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Princeton's Ad-Blocking Superweapon May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race
An ad blocker that uses computer vision appears to be the most powerful ever devised and can evade all known anti ad blockers.
A team of Princeton and Stanford University researchers has fundamentally reinvented how ad-blocking works, in an attempt to put an end to the advertising versus ad-blocking arms race. The ad blocker they've created is lightweight, evaded anti ad-blocking scripts on 50 out of the 50 websites it was tested on, and can block Facebook ads that were previously unblockable.
This fulfills the dream, that I'm sure I'm not alone in having, of "what if something could see the entire page, and show me a copy of the page with the ads visually blocked, but with the advertiser's scripts interacting with the original copy filled with thousands and thousands of blinking, dancing, flashing, seizure inducing ads."
Ads ruin everything they touch. Radio. TV. Magazines. Newspapers. Billboards. I could go on, but on the web ads, like they always do, started out unobtrusive. Then there were deceptive ads designed to lure you to "punch the monkey". Then more deceptively to look like an OS dialog warning of something with horrible consequences demanding immediate response luring you to install malware. Ads. Ad blockers. Ad blocker blockers. Then better ad blockers. Now this. Maybe something that will finally kill ads dead.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @07:57PM
The issue is that the ads aren't targeted to the page and they're extremely obtrusive. That's when they aren't delaying the page loads or serving up malware.
The fact that these adblockers are even a thing is a direct result of the ad companies being so sleazy. Serving up text ads or simple GIFs that are targeted to the page wouldn't have inspired so many people to get ad blockers. I know that I personally click on far fewer ads these days because they're not relevant and they're often times malware.
Most people are just too lazy to install an add on to block ads, they do it because that's what sensible people do in response to the malware and other anti-social behaviors that advertisers engage in in order to get our attention. Just serve up a simple ad that tells us what your product is and why we should want it and we might click. Doing anything more is counterproductive.