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Ads have long been part of the trade-off for users of the free Web, but the rise of ad blockers is making it increasingly difficult for publishers to sustain that ad-supported model.
That's according to a report published Monday by Adobe Systems and PageFair, a startup focused on assessing the cost of ad blocking and proposing alternatives.
While PageFair clearly has a vested interest in illustrating the negative effects of ad blocking, the findings of its study with Adobe are difficult to ignore. Most notably, ad blocking will cost publishers nearly $22 billion this year, it reported.
Ad blocking has grown by 41% globally in the last 12 months, the report found, amounting now to about 198 million active ad-block users around the world.
There were some interesting geographical differences highlighted in the report, too. For instance, in the U.S., ad blocking grew by 48% over the preceding 12 months to reach 45 million active users by June. In the U.K., ad blocking grew by 82% to reach 12 million active users over that same time frame.
Meanwhile, those numbers will surely be on the rise on the mobile side, Adobe noted in a blog post, given that Apple's iOS 9 will likely include ad-blocking features in Safari by default while Adblock Plus is already available in limited beta for Android.
Ad blocking represents "a major, growing problem for both digital publishers and marketers," said Greg Sterling, vice president for strategy and insights with the Local Search Association.
In many ways, the ad-blocking phenomenon is a response to security and privacy fears that have arisen in the culture at large and a rejection of the state of advertising on the PC internet, Sterling said.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @06:53PM
I had it before it expired but anyways here's the untrusted cert's info lol:
First,we will go over the basic privacy settings in general settings, which can be found in the options bar in Firefox 11 (Firefox > Options > Options) or for iOS, Preferences.
Content: Enable block popup windows and disable Javascript when it isn’t needed.
Privacy: Enable the DNT (Do-Not-Track). For history, use custom settings. “Always use private browsing mode” should be enabled. “Remember my browsing history”, “Remember download history” and “Remember search and form history” should be turned off. “Accept cookies from sites”, but un-check “Accept third party cookies” as they aren’t needed often. Location bar: select “Suggest nothing”.
Security: Enable “Warn me when sites try to install add-ons”, “Block reported attack sites” and “Block reported web forgeries”. Under Passwords, disable “Remember passwords for sites” and use a master password.
Advanced – General – System Defaults: Disable “Submit crash reports and performance data”.
Advanced – Network – Offline Storage: Check “Override automatic cache management and limit cache to 0MB space”. Further—you can un-check “Tell me when a website asks to store data for offline storage use”.
Advanced – Encryption: Ensure both “Use SSL 3.0 and Use TLS 1.0″ are enabled. Then click validation > check “When an OCSP server connection fails, treat the certificate as invalid”.
Registry Panel Settings
For these settings, you will need to type “about:config” without the quotes into the URL bar to get the Firefox registry panel.
about:config -> geo.enabled -> double click to false – what does this do? When this is enabled, websites will be able to identify your location based on your IP address.
about:config -> browser.sessionhistory.max_entries -> change value to 2 – this increases your privacy.
about:config -> dom.storage.enabled -> double click to false – this should always be set to false. Leaving this enabled lets the browser store data onto your computer.
about:config -> browser.display.use_document_fonts -> change value to 0 – This limits the fonts it sends to websites you visit. The fonts on your computer can be very unique and it could identify your workplace.
about:config -> browser.cache.offline.capacity -> change to 0 – without going into depth, this one is like the two below. It prevents the browser from storing local data.
about:config -> browser.cache.offline.enable -> change to false – This prevents the browser from storing cache on your system.
about:config -> browser.cache.memory.enable -> change to false – again this is better off left at false. It prevents the browser from storing cache memory on the computer.
Privacy Protecting Add-Ons
AdBlockPlus - Automatically blocks ads from being displayed. Unfortunately now allows "non-intrusive" ads by default, so set your filter to "Fanboy's List".
Ghostery - Blocks analytical software (e.g. Google Analytics).
HTTPS Everywhere - Automatically makes Firefox use HTTPS encryption when possible. Protects against people seeing what you're doing on different websites.
HTTPS Finder - Automatically detects and enforces HTTPS connections when available. It also provides one-click creation and in-browser editing for HTTPS Everywhere rules.
NoScript - Blocks malicious scripts and provides firewall-like protection within Firefox.
Collusion - Allows you to see all the third parties that are tracking your movements across the Web. It will show, in real time, how that data creates a spider-web of interaction between companies and other trackers.
EXIF Viewer - Allows for easy viewing of EXIF data (which can contain personal info) in images with a right click.
BetterPrivacy - Deletes flash cookies.
MD5 Reborned Hasher - This extension allows to check the MD2, MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA384 or SHA512 sum of a downloaded file.
Key Scrambler - Protect your Internet browsing from keyloggers.
FireGloves - Impedes fingerprinting-based tracking.
Redirect Cleaner - Redirect Cleaner cleans Redirects from Links
Open IT Online - Open several types of documents directly in Firefox and Internet Explorer without needing any software to be installed.
Ref Control - Control what gets sent as the HTTP Referer on a per-site basis.
UAControl - Control what gets sent as the User-Agent on a per-site basis.
Cookie Whitelist, With Buttons - Enables you to use a cookie whitelist with ease, through a set of toolbar buttons.
CsFire - CsFire autonomously protects you against dangerous or malicious cross-domain requests, such as Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF).
Request Policy - Improves the privacy and security of your browsing by giving you control over when cross-site requests are allowed by webpages you visit. Protects against Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks.
(Score: 2) by bryan on Wednesday August 12 2015, @09:13PM
SSL 3.0 has been a rather bad idea for a long time, but the recent poodle [wikipedia.org] attack has all but killed it. Don't enabled SSL 3.0!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @10:41PM
Some of these things will actually make you easier to fingerprint. Noscript alone tends to make most of this redundant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @02:49AM
Kind of irrelevant if you use an addon that purposely sends false information about your browser to these websites. The fingerprint may be unique, but it's not very useful if they can't uniquely identify you every time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @04:53AM
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-malware-protection-work [mozilla.org]
I dunno.