Thord D. Hedengren

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Tag: content blockers

  • Wired's folly

    Wired is taking an aggressive approach to ad blockers come February 16. Either you turn off your ad blocker, or you pay to see the site sans ads. From Bloomberg’s piece on the matter:

    Wired plans to charge $3.99 for four weeks of ad-free access to its website. In many places where ads appear, the site will simply feature more articles, said Mark McClusky, the magazine’s head of operations. The portion of his readership that uses ad blockers are likely to be receptive to a discussion about their responsibility to support the businesses they rely on for information online, McClusky said.

    (more…)

  • Bucket ad blockers

    Digiday on Dennis Digital’s take on ad blocking:

    It has now split ad-blocker users into three buckets: “zealots” whom publishers will never win over, “privacy protectors” who are wary of being tracked in general, and finally those concerned with the speed of the Web and data usage.

    A representative for Dennis Digital also said they’d yet to see any real mobil ad apocalypse, but points out that it could change. Don’t worry, it will.

  • The advertising bubble

    Hard words about the online advertising bubble, from Maciej Ceglowski:

    The prognosis for publishers is grim. Repent! Find a way out of the adtech racket before it collapses around you. Ditch your tracking, show dumb ads that you sell directly (not through a thicket of intermediaries), and beg your readers for mercy. Respect their privacy, bandwidth, and intelligence, flatter their vanity, and maybe they’ll subscribe to something.

    This route is not wrong, it would even make it easier to manage content blockers since the ads wouldn’t be laden with third party spy scripts. However, it does require a sales organization capable of reaching not only ad buyers, but premium ones at that. That costs a lot of money, which has to be earned by even more ads. It’s never as easy as it sounds, is it?

  • Anti-ad blocker hacked

    Ars Technica, reporting on the hack of analytics firm PageFair:

    The compromise started in the last few minutes of Halloween with a spearphishing e-mail that ultimately gave the attackers access to PageFair’s content distribution network account. The attacker then reset the password and replaced the JavaScript code PageFair normally had execute on subscriber websites. For almost 90 minutes after that, people who visited 501 unnamed sites received popup windows telling them their version of Adobe Flash was out-of-date and prompting them to install malware disguised as an official update.

    One of those sites were the Economist, as is widely reported. Third party scripts and services is a forgotten security hazard today. Probably more so than ever, since PageFair is an anti-content blocker. From their about page:

    We started PageFair because we personally experienced the damage adblocking can do to a website. While we recognize that visitors need to defend themselves from distracting, intrusive, inappropriate, disingenuous or malicious advertising, the rise of adblocking is now leading to the death of quality free websites.

    Add PageFair to a service you should block, for your own safety.

  • IAB goes LEAN, still clueless

    IAB, writing from an admittedly high horse, about how they messed up online ads, and manhandled the trust of their visitors, launches Light, Encrypted, Ad choice supported, Non-invasive ads – L.E.A.N. for short. It’s all somewhat positive, up until this load of bullshit:

    L.E.A.N. Ads do not replace the current advertising standards many consumers still enjoy and engage with while consuming content on our sites across all IP enabled devices. Rather, these principles will guide an alternative set of standards that provide choice for marketers, content providers, and consumers.

    Trust me, there’s no one in the world who enjoy your bloated ads. You can’t first point a finger at adblockers, then launch an ad program to remedy your faults, and then claim there are none. IAB just doesn’t get it, a global problem in the ad-driven online industry.