I used to work at a startup that was trying to replace ads as the funding source for news (we failed, obviously)
but the crazy thing we discovered is that the people who run news websites mostly don’t know where their ads are coming from, have forgotten how the ad system was installed in the first place, and cannot turn them off if they try
we actually shipped a server-side ad blocker, for a parter who had so completely lost control of their own platform that it was the only way to make the ads stop
Also the companies selling the ad platforms aren’t knowing their own technical documentation. They tell everyone you need to load JS as heavy and blocking as possible and collect as much user data as possible because they can’t read their damn documentation. That’s also why news pages always say ad only works with massive tracking, which isn’t true and not even that effective.
> we actually shipped a server-side ad blocker, for a parter who had so completely lost control of their own platform that it was the only way to make the ads stop
Thank you for this insight. Even as a developer, I can easily lose track of all the trackers I've included in a webpage. Usually, if I see a tracker in the code, it's already obfuscated and I provide the benefit of the doubt to leave it in.
It's only when I jump back into the ads management page where I'm able to get a better idea. Even then, the specific trackers are hidden behind a variety of menu items that can change every time. This post made me realize that I need a better strategy as things are getting ridiculous with ads.
I used to be someone who didn't use ad blockers because some of them are botnets. It's just not the same anymore, as I would trust the botnets with my data over the advertisers.
> the people who run news websites mostly don’t know where their ads are coming from, have forgotten how the ad system was installed in the first place, and cannot turn them off if they try
I think this might be selection bias in your customer base. I've had some friends who worked at a local news outlet. The ads on their website were a big deal and they had a full-time position dedicated to managing internet advertising.
Was your company called Scroll by chance, the one that Twitter acquired?
When I ran Android Police, we were one of the largest Scroll users in the beginning and I was pretty upset when Scroll shut down.
However, it never amounted to any meaningful revenue and was just a nice way to implement ad-free subscriptions across various sites. Other big sites used it too, like The Verge and Gizmodo and I thought it had some potential.
I believe one of the reasons I keep coming back to hackernews is the absence of ads and the near complete focus on content. Shout out to those who work in the background to keep it like this. It would be interesting to hear from dang or other insiders how evident it is that this website is adfree. At some point there must have been someone who probably raised the idea that money could be made by injecting an ad or a tracker here or there. The article uses the example of the print version of the New Yorker, as a way of how things can be. From interviews with David Remnick, the editor, I learned that it has been mostly his vision to decrease the ads in the print and making up the lost revenue by increasing the subscription fees. It’s these people we need to save the media landscape.
"I went to the New York Times to glimpse at four headlines and was greeted with 422 network requests and 49 megabytes of data."
Not really the point of the article, but almost all major news sites are significantly better if you block javascript. You sometimes lose pictures and just get text, but often the pictures are irrelevant anyhow. (a story about a world leader, and some public / stock photo is used and is not truly relevant to the story)
News sites are almost like lyric sites or recipe sites in this regard. The seem to presume that many visitors will not be regular visitors, and so they try to maximize value from every single visit.
Just a crazy idea, but could it be that they don't dogfood their own stuff? I have Ublock Origin Lite on by default (RIP full Ublock Origin) and a lot of sites look clean. I'm often not even aware that if I send a link to an article via Whatsapp or whatever, it may reflect badly on me that I send such an ad-overloaded mess to them. I just don't know the mess is there except sometimes by accident.
I watched someone getting a livestream of an important (to them) soccer game going via the sort of thing usually reserved for "adult" content - that any given click, be it "play" or "fullscreen" or whatever, has a 9/10 chance of triggering a junk popup rather than the intended action, so you play whack-a-mole until you finally get it playing, whack-a-mole again until you get fullscreen, and then for heaven's sake don't touch it any more. Whereas with the adblocker, typically it looks completely clean, with no junk popups, and every click doing exactly what it should on the first try.
Anyway so could it be that the web having turned into such ad-overloaded garbage, that even its designers have adblockers running and don't even fully realize what a mess they're publishing?
It’s ironic seeing Gruber gripe about screen percentages used when his own website dedicates only about 50% of the screen width (on mobile) to content, and leaves the other half blank. Not to mention the light-grey-on-dark-grey and the tiny font.
Just as I need an ad blocker to browse the modern web, I need Reader mode to read Gruber’s rant about it.
At least in India, most popular newspapers actually do this nowadays. Several full page ads including on the front page have become the norm.
It is mostly a function of how little the reader is willing to pay for content. When the price point is too low (which for online content is too low), publishers make their money by other means. It is not rocket science.
> the equivalent of a broadcast TV channel that only showed 7 minutes of actual TV content per hour, devoting the other 53 minutes to paid commercials and promotions for other shows on the same channel. Almost no one would watch such a channel.
I recently was in a 45 minutes Uber ride where the driver had the stereo set to the Sirius XM self-advertising channel - the one you get if you haven't subscribed. For 45 minutes, all he listened to was an ad for XM.
I was surprised at the claim that The Guardian leaves very little room for the article. Sure enough, I loaded it up in a private window with adblocks disabled and the above the fold was very obnoxious.
Which is very surprising to me. I only read The Guardian within the Tor browser, and when the website is loaded over their onion urls I do not see the same large obnoxious ads. A rare Tor win? Maybe adnetworks block Tor IP addresses and the reason why ads don't show up?
I'm doing my small part by paying for websites that respect me in the way TFA describes. I have annual subscriptions to Defector, Brand New, and DIELINE, and I'll add more as other websites follow their lead. Maybe it'll become too much to manage one day, but it might be for other readers too, and then maybe that will pressure our card companies and banks to start providing some more useful consumer services. We need enough people to actually subscribe to these websites to make that future happen though.
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but the crazy thing we discovered is that the people who run news websites mostly don’t know where their ads are coming from, have forgotten how the ad system was installed in the first place, and cannot turn them off if they try
we actually shipped a server-side ad blocker, for a parter who had so completely lost control of their own platform that it was the only way to make the ads stop
At some point I just lost interest in the whole thing and cancelled my plugin subscription.
I got an email from the developer, which was kind enough, asking me why I was cancelling and if there was any feedback I wanted to share.
I mentioned how complicated ad inventory, ad placement, and online ordering for hands-off customer self-service was.
His question back was, "What's hard about it?"
I couldn't even muster a reply.
> we actually shipped a server-side ad blocker, for a parter who had so completely lost control of their own platform that it was the only way to make the ads stop
this is batshit insane, yet I believe it
It's only when I jump back into the ads management page where I'm able to get a better idea. Even then, the specific trackers are hidden behind a variety of menu items that can change every time. This post made me realize that I need a better strategy as things are getting ridiculous with ads.
I used to be someone who didn't use ad blockers because some of them are botnets. It's just not the same anymore, as I would trust the botnets with my data over the advertisers.
> the people who run news websites mostly don’t know where their ads are coming from, have forgotten how the ad system was installed in the first place, and cannot turn them off if they try
I think this might be selection bias in your customer base. I've had some friends who worked at a local news outlet. The ads on their website were a big deal and they had a full-time position dedicated to managing internet advertising.
When I ran Android Police, we were one of the largest Scroll users in the beginning and I was pretty upset when Scroll shut down.
However, it never amounted to any meaningful revenue and was just a nice way to implement ad-free subscriptions across various sites. Other big sites used it too, like The Verge and Gizmodo and I thought it had some potential.
Not really the point of the article, but almost all major news sites are significantly better if you block javascript. You sometimes lose pictures and just get text, but often the pictures are irrelevant anyhow. (a story about a world leader, and some public / stock photo is used and is not truly relevant to the story)
News sites are almost like lyric sites or recipe sites in this regard. The seem to presume that many visitors will not be regular visitors, and so they try to maximize value from every single visit.
I watched someone getting a livestream of an important (to them) soccer game going via the sort of thing usually reserved for "adult" content - that any given click, be it "play" or "fullscreen" or whatever, has a 9/10 chance of triggering a junk popup rather than the intended action, so you play whack-a-mole until you finally get it playing, whack-a-mole again until you get fullscreen, and then for heaven's sake don't touch it any more. Whereas with the adblocker, typically it looks completely clean, with no junk popups, and every click doing exactly what it should on the first try.
Anyway so could it be that the web having turned into such ad-overloaded garbage, that even its designers have adblockers running and don't even fully realize what a mess they're publishing?
Just as I need an ad blocker to browse the modern web, I need Reader mode to read Gruber’s rant about it.
> No print publication on the planet does this
At least in India, most popular newspapers actually do this nowadays. Several full page ads including on the front page have become the norm.
It is mostly a function of how little the reader is willing to pay for content. When the price point is too low (which for online content is too low), publishers make their money by other means. It is not rocket science.
> the equivalent of a broadcast TV channel that only showed 7 minutes of actual TV content per hour, devoting the other 53 minutes to paid commercials and promotions for other shows on the same channel. Almost no one would watch such a channel.
I recently was in a 45 minutes Uber ride where the driver had the stereo set to the Sirius XM self-advertising channel - the one you get if you haven't subscribed. For 45 minutes, all he listened to was an ad for XM.
Most people just don't care.
Which is very surprising to me. I only read The Guardian within the Tor browser, and when the website is loaded over their onion urls I do not see the same large obnoxious ads. A rare Tor win? Maybe adnetworks block Tor IP addresses and the reason why ads don't show up?
The onion url https://www.guardian2zotagl6tmjucg3lrhxdk4dw3lhbqnkvvkywawy3...