In this post we will see how users use Ad Blockers to block ads, website owners use tools to detect Adblock scripts using Anti-AdBlockers, and some web surfers use other software to block Adblock detection using Script disablers. Where is this conflict heading towards? Is the free Internet model as we know today, poised for a shift, to a new model? The threat of AdBlock is very real and could well change the free Internet, as we know it today.
The price for a free Internet
Nothing on this planet is free. Many of us assume that the Internet is a free source of information. Is it really free? Can it really exist in the utopian free state? In today’s life, one cannot do away with ads – whether it’s in the newspapers, the television, the outdoors or the web. You may ignore the newspaper ads, go for a snack when the TV ads are flashed or go blind to the large billboards which dot Urbania. The ads are there, and you may choose to ignore them – but they are still there, none the less, make no mistake!
Threat from AdBlockers
In the online world, to support their existence, websites place ads. Like it or not, Online Advertising has indirectly funded the growth of the Internet by encouraging webmasters, bloggers and writers to generate content. The better his content was, the more his traffic and consequently his revenue.
Some are well-placed ads, and some ads are intrusive. The nonintrusive ads are usually static and displayed towards the sides, beginning or end of articles.
And there are others like the pop-ups or the full-page ads which block you when you land on web pages of some popular large-traffic websites. You may have to manually close these ads, and some of them are programmed to again open a related window even as you click on the Close button. Such advertisements are intrusive ads. You have to leave what you were doing, to close these ads. These ads, which pay a lot, can be very irritating and are used by websites whose focus making more money, rather than providing you with quality content. The cost of such intrusive and annoying ads can be very high, says Microsoft Research.
Surfers vs. Online Advertisers vs. Ad blockers vs. Publishers War
The argument for Website Publishers
Maintaining websites needs money. While sometimes the main aim of a website is to make money, there are many bloggers who do it just for passion and dissemination of information. In either case, once the sites become popular and traffic increases, there are maintenance costs – if not anything, the domain name and hosting costs, to begin with. Then come Authors fees, SEO, software costs, freeware development fees, CDN expenses, Web firewall & antivirus costs and so on. The list could be endless. Of course, many of these are available free on the internet, like the WordPress blogging platform, but others require money. The website income thus helps support the website, the owner as well as his family. Now if a user visits a website and reads the content for free, some say that this could well be compared to seeing a movie in a theater without buying a ticket!
The argument for Internet Surfers
The web surfer does not care about these things. He/she just wants information free and without any clutter. His argument typically is What appears on my desktop is my business, and I am not here to see your crappy ads – not realizing that the information he is reading has cost money to someone to generate and display. There are people who want information and use the Internet for a purpose. From students to teachers to researchers to people looking to find solutions to different problems including Windows – everyone searches for information on different blogs and websites.
The Ad Blocking community
The age-old method of blocking ads by modifying the Hosts file was not something everyone could do. Things changed when various ad-blocking software, add-ons, and plugins were released as free downloads. They started becoming popular. For instance Adblock for browsers, with more than 200 million downloads, is being downloaded 170,000 times a day, says its developers Eyeo.com.
A recent report by PageFair.com said that ad blocking was growing at the rate of 43% every year and that 100% of web surfers could well be having some sort of an ad-blocking software installed by 2018. This figure does look too hard to digest, especially since PageFair.com is a company that helps websites identify how much money they are losing due to ad-blocking, so it is understandable that they may exaggerate, but it is a sign showing the direction in which web could well be moving. There is also a free plugin for WordPress users that can tell them how many percent of their users use some sort of ad blocker.
Over 20% of visitors to general interest websites are blocking ads. The worst affected sites are those that target more technically savvy audiences, such as games and technology sites like this one. More than 30% of the visitors to these sites block advertising.
But ad blocking is expected to cross 50% soon.
Online Advertisers
Google with its products AdWords & AdSense is by far the most powerful online advertising company. Google with a market capitalization of around $ 300 billion, comes 3rd after Exxon and Apple. In 2012, it made around $44 billion from online advertising, 68% of which came from Google’s own sites, 27% from its ad network and 5% from other sources. The stakes are thus high for Google. It cannot see the online advertising business shrink or die – no way! I am mentioning Google here since it is the largest online advertising network.
The war begins
AdBlockers, Anti-AdBlockers & Anti-AdBlocker script disablers
To counter Ad Blockers, some websites came up with the idea of blocking content to visitors who use ad blockers. That is, if a website detects that the browser is using an ad blocker of any type, it will give a message asking the users to disable the ad blocker so that they can view the content. Many such Anti-Adblock scripts are freely available on the net, including a free WordPress plugin to block Adblock users. There are several techniques to block Adblock users on your website.
Arstechnica some time back, experimented for 12 hours by blocking users who had ad blockers installed. Dating site OKCupid used to ask ad-block users to donate $5 to support the site. I do not know if they are still doing it, but these are just a few examples. Reddit too, I believe offers its users an ad-free experience for a small monthly fee.
Could this pave the way for a subscription model then? There are already some news sites and blogs who ask you to pay, to be able to read beyond the first paragraph or two.
Facebook has now pro-actively taken steps to circumvent ad blockers and show ads, despite users using them.
The game continues!
To counter this, Anti-AdBlocker script disablers are now available as free downloads for Firefox and Chrome browsers. These browser plugins disable the anti-adblocker scripts which such websites use and allow them to view the content.
A former Googler has started SourcePoint.com that promises to fight AdBlockers.
Google, in March 2013, removed Adblock from the Android Store. This has had a significant impact on user growth says the developers of AdBlock.
The bombshell!
Users trust ad-blockers to block all advertising and other non-essential bells and whistles like the social sharing bars, tracking codes, etc. But what is little known that some ad blocker software companies have started accepting fees for white-listing ads from select companies?
A case in focus is the very popular Adblock Plus. By introducing the concept of “Acceptable Ads“, it will now be in a position to decide who sees ads, what kind of ads and whose ads! In a survey carried out, it found that only 25% of Adblock Plus users were strictly against any advertising. Thus seems to have born the idea of Acceptable Ads. In all fairness, Adblock has laid down some strict conditions for getting the ads whitelisted. Moreover, one has to realize, ad blockers too have expenses to pay, have you thought of that? So where do they make money from? From using the only tool they have! Adblock Plus says this fee is about helping it to maintain its filter list.
There are reports that Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Taboola pay to get ads past Adblock Plus.
Google and some other companies have started funding, in part, AdBlock Plus. By paying a fee to Adblock, they can get their advertisements allowed under the Acceptable Ads whitelist. This has triggered an intense discussion on Hacker News. Some and not all, advertisements of some companies are allowed as per the white list. These include those from Google, Amazon, SmartSearch, gmx.fr, livestrong.com, fusionads.com, banner.t-online.de, gutefrage.net, etc.
Two problems here as I see!
The trust of web surfers who use this adblocking software is being compromised. Some may feel that AdBlock has started selling them out, by encashing their trust. Such ad blockers will now decide which advertisements its users will see.
This could breed unfair and monopolistic practices in the online advertising world. A powerful company could pay enough to “maintain” the whitelist of such ad blockers, to allow its own advertisements and block ads from its competitors. Who knows the definition of Acceptable Ads itself could change over time!
Ad blockers could well acquire immense power in the future!
More ad blockers would get into the game. Some may start up with noble ideas on being independent, but they may soon get sucked in by some online advertiser.
Possible solutions
There has to be a better mechanism in place that satisfies all concerned, viz. content publishers, users of websites, online advertisers & ad blockers.
The first method we can see is opt-in advertising. The websites can provide users with a feature to select the kind of ads they would want to see. Though the Internet marketing agencies and social networking sites already keep tracking you on the Internet to track your interests, in order to provide you with relevant ads, the procedure of allowing users to select what types of ads they would like to see will remove much confusion. You have such a practice partially implemented on Facebook. If you do not like a particular ad, you can close it and specify what interests you. This method just needs to be refined, implemented by the websites and presented to the ad blockers, so that they can check against their database to decide whether or not to block ads. In this case, it becomes the duty/obligation of an ad network to maintain a database of users and their interests so that they can display opt-in advertisements. It would have to be a collaboration between the website and ad networks to identify the user interests per what s/he opted in for.
The second method too involves a little research. Browser Ad Blockers can survey which websites a user frequents. Based on the frequency of visits, the Ad Blockers can choose to allow advertisements on websites. That way, it will help both the website publishers and website users. The former can still earn while the latter knows s/he likes the content and in turn, allows adverts to be loaded.
Online URL scanners monitor websites and report if they are unsafe to visit. Could the ad-blocking community scan sites and block ads of only those who use excessive ads, pop-ups, etc. – and let go of the others who display a reasonable amount of nonintrusive ads. Could that be a possibility?
UPDATE: Google has launched a Contributor program that lets users block ads.
If this continues, I will not be surprised if we see a shift away from a free ad-supported Internet as we know it today, to a closed pay-for-the-content platform, dominated by select quality websites.
Till an alternative model or business strategy to finance or sustain the “free” Internet is found, online advertising is here to stay. Websites will advertise, adblockers will block, websites may block ad-blocker users, users will then use the anti-ad-blocker add-ons now available, online advertisers will pay adblockers to get their ads whitelisted, and so on.
Questions
1) Will ad blocking software companies be engaging in ethical behavior if they were to accept money and allow ‘acceptable ads’?
2) Would you as a user, voluntarily disable your ad blocker for some sites or whitelist some sites, like say, this one?
We would be grateful to you if you were to decide to whitelist TheWindowsClub.com and support us.
3) Will a day come when a company like, say, Google buys, say, a popular ad-blocker like AdBlock? It would be a potent weapon in the hands of Google to selectively allow only their own ads and stifle out the competition.
It’s too early to speculate, and we will have to wait for Time to unravel events!
Till then, enjoy this comic Tech Of Joy on The case for using (or not using) an Ad Blocker.
Updated on 15th Sept 2019.
With inputs from Arun Kumar
