RE: [projectvrm] The Rise of AdBlock Reveals A Serious Problem in the Advertising Ecosystem | Monday Note

["T.Rob" < >]

> I like the thumbs down button!

 

+1

 

Preferably, it stops there.

 

https://twitter.com/tdotrob/status/544614941026942976

 

Kind regards,

-- T.Rob

 

T.Robert Wyatt, Managing partner

IoPT Consulting, LLC

+1 704-443-TROB (8762) Voice/Text

+44 (0) 8714 089 546  Voice

https://ioptconsulting.com

https://twitter.com/tdotrob

 

From: Guy Higgins [mailto: ]
Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2014 11:00 AM
To: Katherine Warman Kern; Doc Searls
Cc: Ben Williams; Don Marti; T.Rob; Wunderlich, John; ProjectVRM list; Thomas Greiner
Subject: Re: [projectvrm] The Rise of AdBlock Reveals A Serious Problem in the Advertising Ecosystem | Monday Note

 

I like the thumbs down button!

 

From: Katherine Warman Kern < "> >
Date: Wednesday, December 17, 2014 at 6:56
To: Doc Searls < "> >
Cc: Ben Williams < "> >, Don Marti < "> >, "T.Rob" < "> >, "Wunderlich, John" < "> >, ProjectVRM list < "> >, Thomas Greiner < "> >
Subject: Re: [projectvrm] The Rise of AdBlock Reveals A Serious Problem in the Advertising Ecosystem | Monday Note

 

Well if the industry doesn't care about raising the bar, then maybe there's something better than an Ad Blocker and that's a people powered Ad Blocker.

 

For starters, when I click on the X to close the offending ad window floating in front of the link I clicked on, that ad is permanently blocked so I never have to see it again.

 

Give me a thumbs down button so anytime an ad is so annoying I'd take the time to tell the advertiser so I can do that. Then block that ad from me. 

 

Consider a benchmark of thumbs down votes (more than 50% of viewers gave it a thumbsdown) and the ad is blocked from everyone.

 

Once we start getting rid of some the crap out there, then empower the consumer to promote good ads and good media.

 

In my opinion, ads are so bad and so ubiquitous because there is no one identifying where the bar is or identifying what would raise the bar higher. Start an open dialogue that reveals the most offensive ads versus the ones that get clicks. Some advertisers may have some intelligence, but keep it to themselves. They wrongly think it is a competitive advantage. The truth is that there is no competitive advantage when the landscape is cluttered with crap and consumer trust and attention is shrinking by the minute. 

 

Once we demonstrate how much bad stuff is out there, advertisers can be sold on funding a means (new medium?) to help consumers (intentionally) feed information to advertisers and media so they make smarter content choices instead of Wild Ass Guesses. (WAG)

 

If the IABC wants to cater to the needs of the adtech companies and advertisers who only care about KPI quantity (not quality) then maybe there needs to be another organization that caters to the needs of the advertisers and media who care about what their customers think.

 

I know, I know, you aren't here to support advertisers nor media. But, when I buy a box of Corn Flakes, 5% of my purchase price goes directly to the marketing department. I'm hiring them to decide what media to support and how to communicate with me. Why not give me a vote - an open channel?

 

K-

 

Katherine Warman Kern

@comradity

On Dec 17, 2014, at 8:01 AM, Doc Searls < "> > wrote:

Good points.

 

FWIW (not much), the ad industry isn’t going to do much, if anything. 

 

We need to work on stuff from our side: the individual’s. That’s why I’m pushing this the way I am.

 

Thanks,

 

Doc

 

On Dec 17, 2014, at 12:25 PM, Katherine Warman Kern < "> > wrote:

 

The bluntest tool for separating acceptable from non acceptable is to identify the ads that stimulate significantly more response than others. 

 

For example, when I signal I am interested in something by searching for a keyword and a paid ad shows up in GOOGLE search, that's acceptable to me and I have clicked on those ads.

 

When an hour later, I click on a link that is totally unrelated to that search, e.g., in an email newsletter to an article I want to read or I'm doing research for a post I want to write and an ad interrupts access to that link, I think that is unacceptable, as evidenced by the fact that I have never clicked on one of those ads.

 

Is there a way to separate the wheat from the chaff in this way? Or are the click rates so poisoned by bots that there's no way to know?

 

In my opinion, the ad industry needs to be raising the bar by developing ways to block the bots so an advertiser/marketer can hear the real audience's response. 

Katherine Warman Kern

@comradity

On Dec 17, 2014, at 6:20 AM, Doc Searls < "> > wrote:

I’d like to pull apart distinctions with some 2 x 2s. (The numbers are there just so we can talk about the quadrants.) First the Adblock Plus distinctions:

                                                           

                                                            Annoying                            Intrusive

 

Acceptable                                        1                                           2

 

Not                                                                    3                                           4            

Acceptable

 

 

If I understand it right, ABP is mostly interested in blocking #s 3 and 4, with an emphasis on #3.

 

Second, Don’s distinctions:

 

                                                            Creepy                 Non-creepy

                                                            (adtech)                              (signalful, brand)

 

Acceptable                                        1                                           2

 

Not                                                                    3                                           4

Acceptable

 

If I understand it right, Don is mostly interested in blocking the whole creepy (adtech) column. Is this what PrivacyBadger does?

 

Here is a third distinction, based on two kinds of adtech:

 

                                             Tracking-based                 Third party

                                             on a company’s                tracking-based

                                             first-party sites                                 (everywhere

                                             (e.g. Google,                                    else)

                                             Facebook,

                                             Amazon, Twitter)

 

Acceptable                         1                                                                         2

 

Not                                                     3                                                                         4

acceptable

                                                           

Here is where I am going with this…

 

When it comes time to assert our own terms, of what we will and won’t accept, what should those terms be? For example, one term might be, “You can track me, but only on your own site, and only for the purpose of providing me services on your site."

 

Customer Commons is already working on this with the Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Center/Harvard Law School. And we could use some help.

 

Doc

 

On Dec 16, 2014, at 5:40 PM, Ben Williams < "> > wrote:

 

I'm counting 15 on the page being blocked. Of those, the only ones I'm seeing are indeed really large. And as you point out, they also disrupt the reading flow and a few are animated. So probably not. But some of them might be acceptable with a few small changes -- we do this often. I did see one native ad on there, too (although it was on a sub page of qz.com). With those it's all about clear labeling.

 

Ben

 

 

On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 5:26 PM, Don Marti < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

Do the ad units on qz.com count as Acceptable Ads?

They seem to be low-annoyance and subjectively more
magazine-style than other web ads, but they are large,
appear mid-page, and sometimes have animations.
(Privacy Badger lets them through, but does block
cookies from the server atlanticmedia.122.2o7.net .)

Ben, you're right that publishers and brand
advertisers need to get together and talk about
web ads can work best, without the direct response
assumptions.  I suspect that they would come up with
an ad standard that's in the sprirt of "acceptable"
but disagrees on some of the rules (especially on
infinite scroll pages, where there are many fewer
Acceptable ad units for the same amount of content.)

(I turned off "privacy.trackingprotection.enabled"
in Firefox's "about:config" because it was blocking
those qz.com ads, btw.)

Don


begin Ben Williams quotation of Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 01:36:55PM +0100:
>
> Thanks for looping me in, Doc. We haven't received anything from the French
> publishers, but we do have a trial in Germany this Wednesday.
>
> In my experience with user feedback, I would only differ with one word in
> the following:
>
> *Regardless of its validity, the legal action misses a critical point. By
> downloading the plug-in AdBlock Plus (ABP) on a massive scale, users do
> vote with their mice against the growing invasiveness of digital
> advertising. *
>
> That word is "invasiveness." What does something do that "invades" upon
> your experience? It makes it slower, it distracts but chiefly, and in *both*
> cases, it *annoys*. Almost all users we talk to point to downright
> annoyance as their chief reason for downloading ABP. It's perhaps only a
> slight distinction but not a trifling one.
>
> It seems that the article's chief complaint *about us* is with our
> Acceptable Ads. Specifically, he takes issue with the fact that we
> determine our criteria. That's off-base IMHO, because we didn't develop the
> criteria alone (there were lengthy discussions with our users
> <https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7551>, more discussions
> <https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9280>, additional
> discussions <https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=12239> and

> testing). More importantly, the criteria are only relevant if you download
> ABP -- they cannot mold the greater Internet. So naturally we have to take
> responsibility for how the criteria are applied, and if users think we get
> out of line, well, there are other adblockers ...
>
> But he's on target in suggesting that publishers and advertisers (and
> marketers, to be a little more exact) need to get together and talk about
> better ads. That's exactly the type of conversation that could lead to
> innovation, and I hope our Acceptable Ads in some way has helped to make it
> happen. The only thing is, users need to have a seat at the table. Also,
> adblockers and privacy advocates should be there. I actually was in England
> last week in a debate with a big UK publisher, a guy from the IAB and a
> privacy advocate. Students in the crowd also took part. The chief
> disagreement that the privacy guy and I had with the other two was that
> they rather presume to own the Internet while we preach a user-determined
> one.
>
> Best from Cologne,
> Ben
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 4:44 PM, Don Marti < "> > wrote:
>
> > The ad-agency-friendly ad blocker is already here:
> >   https://www.eff.org/privacybadger
> >
> > Mozilla has a built-in tracking protection project
> > as well, haven't tried it yet:
> >   https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection-firefox
> >
> > If you want to see how it works, install Privacy
> > Badger, turn off other ad blockers, and go read the
> > article on Quartz...
> >
> > http://qz.com/308175/the-rise-of-adblock-reveals-a-serious-problem-in-the-advertising-world/
> >
> > There's some tracking going on (and Privacy Badger is
> > blocking it), but checkitout...a web implementation
> > of magazine-style ads.  Big and attention-getting,
> > not crappy or creepy.  And with tracking protection
> > on, unlikely to be "relevant", so the reader has a
> > reason to look at them.
> >
> > If users block the targeted third-party ads that
> > don't pull their weight, and let the potentially
> > valuable non-targeted kind through, it's a win for
> > legit advertisers.  Privacy Badger is not 100%, but
> > the closest I've seen.  (You can't really understand
> > a media outlet without seeing the first-party ads if
> > it has them.)
> >
> > Next step is for high-value web properties such
> > as Quartz (run by the same company that runs the
> > Atlantic) to quietly "nudge" users into turning on
> > their tracking protection.  (Ideally you get people
> > to protect themselves from the crappy targeted
> > ads before they get frustrated, search "block ads"
> > and over-block.) http://ad.aloodo.com/ is a first
> > experiment, but there are a lot of ways to do it.
> >
> > Don
> >
> > begin T.Rob quotation of Tue, Dec 09, 2014 at 07:47:13AM -0500:
> > >
> > > The lawsuit is very illustrative.  One group sees a need in the market
> > and addresses it with code.  Another sees a need and seeks remedy in
> > court.  If you were an investor choosing between a business model based on
> > innovation and one based on legal subsidies, where do you put your money?
> > I'm betting on innovation every time.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Filloux says that "a single private entity cannot decide what is
> > acceptable or not for an entire sector. Especially in such an opaque
> > fashion."  The thing is, it *isn't* a single private entity.  It is but one
> > approach to ad blocking and it has been adopted by millions of private
> > entities as being their preferred implementation.  That some of these users
> > do not know of other implementations and just take the default confers on
> > Eyeo some additional influence but that is hardly something to sue over.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Of course, that they haven't tried to solve this through code is a bit
> > comforting.  I can't imagine what an ad blocker written by an ad company
> > would do under the covers. ;-)  But if they wanted to resolve this through
> > innovation instead of seeking legal subsidy of their broken business model
> > they might consider actually innovating.  For example, by coming up with
> > ads people don't want to block.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Kind regards,
> > >
> > > -- T.Rob
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > T.Robert Wyatt, Managing partner
> > >
> > > IoPT Consulting, LLC
> > >
> > > +1 704-443-TROB (8762) Voice/Text
> > >
> > > +44 (0) 8714 089 546  Voice
> > >
> > > https://ioptconsulting.com <https://ioptconsulting.com/>
> > >
> > > https://twitter.com/tdotrob
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > From: Wunderlich, John [mailto: "> ]
> > > Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2014 6:46 AM
> > > To: Doc Searls
> > > Cc: ProjectVRM list; Ben Williams
> > > Subject: Re: [projectvrm] The Rise of AdBlock Reveals A Serious Problem
> > in the Advertising Ecosystem | Monday Note
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > I'd like to hear their response as well. The secondary theme in the
> > piece was about how the company does make money - including white listing
> > and 'acceptable' ads. If I read it correctly this isn't about allowing
> > users to _expression_ intention, but rather trying to align the ad economy
> > with what they believe most users will find acceptable.
> > >
> > > On Tuesday, December 9, 2014, Doc Searls < "> >
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > Thanks. A lot in there, and in the comments below.
> > >
> > > I am also cc'ing Ben Williams, who works for adblockplus.org in
> > Cologne. I'd like to hear their position on the piece.
> > >
> > > Doc
> > >
> > > > On Dec 9, 2014, at 5:22 AM, John Wunderlich < ">
> > <_javascript_:;> > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Did anyone see this piece? I don't know the site, but the main point
> > is that advertisers are considering suing the makers of AdBlock Plus, I
> > pulled this quote for the list:
> > > >
> > > > "Regardless of its validity, the legal action misses a critical point.
> > By downloading the plug-in AdBlock Plus (ABP) on a massive scale, users do
> > vote with their mice against the growing invasiveness of digital
> > advertising. Therefore, suing Eyeo, the company that maintains ABP, is like
> > using Aspirin to fight cancer. A different approach is required but very
> > few seem ready to face that fact."
> > > >
> > > >
> > http://www.mondaynote.com/2014/12/08/the-rise-of-adblock-reveals-a-serious-problem-in-the-advertising-ecosystem/?utm_source=feedburner
> > <
> > http://www.mondaynote.com/2014/12/08/the-rise-of-adblock-reveals-a-serious-problem-in-the-advertising-ecosystem/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+monday-note+(Monday+Note)>
> > &utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+monday-note+(Monday+Note)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Fat fingered from a portable device...disregard errurs
> > > >
> > > > John Wunderlich
> > > > Privacist
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > John Wunderlich
> > >
> > > Fat fingered from a mobile device
> > > Pleez 4give spelling errurz!
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and
> > intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are
> > addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the
> > system manager. This message contains confidential information and is
> > intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee
> > you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify
> > the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by
> > mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. If you are not the
> > intended recipient you are notified that disclosing, copying, distributing
> > or taking any action in reliance on the contents of this information is
> > strictly prohibited.
> > >
> >
> > --
> > Don Marti
> > http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
> > ">
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Ben Williams
> Eyeo GmbH
> Im Klapperhof 7-23, 50670 Cologne
> Germany
>
> ">
> +49 221-63069606
> Skype: ben-p.williams

> @B__e__n__w <https://twitter.com/B__e__n__w>
> LinkedIn <http://de.linkedin.com/in/benpwilliams/>
>
> VAT-ID: DE279292414
> District Court Cologne: HRB 735085)
> Managing directors: Wladimir Palant, Till Faida
>

>    -

--
Don Marti
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
">

 

--

Ben Williams
Eyeo GmbH
Im Klapperhof 7-23, 50670 Cologne
Germany

" target="_blank">
+49 221-63069606
Skype: ben-p.williams
@B__e__n__w

LinkedIn

VAT-ID: DE279292414
District Court Cologne: HRB 735085)
Managing directors: Wladimir Palant, Till Faida

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