0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.
Ad blocking is becoming a business. While there are still many extensions out there that are not monetized at all or only slightly, for instance by accepting donations, it is clear that there is a drive towards making adblocking profitable for companies involved.
In the meantime, mourn for Adblock Plus, which isn’t as pure as you thought, because at the end of the day it needs money too.
Browser Fingerprinting – the way in which your browser is configured (especially the browser plugins used), together with details of your Operating System, allows you to be uniquely identified (and tracked) with a worryingly high degree of accuracy. A particularly insidious (and ironic) aspect of this is that the more measures you take to avoid being tracked (e.g. using the plugins listed below), the more unique your browser fingerprint becomes.
HTML web storage – Even creepier and much more powerful than cookies, web storage is a way analogous to cookies of storing data in a web browser, but which is much more persistent, has a much greater storage capacity, and which cannot normally be monitored, read, or selectively removed from your web browser.
ETags – Etags are markers used by your browser to track resource changes at specific URL. By comparing these changes in these markers with a database, websites can build up a fingerprint which can be used to track you. They can also be used to respawn (Zombie style) HTTP and HTML5 cookies, and once set on one site, used by associate companies to also track you.Unfortunately this kind of cache tracking is virtually undetectable, so reliable prevention is very hard.
Mozilla co-founder unveils Brave, a Web browser that blocks ads by default...but Brave then replaces blocked ads with its own ads, taking a 15% cut of revenuesThe whole premise of Brave, its raison d'être if you will, is that it automatically blocks programmatic online advertising and tracking cookies by default. Programmatic advertising refers to ads that are placed on websites via automated software. Most websites run a mix of conventional display advertising, which is bought and sold in human-to-human advertising deals, and programmatic advertising.In theory, much like if you installed Ghostery or Adblock Plus, this results in a faster—and potentially safer, in the case of malvertising—Web browsing experience.In practice, Brave just sounds like a cash-grab. Brave isn't just a glorified adblocker: after removing ads from a webpage, Brave then inserts its own programmatic ads. It sounds like these ads will be filled by ad networks that work with Brave directly, and Brave will somehow police these ads to make sure they're less invasive/malevolent than the original ads that were stripped out. In exchange, Brave will take a 15 percent cut of the ad revenue. Instead of using tracking cookies that follow you around the Internet, Brave will use your local browsing history to target ads.
Otherwise it feels pretty much like Google's Chrome running an ad blocker plugin.
Google says it blocked 780 million bad ads last yearMore and more computer users, stung by their experiences of website ads tracking their online activity or infecting their computers with malware, are deciding to install ad blockers – stripping advertising content out of webpages.People aren’t installing ad blockers because they necessarily find advertising an offensive way for a website to generate revenue, but because having your PC infected by malware for simply browsing a webpage is too high a cost to pay.
Adblockers are a “protection racket”, says senior politicianJohn Whittingdale, the UK’s secretary for culture, media and sport, who oversees the government’s regulation of media, including online media... called adblocking companies a “modern-day protection racket.”Not all adblockers make revenue from advertisers: for example, the Electronic Frontier Foundation supports an adblocker called Privacy Badger which is free to all and makes no money for the EFF.But publishing and advertising companies have been sharply critical of the business model of adblocking companies like Eyeo, the creator of the hugely popular Adblock Plus.Adblock Plus doesn’t make money from the millions of people who use its desktop and mobile browser extensions (like so much on the web, Adblock Plus is “free”).Instead, the company makes money through an “acceptable ads” program, by charging big advertisers for “whitelisting” ads that meet a murky set of standards.
Adblock Plus opens up about how 'acceptable ads' workPublishers with more than 10m blocked ads have to pay 30% of the revenue from previously blocked ads to make it on to whitelist
AdBlock replaced blocked ads with ads for Amnesty InternationalAdBlock has replaced blocked ads with ads it wants you to see.The advertising-blocking company on Saturday continued to block ads but replaced them with “banners linked to articles written for Amnesty International by prominent privacy and free speech advocates like Edward Snowden, Ai Wei Wei, and others, instead of the peaceful, blank spaces you’re accustomed to not noticing.”