Interactive Advertising Bureau Bars Adblock Plus From Conference, When It Should Be Listening To Them
from the lalala-we-can't-hear-you dept
Ad blocking and the software that powers it seems to be in the news lately, and for all the wrong reasons. Recently, several prominent sites have attacked ad blockers in several different ways, ranging from lawsuits on the extreme end down to simply withholding content. These attempts are all misguided in the same way, however, in that they attack the software that readers find useful rather than attacking the core problem that makes users turn to ad blockers in the first place: incredibly crappy and occasionally downright dangerous advertising inventory.
One would think that websites and online advertisers would have much to learn from the providers of ad blockers. It seems there is little appetite for education amongst them, however, as we've recently learned that the Interactive Advertising Bureau has flat out barred Adblock Plus from its annual conference.
According to a post on the Adblock Plus blog, the company had bought a ticket for the IAB conference, which takes place in Palm Desert, California at the end of January. The ticket was not cheap: they start at about £1,750 for members, scaling up to £2,600 for non-members. Then, last week, Adblock Plus received an e-mail from the IAB stating: "We are returning your registration fee and cancelling your registration for the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting." That was the entire content of the communication; according to Adblock Plus, there was no reason given for the cancellation.The reason for the summary refusal to allow Adblock Plus into the conference isn't difficult to surmise, of course. Online advertisers must certainly cast an unfriendly eye towards ad blockers, seeing them as the enemy. And, in online advertising's current iteration, they are. But, as we've stated before, that's because online advertising first made itself an enemy of the public by being annoying, useless, and even a vector for malware. Refusing to let Adblock Plus into the conference equates to online advertisers sticking their fingers in their ears, refusing to listen to what should be a very important voice in the industry.
Adblock Plus employee Mark Addison e-mailed the IAB and asked if "there must be some confusion" as he hadn't asked for a cancellation or refund. All he got was another inscrutable email from the IAB, confirming that his ticket had indeed been cancelled, but offering up no reason for the cancellation.
Adding to how silly this is is the fact that ad blocking is regularly discussed at the conference.
The IAB has previously acknowledged that adblocking is a huge problem for the industry, and the topic of adblocking was discussed at length at last year's annual conference. If a solution is to be found, it will almost certainly require a dialogue between the advertisers and the advertising blockers.Imagine if, instead of turning a deaf ear towards ad blockers, the IAB instead encouraged a dialogue to find out how to make their advertising more desirable to those using the software. Adblock Plus must have a ton of data that's useful to advertisers, but they won't get it by keeping their little club exclusive.
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Filed Under: ad blocking, ads, online ads
Companies: adblock plus, iab
Reader Comments
The First Word
“made the First Word by Dark Helmet
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Head in the sand
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Sign of their demise
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This is when I sitched to Adguard, which does everything that Adblock was supposed to do. Adblock has become nothing more than scamware and that it has ceased being an adblocker. Adblock created this problem simply by allowing advertisers to pay Adblock in order to allow their ads to display through various web browsers.
There is literally legions of web browser users who have dumped adblock because of this.
Good riddance to the piece of trash that is adblock.
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Re: Sign of their demise
Did you mean figuratively?
Because use of the word "literally" in your sentence means that they really did shot themselves in the foot - like with a real gun resulting in blood and stuff.
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Re: Re: Sign of their demise
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Re:
They're not perfect and some still slip through. Only a tiny fraction of the one's I see are on the paid whitelist. Yes, I actually check.
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Advertisers are the enemies of the Internet
"All children should be aptitude-tested at an early age and, if their main or only aptitude is for marketing, drowned." --- David Canzi, news.admin.net-abuse.email, 2001-03-21
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Truth in advertising
It could be argued that things would be better for everyone if they dropped this adversarial view. Yet, they still believe the way things are is the most profitable. Not because it actually is, it's merely how they profited in the past. They not only fail to see a reason to change, but will fight to maintain the status quo.
Sound familiar?
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Re: Head in the sand
We're still looking for a cure to the infestation that causes so many people so much pain and aggravation.
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Though the dumbest thing about this is that Adblock Plus is one of the few companies able to give real insight into what ads people don't block.
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Re: Re: Head in the sand
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Imagine if occasionally a TV channel occasionally broadcast an advertisement that blew out the speakers, or left a burnt spot on the screen.
Not only would people never knowingly watch that channel, there would likely be a class-action lawsuit over the damage caused.
Yet websites expect to be insulated from the negative effects of their ads. And advertising brokers expect to be held blameless for any damage done.
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Re: Truth in advertising
That's not adversarial. It's predatory. It's thinking of us as meat wandering in a herd and the highest we could aspire to is to provide a meal for one of the hungry lions circling about.
I propose whenever any of us sees a lion out there, stampede over their asses and grind them to dust!
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Entrenched warfare is ugly
Web site owner perspective: I'm putting a ton of resources into this site. From the hit count, it is obviously useful. It's only fair that I recoup my investment and maybe make some profit. Ads provide a way to do that. Unfortunately, selling ad space means I cede control of that part of my site.
User perspective: Many/most ads are extremely annoying, cost me time, cost me privacy, and cost me security. That't too high a price. I'll either block ads or curtail which sites I visit.
The more each of these positions becomes entrenched, the uglier this will get. However, as with most situations like this, the masses will have the final say, and once a tipping point is reached, it is extremely difficult if not impossible to stop. I'm convinced this has already happened in the broadcast/cable vs. any-other-reasonable-medium. It is starting to happen with Internet advertising. This decision by IAB is just more evidence that greed and short-sighted thinking win out over reasoned responses far too often. Maybe their swan song will be "Rollin in the Deep".
Unfortunately, we're probably going to lose a lot of great web sites caught in the crossfire. Hopefully many of them will find other ways to monetize their sites without abusing their fans.
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Re: Re: Sign of their demise
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally
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I'm wondering....
I'm wondering what the reaction would be if there were laws in place that said any such company -- either as a verified source for malware infections, OR if the company's user-account security got too readily cracked, or both -- had to pay substantial FINES for this, every single time it happened, perhaps even with some of those responsible being hauled off to jail... how long would it take before they cleaned up their collective acts, eliminated ALL possibility of malware vectors via ads, and also made DAMN sure their internal security was impregnable. I'm guessing it'd happen very, very fast.
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If Banning Ad-Blockers is Wrong, I Dont Wanna Be Right
id rather live and Adblock-blocking life
You mama and daddy say its a shame
its a downright disgrace
long as i got ads on my site
i dont care what you people say.
Your friends tell you theres no future in browsing and ad-free web.
If i cant show ads when i want to, ill show them when i can.
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hosts file
So I copied every url from my Fiddler session and pasted the URIs into my hosts file with 0.0.0.0 crapy.com and then I noticed my http traffic went way down. Pages loaded very fast. In short, web sites loaded the way they used to: in one to two seconds.
I wouldn't mind ads so much, but after you add up the bloated payload: all the social media feeds, all the round trips going on plus the auto play videos, pop ups, and the poisoned ads, you have to do something.
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Re: I'm wondering....
-- Think of it: a website gives you some malware that changes your DNS setting nets you $250,000(U$D) and all you have to do is file a claim with the FTC and it is done. Net effect you'll never see a malware spreading ad again. Ever.
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Re: Head in the sand
My DNS server is now authoritative for Forbes.com. Guess where it goes? ... http://localhost/nxdomain.html which reminds me that Forbes has nothing to see.
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This "literally" usage is a battle lost years ago, and using it to mean "figuratively" is very much common practice. I'll still complain about it, though.
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And say what you want about the other dictionaries, but the Oxford is the defining document (pardon the pun) of the English Language.
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Re: Adguard
I just checked out Adguard.
YIKES!!!
Run away from it as fast as you can. It runs a process that intercepts all your browsing and loads a fake root cert to do a man-in-middle attack on all your SSL traffic.
Installing this, you have just opened yourself up to all kinds of attacks.
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I have tested this and found that while websites that block ad blockers will be detedted, blocking either through blocking on the router, or through DNS poisoning, will not be detected.
That is because when a URL is blocked, you will get a message saying the site is blocked, and the anti-adblock script will see that something has loaded, but will not detect WHAT has been loaded.
I see a big business opportunity here, blocking ads, and other bad stuff, that much of the current generation of anti-adblock scripts will not detect.
The only two sites I have found, so far, that detect router level or DNS level ad blocking are Forbes and Hulu.
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If that is selling out, I hope they have set the standard.
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Re: Entrenched warfare is ugly
A simple meter showing yearly/monthly costs to run site and donations to date for that period.
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The Last Word
“made the Last Word by audiomagi