You Can Now Turn Off Ads On Techdirt

from the go-ahead dept

Filed Under: ad blocking, ads, business models, revenue streams, support, tracking, users
Companies: techdirt

Verizon Buys AOL, Because Two Lumbering Dinosaurs Who Can't Figure Out The Modern Internet Must Be Better Together

from the this-might-get-interesting dept

"Verizon is a leader in mobile and OTT connected platforms, and the combination of Verizon and AOL creates a unique and scaled mobile and OTT media platform for creators, consumers and advertisers. The visions of Verizon and AOL are shared; the companies have existing successful partnerships, and we are excited to work with the team at Verizon to create the next generation of media through mobile and video."

"The leadership at AOL is staying and I am staying – enthusiastically, and we made that part of the deal. We have the opportunity to build a unique and globally scaled media technology company with the scale and resources we need to make that happen. Verizon and AOL are very large partners today – in content, in ads, and in the technology. We know their team well and they know our team well. The cultures share very similar values and are both working on very similar ways to do good while doing well."

Filed Under: ads, internet, mergers
Companies: aol, verizon

Good News: Internet Ad Industry Realizes It Needs To Embrace HTTPS

from the about-time... dept

It’s time to talk about security.

In fact, last year was the time to talk about security. From The New York Times to Google, the call went out for websites to encrypt communications with their users, protecting the integrity and privacy of information exchanged in both directions. Even the U.S. government heard this call, and is working to require HTTPS delivery of all publicly accessible Federal websites and web services.

This year, the advertising industry needs to finish catching up. Many ad systems are already supporting HTTPS - a survey of our membership late last year showed nearly 80% of member ad delivery systems supported HTTPS. That’s a good start, but doesn’t reflect the interconnectedness of the industry. A publisher moving to HTTPS delivery needs every tag on page, whether included directly or indirectly, to support HTTPS. That means that in addition to their ad server, the agency ad server, beacons from any data partners, scripts from verification and brand safety tools, and any other system required by the supply chain also needs to support HTTPS.

Let’s break that down a bit more - once a website decides to support HTTPS, they need to make sure that their primary ad server supports encryption. That ad server will sometimes need to include tags from brand safety, audience and viewability measurement, and other tools - all of which also need to support encryption. The publisher’s ad server will often direct to one of several agency ad servers, each of which will also need to serve over HTTPS. Each agency ad server also may include a variety of beacons or tags, depending on how the deal was set up, all of which similarly need to have encrypted versions available. That’s a lot of dependencies - and when one fails to support HTTPS, the website visitor’s experience is impacted, initiating a costly search for the failure point by the publisher.

Filed Under: ads, encryption, https, privacy, security
Companies: iab

New York Times Turns Ads Off On 'Sensitive' Stories

from the advertising-sensibilities dept

I was looking at the HTML source of a recent New York Times story about a tragic plane accident—150 people feared dead—and noticed this meta tag in its head:

<meta property="ad_sensitivity" content="noads" />

There are no Google results for the tag, so it looks like it hasn't been documented, but it seems like a pretty low-tech way to keep possibly insensitive ads off a very sensitive story—an admirable effort. It's interesting in part because it's almost an acknowledgement that ads are invasive and uncomfortable. They cross over into the intolerable range when we're emotionally vulnerable from a tragic story. Advertisers know this too, and the New York Times might stipulate in contracts they'll try to keep ads off sensitive pages.

If I had to guess, I'd say this is probably a manual switch in their CMS. It would be interesting to see what sorts of stories get dubbed unfit for ads, though scraping enough article pages to get that information might raise some eyebrows on that side of the paywall.

(This information, by the way, doesn't have to be exposed for keeping ads off pages they serve. But it could help with debugging, and definitely could be useful for syndication and maybe even displaying in official apps.)

This isn't the first example of companies declining to advertise against tragedies. Five years ago a user documented that Gmail doesn't show ads on emails that contain words from a certain blacklist, at a certain density—one sensitive word per 167 "normal" words.

Reposted from parker higgins dot net

Filed Under: ads, choices, sensitive stories
Companies: ny times

Cable's Answer To A Changing TV Landscape? Stuff More Ads Into Every Hour

from the dancing-in-quicksand dept

"Beset by declines in audience, a majority of U.S. cable networks stuffed more commercials onto their air in the fourth quarter, with Viacom boosting its ad load by 13% across its cable networks; A+E Networks increasing the number of commercials it runs by 10%; and Discovery Communications adding 9% more TV spots, according to research released Wednesday by independent analyst Michael Nathanson. On the broadcast side, Fox raised the number of spots it aired by 15% in the quarter, Nathanson said, while ABC and CBS reduced theirs by 2% and NBC cut its by 6%."

Filed Under: ads, cable, cord cutters, tv

DailyDirt: Advertising Needs To Be More Considerate

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

• Best Buy wrote a playful tweet about having everything you need in its stores -- except a payphone, referring to the Serial podcast about a murder case and an unaccounted for payphone near a Best Buy store that might have exonerated a teen accused of murder. Best Buy apologized for making light of the topic since there was a backlash from people who thought it was inappropriate to joke about such a serious subject. [url]
• Greenpeace wanted to promote renewable energy with a huge banner, and unfortunately, it placed its message on the site of the Nazca Lines -- a 1,500-year-old ancient monument in Peru. Greenpeace will likely be charged criminally for defacing a heritage site with a tone-deaf advertisement that ignored the local population completely. [url]
• Sesame Street also tweeted a mildly humorous joke about Serial. However, the children's TV show didn't provoke much backlash for making a pun related to a murder case. Not-for-profit muppets aren't apparently held to the same standards as retailers, but then again, Bert didn't actually refer to anything specific in the murder case. [url]

Filed Under: ads, advertising, content, media, mistakes, nazca lines, podcast, serial, sesame street
Companies: best buy, greenpeace

Not Just Governments Hacking Your Computers Via YouTube Videos; Malicious Ads Found On Popular Videos

from the danger-danger dept

This was a worrying development: not only were malicious ads showing up on YouTube, they were on videos with more than 11 million views – in particular, a music video uploaded by a high-profile record label.

The ads we’ve observed do not directly lead to malicious sites from YouTube. Instead, the traffic passes through two advertising sites, suggesting that the cybercriminals behind this campaign bought their traffic from legitimate ad providers.

In order to make their activity look legitimate, the attackers used the modified DNS information of a Polish government site. The attackers did not compromise the actual site; instead they were able to change the DNS information by adding subdomains that lead to their own servers. (How they were able to do this is unclear.)

The traffic passes through two redirection servers (located in the Netherlands) before ending up at the malicious server, located in the United States.

Filed Under: ads, malicious ads, scammers, videos, youtube
Companies: google

Big Cable Wasting Money On Ads That Look Like They're Supporting Internet Slowdown

from the rather-incredible dept

Filed Under: ads, big broadband, cable, failure, internet slowdown, net neutrality, open internet
Companies: ncta

Comcast Using Packet Injection To Push Its Own Ads Via WiFi, Apparently Oblivious To Security Concerns

from the because-it's-comcast dept

A Comcast spokesman told Ars the program began months ago. One facet of it is designed to alert consumers that they are connected to Comcast's Xfinity service. Other ads remind Web surfers to download Xfinity apps, Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas told Ars in telephone interviews.

The advertisements may appear about every seven minutes or so, he said, and they last for just seconds before trailing away. Douglas said the advertising campaign only applies to Xfinity's publicly available Wi-Fi hot spots that dot the landscape. Comcast customers connected to their own Xfinity Wi-Fi routers when they're at home are not affected, he said.

"We think it's a courtesy, and it helps address some concerns that people might not be absolutely sure they're on a hotspot from Comcast," Douglas said.

"Indeed, they were not ours," Gabe Rivera, who runs Mediagazer and Techmeme, said in an e-mail. In another e-mail, he said, "someone else is inserting them in a sneaky way."

To Topolski, what Comcast is now doing is no different from before: Comcast is adding data into the broadband packet stream. In 2007, it was packets serving up disconnection commands. Today, Comcast is inserting JavaScript that is serving up advertisements, according to Topolski, who reviewed Singel's data.

"It's the duty of the service provider to pull packets without treating them or modifying them or injecting stuff or forging packets. None of that should be in the province of the service provider," he said. "Imagine every Web page with a Comcast bug in the lower righthand corner. It's the antithesis of what a service provider is supposed to do. We want Internet access, not another version of cable TV."

Filed Under: ads, broadband, isps, packet injection, security, wifi, xfinity
Companies: comcast