If You Use An Adblocker You Hate Free Speech, Says Internet Ads Guy

from the swing-and-a-miss dept

Mother of God. You may recall that we recently discussed the Interactive Advertising Bureau's (IAB) unfortunate decision to refuse Adblock Plus' registration for its annual conference. At a time when adblocking software is seeing its greatest use, it seemed to us that the IAB and its members might have a great deal to learn from Adblock Plus and that, rather than walling off its conference to them, the IAB could instead try to learn why so many people are using that software and software like it. That is because I had thought at the time that the IAB's refusal had mostly to do with it seeing such software as a threat to its members' business. Well, the conference has begun and in the keynote speech delivered by IAB chief, Randall Rothenberg, we learn that barring Adblock Plus from the conference wasn't about ad revenue at all. It was about freedom of speech, an appreciation of diversity, pushing back on racist Republican presidential candidates, and good old apple pie America.

Yeah. Fucking seriously. Here is a transcript of the speech, but I warn you not to have eaten anything just before reading it, or else be prepared to wear your meal on your shoes. The whole thing starts off with a several-hundred word introduction on the history of the IAB and just how unimaginably awesome it is, at the conclusion of which Rothenberg states with a straight face: "Of course, we are not here, you are not here, to celebrate the past." Well, hey, thanks, how about giving us back the last twenty minutes of our lives then, sir.

But, no, Rothenberg then states that we're all listening to him to discover how online advertising is going to generate "The Next $50 billion", except only moments later we're not really talking about that and we're instead talking about how we're going to create something much more valuable through advertising: altruism.

But if money is your only goal, then you risk falling into relativism – a pernicious trap, for you begin weighing all potential returns based on the single metric of how much more money you can make. Truth, beauty, fairness, justice, honesty, civic pride, neighborliness – they become means to an end, rather than ends in themselves. That is debilitating, and ultimately deadens the soul. I want you to confront that challenge. I want you to remember that there are greater and longer-term values than the mere promise of financial wealth that attracts so many to the digital advertising industry.

Those values are then outlined and explained. Diversity is first up, with Rothenberg decrying Republicans for the statements by some of their presidential candidates. Not sure what that has to do with anything, but okay. Freedom of speech is up next, with Rothenberg declaring that open access to speech is important for the internet and digital advertising. Which, fair enough. He goes on to note that free speech and advertising are linked, in that advertising is a form of content and should not be censored. Keep this notion in mind as Rothenberg pivots his speech jarringly into the following rant.

And this is why I hate the ad-block profiteers.

Now, you may be aware of a kerfuffle that began about 10 days ago, when an unethical, immoral, mendacious coven of techie wannabes at a for-profit German company called AdBlock-Plus took to the digisphere to complain over and over that IAB had “disinvited” them to this convention. That, of course, is as much a lie as the others they routinely try to tell the world. We had never invited them in the first place. They registered for this event online. When we found out, we cancelled the registration and reversed their credit card billing. Why? For the simple reason that they are stealing from publishers, subverting freedom of the press, operating a business model predicated on censorship of content, and ultimately forcing consumers to pay more money for less – and less diverse – information.

He then, hysterically, goes on to deliver a whining anecdote about how Adblock Plus convened a meeting with online publishers to discuss how to improve advertising on the internet -- the very thing we here at Techdirt thought made sense -- and that at the meeting almost nobody showed and those that did felt slighted that Adblock Plus wouldn't hand over every last detail of its business model, centering around its "Acceptable Ads" program. In other words, Adblock Plus wanted to open a conversation with these people, didn't simply allow advertisers to dictate to them how to behave, and as a result the IAB wouldn't let them at its conference...and its Adblock Plus that's against diversity and free expression. Yeesh.

He goes on to complain that these publishers didn't receive follow up calls or messages after Adblock Plus' conference. Gee, maybe they thought they'd be at the IAB conference you won't let them into?

After detailing several other barbarians banging at the IAB gates, he goes on to complain about their business model.

The ad-block profiteers are building for-profit companies whose business models are premised on impeding the movement of commercial, political, and public-service communication between and among producers and consumers. They offer to lift their toll gates for those wealthy enough to pay them off, or who submit to their demands that they constrict their freedom of speech to fit the shackles of their revenue schemes.

They may attempt to dignify their practices with such politically correct phrases as “reasonable advertising,” “responsible advertising,” and “acceptable ads”; and they can claim as loudly as they want that they seek “constructive rapport” with other stakeholders. But in fact, they are engaged in the techniques of The Big Lie, declaring themselves the friends of those whose livelihoods they would destroy, and allies to those whose freedoms they would subvert.

Here's how a free market, another value worth holding onto, actually works. Let's say Adblock Plus or another software provider was blocking useful ads with fun content from a publisher and instead injecting its own advertising to generate revenue. Advertising that wasn't as useful or entertaining as the original publishers. Why would anyone use that software? They wouldn't. It would defeat the entire purpose of using an ad blocker. The problem would solve itself. Or let's say the other practice was employed, with ad blockers getting publishers to pay to let the ads through that users were trying to block by using the software. Why would anyone use that software? The problem would, again, solve itself.

No, this ends up being about what it's always been about: the content and quality of the advertising. Content is advertising and advertising is content and the only way that ad blockers get used is by letting more good content in and keeping more bad content out. And Rothenberg knows it.

But the best news of all is that the ad-block profiteers have done this industry a favor. They have forced us to look inward – at our own relentless self-involvement – and outward, to the men, women, and children who are our actual customers.

IAB Senior Vice President and Tech Lab General Manager Scott Cunningham put it best and most succinctly in an October IABlog post: “We messed up. As technologists, tasked with delivering content and services to users, we lost track of the user experience.”

It goes on from there, noting just how shitty digital advertising has become. So then why in the sweet hell are you putting ad blocking software, for profit or otherwise, in the crosshairs at all? They're the symptom of the very disease you yourself have properly identified: shitty ads. You fix that and you fix everything.

But, no, instead we get a speech all about how awesome the IAB is and, strangely, how ad blocking software is in favor of racism and speech censorship, so long as it makes any money. We're here, after all, to talk about the next fifty-billion dollars we're going to make. But not because of the money. Because of our altruistic values.

Please.

Filed Under: ad industry, adblocking, advertising, diversity, free speech, internet advertising, randall rothenberg
Companies: adblock plus, iab

Dead Kennedys Guitarist Joins Crusade Against Ad Networks & YouTube Despite Understanding Neither

from the make-it-stop dept

At the always wonderful SF Music Tech conference yesterday, I went to what should have been a fascinating panel discussion about "artist revenue streams." It had Kristin Thomson from the Future of Music Coalition, talking about their wonderful artist revenue streams project, as well as Steve Rennie, who manages the band Incubus, among others. And then there was the third panelist, East Bay Ray, of the band The Dead Kennedys. Despite that band once mocking the whole "home taping is killing music" argument, it appears that he's now turned into one of those grumpy old musicians who demands that everyone else figure out a way to pay him. So, rather than an interesting discussion about artist revenue streams, the panel basically turned into a big rant from East Bay Ray complaining about all these internet sites that don't pay him. His misunderstandings were legion. He held up a screenshot of a file sharing site in Russia, showing Dead Kennedys songs on them, and noted that he doesn't get paid for those. And, of course, those sites have ads. This is the thing that gets me. A group of music industry folks, led by Jon Taplin at USC, who don't seem to have the slightest clue about how online advertising actually works, keep insisting that when they see an ad from a big company on a site that has infringing materials, it means that "the pirates are getting rich and the artists are getting screwed."

What I find amusing is that professional musicians so often insist that others are simply not qualified to speak about the music business. And yet, they have absolutely no problem pretending they know how internet advertising works. Let's make this simple: internet display ads pay next to nothing -- especially on sites like the one that Ray was complaining about. Those kinds of sites can only get deals with complete bottom of the barrel remnant ad providers, whose payout numbers are so small that most people would laugh. Some -- like Google's AdSense -- only payout if people click, and these days no one clicks on banner ads. They don't even see them. These sites make next to nothing. I'd be amazed if they can clear $0.05 CPMs. That is, if they're lucky, they get five cents for every 1,000 views. If they're lucky.

Furthermore, folks like Ray are blaming the sites, which tend to be platforms or conduits for sharing, rather than the hosts or the actual people responsible for uploading the works. Either they don't understand this or they don't care, but they really seem to want to blame the middleman for the actions of end users.

Steve Rennie tried to talk Ray down a few times, with little luck. Rennie, rightly, pointed out that whining about the pennies some Russian site might get is a really fruitless activity, when there's so much opportunity to make revenue elsewhere. Why not focus on the actual revenue opportunities, instead of whining about the two and a half cents some Russian site got?

And, of course, Ray's anger isn't just at Russian file sharing sites, but basically every legitimate site as well. Even if they pay, they don't pay him enough. He, of course, singled out YouTube and further demonstrated his near total ignorance of the world by insisting that YouTube has "forced 12,000 musicians out of work." You might wonder how that's possible, and read the link for the full "math" and try to hold back the guffaws. The short version, as far as I can figure it out, is that he argues that YouTube only pays artists 35% of the revenue they get, but they should be paying 70% "like Apple." And then:

So, if they had done the same percentage as say iTunes, 30/70 instead of 65/35, that's a difference of about $600 million. Now if you take a middle class musician, say, $50,000 year, year in and year out, divide it into $600 million, that's 12,000 people that Google has siphoned the money off.

And that's 12,000 people that are now working in the salt mines of Walmart.

There are so many things wrong with this that I'm afraid to even try to list them all. First of all, YouTube revenue is incremental revenue on top of other revenue. This is revenue that did not exist at all prior to YouTube setting up ContentID and monetizing those views. This is not money that was somehow taken away from artists. Second, the revenue is not evenly distributed as his simple "division" implies. Bigger artists get more views, so even if his other nonsensical argument about how Google should fork over more of the money made sense, the "missing" money would still go disproportionately to bigger artists anyway.

And, of course, there are so many other factors at play here, including a whole bunch of musicians who only have careers because of YouTube. The fact that this "logic" is even considered seriously is so bizarre.

Rennie pushed back on some of Ray's claims, and Ray just went on something of a rampage, comparing internet sites to companies that exploited child labor in the past. When Rennie suggested that YouTube and other internet services were providing new and incremental revenue streams that simply didn't exist before, Ray referred to Rennie as "massa," which is incredibly obnoxious. He later insisted that "pirate sites are on the payroll of multinational companies," and then said that the internet companies were "pimps" and that "iTunes pays their 'girls' 70%, but Google only pays 30%." The fact that these companies created brand new revenue streams for him never seems to even enter his consciousness.

Finally, when people pointed out that there are a growing number of artists who are successful primarily because of the internet and new business models and services, he mocked those success stories, arguing that they got lucky -- saying that it's "just like a casino." Apparently, he's unfamiliar with the old recording industry which was much more of a pure lottery, where most people never were even allowed in the door, and ended up making nothing at all.

Oh, and poor Kristin barely got to speak at all, despite actually being the one with lots of actual data to share, rather than angry, ill-informed, misguided rantings. Later in the day I got to speak to Dave Allen, who we've written about before, and who was a founding member of Gang of Four -- a contemporary of the Dead Kennedys -- and he made a key point. Whenever the conversation focuses on "but what do we do about piracy," it becomes a complete waste of time. There are so many amazing new opportunities out there, with all sorts of fantastic ways to create, promote, connect, distribute, and monetize music. Whining about "losses" is just time spent not seizing opportunities.

Filed Under: ad networks, artist revenue streams, copyright, dead kennedys, east bay ray, incubus, internet advertising, kristin thomson, piracy, steve rennie, youtube

Both Microsoft And Google Are Probably Best Off Shutting Up About Monopolies

from the seriously,-keep-quiet dept

We found it somewhat ridiculous when Microsoft tried to play the antitrust card in complaining about Google's attempt to buy Doubleclick last year. However, it's almost as ridiculous for Google to now be playing the antitrust card against Microsoft for its effort to buy Yahoo. True, Microsoft actually is a convicted antitrust violator, but Google has clearly been beating Microsoft hands down in the internet search/advertising/portal game. In both cases, it's fairly silly, as it's obvious that there's a fair bit of competition going on in the space (and Google's own rise demonstrates how it's still possible for new entrants to rise up). It's no surprise that Google would prefer Microsoft doesn't end up buying Yahoo (even if the resulting integration mess might give Google a chance to distance its lead online), but having either side pull out claims of antitrust violations pointed at the other just seems pointless. About the only thing it's likely to do is come back to haunt them down the road, the next time either one is investigated for any kind of antitrust violations.

Filed Under: antitrust, internet advertising, mergers, search
Companies: google, microsoft, yahoo