Ad-filtering fiend Eyeo: Morning has broken, like the first morning When I last interviewed Eyeo comms chief Ben Williams a year ago, the smell of gun smoke and scorched flesh hung in the air. Our piece was headlined: Adblock overlord to Zuckerberg: Lay down your weapons and surrender. But things are much calmer now. Over the past year, the use of ad-blockers on the desktop has levelled off, …
"the ad industry has got serious about removing the worst excesses of ad design."
I haven't seen any evidence of that but then I wouldn't - I'm running an ad blocker
But whatever the responsible end of the ad industry* does the ad delivery channel is also a channel for delivering malware so the need to keep blocking as a basic security measure isn't going to go away that easily.
* A quiet and lonely place, I suspect.
I have yet to see advertisers obey my simple rules for ads, rules that were once implemented when the internet went from luxury to necessity. If they worked once, they can work again.
(1) Absolutely no tracking of any kind for any reason, no exception. (2) Absolutely no javascript or something similar in an ad, no exception. (3) Absolutely no pop-up or pop-under ads, no exception. (4) Absolutely no ads that require Flash or Java or any other plug-in, no exception. (5) Absolutely no autoplay video ads EXCEPT only when I click on a clear link to a video. (6) Absolutely no ad that attempts to determine my location, no exception.
Follow my rules, which were successful once, and my adblocker will be turned off. Websites that complain about my adblocker are asking me to respect them while they are unwilling to respect me. Don't ask me to do something you are unwilling to do. Lead by example, and follow my simple rules that do work.
I have no problems with your rules, but there is something still missing. Advertisements, by design, are an attempt to distort your perceptions of a brand in order to manipulate the way that you will behave. There are a number of reasons that an advertiser may wish to do this.
Firstly, the obvious case of pointing out the inadequacies of your existence without their good or service reaching new markets.
Secondly, the case of pointing out how their competition is not able to solve your inadequacies brand awareness.
Thirdly, the case of burying bad press reminding the public that we value your privacy/the environment/customer safety/diversity/safe workplaces for women/whatever else we've done to be a headline. You should totally love us.
Even ads that pad all of your rules with flying colours are no doubt trying at least one of the above three things.
You see, your first two points stand out.
The main advantage of digital marketing over TV ads or what are known as traditional channels in the industry is the tracking that you refuse to accept. This may be hard for you to believe but most display ads do try to be relevant* and this is achieved through using tracking to attempt to find out your interests.
This tracking (called impression tracking) does require javascript and needs URL calls to third party domains to work.
Tracking is absolutely central to digital marketing and is never going to go away, no matter how much you might want it to.
That being said, rules 3 through 5 I can wholeheartedly agree with. Rule 6 I also agree with but is less annoying.
" most display ads do try to be relevant"
And I seriously wish that they'd stop doing that. Target the ad according to the site it's appearing on. Don't try to figure out which ad is "relevant" to me, personally.
"Tracking is absolutely central to digital marketing and is never going to go away"
If that's the case, then I will never stop blocking ads.
Browsers come with some blocking features, but that doesn't stop abusive App.
If I purchase device, I own it... I will never buy a phone that doesn't allow me to have full control of the OS and underlying features (Don't mind it takes a few steps, such as Huawei phones need) - no ROOT, no SALE..
The coalition's purpose is to make ads palatable, so nobody is ever tempted to install an ad-blocker.
Nope. While ads exist I will use an ad blocker.
Mind, if they cease to exist I will still use an ad blocker because I won't know they've gone ...
I don't know what the Acceptable Ads Committee considers to be "acceptable ads", but if it's anything like the Coalition for Better Ads, then it's entirely unacceptable. The CBA does not consider tracking to be unacceptable, and in my view, tracking is the single most unacceptable thing that ads can do.
As long as ads insist on spying on me, I'll block them mercilessly.
The only reason they'd do it is to block the malware ads (i.e. miners, hacks, etc.) and to do some minimal other blocking that will be fiddly and leave lots of gaps for ads to get through. But once they have the support in, they'll probably make it more difficult over time for Chrome to support third party blockers that really do block ads, and claim "you don't need those because Chrome has it built in".
There's no way they could do proper ad blocking because that's money out of their pocket for every ad that gets blocked. Unless they figure out a way to let all ads from Google through and block everyone else's....I'm sure no antitrust authorities would notice that!
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