Petition to Google to kill Adblock (Don't hate me for this)

[Onlinetechs]

I'm afraid to even start the thread, but hoping a connected person may read this or someone who can down the line pass this to someone who can actually take the idea to fruition.

What is Adblock and what is its affect?

Adblock is an extension to a browser or a third-party script that defines the ad servers from ad serving services such as Google in this example and blocks the ad initiation on videos and websites, it creates an ad-free experience for a user that is enjoyable in a sense they don't have to sift through pesky ads and watch cluttered content with designers sticking ad banners all over their blogs, sites and other web real estate.

Positive Impact:

Adblock's positive impact is solely for the user, the user who installs and enjoys a "commercial free" internet.

Negative Impact:

Adblock's negative impact is on both sides of the advertiser (and ad server 'eg: Google') and the benefactor who collects commission or revenue from displaying the ad to his or her audience.

Say Mary has a small shop and is advertising her products, she invests in an ad auction a $2.00/per click ad to gain some customers who see her ad. Due to adblock, most of Mary's ads are not even showing to her target audience, in fact only 6 out of 10 people even see her ad if not less. Mary's advertising efforts has now gone down, losing patience and customers; not understanding why her products which she has paid advertising for are not bringing in customers.

At the same time, John; who is putting the Ad code on his YT videos and his web site; notices a drastic drop in his ad revenue because no one is clicking on Mary's ads. Mary didn't spent that $2.00 for a click on John's site or video, and John never got a cut from the click because the ad was never displayed.

Both Mary and John are hurting due the impact of Adblock. The economic bubble is now cut short by users circumventing the advertising game for their leisure.

Mary see's very low CTR and conversions, she either pulls her ad out all together or reduces her CPC (cost per click) and wings it, hoping someone will eventually click her ad and convert to a sale. This results in an even lower cut for John, who is working hard on getting more views on his videos and more hits on his website.

Debate whether it is wrong, or it isn't?

Of course users have freedoms, and one of those freedoms is to not want to see ads. Instead of having an opt out version (such as Youtube Red's $10/mo sub fee) they choose to utilize Adblock to all together say bye-bye to these ads, why do we care about Mary's product and why do we care about John's effort to sell Mary's product by showing her ads to collect a cut from a click?.

We all know we are entitled to freedom of not having ads on our screen, but at the same time what do terms of use and end user agreements say about this? A company that serves ads surely can 'force' the user legally not to temper with its technology can't it? Technically it is a breach of terms if you think about it, is it not?

This is quite a debate, and so far nothing has been done to stop it.

Why should Adblock be killed of?

In my personal view, from a business stand point as well referencing my above fake John and Mary; Mary is suffering; John is suffering (by suffering I mean loss of income, loss of interest, loss of growth and of course loss of reward for hard work on both ends). Ultimately the ad serving company hurts the most taking a financial hit because their product, or service; is being completely intercepted by technology almost making it obsolete for most users. Adblock is now an extension on Chrome, IE, Firefox and a slew of serving mediums.

Where a user has benefited from not seeing an ad, at the same time three parties has a loss of interest; John, Mary and the ad serving company. The trickle down impact over 1000's of Mary's and John's causes a major gap in the ad industry for both producer and earner.

How can Adblock be killed?

Now we all know Google is a giant in the tech space, there are various ways in which Adblock can become a thing of the past especially with this company.

It can be entered in the EULA / Terms of Services that a party cannot engage in blocking ads as it is a breach of service offered by the ad serving company.

The extension can become unsupported and ultimately fail and no longer be usable in browsers, this can be done via changing the code of how the extensions interact with the browser; and ultimately taken off the add-on gallery as a whole (but this hurts our freedoms, back to the debate)

The real solution

Adblock works by intercepting ad serving URLs, for example all content served by ads.google.com are blocked because ads.google.com is added to a blacklist which causes the ad and its tags to not appear on the serving medium, whether it be video or a website.

By creating a rotating ad serving DNS, that changes on every load of an ad; with each visit if the ad serv url was something such as ads1ab2c3.google.com and the next hit to change to ads2b1a3c and so forth using a combo of alphanumeric links; because of its unpredictable nature it may not able to be blocked by any adblocker. This also includes changing the tags or backend code which calls the ad to display, almost forcing the ad come out of a whole new source each time.

If this was happening, Mary's ad would be shown on John's page, a user seeing it with interest may click it; now Mary pays $2.00 to Google and Google pays John .15 cents for his participation in bringing the user to see the ad and click on it to begin with.

Investing in such technology will save the ad space market for everyone.

In addition, the option to 'X' out an ad, or skip an ad; is a very powerful tool in maintaining our freedoms to choose not to see an ad instead of using Adblock.

Ending

This is my opinion, solely my opinion; if I could have someone at YT or Google see this and say "hey he might have a good idea" than my post has succeeded in my intention. I hope Adblock users won't fill p****d about it, but in reality Adblock is hurting MANY people. I just decided hey, why not voice my opinion on it.

I appreciate you reading my post.

 

[YouTuber1978]

Yeah, agreed. I'd sign a petition if someone started one. You should throw one up on change.org or whatever that petition site is. Finally realize why musicians were so against napster

 

[BrotoNBA]

Unfortunately I don't believe adblock will ever be shut down. I think having less (invasive) ads will turn out better in the long run. Rather than having people spamming videos for views they will focus on quality to retain viewers.

Look at the cable industry. They are stuck in the past and their dated model is starting to slide out of favor. The reason a lot of people come to online videos is because they don't have to deal with so many ads. If everyone had to watch ads, then everyone probably wouldn't watch our videos.

Video makers need to adapt, and I think that can be done by setting up merchandise stores, doing sponsorships, and using product placement. Once again, quality will prevail, and those who are making original content may even be picked up by bigger media corporations.

I think the introduction of Youtube Red will help battle adblock users. People want to support their favorite content. Just like Spotify is laying the pipe to pirating, I think subscriptions will help content creators overall.

 

[Onlinetechs]

I think the introduction of Youtube Red will help battle adblock users. People want to support their favorite content. Just like Spotify is laying the pipe to pirating, I think subscriptions will help content creators overall.

This is actually exactly why the subscription model was created, YT is well aware of the ever-going battle vs. adblock; the main purpose is to generate residual income from these viewers.

Unlike cable however, I wasn't insinuating YT should 'bomb' users with ads, ad technology targets only certain ads pertaining to the video genre and are also displayed in a schedule where 2 ads would show and 1 video will be ad free, of a minor pop up or even a fly-by ad will come across with very little intrusive effect on the viewer. Currently the model is very selective on ad displays, but even as-is with adblock blocking these small efforts to reach the potential customer; it is dead in the water. That's my sole reason to say hey why don't you completely cut off adblock and also alter the model of ad displays; no one wants to be bombarded by a :30 second hold time watching an ad, but considering the videos are free, the content is free and the work made by the producer to draw the crowd is free; it's only fair that the producer gets a shot at delivering the ad.

Remember this is also to assist the person who pays for the ad to come about to begin with, If I started an online shop; I would hate the fact that I can't target an audience in my scope of the industry; how will I ever grow? who will serve my ads? what will my reach be?.. The debate can go on forever. I just feel its unfair to all parties involved and the addition of the sub model of YT Red, just goes to show it is a move to retain losses caused by this technology from the get-go.

 

[BrotoNBA]

I don't disagree. Unfortunately for us in this case, it's usually the consumers who force change, not the industry.

Hopefully Google can come to a happy medium that supports content creators and viewers.

 

[Alex Pota]

You argument is entirely one sided and selfish.
Mary might have a need for people to watch commercials. does she have the need to watch them herself?

only one argument for pros and and entire lecture for cons - you didn't weight the options at all.

I have never pushed a commercial button intentionally and ads annoy me because they are Everywhere. now you want to take the last way to say - No?

You know what, lets go all the way - lets put an eye patch on my 6 month old baby. the eye patch will have an internal screen that will show her commercials 24/7! This way YOU can maximize your profits her or mine opinions do not matter anyway

 

[FartingOnThings]

If they do something like that, then they would also need to introduce some laws to protect the users as well. There are far too many invasive and misleading ads, some of which contain flashing icons, sounds that cannot be muted, videos that automatically start streaming, and sometimes even p**n. These things aren't restricted to weird 3rd party websites either, sometimes even big, well known sites have annoying ads. On youtube, sometimes the ads are longer than the videos, and usually you end up watching the same commercial on every single video to the point where it begins to have a negative effect. Personally, I will never play Game of War, they annoyed the crap out of me.

If they find some middle ground, where ads are served in moderation, in a way that limits the negative experience for the viewers, then there wouldn't be much of a need for adblock.

 

[Onlinetechs]

You argument is entirely one sided and selfish.
Mary might have a need for people to watch commercials. does she have the need to watch them herself?

Boy I knew this is controversial, I'm expecting Mary to become one in the same cycle, just because she is serving ads doesn't mean she isn't one to be marketed to as well; it's an equal double edged sword where no one neither the ad server or the viewer are excused from the premise that product advertisement should be displayed not on a single but for all parties, including myself who push content on both Adwords and Adsense.

Needless to say, no need to go to extremes I was just simply displaying my feelings on the matter. It's not just that I lose on ad revenue but I also lose on product marketing due to Adblock.

That was simply my argument, your rebuttals are only a few of many that can justify the benefit, again I was just trying to illustrate an opinion based on where the market is heading.

I advertise radio also, over the last 4 years I've watched conversions tank because of ad free air play people prefer to as opposed to traditional air play.

The whole game board is changing, I guess my biggest beef is having to keep up with all the changes to not drown.

 

[Kaleido]

Literally couldn't disagree with this thread more. You know Adblock affects more than just your Youtube earnings, right?

Here's the thing, advertisers have COMPLETELY burnt all their good-will with me since I've been on the internet. I use Adblock, NoScript and Ghostery for a very good reason. I don't want pop-up ads, I don't want LOUD NOISES baked into flash banners, I don't want ads that expand to the whole screen, consuming the content I was trying to read, that I have to click past, only to find the link to 'click past' is really just a re-direct to their site. I don't want advertisers tracking my cookies then SELLING MY INFORMATION to third-party advertisement to serve me more ads. There's a whole industry built on buying and selling user information that shouldn't exist. I have the right to an expectation of privacy when I browse the internet, and should be able to choose to opt in on my data being sold to companies, not just have it occur without my control or knowledge, it's reprehensible.

Now, you might say, "yea, but those are just minor annoyances in the grand scheme of things", while I would disagree, the last of my goodwill got burnt when I got malware and viruses from major websites because one advertiser tried to sneak it through. Big websites are usually on-point with catching and fixing that kind of stuff, but only after hundreds of thousands if not millions of people got infected and then complained about it. So no, I'm not risking the safety of my computer so someone can make some cash somewhere anymore. I'm done.

You say you feel bad for these advertising agencies? I don't. Maybe if they hadn't enacted really sketchy, terrible business practices for DECADES on the internet, they'd still have a foot to stand on. As it is now, they do not deserve your pity. The internet will find a different way to monetize it's content if it has to. The bubble already burst once in 2001, and the internet was totally fine. In fact, it got better because of it due to new and exciting innovations in the space after the dotcom bust.

I'm not worried about it, and I'm going to keep using adblock because if you give these companies an inch, they'll literally datamine your entire life. Is that worth it to you so "Mary" can make a couple bucks somewhere?

 

[Onlinetechs]

If they find some middle ground, where ads are served in moderation, in a way that limits the negative experience for the viewers, then there wouldn't be much of a need for adblock.

100% agreed! If they do find a middle ground.. If ever, I'm sure they have a team of experts trying to figure out new innovation daily, the latest being the Red sub model.

We'll see what happens in the future..