Ad-Blocking Just Might Save the Ad Industry

[FreddyFreeloader]

The COALITION FOR BETTER Ads, a consortium of ad, publishing, and tech companies, wants to save the advertising industry—by killing it. Or at least parts of it. Companies in the coalition will discuss, among other idea, pre-installation of a selective ad-blocker on web browsers as a means to effectively purge the internet of the most intrusive types of ads, such as those that automatically play sound, take-up too much of your screen, or force you to wait a certain amount of time before you can dismiss them.

The idea was first reported Thursday by The Wall Street Journal, which suggested that ad-blockers would be built into Google’s Chrome web browser and turned on by default.

“We do not comment on rumor or speculation,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “We’ve been working closely with the Coalition for Better Ads and industry trades to explore a multitude of ways Google and other members of the Coalition could support the Better Ads Standards.”

Stuart Ingis, counsel for the Coalition for Better Ads, says the group will begin discussing specific ideas in coming weeks, though it would be six months to a year before anything is implemented. “To my knowledge Google has not made any decision,” Ingis says. “But certainly a natural way to solve this problem would be in the browsers, whether it’s Google or Microsoft or Apple or any of them.” Ingis doesn’t like to call this ad-blocking, because ad-blocking is generally associated with indiscriminate blocking of all ads on all sites.

More: Ad-Blocking Just Might Save the Ad Industry

 

[RoboMan]

Great share. I'm seeing more and more intrusive ads within the days go by. Even with UBlock Origin i got a huge popup that couldn't be closed and would say, literally, sound: "To be able to close the window, install this extension". Like, serious. Totally not malware. A process kill was enough but for godsake internet. Luckily i'm a robot and i don't experience anger towards my machine partners.

 

[frogboy]

I will do my part to help and continue to use uBlock Origin when and where I want.

 

[DJ Panda]

Never been in the ad blocking thing. Don't really mind ads since I go on YouTube mainly and there isn't any of this bad stuff..

 

[Deletedmessiah]

About time. They realized and finally trying to fix this. Whats killing the ads industry are the ads themselves. No tracking, no video ads, no malvertising, no fullscreen and popup ads and no redirections. This is how it should be.

 

[Parsh]

About time. They realized and finally trying to fix this. Whats killing the ads industry are the ads themselves. No tracking, no video ads, no malvertising, no fullscreen and popup ads and no redirections. This is how it should be.

They're trying to almost fix this, but for their own good.
Security will always be their concern and malicious redirections and malvertising is gaining momentum and they note that.

The other thing is that by introducing their own ad-blocking mechanism in Chrome (for example), many users especially basic users will be tempted to remove their other ad-block apps (that's how they intend to do business).

But you know, the blocking will be limited to some kinds of popups and ads only.
The whole thing under the name of 'Ad-blocking' while what they're actually doing is 'improving advertising'.

 

[spaceoctopus]

Great share. I'm seeing more and more intrusive ads within the days go by. Even with UBlock Origin i got a huge popup that couldn't be closed and would say, literally, sound: "To be able to close the window, install this extension". Like, serious. Totally not malware. A process kill was enough but for godsake internet. Luckily i'm a robot and i don't experience anger towards my machine partners.

Stumbled on those kinds of Ads too. Asking you to install their extension for increased privacy and protection against tracking

 

[katharn]

i hope this bares fruit. had a funny experience with a customer that logged into a site to pay some fees to immigration. and that pc got hit with ransomware. found the source to be an ad that was on one of the pages.

 

[Ink]

Like anything, in moderation is good.

 

[Arequire]

i hope this bares fruit. had a funny experience with a customer that logged into a site to pay some fees to immigration. and that pc got hit with ransomware. found the source to be an ad that was on one of the pages.

Same. Malvertising's the biggest factor in this but it falls on the ad networks to successfully identify the malicious ad(s) before it's put out there for public consumption and I feel there needs to be some kind of accountability for when an ad network fails to do so. Companies are punished for data breaches but there's no repercussion when a network's ad(s) drops malware that scrambles the irreplaceable data of a few thousands innocent victims.

 

[Vipersd]

Currently I'm blocking all ads on all sites. If this take effect I will start disabling ads on site by site basis that have no intrusive ads.

 

[Arequire]

Currently I'm blocking all ads on all sites. If this take effect I will start disabling ads on site by site basis that have no intrusive ads.

I've done this in the past but as a blacklist approach instead of a whitelist. I unblocked ads on all sites and only enabled blocking when a sites' ads annoyed me. It resulted in a pretty enjoyable browsing experience; any sites who's ads slowed my browsing or threw up annoying pop-up ads were blocked so all I ended up with were sites that were actually comfortable to browse with their ads unblocked. It doesn't do much against the tracking or the possibility of malicious ads but it eliminated the annoyance of ads for me. (Although the one thing that did get on my nerves were the EU cookie policy notices on pretty much every site that was unblocked. Usually my ad blocker would filter those out.)
I might actually go back to this approach once Comodo Firewall becomes available to me again.

 

[Nightwalker]

Great share. I'm seeing more and more intrusive ads within the days go by. Even with UBlock Origin i got a huge popup that couldn't be closed and would say, literally, sound: "To be able to close the window, install this extension". Like, serious. Totally not malware. A process kill was enough but for godsake internet. Luckily i'm a robot and i don't experience anger towards my machine partners.

Yes, this kind of attack is very common and annoying these days, like you said, they bypass even uBlock Origin with good filters.

Google should have fixed this method of attack a long time ago (other browsers arent vulnerable), along with ransomware via fake fonts.

Forced into installing a Chrome extension - Malwarebytes Labs


"In paper" Chrome is still the most secure browser ever, but in practice ? I am afraid it isnt, I wonder how many users get "infected" these days because of this kind of attacks; imo it is a much higher number than zero day exploits and sandboxies vulnerabilities.

 

[ForgottenSeer 19494]

Yeah, Google is trying to monopolize the ad-blockers so it can run its advertisings freely. But hopefully it will be a good ad-blocker. I am using AdBlock Plus because of the program for non-intrusive advertisements, I do not think It Is right to stop all ads because some are really helpful and because advertisements are a good way to monetize content indirectly. I really hope that more companies will create ads that conform to the so called "acceptable ads" initiative, that Google will really lead the way for advertisement companies to do this, also I hope to see more and more people using this program and also others like this. I hope to see uBlock Origin joining/creating such a program. I am a person who when sees an anti-adblock tool or a missed ad on a site which makes me angry immediately goes on and reports it to adblock filters creators, but also a person who likes to keep the "acceptable ads" ON.

 

[katharn]

Yeah, Google is trying to monopolize the ad-blockers so it can run its advertisings freely. But hopefully it will be a good ad-blocker. I am using AdBlock Plus because of the program for non-intrusive advertisements, I do not think It Is right to stop all ads because some are really helpful and because advertisements are a good way to monetize content indirectly. I really hope that more companies will create ads that conform to the so called "acceptable ads" initiative, that Google will really lead the way for advertisement companies to do this, also I hope to see more and more people using this program and also others like this. I hope to see uBlock Origin joining/creating such a program. I am a person who when sees an anti-adblock tool or a missed ad on a site which makes me angry immediately goes on and reports it to adblock filters creators, but also a person who likes to keep the "acceptable ads" ON.

im using the same ad blocker. also on the point you made on monopolizing ad blocking. i fear if google indeed becomes the top, we are just going to be fed advertisements that they deem consumer friendly... i mean i dont mind but when you live in a place where bandwidth given by your ISP is complete crap. i would prefer to get more content than ad's per page

 

[Sephiroth Source]

In firefox you can block ads and redirects without apps; By accessing "about config" by clicking on privacy.trackingprotection.enabled and changing the value to true. But I still prefer the ublock origin because I do not like empty spaces and it fixes this.

 

[Handsome Recluse]

In firefox you can block ads and redirects without apps; By accessing "about config" by clicking on privacy.trackingprotection.enabled and changing the value to true. But I still prefer the ublock origin because I do not like empty spaces and it fixes this.

There's still AdBlocker Lite/Bluhell Firewall to fix stuff like these since the blocking is already in the Tracking Protection.