Mike Shields, writing for the Wall Street Journal, pulled together this fascinating interview with Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade association of sorts for the advertising industry.
Some core comments from Rothenberg:
There is a real issue. I’m not worried because the marketing and media value chain has shown remarkable resilience. There is a natural human need to have businesses proposition you with goods and services and vice versa. You need to have that communication. I’m really not worried about whether advertising will be able to find its way through digital channels. I am concerned — very, very concerned — that costs of ads will go up and up and up from this unethical obstruction.
On the cause of this problem:
There is a fair amount of shared responsibility here. We have definitely, definitely over time gummed up the advertising experience and Web pages with all kinds of analytics and pixels and tags and all kinds of things. The more we are able to do with advertising on the Web, the more it contributes to the problem. So this is absolutely something the industry can address and should address.
On potential legal action:
We’ve examined this, and there are some pretty good legal principles here. So that might be a course of action. Maybe. Certainly nothing aimed at consumers. That would be a bad idea. In terms of the software companies, nothing is imminent.
One thing that frustrates the hell out of me is that these companies are ad-blocking profiteers. They are trying to divert a portion of brands’ spending to line their own pockets.
Read the rest. It’s fascinating. Always good to see both sides of an issue, but Rothenberg seems blind to the real problem. He seems to see it as ad blockers taking money from his client’s pockets. This is not a chicken and egg problem. We know which came first. If ads were helpful or, at worst, innocuous, this issue wouldn’t exist.
Take responsibility for the problem, apologize, vow to do better, than do better. Anything short of that is self-serving.
Legal action?
How’d that work out against TiVo?
If you actually believe that, you’re exactly as blind as you accuse him of being, if not more. Read, actually read (not just scan while bathing in confirmation bias) what people say about ads.
Helpful? Nope. You can’t have “helpful” ads without vacuuming personal data, because that’s the only way you know what “helpful” is to any given person. Privacy or ads targeted for your supposed needs. Pick one, they’re mutually exclusive.
Innocuous? Nonsense. Non. Sense. While Gruber made his point in the most asinine way possible, he did have a valid point. The Deck’s ads are in fact innocuous. They use very little javascript. They don’t go after your personal data.
Guess what? People still block them
You cannot accuse anyone of being “blind to the real problem” when your own commentary shows a complete lack of living in reality on your part.
Wow, boy was Upton Sinclair right!
I block blindly, because as a consumer I cannot be asked to analyze the advertising agencies and make those decisions. So instead of allowing ads that are non-invasive, I don’t see any ads. Its the bad ads hurting the good ads, because I’d uninstall my blocking software if I knew I wouldn’t be spammed immediately.
So in other words, barring some kind of foolproof way to guarantee only “good” ads, (which is both physically and psychologically impossible) there’s no point in arguing about “good” ads, because there’s no way to do what you ask without again, gathering information on what you, (and by you, I also mean “everyone on the internet) mean by a “good” ad and then only presenting that to you.
I literally do not even see the point in trying at this point, because as you illustrate, since condition a (guarantee there are only “good” ads on every site I visit) isn’t possible, (it’s a bag of cats as a term), the desired outcome (not blocking all ads on all sites) is similarly impossible.
So basically, it’s free sites (as in bandwidth) or sites that can manage subscriptions or sponsors.
“One thing that frustrates the hell out of me is that these companies are ad-blocking profiteers. They are trying to divert a portion of brands’ spending to line their own pockets”
Bad f$@&!ing luck. It frustrates the hell out of me that companies are ruining the web.
Stop blaming the ad blockers and stop pining to the users – “the sites you know and love” – and fix it.
Good ads are ads that don’t annoy by playing sounds or video, obscure content, animate, show disturbing content or download malware. The ad-content is not the issue, I don’t care if I’m being tracked, I care if I have blinking ad showing me a mangled corpse and a “watch now” button for a TV show on Amazon. I care if the ad covers up the content I came for, I care if the ad slows down the loading of the content I came for, I care if the ad plays sounds, I care if the ad redirects me, I care if the ad is animated to wiggle around in it’s container (those GIF things), I care if the ad reduces battery life.
I’d love to see a well targeted ad, presenting something relevant to me in a way that is actually attractive.
The guy is a bozo. Please, sue the world as you try to push your crap on us. We are under no obligation to see your tripe.
Douchebag, has no leverage over Apple. I’d like to see him sue the largest corporation in the world. There’s no constitutional right that states I must endure advertising.
I hope Apple can bring the entire system to its knees and marketer’s cry like the little bitches they are. The party’s over Douchebag, time to find a new line of work.
but you won’t know that, because you’re blocking all ads, and therefore tracking until you get a guarantee you’ll never see a bad ad.
this is literally impossible. What you’re asking for isn’t going to work. But you’re not alone in that.
I would say that your overall attitude is part of the problem. You (as well as the advertising community) have already decided, this is it. This is the ONLY way to deliver “good” and “relevant” ads. By tracking the living shit out of every little thing a user does on the web, including how long they hover over a link or even where they point their cursor on-screen.
When people say they just want “good” ads, it means we don’t want ads that treat users like livestock and completely disrespect the user. Disrespect a user’s data plan. Disrespect a user’s battery life. Disrespect a user’s privacy. Disrespect a user’s reading experience.
“Relevant” ads can be done without having complete disregard for the human beings you are trying to target. And its up to advertisers to solve that dilemma, not the users. In the meantime, while advertisers have decided that complete disregard for users and complete disrespect is the only way to deliver “relevant” advertising, we don’t have to sit around and let them take over our web experience.
Every so often I turn off the ad blocking and have a look around. I have not “decided” I never will, I will observe what happens next, this field a changing rapidly and making final decisions is utterly pointless.
amen.
He won’t have to sue anyone if he’s part of a trade association that can buy enough Congressmen.
I’m sort of looking forward to seeing whether Rothenberg feels entitled to having made his fortune on what he calls “analytics and pixels and tags,” after having soft-pedaled the excesses.
I just started blocking after getting thoroughly disgusted by the autoplaying videos and the insane CPU load that animated ads were causing. Now I rarely hear my fan spinning up and my laptop runs much cooler. Just consider what that means in terms of global carbon footprint. It’s obscene. Yes, a lot of good websites will be hurt by this, which is hugely unfortunate, but to argue that it’s an ethical issue on the part of the user is absurd. It’s simple cause and effect. I whitelist sites that have a light footprint, and am starting to unblock specific ad services that are low bandwidth, like The Deck, and will continue doing so as I learn about more of them. It’s a good opportunity for them to start marketing themselves. It’s also time for a branded standard for non-intrusive ad serving. Once that’s in place ad blockers can be set to not block those. And it better be done fast before it’s too late.
So the basic human needs are food, shelter, and to have businesses proposition you with goods and services. Not so sure I agree.
Oh and additionally to turning ad blocking off every so often I actually whitelist sites where I make ghostery and adblock plus turn off. Those are sites I trust not to abuse this and it works like a charm.