Probably possible, but this creates an environment where independent small publishers would rely on donations to sustain. Only cash-rich corporations would be able to foot this bill... reminds me of the net neutrality issue.
It is really easy to bypass any kind of adblock filtering by just hosting your ads locally on your own domain, but for some reason all the 'content creators' are to lazy to go back to the old ways. When you buy a newspaper, you can't magically cut images out of it, especially if layout changes from time to time and same can be applied to web pages.
Blame those hassle-free, privacy violating personalized ad networks that infected everything.
Most companies won't pay for advertising online without the ability to monitor performance independent of the publisher (who could easily lie to make more money) and without the ability to more accurately detect fake clicks (which the publisher could help fake). Part of the way the big ad networks work is to detect fake visitors/clicks - on behalf of the publisher and the advertiser's competitors - and exclude them. We can argue the success/failure of how well they do it, but we can't really argue that companies want it.
One way you can do self-hosted ads is pay for purchase instead of pay per view or pay per click. In this, the website would participate in an affiliate program or company, promote their product on the site, and then get a cut of revenue (sales/subscriptions/etc). Unfortunately, this is a very small portion of advertising revenue and is very hit or miss.
My guess as to what will take down ABP will be their 'antiadblock' filter list.
Essentially they are writing and maintaining a anti-anti-circumvention tool. I know it might sound crazy, but think about this example-
Bob writes a computer game. He wants it to be free for registered users, but guests can either pay a monthly subscription or be ad supported to use it as well.
Joe writes a crack for said game, so everyone gets the paid experience.
I think anyone would agree the above scenario is a prime case for a DMCA lawsuit as it is the definition of a circumvention of access control.
I do not see how it would be different for doing the same thing on a website. In the eyes of the law, they are both software getting circumvented. Adblock plus is developing and maintaining ways to circumvent access controls developed by other companies.
Personally I dont have a issue with adblock and the generic filters. I have a issue with the site specific filters as I think they are likely illegal depending on each sites tos
The lack of a EULA does not mean you can do whatever you want. The DMCA still applies.
Also, many sites have a tos that governs what you can and cannot do. Regardless, its not illegal for you the user, but for ABP the company. They are profiting from circumventing software.
Why doesn't Google et al provide a shim for web servers to proxy ads off their own domains, with the same URI routes as the actual content? That way, an adblocker would also prevent the content from being served. (Why waste your networking load on non-paying customers?)
The main obstacle is that this introduces a middleman---so Google et al should only offer this service to the BIG money-makers (like nytimes.com) until they can ship something secure. Adblocking "problem" solved.
WHY don't Ad companies do this? I can see this as an Apache/nginx module or middleware libraries for whatever web server is used, without having to change anything else. How long would this take for the army of 140 IQ Google codemonkeys…like 1 day lol?
Adblockers may use more than the URI, but it starts with the URI and if it does not match, then it does not block.
If a video file is served from cdn.example.com/video/?file=3w0rjwo, then have a DoubleClick ad serve from cdn.example.com/video/?file=0239fjad with phony HTTP headers including mime type.
No kidding, nor do they explain that ad agencies have little to no interest in selling their clients this 'acceptable experience'.
Nor do large brands have any interest in promoting expensively created brands with sub-par adverts.
Truth be told they're after a slice of the remnant and low rent market so they're effectively extorting the small and medium businesses, "mom and pop" outfits, folks that use adwords and similar to build their brands.
Extorting publishers and telling them to pay to advertise on their own content is pretty cheeky.
Is there any data out there on ad placement effectiveness? It sounds like they are removing the ads that are actually effective and leaving the ads nobody notices, in other words, the ads that nobody would pay for.
As someone who used to work for a SaaS company, it always amazed me how many people expect to get things for free.
I can't remember the last time a promoted tweet was relevant for me. I am not going to buy Samsungs new super expensive phone, I am not going to be using mail-chimp.
So why do I keep seeing ads for crap I don't need and products I already know about, instead of new products that are useful that I can actually use? Maybe if ads were useful people would want to see them and so they wouldn't have to be annoying.
> ad agencies have little to no interest in selling their clients this 'acceptable experience'. Nor do large brands have any interest in promoting expensively created brands with sub-par adverts.
And users are clearly not interested in seeing their ads in the first place.
