Ad Block Apocalypse? Here's How to Save the Web

[rgd1101]

If "journalism" depends on advertisers to survive, then it's not journalism. The point of journalism is that it reports in an unbiased fashion, and if you are looking to advertisers to support that, then your mission statement has been compromised.

I guess some people just have more professionalism than others.

 

[Don Barthel]

Currently, to put ads into a page, the publisher's HTML is formed with space for the ad but no ad filled in. Instead, a URL link to the ad (or ad network) is inserted and that's what's given to the browser. Its up to the browser to pull the ad using the URL into the page from the ad network. This makes it relatively easy to choose not to the pull the ad into the page (i.e. to block it).

If, instead, the ad content is pulled by the publisher's server and inserted into the HTML of the page then the browser has no control over what goes into the page. This would make it much harder to block the ads because the ads would be difficult to distinguish from content.

This is the next stage in the advertising arms race.

 

[randomizer]

If, instead, the ad content is pulled by the publisher's server and inserted into the HTML of the page then the browser has no control over what goes into the page. This would make it much harder to block the ads because the ads would be difficult to distinguish from content.

This is the next stage in the advertising arms race.

There are probably at least two reasons this has not yet happened. Firstly, it would make publishers directly responsible for any garbage that is delivered from the ad network because it is now effectively first party content. Secondly, it would also slow down page loads significantly.