1. The ad/banner space downloads a javascript file
2. Javascript runs, collects browser+cookie+other identifying information and sends it on up to an ad exchange
3. The ad-exchange systems cross-reference the information it receives with other information it already has (think huge low latency k/v store) in order to try to identify you further, perform cross-device identification, save more information
4. The ad-exchange system then rolls all this information together and fans out this package saying "here is a male aged 25-35 who likes ponies and bick shaving cream" to dozens or hundreds of partnered ad providers
5. Each ad provider looks at their content, finds a close match, and then bids on how much they would pay in order to serve content to this person
6. Ad-exchange receives all the bids and picks the second highest bidder (no idea why it's the second highest)
7. Ad-exchange then sends this second highest bidder's ad URL back to the waiting javascript running in the users browser, and ad-exchange marks the winning bid so it knows who won/who has to pay at the end of the month.
8. From 1 to here usually has an SLA of occurring in less than 170ms
9. User's browser then loads up the response URL and the ad displays
Asking website operators to host their own thing is feasible, but perhaps not worthwhile. The big money maker in adspace is targeted advertising, and small sites will never have the infrastructure to be able to really identify anybody but perhaps their core users. Others have mentioned reverse proxies to make content appear as if it came from the target site, and that may exist, but the reality is whatever these guys do is currently being defeated pretty handily by community driven ad blocking. Perhaps we will eventually see what you're talking about though
It's called a Vickrey Auction. It allows bidders to bid their true value (instead of trying to outbid all of the other bidders, as is what results from a first-price auction).
It's a second-price auction - the highest bidder is picked, but the second-highest price is paid (more or less). The URL thus is from the highest bidder, not the second highest bidder.
I'm pretty certain that as ad blockers grow there will be a lot more work-around (doing the work on the backend and serving up static HTML or a lot more native ads), but ad blockers aren't quite to the level that it's worth it to make those changes.
If you're Yahoo, however, it's pretty much a toss up.
Also! With more and more ads running javascript based animations, you really don't want shady ad-network-provided JS running in the context of your main site. (XSS)
Aynway, I've seen some domains shifting some crucial images like a play button into ad containers/folders just to come around ad blocker. Easy to adjust within ad blockers though.
I do not think this is any more immoral than you trying to make my computer display things I do not want. If you want my money, just ask for it. Don't tell me via ads to give my money to somone else. Google Contributor is a promising experiment. Bitcoin micropayments are also convenient.
We have a very strict ad policy; we manage all our ads internally, don't do any tracking, and all ads are 100% relevant to the content of the site. I have click-through rates on some ads types that are so far above the industry average you'd think I'm lying. We consider our ads just another service we provide on the site one that benefits us and our visitors.
The content is funded by ads and paying for content on the web to every single click you link isn't feasible. So morality aside, it's tragedy of the commons: People without adblockers effectively fund those that do. If the scales tip too far, the funds dry up and content will just go away.
For the HN downvoters why is choosing not to consume the ad supported content so bad?
Because publishers have control of the website, they can do things like randomize the div name, parameter names, javascript names, javascript functions, sizes of the ad, randomize images for the ad, use dynamic JS positioning, etc..
Basically if a publisher was serving their own ads and didn't want them blocked, you would be extremely hard pressed to counteract it.
As far as building your extension- You cant build it so its automated. No matter what you build, Any publisher could bypass it within minutes. The best you can do is make it so the site doesnt work if ads are showing, but publishers are already fine with this (hence why warnings are put up saying 'disable adblock to continue')
Your browser make a request to a URL, receives a response, and renders it. It seems you're trying to imply that the presence of ads in that response is somehow immoral, but if so, that argument doesn't make a lot of sense. If you don't want to see advertising, fine (I personally believe you have every right to control what you see in your browser, even if that inconveniences the site owners) but don't pretend that advertising is somehow in violation of a contract that doesn't exist.
Ads subsidise the internet for the people that cant afford it. Subscription models will kill off the web/internet as we have it. I don't care for ads either specially those that hamper with the viewing of the content. If you dont want to see ads just visit the sites.A different model is needed if the publishers servers have to get the ad first and then give it to the client because the ad server then needs to trust the publisher to report impressions honestly and the publisher has an incentive to inflate that number.
I totally agree with what is wrong with advertising on the web, which is basically everything, but there is also value to impressions.
Let's say a new movie is coming out. I don't care if you go to the movie website, I just want to get the actors' faces in front of you with a movie name.
Same goes for a political candidate. I don't need you to go to Bernie Sanders' website, I just need you to know that he's running and a couple of things that he stands for.
The problem is that advertising and tracking are inherently connected today. Want to target ads to people who are likely to respond to them? You need profiles on all those users. Want privacy? You need to starve the collection of your data to build profiles.
IMO this is precisely why Google still gives me better results than DuckDuckGo - not _only_ do they sometimes know who I am and things about me, but their data set is based on knowing so much about all of us.
I also find that supremely unsettling.
Having worked on ad-driven properties, I'll say it's pretty common to track things at both ends. The advertiser always wants the impressions / click-throughs / whatever to be as low as possible, and the operators of the site want it to be higher. Much negotiation ensues.
Also, most folks don't have direct ad sales, though this is the holy grail in ad-driven properties, most sites use doubleclick and a suite of others, and often an intermediary inventory management service which picks the ads which pay the most for a given hour or day and maybe switch out providers based on their speed (doubleclick also gets really slow at busy times and will cause your site not to load :/)
2 - brand advertising isn't really meant to create clicks, but rather a positive impression of a brand. eg those cute cheerios ads or the xmas polar bear coke ads.
So forcing domains to host the ads they insert and all the tracking that goes with makes that more explicit and thus a good thing.
Some of my numbers are from: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/study-of-ad-blockin...
Measure what you can see. Don't obsess over what you cannot.
Or did you go already that far?
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||I serve Google AdSense on one of my sites with 10'000 - 20'000 ad impressions daily. What amount of $ would one expect to make with those impressions if changing ad networks away from Google? Any recommendations?
2.) ease of integration
3.) independent analytics