Welcome to Hell: Adblocking and Apple's War Against Google (7)
Welcome to Hell: Adblocking and Apple's War Against Google
Welcome to Hell: Adblocking and Apple's War Against Google
from http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/17/93...ath-of-the-web
"So let's talk about ad blocking.
You might think the conversation about ad blocking is about the user experience of news, but what we're really talking about is money and power in Silicon Valley. And titanic battles between large companies with lots of money and power tend to have a lot of collateral damage.
iOS 9 came out yesterday (in fits and starts) and with it, support for content blockers in iOS 9. There is already a little cottage industry of ad blockers available, and you should definitely try one or two — they will radically improve your mobile web experience, because they will... block huge chunks of the web from loading.
WHAT WE'RE REALLY TALKING ABOUT IS MONEY AND POWER IN SILICON VALLEY
Those huge chunks — the ads! — are almost certainly the part you don't want. What you want is the content, hot sticky content, snaking its way around your body and mainlining itself directly into your brain. Plug that RSS firehose straight into your optic nerve and surf surf surf 'til you die.
Unfortunately, the ads pay for all that content, an uneasy compromise between the real cost of media production and the prices consumers are willing to pay that has existed since the first human scratched the first antelope on a wall somewhere. Media has always compromised user experience for advertising: that's why magazine stories are abruptly continued on page 96, and why 30-minute sitcoms are really just 22 minutes long. Media companies put advertising in the path of your attention, and those interruptions are a valuable product. Your attention is a valuable product.
Now, here's the thing about the web, and in particular web ads: the biggest provider of ads on the web is Google. In particular, Google runs an ad server called DoubleClick for Publishers, or DFP. DFP is huge, and it serves ads for basically every major publisher: Vox Media and The Verge use DFP. BuzzFeed uses DFP. ESPN uses DFP. If you are seeing advertising on the web, there is a real chance it's being served to you by DFP. Even native advertising is served by DFP; that's how the native ad slots on The Verge's home page are managed independently of editorial.
IOS 9 IS APPLE'S ATTEMPT TO FULLY DRIVE THE KNIFE INTO GOOGLE'S REVENUE PLATFORM
Then, in addition to DFP, Google runs the web's largest ad exchange, AdX. DFP lets publishers serve their own ads, while AdX is responsible for those programmatic ads that follow you around the web. Those are the three biggest categories of web advertising revenue — premium display, native, and programmatic — and Google has a huge stake in all of them.
In fact, there's no other company that's managed to monetize the web quite like Google has through the power of DFP and AdX. The web has always been Google's native platform, and DFP means that the web is also Google's revenue platform — users search for things using Google, see Google search ads, and then land on content that is further monetized by Google DFP and its ad exchange. This is basically the foundation of Google's entire business: Google makes the lion's share of its money on search, and Google search doesn't work if the web isn't searchable, so Google has a huge interest in making the web profitable for media companies, so they can search all that content.
But what's happening now is that attention is shifting fast from desktop browsers — where Google's Chrome is dominant (and supports ad blocking!) — to mobile browsers. In particular, to Apple's Mobile Safari, which dominates usage statistics on mobile. There is no alternative web rendering engine on the iPhone; there's just WebKit, which Apple controls. The dominance of the iPhone and Mobile Safari give Apple "veto power" over the web, as John Gruber put it — a veto power which means Google's revenue platform is increasingly under the control of a major rival.
And with iOS 9 and content blockers, what you're seeing is Apple's attempt to fully drive the knife into Google's revenue platform. iOS 9 includes a refined search that auto-suggests content and that can search inside apps, pulling content away from Google and users away from the web, it allows users to block ads, and it offers publishers salvation in the form of Apple News, inside of which Apple will happily display (unblockable!) ads, and even sell them on publishers' behalf for just a 30 percent cut.
ADS IN APPLE NEWS AND THE FACEBOOK APP ARE UNBLOCKABLE
Oh, and if you're not happy with Apple News, you can always turn to Facebook's Instant Articles, which will also track the shit out of you and serve unblockable ads inside of the Facebook app, but from Apple's perspective it's a win as long as the money's not going to Google.
This is the dynamic to keep in mind — especially when you see Apple bloggers like Gruber forcefully discount the notion that Apple's decisions will affect small publishers. The Apple vs. Google fight has never been more heated or more tense, and Facebook's opportunity to present itself as the savior of media has never been bigger — through hey-it's-just-about-speed Instant Articles, which will almost certainly be featured higher in the News Feed, and huge things like its massive video initiative, which is a direct assault on YouTube. And oh — Apple's new tvOS, that huge bet on bringing apps to TV? Doesn't support WebKit at all.
So it's Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook, all with their own revenue platforms. Google has the web, Facebook has its app, and Apple has the iPhone. This is the newest and biggest war in tech going today.
And the collateral damage of that war — of Apple going after Google's revenue platform — is going to include the web, and in particular any small publisher on the web that can't invest in proprietary platform distribution, native advertising, and the type of media wining-and-dining it takes to secure favorable distribution deals on proprietary platforms. It is going to be a bloodbath of independent media.
Earlier this year John Herrman at The Awl said "the next internet is TV," and he's never looked more right — large publishers with digital savvy, big brands, and big audiences (like BuzzFeed and yes, Vox Media) will be just fine in this new world. In many ways, this is the opportunity new digital media companies were made to take advantage of, just as there was a moment for cable network upstarts and a moment for dynamic new print magazines to parlay their savvy with the younger generation into lasting cultural impact.
TAKING MONEY AND ATTENTION AWAY FROM THE WEB MEANS THAT WEB INNOVATION WILL SLOW TO A CRAWL
But taking money and attention away from the web means that the pace of web innovation will slow to a crawl. Innovation tends to follow the money, after all! And asking most small- to medium-sized sites to weather that change without dramatic consequences is utterly foolish. Just look at the number of small sites that have shut down this year: GigaOm. The Dissolve. Casey Johnston wrote a great piece for The Awl about ad blockers, in which The Awl's publisher noted that "seventy-five to eighty-five percent" of the site's ads could be blocked. What happens to a small company when you take away 75 to 85 percent of its revenue opportunities in the name of user experience? Who's going to make all that content we love so much, and what will it look like if it only makes money on proprietary platforms?
These are the questions worth asking — and they deserve better answers than simply "they'll adapt." Because there's only one thing that makes adaptation such a powerful force.
Death."
http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/17/93...ath-of-the-web
I am really interested to see where this goes. After all, as the article says content is paid for by ads. But if the freeloaders succeed at blocking them, what will make people want to make so much funny viral content? Boredom will help create only so much ..
A move sold as being pro-consumer, when in reality it's the complete opposite. I can understand the economic rationale behind, but I don't appreciate it.
Still, I don't think it's that big of a deal. Apple makes a shit ton of money by having insane margins, not by selling lots of products. iPhone market share is around 14% worldwide, with respectable spikes in specific GEOs. It's a luxury product by heart and that's something that will never change. The only way to stomp Apple is to push smartphones into emerging markets. Google's doing it, Apple's Ex-CEO started doing it publicly this week (their product is an Android-derivate).
There's no way I see a positive long-term outcome with Apple's hyper-aggressive strategy.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/apple...?trk=prof-post
Not gonna lie, I think this will put many publishers out of business (I work at one).
This is where Buzzfeed's business model is set up for victory. All of their ads ARE content (e.g. cat video sponsored by Purina).
That said, there are some ad tech platforms that are able to circumvent ad blockers. Sourcepoint is an example, and Yavli is another.
Here's an example of ad block circumvention at work:
http://www.unilad.co.uk/crazy/brazil...ho-kicked-him/
Take a look at the "Sponsored Content" below the article, which would typically be blocked if it were served by Taboola/Outbrain. Note how if you hover your cursor over the links, it shows a fake Unilad URL that tricks ad blockers into thinking it's first party content.
Ad blockers vs. ad blocker blockers!
Mobile Ad-block-alypse: Here comes the first ad blocking app that blocks Facebook and In-App ads too
from http://uk.businessinsider.com/been-c...ok-ads-2015-10
"The threat of mobile ad blocking has been largely downplayed by observers and analysts because, up until now, mobile ad blocking apps could only block ads on mobile browsers — not in apps.
People spend most of their time in apps, and the majority of mobile ad revenue is generated by apps, not the mobile web. So analysts at firms including UBS and JP Morgan have downplayed the impact of the recent launch of Apple's new operating system iOS9 and the avalanche of ad blocking apps that came with it.
But now there's an ad blocker — "Been Choice" — that claims to block in-app ads too. Everything from ads within Facebook's app (Been Choice claims it is the first mobile ad blocking app to do so,) to the New York Times, and even on Apple News.
Rather than just acting as a browser extension to Apple's Safari mobile browser (which is how other popular iOS ad blockers such as Crystal and Adblock Plus for iOS work,) Been Choice uses a different technique.
It's called "deep packet inspection," which Been Choice uses through its VPN (virtual private network) to filter out ad traffic. It can remove specific content — ads — from the data stream using pattern matching. It works in a similar way that companies use deep packet inspection on their managed devices to ensure sensitive information never leaves their internal corporate networks. Been Choice also offers ad blocking on Safari too, creating a "bubble," which the app's founders say frees your phone almost entirely from all trackers and ads.
It's not entirely clear why Apple approved the app — not least because it claims to block one of its revenue streams: the ads it sells in Apple News. Its recent update only allowed for ad blockers that blocked ads on its Safari browser, not other apps.
Back in 2013, Google removed Adblock Plus and other ad blockers from the Play Store. At the time Google said this was because the app violated a Section 4.4 of its Developer Distribution Agreement, which stipulated that apps cannot interfere with another app's functionality.
Business Insider has contacted Apple for clarification, and we will update this article once we hear back. We've also contacted Facebook for comment about the claim that Been Choice can block Facebook ads.
Surprisingly, Apple's app approval turnaround times for Been Choice were "very short"
Been Choice co-founder Dave Yoon told Business Insider that the company has been in contact with Apple about its plans for more than three months, and that its app approval turnaround times "have been very short."
He added: "Other VPN-based ad blockers for apps have been approved, [such as] Disconnect to block 'malvertising,' and a selection of ads based on third-party trackers. We think Apple’s move to focus on user privacy is real — and is aligned with their position in the market vis-a-vis Facebook and Google. Android’s Google Play allows blocking trackers but not ads — and when we move next to Android, our app would most likely focus on that choice. So we are not unique in blocking ads in apps for iOS."
Where Been Choice differs from apps like Disconnect is that it combines app ad blocking with browser ad blocking, and it offers users an unusual second option.
Been Choice offers users an option between blocking ads, or earning rewards for sharing their usage data.
Users can choose between blocking and sharing. If users choose to share, they can opt to earn rewards for letting ads through instead. As a result, their device usage data will be sent to Been, which allows the company to act like a "Gallup or Nielsen" analytics consultancy, Yoon said. Been Choice's iTunes page suggests rewards include PayPal and Amazon vouchers, and it is understood users can earn up to $20 a month via the app, in return for their usage data being sold on (in an anonymized fashion.)
Yoon explains the thinking behind the "choice" in a press release:
"We think this is a better way. And to offer a real choice to users, we think it’s necessary to create a powerfully comprehensive ad and tracker blocker. Anything less leaves us in the same muddle as we find today.
The wide adoption of content blockers over the last 2 weeks speaks to the pent-up frustration users have with inconvenience and poor performance of their devices caused by advertising and advertising technology.
But we think it also speaks to the growing disagreement with the assumption that user information should be rampantly leveraged to target ads. The data collected and the sophisticated methods available for their analysis is growing, and innovation derived from them are necessary. But consumers should have a say, a choice about who gets their data, how it gets used, and who benefits from its value. "
There's not yet any suggestion Been Choice has become the iOS 9 ad blocker of choice.
AppAnnie data shows that since launch the Been Choice app has only risen to a peak ranking of 476 amongst all US utilities iPhone apps.
And the popularity of iOS9 ad blocking apps has waned since they first appeared in the app store on September 16. MarketingLand reported that just one ad blocking app remained in the iPhone paid app top 5 last week.
Nevertheless, the launch of Been Choice may open up the floodgates for more developers to explore making ad blockers that block in-app ads.
Meanwhile, Shine, a mobile ad blocking company that creates white label software that allows mobile carriers to block ads at a network level, announced it had signed Jamaica-based operator Digicel as its first official customer last week. Digicel intends to turn on mobile ad blocking — which will include in-app ads — for all its customers as standard."
Wowwww. I just tried it. A bit slow since everything has to funnel through the VPN (my FB feed sputtered a bit when loading new posts, but maybe not an issue with lower bandwidth apps), but it seems to work.
Shit be cray.
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