Online advertisers admit they “messed up,” promise lighter ads

[SecularMotion]

The online advertising business, which has for years struggled against a rising tide of ad blockers by deploying ever-heavier and more-invasive ads, this week publicly acknowledged the error of its ways.

"We messed up," begins the post by Scott Cunningham of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), which represents 650 advertising and tech companies that produce 86 percent of all Internet ads in the US.

Cunningham makes the case that advertising was a huge boon to the early Web by making so much content freely available on demand, but he admits ads eventually got so slow and intrusive that they actively damaged the user experience.

"Through our pursuit of further automation and maximization of margins during the industrial age of media technology, we built advertising technology to optimize publishers’ yield of marketing budgets that had eroded after the last recession. Looking back now, our scraping of dimes may have cost us dollars in consumer loyalty. The fast, scalable systems of targeting users with ever-heftier advertisements have slowed down the public internet and drained more than a few batteries. We were so clever and so good at it that we over-engineered the capabilities of the plumbing laid down by, well, ourselves. This steamrolled the users, depleted their devices, and tried their patience...

We lost sight of our social and ethical responsibility to provide a safe, usable experience for anyone and everyone wanting to consume the content of their choice."

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/10/online-advertisers-admit-they-messed-up-promise-lighter-ads/

[madokie]

1. Sometimes

I wonder if it isn't ads that slows DU down to a crawl. Even though I have the ads turned off I still wonder if they're not responsible for slow page refreshes. I remember back before we were an advertising site that it was much faster to load a page. My internet connection speed has gone up since then but du sometime is so slow as to make me wander off to other sites and read.

For the most part I trust DU to bring me good solid news of whats happening but when it slows to a crawl I get antsy and move on

[Travis_0004]

2. It shouldnt matter

Du is not sending the ads google is, and I would bet google spends good money on ad servers.

On a dial up connection maybe it could make a difference, but it shouldn't matter on high speed connections.

As much as we hate ads, for a lot of sites it makes up the vast majority of its revenue.

[justiceischeap]

3. It all depends if the ads are loaded with async or not

If the ads don't employ async, then they load first, which can and will slow the load of actual page content.

[ronnie624]

7. I disabled my flash player, and I'm very pleased with the result.

There is no doubt that it was slowing down my computer, even with a high speed cable connection.

[Renew Deal]

4. That was a pretty good article

[mercuryblues]

5. there are

sites that I won't go to because of the ads. Especially if they are heavy on video ads.

[Quackers]

6. I absolutely hate the video ads that automatically play. I've lost a lot of data to those.

[whatthehey]

8. flash block is your friend

Can still launch flash content if you want it with one more click but no more autoplay. Extensions/add-ons depending on your browser and search. It's free.

[Quackers]

9. I'm on an iPad.

They don't use flash. For some reason, my local news stations, cnn, and a few others had their ads set to autoplay. If there was a video on that page, it didn't matter if you clicked it.