alt Hacker NewsI know this is probably a very naive question, but what is the end goal putting so much effort into getting past ad blockers? Surely, someone with an ad blocker installed is not going to click on their ads and buy the advertised products anyway. I don't really know what I am talking about, but I guess it's all about ad impressions that generate money, but doesn't this strategy end up making less money, because the money that's put into circumventing ad blockers isn't really generating more sales.
It's like a door to door sales person thinking that if only they could find a way to unlock my door I would buy their stuff.
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Online advertising is less and less about forcing a pitch to conversion in the moment its viewed. Even if someone with an ad blocker would never click on the ad anyway, repeat "impressions" build implicit trust just through exposure. Six months or even a year from then, when that user is looking for a specific SaaS tool, for example, the brand they saw 40 times already is the one that feels established and safe, and it's more likely to lead to a conversion without ever clicking the original ad.
The second part of putting so much effort into getting past ad blockers is tracking & fingerprinting, especially across devices.
In general, ads work by anchoring a brand name in your memory for when you eventually are looking for said product or service, the goal isn't always to force a conversion on the spot.
Ads do a lot more than advertise. They track and collect data about you without you interacting at all. I don’t use an adblocker to not see ads, i use an ad blocker to not load ads or interact with their providers servers at all.
Ads are for surveillance as much if not more than they are for money
Aren’t ads payed also via „impressions“, like 10k people saw your advertisement so please pay x money?
I don't like ads and don't want to buy random stuff, but they totally work me sometimes, and I'm sure there has got to be many like me. It's one of the big reasons I don't go on social media really anymore. I mostly have willpower, but in moments of weakness I'll see a perfectly targeted ad, it'll be for something affordable, and I'll but it. It was never a big problem for me as it's only happened a handful of times, but everything I've bought this way has been useless and I've gotten rid of it all.
I believe tracking and privacy invasions cannot be solved through technological means, it needs to be solved through laws and regulations.
We need to prod our representatives to ban the selling of our private information. Websites themselves can use the information but they're prohibited from selling it to anyone else. Why? Because the data changes hands and borders several times after which we lose all control over it.
100% higher up decision, I bet they loose more on this than the powerpoint slide says they are earning.
Do we no longer habitually install an ad block for friends and family? There's gotta be some naive users with an ad blocker that way, or default within brave or whatever
> is not going to click on their ads and buy the advertised products anyway
Even cringy ads that digust or anger users in the moment have a subtle effect of making them more likely to buy or recommend that brand in the future. The name recognition is what advertisers are buying, it doesn't have to immediately persuade the user to click for them to get what they want.
I go a bit further - if something penetrates firefox + ublock origin combo, I'll go out of my way to make sure I'll never, ever buy such product or service if I can avoid that (not always possible but reasonably frequent).
Its quichotesque effort but the only thing that can move the needle a bit since everybody involved cares only about money here - waiting for some toothless legislation is useless when harm is happening now.
ads are like billboards. the company doesn't make money by making sure your buy the product, it make money by getting the product in front of you. You might not buy the product today, but there is a chance that since you've seen the product, you might buy it in the future.
many of times, i have looked to purchase a product or service and remember an ad that i saw that has alter my decision.
You don't actually need to click on an ad or purchase something from an ad site in order for Facebook to make money selling ad space.
The moment these ads are loaded on the page, real time auction occurs, where advertisers place bids algorithmically and automatically, based on your profile. Facebook makes it's money by selling this ad space. It doesn't particularly care whether you click on them or not. But if they don't load in the first place, there's nothing for Facebook to sell.
The real insideous part is that advertisers don't need to actually bid on the auction to participate, and anyone participating gets to havest your ad profile. This is one of the big ways data brokers are able to build profiles on you. They can then do whatever they want with this info, and you'd probably never know.