> In my opinion using ad blockers is borderline piracy.
Once upon a time I agreed with you... now I view all online ads as threats.
Unfortunately, marketing companies have gotten greedy and the degree to which they fingerprint and track us as we surf the web has gotten completely out of hand. This is an industry that cannot even follow their own watered-down initiatives like DoNotTrack.
And because ad networks use layers of affiliates, sites typically have no visibility nor control over what their visitors are being served. That's why you end up with a marketing company like Evidon buying Ghostery - just so they can help companies monitor the garbage on their own pages![3]
And to top it off, ads are now a common attack vector for viruses and malware that not even the big companies can control:
1. Just last week, Youtube was serving banking malware via its online ads. [1]
2. Last month Yahoo got a lot of attention serving Bitcoin malware via online ads on their site. [2]
I know that online publishing is important, and we need a strong press. But publishing desperately needs to find a new business model because online ads are a failed experiment and it's time to stick a fork in them.
Once upon a time I agreed with you... now I view all online ads as threats.
Unfortunately, marketing companies have gotten greedy and the degree to which they fingerprint and track us as we surf the web has gotten completely out of hand. This is an industry that cannot even follow their own watered-down initiatives like DoNotTrack.
And because ad networks use layers of affiliates, sites typically have no visibility nor control over what their visitors are being served. That's why you end up with a marketing company like Evidon buying Ghostery - just so they can help companies monitor the garbage on their own pages![3]
And to top it off, ads are now a common attack vector for viruses and malware that not even the big companies can control:
1. Just last week, Youtube was serving banking malware via its online ads. [1]
2. Last month Yahoo got a lot of attention serving Bitcoin malware via online ads on their site. [2]
I know that online publishing is important, and we need a strong press. But publishing desperately needs to find a new business model because online ads are a failed experiment and it's time to stick a fork in them.
[1]: http://labs.bromium.com/2014/02/21/the-wild-wild-web-youtube...
[2]: http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/05/tech/yahoo-malware-attack/inde...
[3]: https://www.ghostery.com/faq#q15