Wakey wakey, app developers. Mobile ad blocking will kill you all Two weeks ago we disclosed that CK Hutchison Holdings’s network-level ad blocking can not only block ads on websites, but it is capable of blocking ads served to mobile apps, too. The move is hugely significant. If Hutch sets a precedent (operators are keen to introduce similar technology) with in-app ad blocking, and it is …
Sadly I never heard of it... So I probably could care less if it required root, or no. I however have been using AdAway for yonks now, which in fact does require you to be rooted, and in short has to be, to be able to alter the Hosts File inside the otherwise protected /system Partition (Folder). This App has not only blocked every nasty from your Web Browser of choice, but from most Apps as well. And like I said for yonks now.
But, would I consider paying for this? I'm not so sure. Perhaps if the rootinig issue were solved then yes! But I seriously kinda doubt that your "Ad Blocker" Browser which needs its own.... Dubious, dare I say untrusted Proxy? In order to work?
Well let's just say I'll take my chances on being rooted.
I know "I hate ads" is a guaranteed upvote winner but this is ridiculous.
If no apps other than an ad blocker have any value to you then it's really easy not to see any ads, just don't have any apps.
If other apps do have value then surely you must recognise that for them to continue to be developed, you either need to pay for the app or accept the ads?
Well I have no real problem with paying out for something if the App in question is indeed useful. One such App was ES File Explorer. Wich untill recenty was not only free... But more to a point ad free. Of course that kinda changed with the last few updates wher the Devs were adding in more chinese fluff alla clean sweeper inside of their app. Yes I probably could have continued using an older "working" version. But, I had found it to have been one of the best... If not THE BEST File Managers on Android. So I did not think twice about the pittence to buy a licence for it. Banner ads that cover up most of the screen alla Angry Birds however... not so much. Then again I gave that up with my old Galaxy S Phone. When it comes to the few apps and games that I do have on my Device, then those tend to be from Amazon Underground. Which are already largely ad free.
If other apps do have value then surely you must recognise that for them to continue to be developed, you either need to pay for the app or accept the ads?
Strangely, one app I use regularly and would like to pay for has no paid version, no ads, and no "donate" button on the website...
I guess I should volunteer some coding time.
Vic.
Not necessarily.
I'd rather pay for an app up-front or as a subscription than be flooded with irrelevant ads which have a high probability to carry a malware payload. It will also show exactly what the app costs and make people pay only for apps which are worth it.
I do not regret paying for Torque, Sygic and a few others I paid for.
@Voland's right hand
I agree, the best solution is for consumers to get used to the idea that it's better to spend $0.99 on an ad free app than to take the ad-supported version. They don't do that though, for some reason they feel like this (oatmeal.com) and they overwhelmingly choose the ads. If customers choose that, how are the advertisers the bad guys?
and the network operators starting to fall on the side of the people who pay them....
Fraid not, mate. Hutchison are more likely looking to control adverts in order to take a slice of the vast pie currently being gobbled by Google. You are free to believe that they are doing this to do you a favour, but common sense and economics dictate otherwise. With competitive pressure pushing network revenues per user south, and no volume growth in mature markets, they need more money, and one of the few levers is to throttle advertising content, and demand a toll on the adverts they deliver. Because users don't really care much about adverts, there's not expected to be the backlash that throttling user content would generate.
However, they're assuming that the advertisers will pay without protest or retaliation, and I think that's big gamble. Google in particular won't want to see the current model disrupted, so I expect there to be some interesting developments if they roll this scheme out.
> Oh yes. I'm already gathering popcorn for the time when Google will take them to court for monopoly abuse :)
And I'm looking forward to Hutchison taking Google to court for various breaches of computer misuse acts due to them just slinging malware ridden ads without performing any duty of care to ensure there is nothing nasty being served up.
Ad industry had their chances over the years and blew it big time by making many ads excessively intrusive, using up lots of (potentially expensive) bandwidth, painfully slow page load times due to ads, and even worse infecting devices with malware (with seemingly no comeback).
Their screw the users attitude show with the we're going to ignore "do not track" approach
I'm sure most users would be happy with as many ads as possible blocked.
I hate ads as much as everyone else, but wonder what alternative financial incentives are available for app developers on mobiles? Sure you can buy many apps very cheaply and there are one or two I wouldn't mind parting with £1 or so for; BUT I just don't trust Android and the Google Playstore ecosystem enough to part with any card details. Similarly I don't use my mobile for accessing online banking or anything else of a sensitive nature. Maybe I'm just too paranoid, but rather that than becoming yet another victim of fraud.
That's why you can either use PayPal or barring that... Pre-paid Cards. Honestly after about 2 Years of using PayPal after it became available. I can honestly say that I've never had a problem. But, then I'm also smart enough to make sure I have 2FA activated as well as all alerts as to when anyone (or myself), has made any purchases though the Playstore.
I think kind Sir is confusing Google with S0NY, to wit I'd agree with you whole heatedly.
Well I can not attest for Blightyville, as I do not live there. But the US has had the almost since day one. We folks here in Germany have had them for about what Two Years now? And can be picked up pretty much everywhere in denominatins of 15€, 25€, 50€, and 100€.
The only problem with these kinds of cards is that you'll almost have something left like 0.10€ with little oppettuity to get rid of it. I think they might have gotten 'round to actually fixing that now though. That's why I actually prefer PayPal over Pre-pay, as it's exact change, at time of sale. And I don't need to buy any Cards. So in that way it's just as safe. And I've been using them for the last Eleven plus Years now for all of my Fleebay needs.
/Endorsement ends :) No I'm not trying to sell anyone on that idea. It's just my personal honest opinion.
+1 for Pre-Paid cards.
Slightly OT, but I've used them a lot and they're very handy. No credit scoring when you apply, just ID info. No credit to run up, as they only allow spending of what you've loaded onto the card. Handy for all sorts, like car hire companies who won't accept debit cards, etc. I've a few, in various currencies for trips away, so no FX loading either.
There is an solution to the payment problem, Google (or whatever it calls itself now) runs Google pay, Apple runs Apple pay and MS runs Windows pay - if these organisations made a commitment to providing a non-data slurping, secure service, and stood by it, they ought to be able to make it work.
Hmm - tricky problem.
Wow you are the same as me, I have two Android devices and would never put my credit card details into either, I only trust my PC with Kaspersky installed, even when in the Philippines if I wanted to do anything online faster than using mobile dongle internet I would take my Trusty Laptop to the local internet cafe and use it there, they were most obliging and that way I knew I was secure rather than using one of their PC's with whatever Trojans or Viruses they might have.
"Has anyone tried in-page ads where the advertiser has a link to the website's server backend and reserved space on the page? (If not, can I patent it?)"
Sorry, all advertising used to be hosted on the web server serving the site itself. You still see some of that here and there. Ad blockers generally don't block self-hosted ads, especially if they are served statically as part of the page rather than via JavaScript.
90% of apps (Android anyhow) are utter garbage.
Anything that will drive these people out of business is a good thing.
I'd rather choose from a dozen quality paid apps than try to guess which one of fifty free, "free', ad supported, or otherwise unpaid ones actually work.
The link says it's 58% who prefer. That means that there are a lot of people who don't. The problem is that no one seems to know how much the sea of adverts that we swim in costs us. What proportion of the cost of goods and services makes up the price that we pay? If people know, what would the proportion who prefer ads be then? I'm happy to pay for apps that I use. When I want to buy a new good or service, I ask friends what they're using and why and read reviews - by people whose opinion I respect. Thus I give no credence to Guardian reviews of bicycles*, pay some attention to road.cc, read Cycling Weekly attentively and talk to cycling friends.
* because they are just thinly disguised, bland, advertisements.
Beers all round to the people hacking blocker code, from one of the thousands who'd happily pay to read El Reg.
My first reaction to the idea of blocking ads at the network level is very positive.
On second thought, content developers need to make some kind of return.
Complete blockage of ads seems almost too extreme.
Would it be possible to define reasonable limits on ads... and actually have them enforced, by who?
In the mean time, I continue to block ads aggressively.
(on PC's and "free" television - I refuse to use smartphones or "mobile" data).
So maybe I'm just a little "radical" when it comes to the mobile industry in general,
Here in the US, I definitely wish the FCC would step up and begin regulating more on the behalf of consumers.
But should Net Neutrality mean that users pay for the advertisers' bandwidth? I'd suggest that whoever wants to use the bandwidth pays.
At present the objections to ads are (a) they're annoying (b) they may be malicious and (c) they steal bandwidth the user paid for. If the advertiser wants to sell something to me then stealing from me isn't exactly a good start.
So if the advertiser pays their share then that's one obstacle removed.
The next is that if advertisers are paying for their bandwidth then they may start paying attention to just how effective their ads are and realise that pissing off the potential customer by being annoying isn't a good idea either, not it wasting money sending out ads for something their tracking tells them the customer's bought already. So the ads might get less annoying.
The worry is that the only "ads" worth paying to send the user are ransomware or the like.
Am I the only one who thinks network level blocking of ads sets a bad precedent?
I'm no fan of ads and I run adblockers on most of my devices, but network level blocking is a whole different kettle of fish. Its a big step away from the network (ISP) being a dumb pipe and puts them in the role of a content curator. I am sure that networks see this a way to leverage back some control and insert them selves in between the user and the internet - something that they tried to do in the early days of mobile internet access with curated walled gardens. Users, quite rightly, rejected this strongly and demanded unfettered access to the internet. This feels like it could be a step backwards and is debatably a breach net neutrality.
Users may not object to the blocking of ads, but what happens when networks get the bright idea of selling ads themselves which will automatically replace Google/Facebook ads at the network level? This could get very messy and if I was Google/Facebook I would be very concerned.
Predicion: Google/Facebook will start encrypting and embedding ads (in Googles case at the Android OS level) such that mobile operaters can not filter then them out and we will be back to square one, but worse off since personal ad blockers will also be shafted.
"what happens when networks get the bright idea of selling ads themselves"
Given that they seem to have cottoned onto the fact that users don't want ads then if the other networks do provide ads themselves not doing so is a valuable differentiator.
There's a big difference between being ad-supported and providing a paid-for service. Ad-supported sites could suffer in the sort of thermonuclear war you suggest. Paid networks aren't going to nuke themselves unless they have very stupid managements.
BTW, re your prediction. How are Google going to send ads to Android devices if the networks are ad-blocking?
"BTW, re your prediction. How are Google going to send ads to Android devices if the networks are ad-blocking?"
You seriously think its not possible for Google to prevent blocking of ads when they have control of the operating system? This would be trivially easy.
If it is being done by blocking the content-provider's site then whether that site uses https or not is unimportant. The only fix will be for those whose pages/apps are littered with ads to start hosting the ads themselves, at which point (as an earlier comment noted) they might start to question the cost of the bandwidth and perhaps even their content and suitability.
"If it is being done by blocking the content-provider's site then whether that site uses https or not is unimportant."
The problem is that you cannot block just a specific site when it is accessed via HTTPS. You don't know what the domain used is.
You could block the DNS lookup, but the app could have a whole bunch hard-coded IPs in it. If those IPs are used generically and not just for serving ads (e.g. Google could trivially decide to use the same set of IPs for their non-advertising offerings under different domain names via TLS). TLS allows for multiple domain names to be served via the same IP address over HTTPS, it is only old SSL implementations that require a separate IP address per domain name. With TLS the domain name is only sent after the initial crypto setup.
Long story short, you cannot block it by domain name, and you can only block it by IP addresses if you are willing to accept a massive amount of collateral damage that most users won't stand for since many would be relatively vital heavily used internet services (e.g. anything provided by Google).
The only way you could do it is if you persuade your customers to install a man-in-the-middle allowing CA cert on their devices, which no sane person will do.
I don;t care too much about Ads on WiFi, but I certainly do on cellular. I've noticed that one of the apps I was using would download ads intended for non-mobile devices, then shrink it down on the phone. Nothing kills a data plan faster than grabbing a 20 MB chunk of video every 5 minutes over the air...
*Provided* the ads aren't irritating and intrusive, I would generally agree.
However when it's flashing "You have ONE new message!" or "Your Phone May Be Infected, Scan Now!" in an extremely annoying manner, you'll find that this user prefers to uninstall that app and find one that doesn't piss him off!
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