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| | Introduction
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< | The purpose of this post is to discuss the problems of today's online advertisement and consequences of the increasing popularity of ad blocking software. I will first discuss why online advertisement has become more problematic in the recent days, focusing on its "tracking" practice; I will then discuss how ad blocking software has accordingly gained popularity and native advertisements that circumvent ad-blockers are creating problems. I feel this is an important current issue that has far-reaching implications for privacy and Internet surveillance practices that permeate today’s society. |
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> | The purpose of this post is to discuss the problems of today's online advertisement and consequences of the increasing popularity of privacy technologies that fight against tracking. I will first discuss why online advertisement has become more problematic in the recent days, including how platforms' placement of advertisements can significantly affect the advertisers; I will then discuss privacy technologies, including ad blocking software that has accordingly gained popularity and how native advertisements that circumvent ad-blockers are creating problems. |
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< | What's Wrong with Today's Online Ads? Tracking. |
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> | What's Wrong with Today's Online Ads? Tracking |
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Online advertisement has been around for a while. But in my view it recently has become much more problematic than before, and the biggest culprit is the growing use of website visitor tracking. Website visitor tracking is a practice of tracking/monitoring website visitor’s online activities (often even when they leave the site) to create “big data” for advertisers who then use the data to provide “personalized” ads to web visitors. This practice has apparently become prevalent as big data analysis is now a buzzword that attracts advertisers who are looking to exploit the ever-increasing online markets (it is reported that internet advertising revenues in the U.S. has exceeded those of cable television and of broadcast television). |
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< | Despite the ironic reality that the click-through rate on such banner ads is reported to be less than 0.1%, more and more websites – including social network services such as Facebook that has access to more personal information than others – are using user tracking. And this is troubling, to say the least. First, this practice clearly is (or should be considered) a form of impermissible Internet surveillance that permeates today’s society because it is generally done without the knowledge/consent of the users, most of who are not tech-savvy and do not understand the consequences of allowing these websites, especially tech giants like Facebook/Google, to monitor their activities. I am also concerned that the prevalence of this tracking practice reflects today’s business leaders’ insensitivity to and us ordinary persons’ ignorance of the importance of privacy and far-reaching implications of surrendering it to big corporations with technology and money that can then use such information to subtly control our lives in troubling ways. |
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> | Despite the ironic reality that the click-through rate on online ads is reported to be less than 0.1%, more and more websites – including social network services such as Facebook that has access to more personal information than others – are using user tracking to sell their advertising spaces. And this is troubling, to say the least. First, this practice clearly is (or should be considered) a form of impermissible Internet surveillance that permeates today’s society because it is generally done without the knowledge/consent of the users, most of who are not tech-savvy and do not understand the consequences of allowing these websites, especially tech giants like Facebook/Google, to monitor their activities. |
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< | Ad-blockers Fight Back |
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> | What's Making It Worse? Dominance of Google and Facebook's online ads market |
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< | Fortunately, there has been some successful effort to fight back: ad-blockers that selectively download material when visiting a website, usually excluding advertisements and tracking components. According to Adobe’s 2015 Global Adblocking Report, “there are now 198 million active adblock users around the world … [adblocking] grew by 41% globally in the last 12 months”. A Harvard Business Review article called it “the largest [boycott] in human history”. Ad-blockers have become so popular that the popularity is even sparking ethical discussions on whether it is morally wrong to deprive web publishers of means/opportunities to earn money, which could lead to the decline of journalism in general.
Native Ads and Problems |
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Against this backdrop, the issue I would like to discuss here is the growing prevalence of native ads that more and more online advertisers are starting to use in response to ad-blockers because they can circumvent the blockers. Native ads are forms of advertisement that match the online platforms’ form and function so as to look like the platform’s content, and some examples can be found here. |
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> | The prevalence of tracking has led to the emergence of the duopoly of the online ads market by two largest platforms, Google and Facebook. These platforms gather personal information through user's website uses and through user's app use on their phone, which tends to provide much more personal information, as users are spending more and more time on their phones and are becoming comfortable providing personal information on their app these days. Due to this unparalleled data gathering capacity of the two platforms, Google and Facebook provide advertisers with access to greater audiences and, more importantly, with better tracking, leaving no room for other platforms to compete with them in the online ads market. This duopoly has left advertisers with little leverage power and at the mercy of these platforms -- Google and Facebook can command steep prices for popular target keywords and depending on how the platforms treat the ads, the ads can appear with different contents, which significantly affects the ads' effectiveness. |
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< | Two main problems of native ads I think are: first, it is often difficult for many website users (who I assume are not tech-savvy) to tell if some content is in fact a native ad, creating misleading, if not deceitful, impressions of products the ad is promoting. Second, perhaps more importantly, when it is difficult to tell the difference between journalism and advertisement (because many native ads operate on online publishers websites), it could eventually erode the independence of journalism and, if combined with tracking, the Internet would no longer be a place for content democratization and free exchange of ideas. |
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> | With these platforms dominating the ads market, other media websites have seen their ads revenue, which is often the main revenue source, sharply decline and are struggling to survive. If this trend continues, there will be fewer and fewer media sources and the duopoly will only be strengthened even further, and advertisers (who are often product and services businesses) will find themselves with little to no bargaining power against these platforms. |
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< | In response to criticisms against native advertisements, Meredith Levien, the New York Times’ Executive Vice President for Advertising, insists that “good native advertising respects the independence and the sanctity of journalism…[and] is just not meant to be trickery. It’s meant to be publisher sharing its storytelling tools with a marketer”. She also argues that, because the marketers are held to the same standard consumers hold publishers to (transparency, accountability, etc), native ads can add value to rather than undermine journalism. |
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> | It is also concerning that the prevalence of tracking practice by these platforms reflects today’s business leaders’ insensitivity to and us ordinary persons’ ignorance of the importance of privacy and far-reaching implications of surrendering it to big corporations with technology and money that can then use such information to subtly control our lives in troubling ways. |
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< | I find this incredibly difficult to believe. We already suspect and have some evidence research articles sponsored by companies can bias conclusions in favor of the sponsoring companies’ products, and it is difficult to think that something similar will not happen in journalism and native advertising. Even a 1999 article in the New York Times questioned the viability of maintaining journalism’s independence with the advent of online native ads, and that was almost 20 years ago when online advertisement was not heavily employing tracking and fewer people used the Internet for information gathering. |
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> | Privacy technology -- Ad-blockers Fight Back |
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< | Concluding Remarks |
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< | I have mainly discussed the problems of online advertisements that create privacy issues and threaten the Internet’s (online publishers’) integrity, without discussing solutions. Honestly, I am not sure what solutions there are, especially considering that web publishers’ need to monetize their websites/content is also important; if they can’t do so, we will have fewer and fewer web publishers that can financially survive, threatening the notion of content democratization championed by the web. Nonetheless, a better understanding of the problems should help us find solutions as we move forward. |
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> | Fortunately, there has been some successful effort to fight back: ad-blockers that selectively download material when visiting a website, usually excluding advertisements and tracking components. According to Adobe’s 2015 Global Adblocking Report, “there are now 198 million active adblock users around the world … [adblocking] grew by 41% globally in the last 12 months”. A Harvard Business Review article called it “the largest [boycott] in human history”. Ad-blockers have become so popular that the popularity is even sparking ethical discussions on whether it is morally wrong to deprive web publishers of means/opportunities to earn money, which could lead to the decline of journalism in general.
While ad-blockers are the most common privacy technology even non-sophisticated users can employ to defend against tracking, ad-blockers admittedly are rather basic privacy technology that helps users fight against tracking. |
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> | Native Ads and Problems |
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Against this backdrop, the issue I would like to discuss here is the growing prevalence of native ads that more and more online advertisers are starting to use in response to ad-blockers because they can circumvent the blockers. Native ads are forms of advertisement that match the online platforms’ form and function so as to look like the platform’s content, and some examples can be found here. |
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< | I think the draft is rather 2012. Your way of describing the extent
of data-gathering, the focus on banner advertising and "native"
advertising, which is just another cycle being turned, the absence
of analysis of the way the placement platforms at Google and
Facebook (which are now garnering between them 99% of all the new
digital advertising spending in the world outside China)---all seems
ill-designed to give the reader a current view of the situation.
Why are we discussing advertising-supported media content, instead
of discussing how businesses that are product and services
businesses either succeed or fail depending on how the advertising
platforms treat them? Why is "ad-blocking" even an issue, given
that digital media are intrinsically filterable, and whatever I use
to read data from webservers isn't necessarily a "browser" made by
an advertising company? Serving the ads off the same address that
serves me parts of the data stream I want (which is what "native
advertising" now really means) defeats only primitive forms of
ad-blocking, which are not how sensible people protect themselves
both against the monitoring and against the attention-distortion at
the same time. (The NY Times does various things to interfere with
my reading of the news they publish, some of which might be
considered advertising and other bits might be thought of as
"content," but if I don't want them I can be filtering them out
equally. Ads are really just anything I don't want, as spam is
really just email I don't want to read. In both cases, computers
are ideally skilled at helping me remove what I don't want to see.)
I think the best route to improvement is to broaden the discussion
of advertising, from media-content decoration to the activities of
the platforms themselves, and to look more closely at privacy
technologies beyond in-browser ad-blocking. |
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> | Two main problems of native ads I think are: first, it is often difficult for many website users (who I assume are not tech-savvy) to tell if some content is in fact a native ad, creating misleading, if not deceitful, impressions of products the ad is promoting. Second, perhaps more importantly, when it is difficult to tell the difference between journalism and advertisement (because many native ads operate on online publishers websites), it could eventually erode the independence of journalism and, if combined with tracking, the Internet would no longer be a place for content democratization and free exchange of ideas. |
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> | Concluding Remarks
I have mainly discussed the problems of online advertisements that create privacy issues and market imbalances, and threaten the Internet’s (online publishers’) integrity, without discussing solutions. Honestly, I am not sure what solutions there are, especially considering that web publishers’ need to monetize their websites/content is also important; if they can’t do so, we will have fewer and fewer web publishers that can financially survive, threatening the notion of content democratization championed by the web. Nonetheless, a better understanding of the problems should help us find solutions as we move forward. |
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