The future of Internet advertising

Did internet advertising lose meaning?

Unfortunately, tracking by advertisers and other companies tied to the advertising industry is commonplace on the web today. Generally this fact occurs without the knowledge, permission or consent of Internet users. Evidence of this can be seen when the ads that appear on the web are based on our latest browsing habits. Meanwhile, the logs and the underlying online activity profiles are distributed among a vast network of advertising companies, data brokers and tracking companies.

For this reason, the use of ad blockers is increasing, especially on desktop PCs. These extensions are capable of blocking scripts considered "intrusive advertisements", leaving only those considered within a white list (which are none other than those that users have paid to see and for that reason or another they do not want to that are blocked). This practice, as it is gaining more and more popularity, has also had a high impact on the income of advertisers and companies that run the business of Internet advertising, read Google. Recently, Adobe and PageFair released a comprehensive study on the subject and concluded that Adblock and other similar extensions have cost advertisers a handsome sum of $ 22 billion. Here are other key figures from the research:

• In 2015, 198 million Internet users used ad blockers (adblockers)
• This figure increased 41% in the last 12 months
• 45 million Internet users in the United States use a blocker
• 16% of Firefox (mobile) users use a blocker
• 16% of Spanish Internet users use a blocker, against 15% of Argentines and 14% of Chileans (the highest rates in Latin America).
• In the US, losses from the use of adblockers are estimated at $ 10,7 billion
• The video game industry is the most affected by this phenomenon
• Paradoxically, most of the advertising blocks occurred through Google Chrome
• The main reasons for blocking advertising are fear of tracking and impaired navigation

The full study is available in the SlideShare presentation below.

To this must be added the fact that most modern web browsers include an option to read the pages removing any extra content, among which is advertising.

Internet advertising on mobile devices

Until recently, mobile devices were to some extent outside of this logic (of increasing ad blocking). However, this seems to be changing rapidly. As everyone knows, on mobile devices advertising is usually embedded within each application and the only way to block its operation is by having administrator access to the device, which is only possible by "rooting" it. Although this is not a very complicated task, it can have its risks and it is something that only some daring dare to do. The truth is that to this day most of the users of mobile devices cannot avoid seeing the advertising in those applications that have elements of this type embedded. However, Apple announced that it will allow blocking of these advertisements in iOS 9. It remains to be seen what Google will do, which owes much of its revenue to advertising and which largely dominates the mobile device market.

On the other hand, until a few months ago, web browsers designed for these devices did not include the ability to block advertising and tracking scripts on web pages. They also did not allow the use of extensions, which would have mitigated this shortcoming. Fortunately, today there are new alternatives. For example, I use Firefox for Android together with the extension uBlock, the same combination I use on the desktop PC.

Why is this important?

In principle because a large part of the income of many Internet giants, especially Google, is based on advertising. And if the use of advertising blockers becomes widespread, Google will have to look for other sources of income, so it would not be surprising if it begins to charge for some of the services that it gives us today for free. The same applies to other giants in the sector, such as Facebook, but also to all those who offer their applications for free, such as many "open source" projects that depend on advertising.

In turn, mass Internet tracking is carried out not only by some "malevolent" governments but mostly by private companies, for "not so malevolent" purposes. Google and all the sites that use Google Ads would fall into this category. Continuing with the example of Google, the justification that this company uses for tracking users is that it allows you to build a profile and offer better advertising, instead of "junk" or random advertising. So, for example, if you Google something about "running", when you enter Gmail you will see an advertisement for Adidas shoes, etc. In short, if Internet advertising is increasingly blocked, the (benevolent) use of tracking scripts loses meaning or justification.

Finally, the elimination of advertising (I mean specifically the multimedia content through which they are displayed) as well as tracking scripts could have a significant impact on both browsing speed, bandwidth consumption and display. of the web pages. These would not only be easier to read, without so many distractions, but they would load faster and consume less bandwidth, with the consequent impact that this has on the servers that store it. All of this is especially important for those people who access the Internet through slow and expensive connections, especially if it is from mobile devices, which unfortunately is what happens in many of our countries.

Is the solution Do not track (DNT)?

DNT is a preference that can be activated in Firefox, Chrome, or other web browsers, as well as in the iOS and FirefoxOS mobile operating systems to indicate to the websites that the user accepts (or not) the monitoring of their online activities. This system was harshly criticized for its lack of effectiveness, as it requires websites to recognize DNT activation and effectively respect the users' decision. Also, DNT does not really allow to distinguish between intrusive advertising (that the user does not want to see) and non-intrusive (that that the user does want to see). Failure to compromise on DNT by ad industry groups led to an increase in the use of ad blocking extensions, with consequent massive losses for internet companies that rely on ad revenue. , and leading to increasingly malicious user tracking methods.

However, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Disconnect, and a coalition of Internet companies are not giving up and insist on improving DNT. Few days ago announced the launch of a new standard for "Do Not Track" (DNT) which, together with appropriate privacy software, will better protect users from attempts to track and record their Internet activity. They also sought to incentivize advertisers and companies that collect tracking data to respect users' choice not to be tracked online.

But is this the real solution to the problem of Internet advertising? Or, on the contrary, is the problem of advertising on the Internet so complex that it is impossible to solve?

New business models

When it comes to mobile devices, Apple has been proposing a different business model from Google for several years. The income of companies that develop software for iOS comes mainly from the sale of their programs. On Android, on the other hand, free applications predominate whose income comes mainly from advertising. However, to the extent that advertising is associated with tracking and a poor Internet browsing experience, this could affect Google's business model, in favor of Apple. If so, Google could be forced to at least include an option to block embedded ads in applications without the need to root the device. The same would apply to the advertisements that appear on YouTube or those that are displayed through Google Ads.

Another interesting approach to the problem was raised, once again, by the Mozilla Foundation, which is always looking for new sources of income. Since the release of version 33.1, Firefox also includes advertising. The idea is basically to show sponsored links using your browsing history (instead of crawl scripts). In addition, this option can be disabled easily. This seems a less invasive strategy than the use of trackers and that respects the criterion of displaying "tailored" advertising instead of "junk" advertising. However, it has a great disadvantage and that is that it only works for those who develop Internet browsers. The rest of the developers who live thanks to advertising are "pedaling in the air."

You. What do you think? What will happen to online advertising in the next few years? Where should the industry be aiming? How will this affect open source projects?