New 'Perceptual' Ad Blocking Tech Doesn't Win The Ad Blocking War, But It May Put Advertisers On Their Heels
Found on Techdirt on Tuesday, 18 April 2017
The bottom line is that thanks to aggressive, poorly designed or downright hostile ads, many consumers quite justly now feel that ad blockers are an essential part of their privacy and security.
Princeton and Stanford researchers say they've developed a new method of blocking advertisements that detects ads the same way human beings do -- by simply looking at things like container sizes, graphical layout, and words like "Sponsored" (usually mandated by regulations or voluntary, cross-industry commitments).
The technology was developed in response to Facebook's decision to integrate ads that look like regular posts in the user's news feed, something systems like AdBlock haven't been able to detect.
Nobody minds small, clean and unintrusive ads that are on topic; but since the Internet gained momentum, the advertisers decided to try exactly the opposite: big graphics which blink annoyingly, Flash which abuses your speakers, popups, popunders, full-screen overlays and hijacking left and right clicks of your mouse to pop up even more ads. That, bundled with the often delivered malware resulted in the only option: block everything that looks like an advertisment. This industry needs to seriously reconsider its strategies; and until then, those sites which block those with adblockers will just get ignored.