Whose browser is it anyway?

Published

May 15, 2016

There’s a recent research piece doing the rounds from Oriel.io - who sell anti-adblocking software.

For anyone who has used an ad blocker of some kind, their analysis is pretty basic, but the patronising tone and neo-luddism really irritated me. They say adblock deployers are:

(I would at this point draw your attention to the disclaimer on my site - the views I am about to outline are definitely not those of my employer.)

I’ll put aside the fact that most of the examples of ‘breakage’ that Oriel describe are really things that most ad block users actually want. (‘Ooh - those poor people - being denied the opportunity to fill out a website survey - how terrible for them.’)

I’ll also put aside my suspicion that the more egregious examples they give, like BA check-in breakage, are likely the result of badly written sites carelessly implementing their tracking code.

There is a line

Because the most important issue in this debate is the ongoing confusion about where the boundaries lie between what’s mine and what’s yours in the digital world. It’s about the locus of control, and whether you agree with my delineation or not, it is really important for everyone in this discussion to consider where it lies.

The Oriel view fetishises the idea of ‘the website as the publisher intended’. Without irony they write:

“Once a webpage is delivered to a user as intended by a publisher and just like we receive a book, a magazine, a newspaper from a traditional publisher, then and only then should we be allowed take out our adblocker / pen to change what we got and if we feel like it, draw a moustache on the queen!”

In other words, dutiful little consumers should take what they’re given because it’s what daddy publisher decided they should have.

Websites are not paper

Now I never thought I’d have to write an explanation of the ways in which a website is not like a mashed up, flattened tree, but here goes:

For a start this view completely neglects the fact that every page on a big, modern site or app is a composite, made of thousands of resources from tens if not hundreds of domains. Not only that, but many of those are not publisher domains at all. As a five minute play with the Ghostery browser extension will tell you, the sites we load are crawling with tracking and support code from many third parties, and the idea that a website is a single, unitary, virginal entity is laughable.

Furthermore, an unfortunate fact of website design and of the way that the ad product is shoved into the consumer product, is that most websites look better without ads. Not just in the sense that there are no ads to distract, but more fundamentally, that the design of the website was often done before the ads were added, and removing them actually gets you closer to ‘what the designer intended’ anyway. The lazily designed ad products squat over the page like digital toads.

My things are my things

And beyond that, we need to acknowledge that it’s my computing device, my browser and my internet connection. When I visit a website, I extend an invitation to you to send me information, but how I choose to view that information is up to me.

I could choose a computer with just one font. I could choose a browser which only displays text because I don’t like pictures, or because I am blind and use a screen-reader.

Now I’m being slightly glib here, but ownership and control of devices is a big deal. When businesses get it wrong (Sony most infamously in recent years, by arguing in court that they can take away features at will because it isn’t really your console) then enterprising hackers will respond. Who can forget fail0verflow’s legendary PS3 hack? But fundamentally it’s my stuff being used to access your stuff.

The real block party

Think of it like this. Opening a typical website is like setting up a giant house party, where I’ve invited you, the publisher, onto my turf, my pad, my house, as a guest allowing you to bring along hundreds of mates for the craic, without asking me. Usually I don’t mind, because they make it more fun, but unfortunately not all of the gatecrashers are well behaved these days. Some of them clog up my driveway. Some of them go rummaging through my cupboards looking for biscuits. Some use the phone to call home. And some bring drugs - even the really dangerous stuff like Adobe Flash.

Is it any wonder then that I put some bouncers on the door? Yes they sometimes get it wrong and turn away people who should have been let in. Yes they might let you in but turn away your best mate who you were really looking forward to chatting with at the party. Yes they might let you in while turning away your rich mate who usually buys drinks for everyone.

Tough. It’s my party.

Don’t break in

And the answer, in case it wasn’t obvious, is not to open the window above the toilet so you can sneak your friends in that way. Nor is it to disguise your friend or hide them under your coat - Minions style. And you definitely shouldn’t start a fight with the bouncer. They’re just doing what I asked them to do.

The answer of course is politely to decline my invitation altogether, which is absolutely fine as long as you tell me or the bouncers politely and in good time. That’s just good manners.

We used to talk about advertising being a welcome guest in people’s living rooms. How did we get from that to breaking and entering?

You can’t make me like you

And frankly even if you as a publisher decide to DEAL with adblocking it’s no bother to me because there are thousands of other people in my address book who are great fun at content parties, so I’ll probably just invite one of them instead. Sorry but the world is full of party people, and it isn’t my responsibility if you choose not to turn up because you don’t like the bouncer.

Now publishers in some countries are trying to have their own ‘block parties’ to muscle their way past the bouncers en masse but if it wasn’t blindingly obvious already in our world of permeable borders, this simply isn’t a long term solution. Hell, much of the time publisher content isn’t even consumed off publisher sites anyway. Why are we trying to force consumers into broken distribution and business models when we could be trying to be charming and valuable house guests instead? You can’t bully people into liking you.

Got Milk?

To completely change metaphor for a minute, a lot of the industry rhetoric on this sounds, bizarrely, like farmers moaning about the price of milk. When there is a glut of supply a good capitalist says ‘get bigger or get out’ but instead we get lots of handwringing from content producers about the loss of their advertising sugar daddy.

Here are two quotes, one about milk production and one about content production, but I’ve flipped some of the key terms around.

“The NFU believes in supermarket funded milk production so that farmers can continue to make their content, services and applications widely available at little or no cost to the consumer. We believe adblocking undermines this approach.”

“UK content farmers are being forced out of business because of the low price of content, industry leaders warn. In protest at their plight, content producers have been blockading content distribution centres and even bringing IAB JavaScript into supermarkets.”

In fact, next time you read a piece about adblocking, try substituting the phrase ‘supply and demand’ in place of the adblocking word and see how it reads. (With apologies to Orwell.)

Try it. You might understand it.

For any of you who haven’t tried ad blocking in its various forms, I’ve written a handy guide in another post. I’d recommend giving it a try. You may find that life with a bouncer on the door is a bit more pleasant. And judging by the mere existence of this warning on Facebook’s ad booking platform (or indeed a casual glance at the browsers on the computers of people in agencies) lots of other people in the ad industry do too. It is time we stopped paying lip service to consumer power, and started acknowledging it. Especially when we ad people are the consumers too.