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Comment by FreeKill | Hacker News Reader

Pretty interesting. I don't really understand why PornHub or others put so much effort into getting around ad blockers, unless it's purely to pad their statistics when it comes to getting new Advertisers to partake or I guess even to try and trick people into accidental clicks etc. using shadier practices.

You'd have to imagine that a visitor to their site, who has taken the time to actively setup and run an ad blocker, is probably the least likely user to actually click on an ad in the first place.

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You'd be surprised. I'm not sure it's obvious that people on porn sites who install ad blocks aren't interested in porn ads.

Alternatively, there are services that do well to advertise on PornHub that aren't porn: https://blog.eat24.com/how-to-advertise-on-a-porn-website/

This article is pure gold: „We saw a huge spike in orders and app downloads during the time our ads were live, especially late at night when that insatiable desire for DP (double pepperoni) is at its most intense.“ xD

Much ad revenue comes from views, not clicks. Some quick back of the napkin math:

- 21.2 billion visits in 2015

- Average of 9% of users using Ad Block

- Let's assume an average CPM (amount paid per 1000 views) of $2.00

- Let's assume 0.01% of users use adblock

That's ((21,000,000,000 * 9%) / 1000) * $2.00 = $3,780,000 in lost revenue due to adblock.

You've got to love this logic: If I have not bought your product, you haven't lost a sale, You have not made one. You don't lose something you don't have to begin with. This is a very disingenius way to present reality, and suits well the manipulative frame of mind from the advertisment industry.

Given the nature of the subject matter I wonder if otherwise scrupulous users may actually click on and follow through with some of those adds.

Sometimes porn doesn't play by the same rules as other markets.

>>> You'd have to imagine that a visitor to their site, who has taken the time to actively setup and run an ad blocker, is probably the least likely user to actually click on an ad in the first place.

Ad blockers are easily in the Early Majority right now, and it's becoming easier and more known about every day. It's dangerous to make such assumptions.

Aren't some classes of ad payments based on impressions? Surely with high traffic it's worth it to get around the blocker if only for the impression.

Yeah, makes sense from that perspective. If your payments are based on eyeballs and not clicks or conversions, then absolutely I can see why they try to get around it...

Advertisers still pay for CPM ads based on what they're worth to the advertiser -- adding a million worthless eyeballs to the ad will work once, but the advertisers will note conversions fell and pay less for the slot in the future, for the most part. There'll probably be some lift from people who normally block ads but still might convert on an unblocked ad -- it remains to be seen if the lift will justify the engineering effort spent dodging the blockers.

Yes CPM payment is based on impressions. But ultimately an advertiser will stop buying ads, or significantly lower the CPM, if they don't see click throughs (or better yet, conversions to product purchases, etc.) for those impressions. They keep track of the CTR (click through rate) and if that falls below a certain level they're going to evaluate why.

I don't work in ads anymore, but I get the impression that that industry must be under the impression that CTRs and conversions are in fact dropping because of ad blockers, because there's a rash of new startups that work in the space around detecting and getting around ad blockers.

Someone in the Chrome bug report found the complainer's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-cameron-6380541

"I am recovering over $1,000,000 / quarter in lost revenue from Adblock for my current employer. I have designed and implemented multiple strategies to combat Adblock. Would you like to know more?"

"purely to pad their statistics when it comes to getting new Advertisers"

Ding ding ding. This describes advertising in general.

It is the broken incentivization killing media companies everywhere.

Well large sites don't really care if you click - of course that's better - but simply displaying the ad already counts towards the CPM count. Oh and nobody said something about a click having to be intentional. Anyone can click on them by accident, which is easier if they are natively looking embedded.

Also the adblock rates are already quite high [0]. I

[0]: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-percentage-of-Internet-use...

So we should start a bot farm to click on ads on targeted website and sell that as a service? How do you market that, though?

AdBlockers are becoming more mainstream. I suspect shady practices that auto-click ads, which may be impacting their revenue. So even if you wouldn't click the ad, they may be losing out on padded clicks.

Until everyone start using it.

Gotta adapt when adblocking is going over 50%.

Too much money at play, can't be ignored ;)

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