tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post3253501731024703286..comments2024-03-16T18:42:21.178-07:00Comments on DSHR's Blog: OK, I'm really amazedDavid.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-69513259705544211492017-11-10T18:02:31.370-08:002017-11-10T18:02:31.370-08:00I've just had another sub-optimal user experie...I've just had another sub-optimal user experience with the <i>New York Times</i>. I was reading their "interactive" on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/10/opinion/sunday/wildest-place-in-america.html" rel="nofollow">Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve</a> using Firefox on Linux Mint when my hotel's flaky WiFi kicked me off. The mouse froze, my entire UI froze, and my only recourse was to power-cycle my laptop. Thank you for an "interactive" experience!David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-33462435132544630082017-11-01T15:44:32.291-07:002017-11-01T15:44:32.291-07:00More evidence for the shark-jumped nature of Web a...More evidence for the shark-jumped nature of <a href="http://adage.com/article/digital/business-insider-york-times-shed-details-ad-industry-s-biggest-problem/311081/" rel="nofollow">Web advertising from <i>Ad Age</i></a>:<br /><br />"Methbot, a domain spoofing scam that's <a href="http://adage.com/article/digital/ad-fraud-scheme-cost-advertisers-3-million-day/307235/" rel="nofollow">widely regarded as the largest ad fraud attack in history</a>, bilked marketers of $3 million to $5 million a day for over a month. Even Google, which is regarded as having the best defenses when it comes to preventing fraud, is also believed to be a victim <a href="http://adage.com/article/digital/google-makes-big-doubleclick-refund-policy/310554/" rel="nofollow">of a recent domain spoofing attack</a>."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-51257302457817752562017-09-16T19:38:31.470-07:002017-09-16T19:38:31.470-07:00Tyler Durden reports that it isn't just P&...<a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-11/startling-anecdote-about-online-advertising-restoration-hardware" rel="nofollow">Tyler Durden</a> reports that it isn't just P&G:<br /><br />"Restoration Hardware delightfully colorful CEO, Gary Friedman, divulged the following striking anecdote about the company's online marketing strategy, and the state of online ad spending in general (courtesy of @parsimony16). What Friedman revealed - in brief - was the following: "<b>we've found out that 98% of our business was coming from 22 words. So, wait, we're buying 3,200 words and 98% of the business is coming from 22 words. What are the 22 words? And they said, well, it's the word Restoration Hardware and the 21 ways to spell it wrong, okay?</b>"<br /><br />Stated simply, the vast, vast majority of online ad spending is wasted, chasing clicks that simply are not there."<br /><br />Click through to read the full details. Online advertising has indeed jumped the shark.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-83220932795048232312017-08-01T10:25:07.722-07:002017-08-01T10:25:07.722-07:00Web advertising has officially jumped the shark. P...Web advertising has officially jumped the shark. Procter and Gamble, the world's biggest advertiser, <a href="https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/08/01/2192116/mega-advertiser-provides-a-challenge-to-the-tech-juggernauts/" rel="nofollow">cut spending on digital ads</a>:<br /><br />"[P&G cut spending] by an amount equating to $140mm. For context, P&G spent $7.2bn on advertising during its fiscal 2015, and likely around $1.5bn in digital advertising, or ~$400mm per quarter. An advertiser like P&G might allocate around 70% of digital advertising budgets to Google and Facebook ($300mm?). P&G’s prior rhetoric regarding Facebook and Google (and crude math, given the scale of the cuts) strongly suggest that these media owners would have experienced cuts."<br /><br />And nothing bad happened to P&G:<br /><br />"Most critically, because P&G indicated its view that <b>reductions did not impact revenue growth</b>, the statement will undoubtedly add fuel to the fire of large brands more carefully scrutinizing their digital advertising choices. Large advertisers represent around 30% of Facebook revenues, on our estimates."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-84773025189080858862017-04-12T08:06:57.407-07:002017-04-12T08:06:57.407-07:00At last Google has done something about the way pa...At last Google has done something about the way <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/11/chrome-now-uses-scroll-anchoring-to-prevent-those-annoying-page-jumps/" rel="nofollow">pages leap about like a demented terrier</a>. "Scroll anchoring" is now on by default in Chrome 56+.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-6489805179573172432017-03-30T06:32:40.063-07:002017-03-30T06:32:40.063-07:00At last, someone else has noticed that re-laying o...At last, someone else has noticed that re-laying out the content while someone is reading it is an awesomely sucky idea. In a signature rant, the redoubtable Dabbsy (Alistair Dabbs) at <i>The Register</i> asks <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/24/why_do_guis_jump_around_like_a_demented_terrier_while_starting_up_or_am_i_on_my_own/" rel="nofollow"><i>Why do GUIs jump around like a demented terrier while starting up? Am I on my own?</i></a>. As with any good rant, extracting quotes is value-subtracting, but here is a taste:<br /><br />"This leaves you chasing after buttons and tabs as they slide around, jump up and down, run about in circles and generally act like some demented terrier that has just dug up a stash of cocaine-laced Bonio.<br /><br />I blame web browser developers for letting this happen. Allowing websites to load into a browser window bit by bit was a mistake. Over the years, this has persuaded application developers into thinking this is acceptable behaviour when IT ISN’T."<br /><br />and:<br /><br />"You trigger a lengthy process such as a network install and send it behind your other software while you carry on working. Seven hours later, when it has nearly completed, the long process jumps to the front without warning, overlaying your current application’s <i>Save</i> button that you chose that moment to click on with another labelled <i>Cancel Install</i>."<br /><br />No, Dabbsy, you aren't on your own.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-25762513069767933302017-03-14T12:19:44.212-07:002017-03-14T12:19:44.212-07:00Google just discovered and banned a massive Androi...Google just discovered and banned a <a href="http://thehackernews.com/2017/03/android-adware-malware-google.html" rel="nofollow">massive Android malvertising family</a>:<br /><br />"Dubbed Chamois, the family of PHAs (potentially harmful applications) was capable of bombarding users with pop-up ads, boosting app promotion by automatically installing other applications in the background, subscribing users to premium services by sending text messages and downloading additional plugins without their knowledge."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-30177404135791106132017-01-19T06:30:37.820-08:002017-01-19T06:30:37.820-08:00Walt Mossberg is annoyed by the ads but he clearly...Walt Mossberg is <a href="http://www.recode.net/2017/1/18/14304572/mossberg-lousy-ads" rel="nofollow">annoyed by the ads</a> but he clearly doesn't understand the scope of the problem. They aren't just annoying, they are dangerous.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-77054195130587133682017-01-02T19:31:17.769-08:002017-01-02T19:31:17.769-08:00Atrios agrees with me.Atrios <a href="http://www.eschatonblog.com/2017/01/i-cant-read-your-damn-web-site.html" rel="nofollow">agrees with me</a>.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-30583193040080175592016-12-06T20:40:25.664-08:002016-12-06T20:40:25.664-08:00In Millions exposed to malvertising that hid attac...In <a href="http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/12/millions-exposed-to-malvertising-that-hid-attack-code-in-banner-pixels/" rel="nofollow"><i>Millions exposed to malvertising that hid attack code in banner pixels</i></a>, Dan Gooding reports that:<br /><br />"Millions of people visiting mainstream websites over the past two months have been exposed to a novel form of malicious ads that embed attack code in individual pixels of the banners. ... The malicious script is concealed in the alpha channel that defines the transparency of pixels, ... To execute the hidden payload, the malicious ads load a heavily modified version of Countly, an open-source package for measuring website traffic. That JavaScript extracts the hidden code out of the image and executes it. Because there's nothing per se malicious in the JavaScript, ad networks fail to detect what's happening."<br /><br />The campaign is very successful:<br /><br />"We can say that even some of the other major exploit kits, like Angler and Neutrino, are outclassed by the Stegano kit in terms of referrals—the websites onto which they managed to get the malicious banners installed," Eset researchers wrote in a <a href="http://www.welivesecurity.com/2016/12/06/readers-popular-websites-targeted-stealthy-stegano-exploit-kit-hiding-pixels-malicious-ads/" rel="nofollow">report published Tuesday</a>. "We have observed major domains, including news websites visited by millions of people every day, acting as 'referrers' hosting these advertisements."<br />David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-19413208177685512542016-10-09T16:57:36.767-07:002016-10-09T16:57:36.767-07:00Spotify joins the ranks of major malvertising site...<a href="http://www.techhive.com/article/3128289/security/spotify-ads-slipped-malware-onto-pcs-and-macs.html" rel="nofollow">Spotify</a> joins the ranks of major malvertising sites.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-76270491786538721672016-09-27T20:17:40.318-07:002016-09-27T20:17:40.318-07:00At Techdirt, Leigh Beadon sums up the state of Int...At <i>Techdirt</i>, Leigh Beadon sums up the state of Internet advertising with <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160915/18183535533/traffic-is-fake-audience-numbers-are-garbage-nobody-knows-how-many-people-see-anything.shtml" rel="nofollow"><i>Traffic Is Fake, Audience Numbers Are Garbage, And Nobody Knows How Many People See Anything</i></a>. The headline sums it up.<br /><br />On Digby's awesome blog, the equally awesome Spocko extends this to Twitter with <a href="http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2016/09/on-debate-night-your-tweet-matters.html" rel="nofollow"><i>On Debate Night Your Tweet Matters</i></a>. A sample:<br /><br />"But you know whose tweets will get picked up? The millions of TwitterBots controlled by a handful of people. They know how the keywords, counting and sorting tools of the media work. This means that when the media talks about "the public's reaction" It's not totally the public's reaction. This is a problem. How big is it?<br /><br />One estimate from Twitter Audit is that 1 out of every 4 followers of Big Orange Hair are fake. And yes, both sides do it, Hillary Clinton has the same percentage of fake twitter followers as her opponent. You can be outraged or see it as "Bot Parity" for those accounts."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-36791409190306196452016-08-28T09:04:50.776-07:002016-08-28T09:04:50.776-07:00Doc Searl's It’s People vs. Advertising, not P...Doc Searl's <a href="https://medium.com/@dsearls/its-people-vs-advertising-not-publishers-vs-adblockers-da5f20ca50d0" rel="nofollow"><i>It’s People vs. Advertising, not Publishers vs. Adblockers</i></a> makes a good point:<br /><br />"nearly all press coverage of what’s going on here defaults to “(name of publisher or website here) vs. ad blockers.”<br /><br />This misdirects attention away from what is actually going on: people making choices in the open market to protect themselves from intrusions they do not want.<br /><br />Ad blocking and tracking protection are effects, not causes. Blame for them should not go to the people protecting themselves, or to those providing them with means for protection, but to the sources and agents of harm."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-5882662869653212882016-08-26T19:56:04.374-07:002016-08-26T19:56:04.374-07:00Via Yves Smith at naked capitalism, a look at the ...Via <a href="http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/08/the-newspaper-ad-collapse-bad-news-for-readers.html" rel="nofollow">Yves Smith at <i>naked capitalism</i></a>, a look at the <a href="http://voxeu.org/article/newspapers-times-low-advertising-revenues-towards-decline-quality-information-media-outlet-level" rel="nofollow">declining revenues of newspapers</a>, and the effects of the decline:<br /><br />"a reduction in advertising revenues will reduce the quality of newspapers. Ultimately, this may result in a less well-informed public.<br /><br />The year 2015 was perhaps the worst for the newspaper industry since the recession. According to the Pew Research Center (2016), in the US total advertising revenues (print and digital) among publicly traded companies declined by nearly 8%."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-71905912800352634842016-08-23T12:24:23.897-07:002016-08-23T12:24:23.897-07:00Ahem!
"Hackers thought to be working for Rus...<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/russia-hack-new-york-times-fbi/index.html" rel="nofollow">Ahem!</a><br /><br />"Hackers thought to be working for Russian intelligence have carried out a series of cyber breaches targeting reporters at the New York Times and other US news organizations, according to US officials briefed on the matter."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-13460552385297426802016-08-17T11:13:06.787-07:002016-08-17T11:13:06.787-07:00Doc Searls has a great rant about how counter-prod...Doc Searls has a great rant about how counter-productive it is for companies, especially Amazon, to bombard you with <a href="https://medium.com/@dsearls/if-it-werent-for-retargeting-we-might-not-have-ad-blocking-e304a4e057ec" rel="nofollow">ads for the product you just purchased</a>.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-55685628596951326522016-08-16T20:16:49.201-07:002016-08-16T20:16:49.201-07:00Today's malvertising story comes from Kaspersk...Today's malvertising story comes from <a href="https://securelist.com/blog/incidents/75731/good-morning-android/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter" rel="nofollow">Kaspersky Labs</a>:<br /><br />"By simply viewing their favorite news sites over their morning coffee users can end up downloading last-browser-update.apk, a banking Trojan detected by Kaspersky Lab solutions as Trojan-Banker.AndroidOS.Svpeng.q. There you are, minding your own business, reading the news and BOOM! – no additional clicks or following links required. And be careful – it’s still out there!<br /><br />It turns out the malicious program is downloaded via the Google AdSense advertising network."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-75669820403747610032016-08-16T14:31:14.279-07:002016-08-16T14:31:14.279-07:00In pursuit of their traditional margins, many news...In pursuit of their traditional margins, many newspapes erected paywalls. At the <i>Financial Times</i>, the <i>Wall Street Journal</i>, and the <i>New York Times</i> they have, despite becoming somewhat porous, been relatively successful. After all, the <i>New York Times</i> persuaded me to cough up.<br /><br />But Mike Masnick at <i>Techdirt</i> points outh that <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160815/09353135247/lots-newspapers-discovering-that-paywalls-dont-work.shtml" rel="nofollow"><i>Lots Of Newspapers Discovering That Paywalls Don't Work</i></a>:<br /><br />"Not surprisingly, more and more newspapers that bet on paywalls are <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/newspapers-rethink-paywalls-digital-efforts-sputter-093036224.html" rel="nofollow">discovering that they don't really work that well</a> and were a waste of time and effort -- and may have driven away even more readers."<br /><br />Full disclosure, I also pay for <i>The Guardian</i> (which doesn't have a paywall) and support a number of blogs.<br /><br />PS - Any time you write "in pursuit of their traditional margins" you're probably writing about an industry that will never get them back.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.com