Advertising is the Internet's necessary evil, it seems. Unless you're an advertiser, in which case you're pulling your weight, and everyone else is just freeloading.

I'll make no secret of it: I'm not on their side. They seem to make it so hard to be on their side, after all.

It's a truism that advertisers always want to get advertising into more places, and to invade and track the lives of people in order to turn those lives (think Minority Report). Then, just to show they're not complete sociopaths, they try to invade our downtime.

Cleanup required

With that in mind, this morning I found myself reading “2015 Digital Media: A Call For a Big Business Model Cleanup” by Frédéric Filloux.

In this article, Filloux writes of the ad industry's greed being self-destructive; of some of the problems he sees as currently facing the industry; and what can be done to turn things around.

Part way through the article, and I actually found myself feeling some sympathy for adland. For example:

The best way to address the growing ad rejection is to take it at its root: It's up to the advertising sector to wake up and work on better ads that everybody will be happy with.

Who can't agree with that?

Then there's “bot fraud”, whereby more money changes hands if an ad has more “impressions” (whatever those are). Fraud, that sounds bad, right?

Poor things.

But then… the more I read, the more my sympathy evaporated.

On ad-blocking

Filloux writes of the “rise of the ad-blocking system”, and that “with a few clicks, system administrators can now install AdBlockPlus on an entire network of machines”. I think I feel neutral on this: I've always thought of ABP and similar technologies as something a user can choose to install, so the idea of a sysadmin installing it for a load of users en masse doesn't feel quite right to me. Maybe Filloux has a point.

But then, he says: “The most obvious [approach to addressing the rise of ABP] is to use the court system against Eyeo GmBH, the company operating AdBlockPlus.”

Here's where my sympathy starts to wane: I'm not a lawyer, but to me, AdBlockPlus is a tool that fulfils a particular task, and much like Spamhaus and the SBL, users can either choose to use the tool if it meets their needs, or not. Or indeed customise it. Legal action, flailing out at those who seek to help people control what it shown on their PCs, is not the answer.

“Everyone ends up being affected by the bad practices of a minority,” writes Filloux. I'm genuinely not sure which which “everyone”, and which “minority” he has in mind here. The users at this fictional company, affected by the evil ABP-installing sysadmin? Maybe the good advertisers, affected by the minority of greedy, careless, irresponsible advertisers? Or maybe the “everyone” is the Internet at large, affected by the bad practices of the ad industry.

Measuring up

Filloux goes on to discuss the metrics used by the industry, and the flaws in therein. There are “unique visitors”, and “impressions” — but those metrics can be gamed using bots, and therefore advertisers are defrauded.

So far, so good. So, what should be done about this?

The ad market and publishers need more granular metrics to reflect actual reader engagement […]. Could it be time spent on a piece of content or shares on social networks?

Shares on social networks. Because bots totally can't game that, right? Have you seen Twitter recently?

The user needs to be counted across platforms she's using. It is essential to reconcile the single individual who is behind a variety of devices: PC, smartphone or tablet. To understand her attention level — and to infer its monetary value, we need to know when, for how long, and in which situations she uses her devices. Wether (sic) it is anonymously or based on a real ID, retrieving actual customer data is critical.

Filloux offers no rationale as to why collecting this data is critical. But, surprise: the ad industry's response to the problem of people not liking ads (and, I would argue, advertisers) is to monitor people even more closely.

No happy ending

I don't have a happy ending for this piece. I'm no expert on the ad industry: I'm a user of the Internet, and I have something of a technical background that helps me to understand how the ads arrive on our screens, and the impact this has on our technology and privacy.

If the industry's proposed solutions to its (perceived or actual) problems are to set the attack lawyers on its enemies, and to further invade the technology, privacy and lives of everyday Internet users, then for me at least, it's likely to become increasingly hard to see them in a positive light.

Although some users may choose to block them from view, the Internet's corporate sociopaths aren't likely going anywhere in a hurry.