The Ad Industry Plots Their Revenge ⇥ adage.com

Content blockers are coming in iOS 9, which is frankly a blessing these days. After seeing the improvements with the one I’m using — Crystal — I’ve started to consider how ad exchanges will respond. But, while Rene Ritchie has similar thoughts and Don Searls is optimistic, advertisers are less welcoming. Tim Peterson, AdAge:

“I advocated for the top 100 websites to, beginning on the same day, not let anybody with ad blockers turned on [to view their content],” said [Xaxis Chairman David] Moore. He said that the other IAB members in attendance considered it “a good idea but the possibility of pulling it off slim.”

(Why, yes, Xaxis is an adtech provider. Good guess, reader.)

The ad blockers “are interfering with websites’ ability to display all the pixels that are part of that website, arguably there’s some sort of law that prohibits that,” Mr. Moore said. “I’m not by any means a lawyer, but there is work being done to explore whether in fact that may be the case.”

Technically, ads delivered via other websites are not part of that website. When I visit, say, the New York Post’s site — not that I do — I expect to see content from the Post, not all this crap.

Anyway, if you know what addresses Xaxis uses to serve their ads, feel free to point them to 127.0.0.1 in your hosts file. You’re not blocking ads; you’re just configuring your DNS the way you like it. Nothing Mr. Moore can do about that.