This document discusses the ethics of ad blocking. It begins by introducing how online advertising works and major online ad platforms. It then discusses how websites generate revenue from ads and how ad blocking software works to block ads. The document considers arguments that ad blocking amounts to piracy since it deprives websites of ad revenue. It also discusses the practice of "whitelisting" where ad blockers allow some ads from paid partners. The document concludes by proposing alternatives to ads and changes to ad blocking and whitelisting to promote a more neutral internet.

1. ETHICS OF ADBLOCK
Alankrit Kharbanda
2011A7PS125P

2. INTRODUCTION
 Online advertising has become an essential cog in advertising and marketing.
 Increasing internet penetration and users spending an increasing amount of time
on the internet, internet advertisement has become a major revenue garner for
online advertisement platforms.
 Unlike conventional methods, online advertisement is a very target specific
technique and hence costs more to reach out.

3. MAJOR PLAYERS
 Google Adsense
 Bing Adwords
 Yahoo ! Ads
 Facebook
 Baidu
 InMobi

4. REVENUE MODELS FOR WEBSITES
 Websites sell their own products (e.g. Etsi.com)
 Sell products made by other manufacturers (e.g. amazon.com)
 Marketplaces that allow other sellers to sell and gain a commission per sale (e.g.
Ebay.com)
 Travel portals (e.g. Makemytrip.com)
 Advertisement

5. HOW ADS WORK
 Website owners usually sign up with an ad provider such as Google AdSense or
Bing adwords. Companies such as google, Facebook and Microsoft have a lot of
information about users. As a result they run their ad platforms allowing advertisers
to select their target customer base (eg. Indian males living in New Delhi with an
interest in music).
 When the said user opens the website, Google/Bing ad servers select the most
appropriate advertisement and deliver it to the website.
 Advertisements in mobile apps function in the exact same way as on a website.
The server selects the most appropriate content to be displayed and broadcast it
to the given users instance of mobile app.

6. TECHNICAL DETAILS
 For web, most of the advertisements are delivered using JavaScript.
 A JavaScript code on the HTML code of the website requests the server for an
advertisement and the server delivers it to the page.
 This connection is easily observable if one monitors the network traffic over a
software such as Wireshark.
 For mobile, it may be done using JavaScript or native JAVA API’s, depending on
the application.

8. TYPES OF ONLINE ADVERTISEMENT
 Pay Per Click
 Pay Per Thousand Impressions(Banner Ads)
 Pay per action
 Pay per Install
 Video Ads

9. WHY DO PEOPLE USE ADBLOCK
 Personalised ads seem as invasion of privacy
 Ruin experiences such as watching a video
 Website owners flood their pages with ads
 Spam ads
 Unnecessary popups

10. HOW ADBLOCK WORKS
 Recently many users have started to block advertisements using browser extensions
and mobile apps such as Adblock and Adblock plus.
 These extensions severe the JavaScript and AJAX based connection of the user
computer with the advertisement servers, thus hiding the advertisement from the
user.
 As a result the part of the page where ad was supposed to be present is now
blank.
 In mobile, the same is achieved by the app which blocks data retrieval from ad
servers.

11. 250
25
22
Adblock usage in different browsers(million downloads)
Chrome FireFox Opera

12. ESTIMATED LOSSES

13. ESTIMATED LOSSES
 Using latest statistics, a company like google is the primary search engine for 62%
online users.
 Using the same estimation, 6.2% online users are google users who use Adblock.
 Using the below estimate as average revenue per user, Adblocking costs google
approximately 6.2% X3 billion X $29.95= $5.4 billion.
 This is an approximation to the amount of money it costs for a single advertiser.
However given that not all of Google’s advertisement revenue comes from search
and not all people on Adblock block google, the actual figure maybe lower, but
not insignificant for sure.

14. ADBLOCKING AS PIRACY
 Piracy is defined as the unauthorized usage of someone else’s work.
 By adblocking, one deprives the owner of the website his right to earn from his
content.
 For e.g. If TVF, a popular online YouTube channel makes a video and publishes it on
YouTube, they incur heavy expenses in terms of publicity and production. Similarly
YouTube occurs heavy expenses for successfully hosting the video. However if one
were to use adblocking software, companies like TVF and YouTube wouldn’t be
able to get a return on their investment, which is quiet detrimental to the entire
industry.

15. ADBLOCKING AS PIRACY
 Most websites depend on advertisements as primary source of revenue and
adblocking deprives them of it.
 As a result in some time, lack of revenues may force websites to shut shop. This
could possibly lead to another crash in the internet stocks, similar to the one in the
dot com bubble burst.

16. WHITELISTING
 Whitelisting is a process by which a particular advertisement provider is declared as
“Whitelisted”, i.e. all its advertisement is displayed by default in spite of the user
having the Adblock extension.
 Both Google and Microsoft have been known to pay Adblock to add them as
whitelisted content providers.
 Though the user still has an option to turn off all advertisements, but this process is
unfair to smaller content providers who do not have the resources to match the
bids by giants in the field.
 Also it provides unlimited power to extension publishers who could use it in rather
unethical ways.

17. ETHICS OF WHITELISTING
 The Internet has always meant to be used
in a free and open manner, also known as
the concept of Net neutrality. There is no
way there should be a monopoly due to
unlimited power resting in a few hands.
Innovation in web browsing was stalled for
a few years after the release of Internet
Explorer 6.0 and in no way should the
industry have to suffer similarly again.
 Given that Net Neutrality has to be
maintained, either all or no ads should be
whitelisted by default. Such an
arrangement would ensure that players
stand on equal footing.

18. CONCLUSION
 Net neutrality is essential for the freedom of the web and to maintain that whitelisting
and adblocking need to be controlled. This could be done in the following manner:
 Permitting users to opt out of personalised ads. Since many users consider personalisation as
an invasion to their privacy, removing such ads could be a good start to gain support of the
consumers.
 Allowing users to choose the type of ads they wish should appear on their feed.
 Adopting a common advertising interface for all advertisement providers. Such an interface
would allow the user to customize ads more easily. Revenue sharing can be done on a client
by client basis.
 Increase user incentive in advertisement. For e.g. Provide minutes of free talk time for
watching advertisement or installing an app. Such user incentives interest the customer
more and ensure increased engagement.

19. CONCLUSION
 Adopting alternate sources of revenue, such as :
 Subscription model as in case of Netflix, Kindle etc.
 Subscription model to remove advertisements on all websites, using a common platform
model mention in (3) above.
 Introduce more interactive ads, such as a flash game before a video, so that the user could
engage with the ad rather than wish to skip it.
 Competition has been the key to the insane rise of the tech industry and Adblock is
killing it. Tools like Adblock need to be removed, or at least curbed for a more neutral
internet.

20. FUTURE SCOPE
 Deeper study into working of social media advertisements.
 Deeper study into subscription models
 Research on whitelisting and views surrounding it.

21. CONSTRAINTS
 Lack of original data
 Not possible to conduct a survey with neutral audiences.
 Lack of published views from advertisement providers regarding the same.

22. REFERENCES
 Businessinsider
 Facebook
 Slideshare
 Wikipedia
 Bing AdWords
 Numerous private blogs