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Author Topic: Browser features implemented specifically for advertising  (Read 3043 times)

Chrysalis

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Browser features implemented specifically for advertising
« on: June 15, 2019, 04:19:16 PM »

I noticed some new trends popping up of which I think at least one of them must have had a new feature added to browsers to work properly.  Advertisers are definitely getting more aggressive.

1 - The delayed popup box/prompt.  When you first load the site all seems normal, but then say 10 seconds later or when you move the mouse a new message appears covering a lot of the screen.  Because its delayed it circumvents anti advertising software in the browser which typically are designed to expect this kind of stuff to load on initial page load.  These boxes are not necessarily adverts but if they not they usually something encouraging you to register on the website or use an affiliated site.  The only mitigation I see so far is basically not whitelisting the site for javascript, as it requires javascript to work.
2 - Autoplay videos, definitely most apparent on news websites, but becoming more and more common round the web.  Edge added a feature where you can whitelist specific sites only for it, google developers seemingly refuse to do so, an addon I have can block autoplay video but it seems it doesnt work for these sites.  So again relying on javascript filtering.  These videos not only autoplay but often follow you when scrolling or may even go automatically to a large size to get your attention.  It feels like we going back to the 1990s mess.
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Weaver

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Re: Browser features implemented specifically for advertising
« Reply #1 on: June 15, 2019, 10:44:49 PM »

The anti-Adblock thing is also apparent when I get cookie notice prompts or similar such annoyances. The initial appearance of the page is different from the appearance without Adblock running, so if I see some anti-adblock-tech or ‘resistant’ advert and go inti the adblocker’s settings to try and point at the ad to say ‘note this and zap it’ then I can’t because the adblocker’s displayed picture of the window is that which you would see with no adblocker at all and that has the nuisance cookie notice prompt up and that covers the whole thing in my case which means that I can’t select the offending ad and point to it. This is a bug in the design of my adblocker as it should give me an option of what kind of page it is that gets shown to me when selecting components to be marked for zapping.

My case isn’t about time delays so this is a bit off-topic. However I note that in addition, a ‘show rendered state after initial delay=x ms’ would also help, in something like your case.
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