Google Tests Ads That Load Faster and Use Less Power (bbc.co.uk) 118
Slashdot reader Big Hairy Ian quotes a report from the BBC: Google says it has found a way to make ads load faster on web pages viewed on smartphones and tablets. The company said the ads would also be less taxing on the handsets' processors, meaning their batteries should last longer. The technique is based on work it has already done to make news publishers' articles load more quickly. But it is still in development, and one expert said Google still had questions to answer. The California-based company's online advertising revenue totalled $67.4 billion last year...
The technique limits the scope of JavaScript, and "provides its own activity measurement tools, which are said to be much more efficient," according to article. A Google software engineer explains that this technique "only animates things that are visible on the screen," and throttles animation to fewer frames per second for weaker devices -- or disables the animations altogether. "This ensures that every device gets the best experience it can deliver and makes sure that ads cannot have a negative impact on important aspects of the user experience such as scrolling."
The technique limits the scope of JavaScript, and "provides its own activity measurement tools, which are said to be much more efficient," according to article. A Google software engineer explains that this technique "only animates things that are visible on the screen," and throttles animation to fewer frames per second for weaker devices -- or disables the animations altogether. "This ensures that every device gets the best experience it can deliver and makes sure that ads cannot have a negative impact on important aspects of the user experience such as scrolling."
and hosts file is worse than adblock (Score:3)
apk is clearly wrong on this.
Longer, Faster, Harder (Score:1)
Love, Google
Re: (Score:1)
Hey, if we include less content, there's both room for more ads, and the ads can send more code as well!
Re: Trump 2016 (Score:1)
Yeah like it isn't obvious and therefore needs more exposure...
The only difference will be that without Hillary in office they will no longer be untouchable.
I can load them even faster (Score:5, Insightful)
You can load them even faster... (Score:1)
Re:You can load them even faster... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You can load them even faster... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course they won't. And until the ad industry gets their shit together then this current scenario won't change and more people will move to block ads. They did this themselves and are doubling down on stupid instead of going "why are people blocking ads..." Oh right, because we fucked up and allow malware authors to ride along on our networks and screw people over.
Sorry ad people, but using adblockers in some form is basic malware protection these days.
Re:You can load them even faster... (Score:4, Insightful)
My worry is that it becomes an arms race. Advertisers looking for ever more intrusive and annoying ways to bypass ad-blocking. We have already seen attempts to detect ad blockers, and then ad blockers blocking the ad blocker blockers in response.
In that sense maybe a standard API for adverts, that is extremely limiting and enforces good behaviour in exchange for not getting blocked, might be a good solution. Static images, maximum file size, no javascript, no ping backs, no cookies, maximum 10% of the page, served from the same domain as the rest of the content. That removes most of the scope for malware and the stuff that slows down loading and wastes battery.
I'd have to give it a trial run, but I'd consider lowering my ad-blocking shields enough to allow that through.
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Brave gave them the option [brave.com] to get around this by not only paying people to see ads but to openly vet ads to make sure they're malware free. The major advertising companies turned their nose up at it, though he hasn't given up and is still fighting to get the system in place. I honestly expect that he'll manage with a bit of luck create a new ad network out of it. And with luck, will displace the existing companies.
Any type of API like that I expect would be abused and exploited heavily.
View and click fraud (Score:2)
served from the same domain as the rest of the content
Once this is the case, how will publishers* be able to reassure advertisers that reported impressions and clicks are real, not fraudulent?
* In ad industry jargon, a "publisher" is the operator of a site on which ads are placed.
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The view tracking needs to be on the back end, with some kind of trusted server (virtual machine) appliance or something. Or just accept that this form of tracking is unacceptable and they will have to rely on click-through rates and audits.
To be clear, if you want my browser to display your content, you play by my rules even if it's inconvenient. The alternative is your ads get blocked, so take your pick.
Re: View and click fraud (Score:2)
CPALead (Score:2)
What you describe sounds like "cost per action". I've seen where that has gone in the past with networks like CPALead where sites require you to sign up for a free trial of something (with your credit card number so it can auto-renew) or download and install a Windows-only, binary-only application before a page will display.
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If user-created works are derivatives of other underlying works, such as fan art of video game characters or videos containing music, don't the authors of said underlying works need to be paid?
Re:You can load them even faster... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want me to care about "content creators", you're going to have to call them something other than "content creators". I find that appellation irritating in the extreme. It says absolutely nothing about what they've done to deserve my money.
I mean, I work very hard on adding value to Slashdot with my shitty comments, so I am also a "content creator". So pay me my money, motherfucker. GIVE ME MY GODDAMN MONEY.
https://youtu.be/0N4b2dmLZII [youtu.be]
"Happy god" or "author of works" (Score:2)
If you want me to care about "content creators", you're going to have to call them something other than "content creators". I find that appellation irritating in the extreme.
FSF isn't a big fan of the term "content creator" either, which sounds too much like "happy god" [gnu.org]. So mentally replace these terms with the terms used in the actual U.S. copyright statute: "creator" becomes "author", and "content" becomes "works".
It says absolutely nothing about what they've done to deserve my money.
With the terminology issue hopefully out of the way: How do we encourage people to continue being an "author of a work of substantial length"?
Re: (Score:2)
As a content creator on Slashdot you already get the option of switching off ads.
Re:You can load them even faster... (Score:5, Insightful)
"By blocking the only remaining avenue for content creators to earn a living from their extremely hard work, you are helping put them out of business"
I'm more than happy to put sites that depend solely on advertising derived from third-party ad-feed companies out of business. These, more than any other cause, are the monstrosities that have ruined the web experience for so many people and given any form of advertising a bad name.
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Men, get a real job, you snooty DH ;). You know the kind of job you people sneer at and say it's only a training job that deserve less than the already shitty minimum wage. Want to express your creative talents, do it in your own time, out of your own pocket and like any busker, beg for money.
Unsympathetic, yep, because to many rich geek/nerd arseholes do not give one fuck about those doing hard work, real fucking work, on shitty minimum wage, not being able to afford a reasonable place to live or much of
MC/Visa swipe fees (Score:2)
and like any busker, beg for money.
The difference is that online transaction fees are a lot higher than those for a busker operating in person. Someone seeking online donations has to deal with the payment card industry's swipe fees, which can overwhelm the small donations that buskers tend to receive. Bitcoin isn't the answer either, as the Chinese mining cartel has driven up transaction fees to be near those of plastic by refusing to accept the years-overdue hard fork to increase the block size.
Buying a month's subscription for one article (Score:3)
Uhm.. quality websites with well researched articles are generally subscription based
:
Which means readers end up turned away when they try to read one article [blockadblock.com] that was found through a search engine or shared through social media. People have shown themselves unwilling to buy a whole month's worth of access just to read one article.
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O'Really?
When somebody puts a site on the web they are making it publicly available to anybody that wants to connect to it. Trying to to then impose constraints on how people access that content *after making it available* has no moral validity at all. The web was not invented to be "monetised", and fuck corporate apologists like you would try to rewrite history to make it so.
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It costs a lot of money to create quality content,
...and should I ever find a webpage again that contains some, I will gladly turn the adblocker off or even directly support them with my money.
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TLDR: If the busi
Too bad (Score:2)
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Too bad that breaks a lot of web sites. :(
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Webpages that don't work without JS ARE broken in the first place. The least I'd expect is some kind of minimal functionality, if you can't provide that, ok, it's fine.
NEXT!
What "minimal functionality" for a browser game (Score:2)
Webpages that don't work without JS ARE broken in the first place. The least I'd expect is some kind of minimal functionality, if you can't provide that, ok, it's fine.
I'm interested in implementing "some kind of minimal functionality" for a page on my website. Currently JSNES Arcade [pineight.com] requires JavaScript for its core function of interpreting a video game and displaying its graphics. What "kind of minimal functionality" would be appropriate here?
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A button where I can download it and play it locally.
Downloadable version for which OS? (Score:2)
A button where I can download it and play it locally.
Would it be acceptable if the downloadable version of a web application required you to run a webserver on localhost in order to serve the JavaScript files to your browser? Or if you meant a downloadable native app, for which operating system should this native app be produced?
Would it be acceptable if the play button is available without charge but requires JavaScript to use, and the download button works without JavaScript but requires payment to obtain? Or what am I missing?
Pay for ROM (Score:2)
Would it be acceptable if the play button is available without charge but requires JavaScript to use, and the download button works without JavaScript but requires payment to obtain? Or what am I missing?
In your previous example the application in question is native to the NES so it seems you've already made up your mind. Just provide the native NES ROM file
Would it be acceptable if the play button is available without charge but requires JavaScript to use, and the "Download ROM for use in FCEUX or PowerPak" button works without JavaScript but requires payment to obtain?
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Then let me express it a different way: If a resource were available in two forms, one without charge requiring JavaScript and the other without JavaScript requiring payment, would users be more likely to A. enable JavaScript, B. pay, or C. leave?
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Considering that there are quite a few options to play NES cartridges, I'd probably go for C.
Re: What "minimal functionality" for a browser gam (Score:2)
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Readable source, developer blog, bug tracker and notes on same, lists of currently played games.
Wouldn't "Readable source" enable others to make available modded, rebranded versions, thereby requiring severe changes to a proprietary game's revenue model? Wouldn't a bug tracker need some sort of policy to keep bugs private to block cheating by reading and exploiting others' bugs? And by "currently played games", did you mean a list of instances of this game in progress, or did you mean other game products that the developersimfile have been playing over the past several weeks?
But, more realistically,new can distinguish between a web page, and a web application.
There appears to be a voca
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It seems to be a NES emulator. So, I actually meant "ROMs currently being played." Similar lack of concern about people hacking their own clients. And it is in JS, so it's totally modifiable already, but probably with minimized JS.
I'm big on the "web applications should die in a fire." line of thinking. I've never been keen on running arbitrary code on my computer, even if it is sandboxed (build a perfect sandbox, and then, maybe). Also, it's pretty high cost in terms of overhead, downloading, ability
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It seems to be a NES emulator.
As I wrote in this comment [slashdot.org], I was hoping for a more general reply that didn't take advantage of the fact that this particular browser game operated by emulating an NES. For another browser game that does not operate by emulating a classic video game console, would I need to make three versions: one for Windows, one for macOS, and one for X11/Linux?
So, I actually meant "ROMs currently being played."
As I wrote in this comment [slashdot.org], would you be fine with the following choices, or would you instead leave?
What "minimal functionality" for Cookie Clicker (Score:2)
Eliminating the NES from the equation:
I imagine that Orteil, developer of the game Cookie Clicker, might be interested in implementing "some kind of minimal functionality" for a page on his website. Currently the game [dashnet.org] requires JavaScript for its core function of executing game rules and displaying its graphics. What "kind of minimal functionality" would be appropriate here? How could a game written in JavaScript be made downloadable? Are you referring to providing a zipfile with all game assets and then hop
Boooo google (Score:1)
Back in the day, Google played an important role in showing that relevant ads were better than animated interruptions, punch the monkey banners, sounds coming out of www pages unexpectedly, etc. Now they're optimising performance of the same crap they were making obsolete.
It's sad but the www was ruined by ads, like email was before it, like TV, radio and printed media.
Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
A Google software engineer explains that this technique "only animates things that are visible on the screen," and throttles animation to fewer frames per second for weaker devices -- or disables the animations altogether.
Here's an idea - how about disabling animation by default, and regardless of device? Annoying animated ads are what drove me to completely block them in the first place.
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They make no such assumption. They simply don't care. And why should they? The numbers spell it out in spades. What marketing says, goes. They read the reports, and then say, "Good work, let's see if we can push a little harder, eh?" They block the complaints like we block the ads. They don't see them. What few get through go straight to the trash, accept the NSLs from the FBI, of course. Those people have a hot line.
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The problem is they are in an echo chamber. They only get feedback from people who don't block them altogether, so they cannot know what people who do know how to block their annoying ads want.
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You're not the only one. I don't use my phone much to browse the web, but I do play games and those flashing ads (preferably between the image and its negative for maximum contrast) are really annoying, totally distracting.
It's not the ads that drive me to use an ad blocker. I don't mind ads, I know websites and games need to get their revenue somehow.
It's the flashing bits on a web page that are very distracting, it's the pop-up ads that block my view of what I want to read (those apparently unblockable "s
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I've never blocked anything just for being an ad.
I do block anything that blinks or moves, including those carousals on news sites, and those bouncy-floating sidebars.
The consequence is that I see so few ads that I' surprised when one happens.
On the rare occasion I need a website on my phone, I use ghostly. I'm just plain not a product, and do not want to be tracked.
hawk
So they invented RAF? (Score:1)
That sounds like a textbook definition of requestAnimationFrame (like setTimeout/setInterval but doesn't run when not visible).
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/window/requestAnimationFrame
How about no animated ads? (Score:5, Insightful)
That would make batteries last much longer.
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Simply make ads non-annoying and palatable.
No such thing. Pretty much by definition, advertising is annoying and unpalatable in order to get your attention and convince you to buy shit you don't want.
How about getting rid of advertising entirely and the enormous industry of waste and bullshit (marketing) that goes along with it?
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But then marketing people would be unemployed and would have to go extinc...
You have a point, ya know...
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How about getting rid of advertising entirely
How about sites go behind a paywall so you don't have to read them? We could start with...
To continue reading this comment, donate to my PayPal account
Something off the rails (Score:5, Insightful)
Something has seriously gone off the rails when an ad/image designer either a) cares directly, and/or b) has insight into device power management and usage.
You're doing it wrong.
How about devices, firmware writers, OS writers, library writers, and application writers (browsers in this case) focus on the power management and we keep remote content creators out of the loop. If you need end-to-end awareness of things like this, it's a sign that your different layers are unable to make sane design choices or write sane platform specifications internally. It's also a sign that you don't care about leaking data far and wide to things that should have no need for that info. (cf. Uber and pricing changes when your battery is low.)
Re:Something off the rails (Score:4, Informative)
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Ok, then put out "disable ad-blockers if you want me to continue delivering content" and if people really want your content, they will.
There are also various ways to get people to actively pay for your content, and guess what: People do actually do that, crazy as it may sound to some.
Sorry, but for FAR too long unscrupulous advertisers have bombarded the people with ads. They should not be surprised that people defend themselves against it.
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Last time I checked for my phone (and that was pretty recent) all adblockers required root access to even work. That requirement is for most people enough to put them off (even for me and I'm far more tech savvy than average). Installing an ad blocker for a web browser is a lot easier, but it's not the browser I use much on my phone, it's the apps, and that's where the ads annoy me most.
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How many of those things do you think Google creates? All of them?
Uh, yeah. Google makes the Android OS and supervises the Nexus phone brand, and it briefly owned Motorola Mobility. Perhaps Etcetera's gripe is that Google owns both the Android business and the DoubleClick and AdWords businesses.
Testing battery consumption of your ads (Score:2)
Something has seriously gone off the rails when an ad/image designer either a) cares directly, and/or b) has insight into device power management and usage.
"I've designed an ad and tested it on my phone. Doing it this way makes the battery go from 90% to 85% in x amount of time while displaying the ad on loop; doing it another way makes it take twice as long." Now how is this insight "off the rails"?
We especially need this in video features (Score:2)
Ads in videos, whether pre-roll or interstitial, make a lot of free content possible. But why do so many of the ads stutter and freeze, requiring restart of the vid from the beginning?
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Then you get to watch the ad twice, why?
"limits javascript" in order to load faster.. (Score:1)
hmmmm... let's expand on that and get rid of the scripting and tracking completely. then the ads will load even faster.... but then, might as well get rid of the damn things completely. there. problem solved. pages load faster, lightning fast at this point. mobile devices last longer on battery. and finally, since it's really all about the page load times and battery life (ya right), lets eliminate all unnecessary scripting, especially scripting that is used for navigation or to display the fucking page con
Re: "limits javascript" in order to load faster.. (Score:1)
My battery lasts fine (Score:5, Interesting)
My battery lasts fine, it's bandwidth that bothers me, reduce that instead.
Yeah! (Score:3)
Oh boy, faster ads, just what I've ALWAYS wanted!!
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Oh boy, faster ads, just what I've ALWAYS wanted!!
Oh I don't know: If that 30-second pre-roll add flashes by in two frames I'd be perfectly contented not to block it.
Didn't Google already do this years ago.... (Score:2)
How about Javascript ads? (Score:2)
How about forbidding Javascript ads over 10K, instead of the not so uncommon 2MB javascript ads presently out there in the wild.
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How about forbidding Javascript ads over 10K, instead of the not so uncommon 2MB javascript ads presently out there in the wild.
Assuming your not blocking them all, why not have a setting which states which kind of ads you will tolerate? Perhaps it could be as simple as 1) Simple text only 2) static images 3) Standard videos that do not auto play 4) everything. Each notch up would also include everything before it.
Of course, I'm not sure how useful it will be. Are web sites paying attention to the do not track flag?
Then again, you could no doubt just block everything other than what you will accept, but then by the time I go thro
I don't fscking want them in the first place... (Score:2)
tossers...
I have a LIMITED dataplan... they waste MY bandwidth
lowest power ads (Score:2)
would be to have no ads at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Have fun paying $5 for a month's subscription every time you find an article through a search engine or an article shared by a friend through email or social media.
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I will have fun. LOTS of fun.
Now if only I could pay a fee so I no longer had to deal with twits.
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Or I could just go to another site for free.
If several "another sites" in a row all have paywalls, anti-adblock, or other annoyances, how many such "another sites" are you willing to try to visit before giving up?
Behind The Times (Score:1)
Why the fuck are browsers animating content that you can't see and/or aren't in your current tab? Games have been using similar optimizations for decades. How about instead of masturbating on the UI, browsers make some fundamental improvements to their rendering engines? You don't need to study this stuff, it's common sense to not waste resources working on things you don't need or can't see the effects of. Browsers known when something is visible or not. Here's how simple it should be:
OnWindowScrollBy
Also in the news (Score:2)
Consumers, on the other hand, are looking for ways to block ads faster and with less power consumption.
What happened to just having text ads? (Score:2)
I remember when the text ads next to Google search were touted as a good thing as they were unobtrusive and people clicked on them more often than on banners and popups. Having blocked ads for nearly 20 years now, I dunno what they're doing but have they started showing image and video ads too?
Re. oogle Tests Ads That Load Faster and Use Less (Score:1)
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Google capitalism and Hillary corporatism hardly seems leftist.
Hillary's VP pick, Tim Kaine, is well known to be in the pocket of the Virgina coal industry.
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If that's your reason, you're doing it wrong.