Why Cross-Site Tracking for Ads is Disturbing, But Also Badly Targeted

We’ve all had these sorts of experiences: A friend or loved one uses your computer to, for example, look up skateboarding and you soon notice that when you’re on some news site you typically frequent but suddenly the advertisements are now skateboarding related? Then you go to Facebook and the same thing happens with those types of ads appearing?

What’s bothersome to me is BOTH the ads AND the cross-site tracking companies that advertisers use so they can “follow us around” and display what they think are relevant ads. The problem is that my wife and I share a single Amazon Prime account so I logged in to Amazon as her this moring, bought her a new backup hard drive (her current one died), and then looked at my news reader and clicked on this Ars Technica article.

The ads were suddenly for beauty products like this one:

While I get my beauty sleep and care how I look, I do NOT use Clinique so I come across with a “better glow.”  😉

Here’s the thing: Ars Technica is a geek site and highly technical in its articles and why I so enjoy reading it. But I usually only read it in a browser with ad blocking turned on because, after they were acquired in 2008 by Advance, the parent company of publisher Conde Nast, their ads slowly-but-surely became larger and more intrusive like the HUGE one above (which, by the way, is in THREE other places on the page as I scrolled down.

USING AN AD BLOCKER
Ads are intrusive overall regardless, but they are REALLY annoying when I’m reading on my iPad which is what I typically do. Why? Because constantly loading ads in a header or sidebar means that, as I’m reading and maybe halfway down the article, it suddenly jumps to the top of the page! I get SO pissed off that I typically hammer on the publisher through tweets or an email, but they don’t care so never respond.

On my iPad I use 1Blocker to block cross-site tracking and ads, primarily to stop that behavior I just mentioned but also since it is a MUCH better experience to not be punched-in-the-face with ads since they are never discrete…they only want to intrude, interrupt, and completely take over one’s reading experience. They also make their “close boxes” as hard as possible to use so we inadvertently launch the ad’s website so the publisher gets credit for click-through!

Here is the exact-same article on my iPad:

If you’re interested in an ad-blocker (and, in some cases, a cross-site tracking blocker) for iOS, here are some options.

Google’s Chrome browser is the one I use but they are taking NO leadership for us. Only for themselves, advertisers and cross-site tracking companies since Google’s business model is primarily ad-centric and they provide us with all of those “free” services (e.g., Gmail; calendar; voice; and more) to get better-and-better at advertising to us and selling our data to others.

WHAT I DO
I don’t use ad-blockers or cross-site tracking blocking in Chrome usually since it interferes with too many web development activities which I perform within our Innov8Press business. Instead, I create site-specific browsers using Coherence 5 so cookies are self-contained within my “search” browser, for example, since Coherence allows you to turn any website into a full-blown macOS application in seconds. And, using the power of Google Chrome, allows each app to have separate settings and extensions.

STOPPING CROSS-SITE TRACKING
Fortunately there is hope. Apple’s decision to stop the cross-site tracking of advertising companies in the newest version of the Safari browser (version 11) — and put the power back in to the hands of those of us doing things online — has come to the fore with great controversy.

Publishers are obviously upset since their business models are advertiser-centric. While I completely understand their motivation, don’t they know that bitch-slapping us with ads, making them as HUGE as possible, hiring cross-site tracking companies to follow us around, does nothing but make everyone want them to STOP!!

Perhaps if publishers showed some restraint and took the high-road, things would be different. But for now I know I will do WHATEVER IT TAKES to block ads and cross-site tracking companies.