# Adblocking

## Reading Response

### Nov 14 Fri - Online ads & blockers
Sometimes online ads know we browsed Sephora before we even remember. When we open Nike minutes later and see the same Sephora product again, it proves how online ads "follow them around." Online advertising has become what Marti (2017) calls a "market for lemons," where "tracking and data leakage" make ads less trustworthy. Specifically, Marti argues that "targeted advertising is considered harmful" not because ads annoy people but because "retargeting... causes users to see ads following them around from one site to another." In fact, this destroys the "signaling" action that comes from credible publishers. Meanwhile, Lekander (2020) also points out how this broken system extends even to ad blockers. For example, through "acceptable ads," companies can be "paying off" ad-blocking firms to "gain access to screens, track user, and undermine the true purpose of an ad blocker," which users are automatically "opted-out," since the function is "on by default" like a surveillance.

Sharma (2022) shows how a Google ad redirected users from the lookalike site GIMP.org to gilimp.org by adopting the difference between a "display URL" and a "landing URL." It served malware of a 700MB VIDAR infostealer disguised as an installer. Therefore, online ads are shifting from a funding source into a security risk that exposes users.

While reading these three articles, it brought me back to Stokes's (2014) online advertising concepts, including "banner ads," "clickthrough rates," "paid search advertising," and "display networks," which are tools to expand reach, yet they also make "data leakage, "whitelisting," and "malvertising" from the three readings possible. Additionally, this connects to what I learned about *brand context* in my Media, Culture, and Society course in which websites use positive ads to shape reputation. However, as Marti states, signaling collapses once ads rely on an "automated system" instead of context. In that case, blocking ads protects privacy. Most importantly, it links back to who pays for the web, and to Marti's argument that a healthy advertising system should be based on context and publishers.

## Application
I used [BBC News](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj41g75pe20o) as the website to test. My browser was Chrome, and I installed [uBlock Origin Lite](https://ublockorigin.com/) as the ad blocker. As the screenshots show, before enabling the extension, the BBC page displayed a hero banner for Rolex. After turning on uBlock Origin Lite, the page removed all advertisements and only showed the *Stranger Things* content I was reviewing.

### Before

### After