Register

    Facebook Disarming Ad Blockers

    By SHOOTUpdated:No Comments2916 Views
    In this June 11, 2014, file photo, a man walks past a mural in an office on the Facebook campus in Menlo Park, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

    By Barbara Ortutay, Technology Writer

    NEW YORK (AP) --

    Facebook is blocking ad blockers on the desktop version of its service, saying well-made, relevant ads can be "useful."  

    At the same time, the world's biggest social media company says it is giving users easier ways to decide what types of ads they want to see —  unless, of course, the answer is "none."

    Ad blockers filter out ads by refusing to display page images and other elements that originated with a known ad server. But Facebook has found a way around this. Beginning Tuesday, the desktop version of Facebook will show users ads even if they have ad blockers installed.

    The changes don't affect the mobile Facebook app, which brings in the bulk of the company's advertising revenue. As with most new Facebook features, the changes are being rolled out to users over time, so some people might see it before others.

    FACEBOOK NEEDS ADS
    While couching its move in the language of customer service — primarily by reiterating its premise that ads serve a purpose if they're relevant and well-targeted — Facebook is also upfront about needing them to make money.

    Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook vice president, pointed out in a blog post that Facebook is a free service that's only able to operate because it makes money from advertising.

    In the most recent quarter , Facebook made $6.24 billion in advertising revenue, an increase of 63 percent from a year earlier. Mobile advertising (which is not affected by the changes) accounted for 84 percent of this.

    CAT-AND-MOUSE BLOCKING
    Several publishers, such as The New York Times have tried to work around ad blockers by asking users with ad blockers installed to turn them off in order to be allowed on a website. Other technology can "reinsert" ads that have been blocked. But there are ways to configure ad blockers to stymie these efforts as well.

    Facebook's ad-blocker blocker works by making it difficult for software to distinguish advertisements from other material published on Facebook, such as photos or status updates.

    But while users won't be able to stop ads from showing up, Facebook says it wants to make it easier for people to control the types of ads they want to see. For example, if you don't want to see ads from a specific business, or ads that target a specific category like travel, cat owners or wine lovers, you can say so.

    "We also heard that people want to be able to stop seeing ads from businesses or organizations who have added them to their customer lists, and so we are adding tools that allow people to do this," Bosworth wrote.

    Category:News
    Tags:Facebook



    Raoul Peck Resurrects A Once-Forgotten Anti-Apartheid Photographer In “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”

    Friday, November 22, 2024

    When the photographer Ernest Cole died in 1990 at the age of 49 from pancreatic cancer at a Manhattan hospital, his death was little noted.

    Cole, one of the most important chroniclers of apartheid-era South Africa, was by then mostly forgotten and penniless. Banned by his native country after the publication of his pioneering photography book "House of Bondage," Cole had emigrated in 1966 to the United States. But his life in exile gradually disintegrated into intermittent homelessness. A six-paragraph obituary in The New York Times ran alongside a list of death notices.

    But Cole receives a vibrant and stirring resurrection in Raoul Peck's new film "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found," narrated in Cole's own words and voiced by LaKeith Stanfield. The film, which opens in theaters Friday, is laced throughout with Cole's photographs, many of them not before seen publicly.

    As he did in his Oscar-nominated James Baldwin documentary "I Am Not Your Negro," the Haitian-born Peck shares screenwriting credit with his subject. "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is drawn from Cole's own writings. In words and images, Peck brings the tragic story of Cole to vivid life, reopening the lens through which Cole so perceptively saw injustice and humanity.

    "Film is a political tool for me," Peck said in a recent interview over lunch in Manhattan. "My job is to go to the widest audience possible and try to give them something to help them understand where they are, what they are doing, what role they are playing. It's about my fight today. I don't care about the past."

    "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is a movie layered with meaning that goes beyond Cole's work. It asks questions not just about the societies Cole documented but of how he was treated as an artist,... Read More

    MySHOOT Profiles


    Add A Comment