Affino is sponsoring and participating again in The Future of Media Technology Conference taking place at the Waldorf Hilton, London, WC2B 4DD on Wednesday 21st September.

Nearest Tube Stations are Covent Garden on the Piccadilly Line, and Temple on the Circle and District Lines.

The Future of Media Technology conference aims to give media industry decision-makers a one-day masterclass on the strategies, solutions and ideas they need to thrive in the digital era. One key topic covered ...

Back on February 15th Google introduced a number of new ad filtering algorithms into its Chrome browser - these have also come to be known as ’Chrome Filtering’, and are a series of automated processes which protect users by screening out questionable advertiser behaviour.

The new guidance is split across Desktop and Mobile devices, and I will refer to the diagrams in each of the included images - which I have updated for greater clarity.

DESKTOP

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Ads ...

With more and more browsers now baking stringent Ad-blocking functionality directly into their core operation - in particular Apple Safari and Google Chrome per recent updates; and Ad-blocking Apps and extensions being ever more clever at spotting and screening out different types of ads - the only way to continue business as usual is to use something like Affino - which bakes its native ad-handling functionality into its core page delivery mechanics - making the ad parts indiscernible from the...

PageFair and The New York Times recently published the most recent stats on adblocking globally. In the past year, the number of users employing ad-blocking software has risen to roughly 11% of the global Internet audience, equating to some 600 million devices.

Many companies have tried to outsmart adblocking or ban it in one way or another, but as we keep reiterating - adblocking is about far more than just mitigating advertising revenues. The risk of malware / malvertisements has ...

There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what ad blockers do, and about what their real impact is. Several different strategies have emerged to deal with ad blockers, from outright access blocking to gentle consumer petitioning. Yet there is only one genuinely successful way to deal with ad blockers - which is to serve up properly vetted ads natively.

I talk of ’properly vetted ads’ as the downside of programmatic advertising is the lack of significant validation - ...

Ad Blockers have been responsible for reversals in fortune for an enormous variety of websites and digital properties. In Western Europe, and in countries like Germany and Poland, the proportion of web users deploying some form of ad blocker or privacy tools is getting into the region of nearly 50%. In the UK, the figure is currently around 20% and growing fast.

In several scenarios, it’s a case of digital property owners really not knowing what they don’t know - meaning ...

The IAB or Internet Advertising Bureau has come up with a couple of initiatives / strategies for tackling the ever growing impact of Ad Blockers, in the form of the suitably acronymed - LEAN and DEAL.

First LEAN:

L = Light (Lightweight)
E = Encrypted
A = Ad Choice Supported
N = Non-Invasive Ads

Light

For a variety of reason ads slow down page upload speads, IAB’s LEAN standard means to speed up page loads by no longer pre-loading ads when the units aren’t in...

Once more the dark side of advertising rears its ugly head, as the FCC fines Verizon Wireless $1.35 million for its ongoing use of unsolicited and covert ’SuperCookies’ tracking technology, fully intended to follow its customers’ movements right across the Internet. The new ruling likely mandates that both wireless and fixed broadband providers must get permission from users before tracking their behaviour online in such a manner.

The SuperCoookies being deployed are ...

A recent article in the Guardian quotes UK Culture Secretary John Whittingdale calling out adblocking companies as a ’modern-day protection racket’. By this he is having a go at their ’whitelisting’ services where many of the ad blocking services take payment for whitelisting particular providers - these though can still be screened out by end-users. He cites that ad blockers are putting news delivery services, as well as the music industry in mortal peril and must be ...