from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why don't publishers with ad networks route ads through content domains?

by groundpepper on 5/13/21, 4:28 PM with 2 comments

In the eternal battle between ad networks and ad blockers, I'm wondering why ad networks who are also publishers haven't taken the obvious route of hosting ads on their publishing domain? This would make it significantly less easy for me to block their third party script domains.

Specifically, why doesn't YouTube put their video ads on the same domain as the videos themselves, or even embed them dynamically in the videos at request time? Why doesn't Twitch stitch their ads into the live video stream?

I know for third party sites this isn't possible, because ad networks don't trust them to report honestly and want their own scripts running. But for the sites mentioned, and others like them, I haven't been able to figure out their reasoning for not doing this.

  • by buro9 on 5/19/21, 7:31 AM

    How do you trust the content of the adverts?

    I mean... on the level of JavaScript, SVG, CSS, etc... you either have to incredibly constrain what an advert can do as you cannot moderate them all or be aware of every possible attack vector... or serve them from a different domain so that the browser security model applies.

    The risk to someone like Google of a rogue advert causing an account compromise is far greater than the risk of some % of lost revenue.

  • by littlecranky67 on 5/13/21, 4:49 PM

    Google - other tan FB and Twitter - seemingly made the (in my opinion) right call not to shove ads down to people who actively opt-out by adblockers. I dislike ads very much, and if my adblock is bypassed I feel angry and anoyed - you got to ask yourself what my emotional association for a brand or product becomes that is advertised this way. This is very much not in the interest of the advertizer.