Ad Blockers Are Also Changing the Game for SaaS and Web Developers

Re:Ad Blockers Are Also Changing the Game for SaaS and Web D... by snowwrestler on Thursday October 29, 2015 @04:35PM (#10474081)

Analytics JS is not pointless because it is part of the page/service that the visitor is requesting. It is a legitimate form of data logging just like Apache or Nginx logs and reading cookies. Logging is a necessity for troubleshooting and improving any software service.

It's no more pointless than using Adobe Typekit for fonts or pulling jquery from a CDN. Both of these use a lot more bandwidth than an analytics ping, BTW.

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Re:Ad Blockers Are Also Changing the Game for SaaS and Web D... by dasil003 on Thursday October 29, 2015 @05:08PM (#10474302)

The point you are missing is that users don't need to send an analytics ping for the page to load. If you were to conflate your jquery load with analytics so that the page was broken, then you could prevent the use of ad-blockers (although you're just as likely to make people think your site is just broken).

The use of bandwidth is a moot point. If advertisers hadn't abused the user's good will we wouldn't be where we are today, but there's no putting the genie back in the bottle.

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Re:Ad Blockers Are Also Changing the Game for SaaS and Web D... by snowwrestler on Thursday October 29, 2015 @06:47PM (#10474952)

If we're talking about "need" then the conversation gets sticky pretty quickly.

Users don't really need webfonts; text just needs to be readable. And they don't need to grab jquery from a CDN; it can come off the server. Heck, they don't need to grab anything from a CDN--the app server can serve images just as well as Cloudflare.

Do users really need DDOS protection? No, that protects the server, not the user. And it banks their legitmate request--needlessly--through a proxy server, which certainly adds latency. Not to mention that Cloudflare can see everything they're browsing.

Do users need single-page JS apps at all? Why not just render HTML4 on the server like in the good old days?

So why do developers use these technologies? Because it makes the user experience better. And so do analytics. Without analytics, developers are flying blind. And no, Apache/Nginx logs don't capture the same data--especially with more advanced JS-heavy sites.

Users want websites that load fast and are easy to use. It is impossible to build or improve such a site without data upon which to base decisions. That's why analytics are a necessity.

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Re:Ad Blockers Are Also Changing the Game for SaaS and Web D... by mattmanser on Thursday October 29, 2015 @05:07PM (#10474290)

It gives you a bit of extra data, I do use it on my site and all my client's sites, but in reality it's actually pretty invasive privacy wise.

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Re:Ad Blockers Are Also Changing the Game for SaaS and Web D... by joosters on Thursday October 29, 2015 @05:14PM (#10474342)

That's not a valid comparison. If your site needs a custom font, the users have to download it from somewhere - the data needs to be sent. For analytics, the HTTP request can be dropped entirely, since the data can be extracted from the web server logs.

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Re:Ad Blockers Are Also Changing the Game for SaaS and Web D... by Silhouette on Thursday October 29, 2015 @06:28PM (#10474826)

For analytics, the HTTP request can be dropped entirely, since the data can be extracted from the web server logs.

No, it can't, at least not in general. That's what others here are trying to explain to you. It can be very useful, and in both the visitors' and the host's interests, for someone operating a site that has a lot of client-side interactivity to see what's really going on, for example.

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