TechCrunch had a post a couple days ago discussing a Texas ISP that inserts advertising into pages its customers visit. That post is called Real Evil: ISP Inserted Advertising. Needless to say, TechCrunch is judging the practice to be “real evil….

1. The customer of the ISP. If the customer does not read the agreement that states by using this ISP he/she will allow these ads to be displayed, and without blocking them, could end up in legal trouble with the ISP if you block the ads. Even if you claim ignorance because you didn’t read the agreement you will still be liable for the ISP’s lost ad revenue. An agreement is a binding legal contract even if you don’t read it. Read the fine print BEFORE you agree to do anything!

2. The web site owner. If I have a web site that I choose to be ad free for whatever reason and some ISP overlays an ad on my site without my permission, this is hijacking my site for the purpose of making money. If I have a very successful site the ISP would have access to thousands of potential customers and added revenue with compensating me.

3. The legitiment advertiser. If I’m an advertiser on a website that pays for impressions instead of click throughs my ad could be covered by the overlayed ad causing me to potentially lose revenue. This would be the same as me advertising on a billboard and another company comes along and erects a billboard directly in front of mine. My ad is still there but, because no one can see it, I have lost potential revenue.

What I do object to is people inserting crap into my carefully constructed user experience. This is not like the cable company putting adverts between segments - this is like the cable company using CGI to insert things into the show or just placing big banners over the top of the show while it is running.

If it does become commonplace there will be a massive shift of power in the internet from the content providers to the ISP’s - for example if I am free to modify pages why not write a simple script that identifies google adwords and replaces them with my own chunk of identical HTML but with adverts I have sold instead. If enough ISP’s are doing this who in their right mind would pay google for ads that never got seen because ISP’s where not delivering them.

Yeah, I do not think Google, or Microsoft, etc, will take kindly to this sort of thing

Theft of site real estate is still theft. Might as well reach into a billion website’s cash registers and help yourself. (let alone the possibility of inappropriate ads being served up—porn, anyone?)

Someone, end them.

End them, please.

Shut ‘em down, and donate the $ from the liquidation of their assets to charity!!

For sites that don’t sell stuff, ad revenue is the only way some folks make a living…

- Its a simple legal matter / You stuff a clause in teh middle of your TOS / that states - you provide … blah blah blah … for whatever.

- now this technology could help NetZero be a better - ADvertiser

Jon

Do you understand the Google is nothing but an advertising machine? Their search is only a means to get advertising. Hold onto your hats because the analysts say that ALL of the major carriers will be using this technology because it brings relevant ads to subscribers via “behavioral targeting”.

I certainly hope this does not become the norm, and more importantly i hope they don’t enforce a premium connection that doesn’t have these advertisements as that would be beyond belief!

“It doesn’t appear to replace any existing ads, just adds more in annoying floating windows.”

Yep. This is Gator 2.0!

Now for someone to write some server side code that redirects requests from the ISP’s customers to an information page about what they’re doing, with links to alternative providers in their area.

I’d certainly use this tactic on my site.

The ads are in floating Divs and can be moved around in FF, but not IE. All browsers can close the ads by manually clicking the ‘x’ in the corner, but because it is injected inbound all browsers are affected. Most of the time it doesn’t appear to work in Opera, and it only appears to work on .com domains. It never shows up in the HTML for other sites. The ads only appear when the content is centered with margins on the side. If the computer uses a low resolution or the browser is sized smaller that the website requires to display its content then the ads don’t appear.

Luckily it didn’t affect outbound HTML, so the ads weren’t appended to our pages we served, but it annoyed the heck out of us.

When I tried the opt-out cookie it didn’t stop the injection or the ads. The Opt-out is only for the privacy agreement.

It doesn’t appear to replace any existing ads, just adds more in annoying floating windows.

What I fear is that if this form of advertising works out, there might be ISPs in the future who will offer free internet connectivity in exchange for Ad display. If that happens it’s going to be a very bad mess for content based websites.

In any case serving ads right on the webpage is illegal and the company must be sued.

Markus, funny you mention that, they’ve hired (or tried to hire) a lot of former Gator/Claria employees from what I’ve heard.

One of the major requirements for the safe harbor provision for service providers is that they do not alter or filter the data they transmit. This is clearly such an alteration.

Hence, they are now legally responsible for any pirating, illegal pornography (kiddie stuff, etc), and other shit that transmits over their network.

Check it out: Google the DCMA for yourself.