Related papers: The Future of Ad Blocking: An Analytical Framework…
The rise of ad-blockers is viewed as an economic threat by online publishers, especially those who primarily rely on ad- vertising to support their services. To address this threat, publishers have started retaliating by employing ad-block…
Perceptual ad-blocking is a novel approach that detects online advertisements based on their visual content. Compared to traditional filter lists, the use of perceptual signals is believed to be less prone to an arms race with web…
Adblocking tools like Adblock Plus continue to rise in popularity, potentially threatening the dynamics of advertising revenue streams. In response, a number of publishers have ramped up efforts to develop and deploy mechanisms for…
The intrusiveness and the increasing invasiveness of online advertising have, in the last few years, raised serious concerns regarding user privacy and Web usability. As a reaction to these concerns, we have witnessed the emergence of a…
Websites use third-party ads and tracking services to deliver targeted ads and collect information about users that visit them. These services put users' privacy at risk, and that is why users' demand for blocking these services is growing.…
Websites employ third-party ads and tracking services leveraging cookies and JavaScript code, to deliver ads and track users' behavior, causing privacy concerns. To limit online tracking and block advertisements, several ad-blocking (black)…
User demand for blocking advertising and tracking online is large and growing. Existing tools, both deployed and described in research, have proven useful, but lack either the completeness or robustness needed for a general solution.…
We explore the promises and challenges of employing sequential decision-making algorithms -- such as bandits, reinforcement learning, and active learning -- in law and public policy. While such algorithms have well-characterized performance…
Many internet ventures rely on advertising for their revenue. However, users feel discontent by the presence of ads on the websites they visit, as the data-size of ads is often comparable to that of the actual content. This has an impact…
Efforts by online ad publishers to circumvent traditional ad blockers towards regaining fiduciary benefits, have been demonstrably successful. As a result, there have recently emerged a set of adblockers that apply machine learning instead…
Millions of web users directly depend on ad and tracker blocking tools to protect their privacy. However, existing ad and tracker blockers fall short because of their reliance on trivially susceptible advertising and tracking content. In…
Adblocking relies on filter lists, which are manually curated and maintained by a community of filter list authors. Filter list curation is a laborious process that does not scale well to a large number of sites or over time. In this paper,…
Recent years have seen a sharp rise in adblocker use, driven by increased web tracking and personalized ads. However, a significant issue for adblocker users is the web breakages they encounter, which worsens their browsing experience and…
Over the last two decades, we have seen extensive industrial research in the area of computational advertising. In this paper, our goal is to study the performance of various online learning algorithms to identify and display the best…
Our study addresses the challenges of building datasets to understand the risks associated with organized activities and human trafficking through commercial sex advertisements. These challenges include data scarcity, rapid obsolescence,…
Online advertising governance faces significant challenges due to the non-stationary nature of regulatory policies, where emerging mandates (e.g., restrictions on education or aesthetic anxiety) create severe label inconsistencies and…
We consider an application of multi-armed bandits to internet advertising (specifically, to dynamic ad allocation in the pay-per-click model, with uncertainty on the click probabilities). We focus on an important practical issue that…
Advertisements generate huge chunks of revenues for websites and online businesses. Ad-blocker and tracker blocking programs have gained momentum in the last few years with massive debates raging on privacy concerns and improving user…
Free content and services on the Web are often supported by ads. However, with the proliferation of intrusive and privacy-invasive ads, a significant proportion of users have started to use ad blockers. As existing ad blockers are radical…
Rapid technological advancements in AI as well as the growing deployment of intelligent technologies in new application domains are currently driving the competition between businesses, nations and regions. This race for technological…