Just an Idea (analyzing the ads / pics)

[Bender]

hi,

just an idea...

i often read the ad-polluted website gamestar.de
maybe u know that they are using a new ad system, which can unfortunately not effectively blocked by adblock... and even if for one day -> the next day gamestar shows this stupid ads again.

so i decided to ask the pros a question: is it possible to block ads while generation a unique code? if u look on these ads on this kinda "unblockable" gamestar ads u see that they are nearly always use the same pics as ads. the same pics...the same content...the same text...the same colors and so on.

my idea would be, if it is possible, to use these things againgst the ads. analyze these ads-pics and generate a code...this code will be unique. and with unique codes it should be easy to identify such ad-pics and block it.

to be more precise: analyzing an ad-pic
-> u get a arrangement of colors -> unique for this pic - lets call this code 123
-> u get a pic of a smiling man on it -> unique pic -> code 456
-> u get text on it "please buy our product -> "unique" text in relation with the other analyzed things -> code 789
-> u get nearly always the same ads-position on the screen -> maybe code 10
...here u can add more ideas to get an even more unique code...

so analyzing our ad-pic we would generate a unique code with "12345678910". blocking this code "123456789010" should work easily like always on the block filter... if it is used on page ab.com or cd.de or ef.com -> it should be blocked

even if the ad-pic is changed, lets say instead of "please buy our product" in "buy our product please", or the color is changed from white to yellow -> the changed new unique code isnt far away from the old unique code -> 90% or 80% or 70% of even the same code as before should easy to be identified to block the "new" changed ad-pic again.... this could lead to the fact that a completly new ad-pic needs to be made. which need time and work, but could again easily be blocked when identified as ad.

take an ad-pic...let a software analyze it...generate a unique code from it and block it all over the world with ad-block... possible?

[mapx]

I don't even know if the javascript has all the tools to do such an analysis. More: would be very heavy/slow to do it.

However you can use regex filters. Now for example you can use this filter:

Code: Select all

||images.cgames.de/images/*_*x*

[mapx]

see also
http://forums.lanik.us/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=21881

(there is also some userscript to defeat such tricks - installable in greasemonkey)

[Bender]

i'm not a javascript expert... was just thinking about this way.

so u know facebooks possibility to identify pictures to find out who is in the picture. so it should be possible (in my eyes... but i'm no programmer)
or do u know the add-on TinEye? i dont know how it exactly works... but with TinEye you can identify pictures and find this picture on many websites in the world....

i was thinking about the concept behind this and implementing it in adblock...

[mapx]

I guess tineye addon sends the pics thru tineye server which can use a lot of tools ... the same facebook when you upload a pic.

[Bender]

seems so. but those pics can be identified. this is my point. even if friends upload pics on facebook u can be identified without doing anything. so it is possible. would be fine to copy such methods... the way it is made (if it is possible) is another question.

i have to admit that i dont exactly know how adblock exactly works or which tools it uses or can use or if. it works with code and filter this i know... and i also know that i love adblock and wouldnt be in the internet anymore without adblockers...

is there really no way to implement ways or things to make adblock even stronger in this way?

[mapx]

-only the devs could respond, but surely would be very heavy, so not implementable for an addon which is working on all the pages you visit.
-on the other hand (see above) you already can use normal filters (I provided one - did you try it ?) or complex filters (regex filters) to block such ads.

[mapx]

Anyway, it seems already exist the tools to do such analysis (in javascript)
see
Resemble.js : Image analysis and comparison
http://huddle.github.io/Resemble.js/

[Dodger]

This is a bad idea for three reasons:

1. Client side pixel analysis for every single image on a page will freeze the browser and utilise 100% of the CPU while crunching the numbers. Some news websites can have hundreds of images on a single page and real time bitmap analysis is very CPU expensive. On mobile which have limited CPU power this would be a disastrous experience to the user.

Even if you considered taking the CPU load of the client and making an external hosted service, you still have to send the entire image to that server, wait for a response and then take an action based on the result. So instead of hogging the user's CPU you are now hogging the bandwidth. For most websites images are the most bandwidth consuming asset, so if you send these off to another web server you could be doubling mobile data costs.

One of the reasons we block ads is because they make page load slow. With this suggested move you would not only make the page slow, you would most likely freeze or crash the browser severely damaging user experience. So this defies the purpose of adblocking.

2. When comparing images on mass scale you are bound to get a lot of false positives.

3. The system can be beat: Publishers will just make a server side script that will alter the image's hue, tint, cropping or scale making your test fail.

I'm a software developer btw.