I just uninstalled a game from my mobile phone this morning that had heavy ad usage. It was interesting to note the different ad display strategies. From least to most annoying:

- display a static ad, have the "x" to close appear soon (3-10 seconds)

- display an animated ad, have the "x" to close appear soon (3-10 seconds)

- display a static ad, have the "x" to close appear after 20-30 seconds

- display an animated ad, have the "x" to close appear after 20-30 seconds

- display several ads in succession, each short, but it automatically proceeds to the next; the net time after which the "x" to close appears after 20-30 seconds

- display several ads in succession, each lasts for 3-10 seconds but you have to click on an "x" to close each one before the next one appears

I live in the USA. The well-established consumer product brands (Clorox, McDonalds, etc.) almost all had short ads that were done in 3-5 seconds. The longest ads were for obscure games or websites, or for Temu, and they appeared over and over again, making me hate them with a flaming passion. The several-ads-in-succession were usually British newspaper websites (WHY???? I don't live there) or celebrity-interest websites (I have no interest in these).

It seems like the monkey's-paw curse for this kind of legislation is to show several ads in a row, each allowing you to skip them after 5 seconds.

My favorite most annoying ad tactic is the trick slowing down progress bar. It starts off fast making it seem like it’s going to be, say, a ten-second ad so you decide to suffer through it… but progressively slows so you notice at like the 20 second mark you’re only 2/3 of the way through the progress bar, so probably less than halfway done. Murderous rage.

You likely turned off any privacy invading feature and didn’t let the app track across apps.

The fact you are getting irrelevant ads is a good thing that indicates that is probably working.

I can tell you how the ad companies will implement this. For Rewarded ads (the longest ones, that are at least 30 seconds, and sometimes as high as 60 seconds), they'll move to that succession model, but the succession will take you at least 30 seconds. Oh you skipped an ad after 5 seconds? No worries, here's another ad. You watched the first ad for the full 30 seconds? No more ads for you.

It'll probably be a win for them.

Some "news" sites are so annoying about their ads, I just close the tab and google for someone else's version of the story. I block sites that show up in my news feed often but display more nag than content.

I'm sure in their mind, they don't care about me leaving. Apparently more than enough people put up with it to keep the site viable.

they appeared over and over again, making me hate them with a flaming passion

I wonder how much risk there is to brands due to this sort of thing? I tend to feel the same way; are we just uncommon?

The only place I see ads is Amazon Prime Video (b/c I'm still irked they changed the deal and added ads). I've come to hate those companies whose ads I see over and over and over again and I've resolved to never buy anything from them. I even used one of their products regularly and switched to a competitor due to their ads.

> It seems like the monkey's-paw curse for this kind of legislation is to show several ads in a row, each allowing you to skip them after 5 seconds.

We should just ban all online ads then. I honestly think we would be better off. Yes, some things that used to be completely free would start costing a little bit, but I don't think we would lose much of value, really. And there would still be lots of different ways that consumers could discover goods and services if we didn't have online ads, it would just be via directories where consumers could go and search for products instead of consumers being bombarded with information noise all the time.

The freemium ad-revenue model is a local maximum which results in a whole lot of shittiness.

I uninstall all games with any ad usage.

The latest was "I Love Hue". It let me play 10 levels (nice) and then put ads in. If they had just asked for $1 before showing the first ad I might have paid but as soon as I saw the ads I just uninstalled.

Note: IMO "I Love Hue" is a $1 game. I'm happy to pay $$ for bigger games and often do though on Switch/Steam, less on mobile.

And just so we're attacking the problem from both sides: the dark pattern on the advertisers side is the inability to easily opt out of in-app ads when advertising on Google's display network. For the reasons you listed, in-app ads generate an incredible amount of low quality clicks, yet Google makes it very hard to exclude yourself from that ad inventory.

The only way I've found to do it so far is to manually exclude yourself from every individual app category. IIRC there are over a hundred categories and you need to manually go through and select every category to exclude your ads from mobile apps.

There's also the tactic where the layout of the page/app reflows after a second or two, changing where the ads are. It drives me up the wall. Go to tap on a button, SURPRISE, an ad popped in where the button used to be 10ms before you touched the screen and now you're forced into some company's site whether you wanted to see it or not.

I discovered that the samsung good lock sound assistant lets you mute all sound from specific apps and allow specific apps to never have their sound be interrupted. So it mute games and have audiobook players to always play audio and this lets me listen to audiobooks while playing games and never have the adds interrupt audio.

My absolute favorite is the smaller “picture in picture ad” that gives you a way to immediately dismiss it with a “X” that looks like microfiche - the cynic in me assumes that this is so the average user will fat-finger it by mistake making it look like a conversion.

I have a turn-based game that I play with remote family and after I play my turn, I swipe the app off (force close) so I don't have to see the ads. It used to be that I could just switch away to skip the ads but they must have gotten wise to that because one day it stopped working.

A particularly egregious offender is Kalshi ads. They regularly play for a minute, sometimes up to two minutes before they can be closed.

I would not be surprised if the incentives are in place for ad networks to push for longer ads and for advertisers to create longer ads.

What about the ones that automatically open the Play Store to the app they're advertising after the ad? I would've thought it's against Play Store ToS to manipulate view count, but clearly Google has a conflict of interest.

You missed one of the worst: mandatory interactive ones.

My wife is a sucker for these horribly generic flashy F2P puzzle-ish games. There are these ads that pop up every N action or something; some of these look like a mini-game and are actually an ad for another of those F2P games, and you have to play the mini-game that showcases some dumb simple mechanic of the game it advertises for a little bit before you can dismiss the ad.

Some come complete with two trivially easy levels ONLY 20% OF PLAYERS CAN PASS SOLVE THIS that glorify you OMG YOU HAVE SUCH HIGH IQ then one impossible that taunts you into installing the game.

The predatory dark patterns are so obvious they should be trialed to oblivion but no apparently this kind of abuse is legal.

My favorite mobile game ad was for Jeep, which was 3 seconds of the word JEEP on a black background. My wife and I laugh about it, but we remember it. It was actually really effective in that regard.

My second favorite was for some pirate game, but the ads were basically the setup for an adult movie, with tons of hammy overacting. I thought they were so funny, I was really sad when they stopped.

The funny thing is that any company that has their ad displayed to me like this makes me just hate them.

I'm OK with a unobtrusive banner ad. I hate forced ads that get in the way of my flow (whether it's gaming or reading or work). I hate forced ads that can't be skipped.

I understand the reason for these (they often have an IAP that will remove ads, so the more annoying the ads the more likely folks will be tempted to buy it). But doesn't make it ok. I usually just leave a one star review and uninstall.

Some time ago, Google AdMob started using a new format ads - two videos, one immediately after another, unskippable for the first 60s, sometimes more. You know how they called them? "High-engagement ads". On some level, it's hilarious.

If are using Android, it's easy to block these ads with apps like Netguard or even PCAPDroid

Then can use the game without annoyance of ads

As it happens, the data collection, surveillance and ad serving strategies of the mobile OS vendors and their unpaid "app developer" independent contractors are still subservient to application firewalls and/or user-controlled DNS

This could change one day, it's within the control of the mobile OS vendors, but I have been waiting over 15 years and it still hasn't

My most favorite annoying thing about ads is the 'x' close button. They make it very small almost impossible to be perfect. I end up clicking the ads 50% of the times. Been running PiHole at home network for almost 8yrs happily. The ads come into play only when I am traveling.

This is why instead of specific legislation that winds up being a cat-and-mouse game with companies, the practice of creating specialized agencies with a general charter and delegating the specifics to them is often employed.

But it's also why this administration is dismantling those agencies as fast as it can -- without them the legislature will always be hopelessly behind on proper regulation.

I have fallen asleep watching youtube many times. I swear i have woken up in the middle of 20+ minute ads. I thought it was a news article about china when it was an ad. Who knows when the skip button appeared. The few times i have seen these, it has always been a literal fake news show about china.

For people with iPhones I recommend an "Apple Arcade" subscription, especially if you have kids. All games included in Arcade are ad free. They have a big enough collection.

> It seems like the monkey's-paw curse for this kind of legislation is to show several ads in a row, each allowing you to skip them after 5 seconds.

As is often the case I think that means the restrictions should just get even more strict, e.g., "no ad may ever be longer than X seconds and no app may ever show more than Y seconds of total ads within any 24-hour period". Then add some extra clause like "any attempt to circumvent or subvert these rules is punishable by fines up to 10x the company's gross annual revenue, plus asset forfeiture and prison for executives". People at companies should be deathly afraid of ever accidentally crossing the line into abusive behavior.