opportunities for publishers on the other hand. we put a lot of research into but we're t balance now in the process of opening that up so we're currently stablishing an independent committee which will have members from all the relevant that have a roups stake in online advertising and handing control over what constitutes an acceptable ad we theeve we can really evolve problem so we will have journalists there. e will have publishers, advertisers and also ad companies and if we bring table e together at one we think we can really evolve this program. oderator: so it will be what you call a council essentially, like a board or something like that? ill: yeah we call it the acceptable ads committee. moderator: so they'll kind of set what the broad guidelines user can e individual still decide what their settings are even if they want to see at all. e ads till: absolutely. moderator: i think there are some people who see this idea but hey we're an ad blocker

we make money from advertising down right cal or extortionist. how do you respond to that? it's of course nonsense because the only reason why we are as successful as we are is we have millions and millions of users that support our vision and because we incremental of revenue for our partners. now, of course ad blocking is controversial. i think disruptive technology has to be controversial. o coming up next, it's randal, and i'm very sure he's going to and nue his rants about me about my team. really is t just an attempt to distract people of the real reason why we're in this mess has failed to create an advertising ecosystem healthy.ustainable and

moderator: so when you say it's disruptive technology and that's it's controversial, but certainly there are probably going to be as ad blocking to grow, there are goes that are going to be hurt by really concrete way this. do you think they'll say this is really bad for us? i think we are all about empowering our users to have control over their browsing experience. at the same time, we're working with publishers on user friendly methods and i think this is really what is needed because you cannot have a relies on pissing off your user base. this is : and i think one of the things interesting is that you guys have this control it, the vastrstand majority of them are willing to see acceptable ads. they don't opt out of advertising entirely. why do you think that is? i think because so far we've managed to find that perfect balance between the user monetization the

needs of publishers. enerally if you ask people who have an ad blocker installed, rarely do they say they're against all advertising. the really just intrusive experience that just installing an ad blocker. moderator: one of the things i found out back stage is that you this ly come from background of online marketing yourself so this is actually a orld that you know even though you've now come into this very kind of controversial position within it. yeah, i mean, many people from our team have a background in advertising and i think also important because we really want to bring both sides together and i think this is lacking in has been the past, that there was real nnovation in online advertising, especially user friendly innovation and i think good position to facilitate that. moderator: so let's talk a more about the form. you talk about giving users choice and i think at the ads meant acceptable

like tech space ads, ads without images. talk a little bit more about what you think good ads looks like? most importanthe aspect is it cannot be disruptive. if you're reading an article and next to it there is an animation that is screaming for just something's that bothers most people, so the forms out there just blend better into the content of overall are just much less disruptive of an experience. you guys have been things ublish ers and called flatter plus. what is that? till: flatter plus is going to first payment system that is going to work for web without any friction for the user. so it's going to work every web siteor and users can just decide how compensate.

so if they decide they don't want to pay with their eyeballs content, they can decide how much content on the web is worth them and by signing up with flatter plus, their funds will be automatically distributed to web sites they have engaged with. moderator: and they don't have to hit a button or do anything. it's automatically tracking sort .f the sites they're looking at till: exactly. this has been what's missing so far is the payment system on the web that works everywhere and completely frictionless for the user. moderator: do you feel confident going to be a significant number of users actually willing to pay for content? yeah, definitely. right kind ave the of audience of people that are looking for alternatives. he majority of people will always be fine with seeing obnoxious ads. that en there are people want to have more control and hey want to decide how they

concentrate it and i think we're in a very unique position to facilitate that. to be clear, a publisher has to actually partner with you in order to the money from flatter plus. till: they just have to tell us the money to. moderator: just accept the checks basically. exactly. moderator: it is interesting. you're working with flatter on this, as the name implies, one founders of pirate bay. i imagine some of these we'resations are like hey ad block plus. we're here with the company of pirate bay guy, do you want to work with us. are anyone like screw you, we to work with that. till: i think most understand that we have to evolve business on the web and we have to put the user in the center of that and if we make it really contribute to to the content they consume then i think we can establish something we've never had before. moderator: so, i mean, let's talk a little bit more about how publishers are

going to make. the terms are that you guys will rest goes fee and the publishers right? till: right. by the end of how much going to the users? till: we will estimate about 10 users and they will spend about $5 a month we estimate. hat's interesting if you look at monetization, it's shocking create.tle value ads so my opinion, as little as what you spend on a cup of coffee, by spending that much per month, you can create the same value publisher without having to see any intrusive advertising. moderator: when you say ads for e little value publishers, is that basically on eyeball basis, if you get enough eyeballs they can

add up to a big number but individually it's really tiny. till: absolutely. look at the revenues generated through advertising on an individual basis it's very tiny. so you as the user, if you spend bucks a month, you can create the same kind of value for the publishers but you don't have to advertising.ive you don't have to accept malware risks and all the things wrong today. vertising moderator: you guys announced flatter plus last week but the product t used yet right. till: no, we're going to open it p by the end of the month hopefully. right now people can go to the leave atterplus.com and e-mail address and we will notify them once the program is open. moderator: right now flatter plus is a completely separate from ad blocker plus but overtime do you see integration. till: absolutely.

feel we're in a really unique position to make this work many people ve so using ad block plus so that it fits really perfectly into what always been all about. nd that is user friendly monetization and with your ad fewer but ve proven better ads provide more value and now we're providing more and how they users want to concentrate it. so as a user you can really just ecide how you want to be monetized and i think this is reply important because the is all about user choice. moderator: let's talk about ad plus more broadly. how many downloads have you guys seen at this point? till: i think we're getting close to a billion downloads now. it's a huge milestone for us that we very recently achieved ad block plus is being used n over 100 million active

devices. so i think that just shows that ore and more people are just ompletely curre lly frustratede current ad on the screens and reach out to us. the ator: last fall was first you could launch on ios. what have you seen there. we've launchod ios and android and seen over 10 million downloads. compared to our overall user ase that is not super huge yet but we see more and more people complaining about the mobile ad experience. they're complaining about issues like band width consumption or age load time so we anticipate a lot of opportunities for us to . ow on mobile as well moderator: can you say anything in terms of how much money the acceptable ads program is making now? till: we're not releasing any of ur financial data but i think we are in from a business perspective in a very healthy grow and i e can

think that also validates our we have created ipmendous amount of value of krement aa aal -- incremental and our partners are on board that. moderator: going back a second, he way publishers have responded to ad blockers, ad, it'll say hey, we saw you have an ad blocker turned on, maybe turn it off or cases, we won't show you the story or content until you turn it off. what do you think of that? i think the kind of dialogue is good and ntentionally we made it a very prominent feature with the ad off on a to turn it given site so we encourage users ad block responsibly, but i don't think it goes far enough users to turn off ad blocker, but you also have to to do so because

otherwise they will turn it back on immediately and that is what achieve with o acceptable answers as well as making sure that the ad is rience for those users just a lot better than the regular ad experience because if don't provide them with the experience they want, they will move elsewhere and the traffic those sites that are blocking ad blocker users, i think they're telling the whole back that users don't come if they don't like the experience. moderator: do you feel the conversation around advertising good at constitutes advertising has changed as a blockers? ad till: yeah, i think when we started a couple of years ago, we had to create awareness that t is a problem with online advertising. i think nowadays there's no disagreement around that anymore on ow we just have to work the right solutions, but at least all the people in charge that along the way they have lost the consumer, and we can bring them back. we've also nd adsously been seen enormous

with ad block plus and the that it's not an ad blocker per se like a browser as a as ad blocking component. as that happens how do you think ad block needs to evolve so it's still competitive? till: well, i think thanks to success of ad block plus, it's no surprise everybody wants the ad blocking feature in their product and many companies are with us around that. for us it's important that we always provide the best user experience because people can easily move on to a different ad blocker. since we make a point out of not blocking all he ads, we have to make sure that the experience for the users with ad block plus is . ways the best moderator: we're almost out of time so my last question and randal on stage and others in the industry will be watching this video, is there that you would change

about the ad tech industry that you think would make the better? as a whole till: i think it is really time friendly user innovations and for that, we need to bring everybody together. need the agencies, the publishers, the ad tech we anies, the consumers, need all of them to agree on certain standards. iab should have done that years ago. they have completely failed in now which is why we are establishing this committee and i think we are going to be much more successful because we are takenly ones that actually the consumer seriously. moderator: great. thanks so much for joining us. you.: thank [applause] > hey, phil, you want to stay with me for a sec? come here. up. know what's we have obviously ad block and

coming on stage. they didn't want to hang out for second, which is understandable but we thought hands.ould shake randal rothenburg from iab. why don't you come on out here. come on. he doesn't want to. i'll shake your hand. good job. rothenberg from iab going to do we're the other side of that conversation. have fun out there, man. on out. >> sorry. slightly awkward transition. > thank you for joining us, randal. and so we're going to talk about a bunch of things in the advertising and publishing industry, not just ad blocking but we might as well start with blocking. you've said in the past and i don't think it's to any surprise not a fan of ad blockers. ou think they're a threat to creativity. can you explain it to the 40% of blockers? use ad

randal: sure, and i have no argument against anybody using d blockers because i think there is a very strong kernel of truth when it comes to the impedence of user experience that absolutely is a true issue. that's fine. i said before, and i directly heard it very in your conversation is that this is an extortion-based business and it hurts publishers, primarily small publishers. majority earned by publishers all around the world from all sizes comes from advertising. companies -- the like ad t companies block plus, these are companies whose business is trying to take revenue and t divert it into their own pockets. it's very straightforward. one of the is biggest sufferers, one of the victims for years

because it's been primarily tech sites and gamer sites that have this.hurt by i often notice -- i was listening to the interview, he didn't answer any of your questions. say what is an acceptable ad. didn't answer that. refuses to talk about what the are.nues they're very high. he's a rich man from blocking advertising. oderator: so one of the things he did say though was he thinks that the iab hasn't done -- he the iab has failed to create a sustainable ecosystem audiencewhy there's an for something like ad block that's fair? hink randall: i wish it was fair. i wish i could be that powerful something.d fail at the fact of the matter is that any trade association in the can create s standards that by definition have to be voluntary. allowed to enforce them according to u.s. antitrust regulations, so that's true for any kind of standard, even the

three-pronged plus that the ieee recommends. t's fair to the extent that this is an industry that is very fragmented, very diverse and early days of iab, he founders were very successful at coming together and create iing different kinds say for standards on the format of advertising. the past say 7-10 years, it's been more difficult because incentives in the industry itself led by short term venture capital favor differentiation and customization and lack of tandards, rather than standardization. i wish it were different. as much as e strive we can to try and coalesce this fragmented industry around chain ds for the supply

but the pushing a boulder up hill, absolutely. a erator: let's step back second. most people don't know what the iab is. it's the interactive advertising bureau. iab and specifically who do you represent? was founded 20 ears ago by about 50 top publishers. these were companies that primarily created first-party of them in those early days began in the magazine or television or newspaper business. some were digital natives, and hey sold advertising as their primary source of revenue that creative content. over the 20 years, it's grown to about 650, 700 members. most of them are first-party publishers. our board of directors, for example, 70% of our board of are publishers. ew york times, meredith, abc,

disney, nbc, companies like that. do, we do what most rade associations do, which is in no particular order, we're involved in training and development. iab digital ad certification program for ad sellers. it's basically a qualifying test that 12,000 people have taken in years we've had it. vice schiller, executive president of nbc is here. he was the founder of this program. market research and consumer research on content attitudes about and advertising and user on rience, market research what buyers are thinking of and not thinking of. run marketplaces. we're right in the middle right now of the annual digital new fronts where about 0 creators and distributors of

original digital video content re presenting their offerings to about 10,000 ad buyers in presentations over this two-week very exciting's a event because you get to see ots and lots of original content. we represent our industry in washington. team of three or four obbyists in washington to work on everything from malware and to ware related issues privacy, to internet security. do lots and lot in between. oderator: i wanted to get into a couple of those different things. the first one, in the middle of excitingnt which is an time to come in. this year is interesting because there's a lot of companies that before.done new fronts they're doing them -- this is maybe the obvious ones are like is having their first new front on friday. i will be there.

depends on what you mean by sellacious, because i ead playboy is no longer publishing pictures of naked people because there are too many free naked. so i hear. moderator: yeah, i've never looked at internet pornography so i have no idea. so how many viewpoints do you to? o go randall: i went to pretty much all of them last week. went to about 25 or so and week i don't get to go to anybody because i have to go to lis ben to the iab europe conference. to nate t say no desmond. moderator: broadly speaking, are here any sort of trends you're seeing in terms of obviously online video is exciting, it's a making a lot of money. randall: there's a bunch of stuff. seeing it actually evolve the years, so i of wouldn't say there's anything i've seen that's dramatically kind of one exception,

kind of one exception, and that is the degree to which virtual reality narratives play.eally come into a lot of publishers are really working on virtual reality. insight that i've ot there, but also, i'm on the education board of the international center of photography, and we introduce a new media ogram and narratives over the past year so i've seen it there as well. thing there that's very exciting is two years ago, three occulus and i h thought oh, this is technology driven and this is kind of a of a problem arch and now it's become very clear to me, especially from looking new front that's become creatively driven, that creative in le are very interested virtual reality narratives. so that's been a really -- i saw new york times is doing it.

hearst is doing it. refinery 29 is doing it. hat was one big trend interesting to me. in terms of things that have been evolving that are pretty of the , the concept in-house agency or primarily nown as a content studio has now become a real fixture. fory previous job, i worked a big consulting firm, and we did a pretty big report in the 2000s in which one of our recommendations to publishers was look, you have to get into marketing services business. that was a very foreign concept in 2001-2002.back every majorould say publisher in the united states as a content studio where they content on behalf of their clients or they're cocreating it and that's a very evolution. moderator: and for people who aren't sort of really involved basically it

means basically there's a team either involved primarily or creatingip in terms of native advertising. randall: yeah. it's called native advertising. problem with the word native advertising is it means about 100 different things. report two years ago called the native advertising play book. mentioning ings i'm are free on the iab site so you can download it. that'sill the best study been done on native advertising nd we found so many different definitions that we had to kind of create a three dimensional what people rstand are talking about. so native adveritizing means from in-stream advertising, so the ads you see when you're flipping through on mobile, which are really not that different from ads or magazine ads in that they're ads that kind of interrupt the flow of content in a very seamless and natural way.

to customi hrough customized advertising that is content-based, narrative based, ooks like it is contextually relevant to the way a site is designed. those are two very, very different things. yes, content studios are creating all of the above. i like to think of them more as in-house agencies with ae creating content very specific and explicit knowledge of their audience, is a very nk important point. moderator: do you think there's clear division, here, you are the content studio. you're making this stuff. that's doing the real journalism? randall: well, everything that i ave seen from main stream publishers, yes. and also the federal trade very, very as been clear on this. fool people, y to you will get hung. you'll get caught and you'll get and you should be.

just c issued guidelines within the past couple of months n native advertising, where they talked in great detail about what the expectations are terms of disclosure and we've said from the very beginning, optional.e is not it is a must have. are there publishers who violate that? there are and there will be and the ftc is sort of looking for sample cases and salivating at taking some of them on to prove the point. senior ftc staff members up at the iab i think three year to meete past with publishers as they were developing the guidelines. so it was a very good i think process. we don't agree with everything hat they said, but their instinct around disclosure is definitely in the right direction. moderator: i want to get back to

a second and, you know, you've explained why opposed to using ad block ers and why the companies themselves aren't really great ecosystem but if your job is to sort of bring these different constituencies a solution, ind isn't part of your job to have a good conversation with the ad of kers since they're part the reality now? 200-odd: there are about ad blocking companies out there. of e actually had lots conversations with lots of them. we're trying to make a point that extortion is not a viable model.s i've got no argument with at trying to aim improve the user experience or of their own trol experience. i do have an argument with the flag of t fly user benefit but whose actual model is based on stealing money out of the

publishers, especially small publishers. this seems to me self evident. moderator: to you the key ad inction is if you're an blocker and you're making money rom advertising then you're an extortionist? randall: yeah, this dude thinks he's in the public service business. and do itt he open up for free in give me a break. you have a couple of hundred out there doing it for free. he should do it for free too. look, there is -- as i said, there is real truth in the issue that there are obstructions in the way of user experience. his is why iab has pioneered what we call the lean principles ad choice ncrypted supporting noninvasive advertising. introducing a re lean scoring mechanism, a market-based mechanism to drive publish ersior from and advertisers. this is why we're doing all those things. are real issues too many load times,

data calls from an advertising asset. horrible object latency. the tags and pixels. this is bad stuff that needs to be fixed. and utely agree with that we're doing everything we can to work with our publish ers and ad ers and others on this, but the idea that, you we're in it to improve the user experience when trying to extract tens of millions and hundreds of millions of dollars out of the publishers, that to me is not an argument. oderator: your argument is partly, okay, there are these problems and we're, you know -- but at the same time at sort of were you saying the iab is a trade organization. there's only so much we can do a lot of the issues you're talking about or maybe you can point to, but a lot of foundational issues with online advertising. fixed?t ever going to get

randall: i think a lot of it is actually foundational issues relating to the architecture of itself.ernet to me, the real. moderator: that sounds even more pessimistic then. randall: it's not pessimistic as it is being realistic. i think the fundamental underpinning and i think this is especially important for this and nce of technologists on the rs, is that internet at large, the source of our innovation is also the vulnerability and that is that we live in a very pen supply chain in which anyone can participate. you don't even have to have a it. of money to do as i've been saying for years, any 14-year-old can build a network with ion the apps that come built into a laptop or available on the cloud knows a body here couple of 14-year-olds who have already paid for their college exactly that.oing that's a remarkable, remarkable

thing. people who have made a living from the internet. calculations a couple of ears ago in 2009 that found a harvard study that more than 3% premised on s internet advertising. there was hundreds of in every of jobs congressional district in the united states, so this is a great thing. hand, everybody can play, no matter how immature, no co-opt in the sense of it's not well put together and no matter how criminal. a lot of the malware that's out you know, ased -- organized crime. interpol. we've been working with interpol department on trying to fight the stem of non-human traffic that is based on malware derived

nets. so the source of our innovation is the source of our vulnerability. that there are only three ways to deal with it. number 1 is you muddle along, you don't resolve the don't find a nies way to come together, ad blocking rises, and the ad of media diversity gets further and further and further pressed down. which we are seeing, is an increasing olopoly, a olig handful of giant platforms that control of their favored rs, become the platforms for media and advertising distribution, and number 3 is that the industry finds a way to come ogether and through self regulatory activity and possibly ome regulatory activity resolves these problems. we are betting on way number 3 a i think way number 3 is

better way because it preserves the diversity of the open interest. as a former journalist and still i thinklist in my soul, diversity of communications is of very high value. hold inest value that i life. moderator: it seems like as the head of the iab and part of your to push for number 3, what would you say is the odds hat numberley is the actual outcome? randall: i would say the odds not great i would 70%, and the 5 to reason i say that is because i there is a natural human mpulse to want to communicate and to want to communicate openly and freely, number 1, and natural ink there is a human impulse to want to work for yourself rather than work for the man. the system nk that

and the human beings that are he system and inhabit the system will work -- strive very hard to self regulate to preserve that openness. question for quick you before we run out of time is what do you think are the odds is sort of king going to kill my profession in a few years? randall: again, i don't think it happen. needless to say that for all the making, block plus is for all the money he's putting into his pocket, for all the disclosing re not about their finances and their finding aswhat we're we canvas our own publishers is not -- it's still not having that much of an impact of tech sites and gamer sites. moderator: that's not much consolation for me. randall: no it's harder for you and for the folks in the got to consider how much you'll be willing to pay for a techcrunch

subscription. lot. ator: pay a randall: mouhow much more you'r going to be willing to pay to to this conference or for you how much less you're going to be willing to work for it. moderator: i don't like ending note but let's end on that note. thanks a lot, randall. randall: thanks, anthony. thank you. [applause]. we go, randal -- there cool. announcer: this is the headline at washingtonpost.com. shaking up the campaign and demoting a top advisor. robert costa, political reporter for the post has been following the overnight developments joining us on the phone today. hank you very much for being with us. >> good to join you. host: essentially, what's behind changes? guest: donald trump has been in recent weeks growing more and the attempts d by of his campaign chairman and others in his circle to his rhetoric to make him more disciplined for the campaign.lection as he looked ahead to the political horizon to about 80

he left in the campaign, decided to move away from those onstraints and to elevate two long-time associates, steve breitbart news, to let trump in essence be trump. form, more aggressive and bellicose if necessary. the and yet he remains chair of the trump campaign, why? uest: there's a sense within trump's campaign that metaford of done fine in terms stabilizing the aspects of the ampaign in terms of building relationships with washington and republicans and his relationship with trump has been they're the same generation, nearly the same age, more moderate republicans from mid-atlantic northeast region of the country both imate both -- and who come from family that is worked in construction. campaign the strategist over the last couple of month when is trump dropped

n the polls and trump felt according to people close to him that he needed a jolt. not only a jolt but he needed to return to the populous core of his campaign and he needed to be he trump like he was in the primaries. he's never been comfortable as a reading from teleprompt ers and all that, and teve bannan, a populist and businessman and media savant and with, it'she's close a campaign that trump is more . mfortable with host: i want to go back to paul manafort and his link to victor yanakovich and his party, the 12 million in undisclosed cash payments which we point out they denied. but were these stories behind move by donald trump? guest: they were not according to my sources within the

campaign campaign. while manafort has grown unhappy with the scrutiny especially around ukraine and the possible payments he may have received, cloud over him but it was not the cloud that necessitated trump making the move. with has been more unhappy thimble annafort, is a for trump being less trump. t happened over the weekend when trump was at a fundraiser at the hamptons in new york and said you're rs who being tamed too much. it's too much effort to make you are.rent than you and while the chatter about hisafort and russia and all dealings were certainly part of the conversations and has been part of the conversations quite the impet t wasn't impetus, it seems, to push him out a little bit from the top spot. it should be noted of course that manafort is keeping his

title. campaign ining the chairman and strategist, it's just that he's layered. a former navy n, officer and banker and until week, the head of breitbart news. hat is his experience in running campaigns and why did donald trump report him? rapport with as a bannon for years. he runs breitbart news which is news site.d it's antiestablishment. it's positioned against not only the democratic party and the but against the republicans. and bannon, he inherited the a sense from andrew breitbart who passed away a few not ago and bannon is someone who comes out of the traditional campaign world. he's a media operator. he hasn't had any businesses. he's been a banker, done some kinds of s, different private projects. e's a hollywood conservative, kind of a hollywood radical, a bon vazant who enjoys having a

talking about and colt combative liberals.ssary with he's been ahead of this party towards populous nationalism in 's been epitomized congress and championed by jeff sessions but in the media world, that strain of conservative ortho doxy or views has been hampioned by breitbart and by bannon. >> kelly ann conway is a veteran republican pollster. her portfolio include? uest: her portfolio has included trying to expand d