Keeping the internet, and the content that makes it a vital and vibrant part of our global society, free and accessible has been a core focus for Mozilla from our founding. How do we ensure creators get paid for their work? How do we prevent huge segments of the world from being priced out of access through paywalls? How do we ensure that privacy is not a privilege of the few but a fundamental right available to everyone? These are significant and enduring questions that have no single answer. But, for right now on the internet of today, a big part of the answer is online advertising.
We started engaging in this space because the way the industry works today is fundamentally broken. It doesn’t put people first, it’s not privacy-respecting, and it’s increasingly anti-competitive. There have to be better options. Mozilla can play a key role in creating these better options not just by advocating for them, but also by actually building them. We can’t just ignore online advertising — it’s a major driver of how the internet works and is funded. We need to stare it straight in the eyes and try to fix it. For those reasons, Mozilla has become more active in online advertising over the past few years.
We have the beginnings of a theory on what fixing it might look like — a mix of different business practices, technology, products, and public policy engagements. And we have started to do work on all of these fronts. It’s been clear to us in recent weeks that what we haven’t done is step back to explain our thinking in the broader context of our advertising efforts. For this, we owe our community an apology for not engaging and communicating our vision effectively. Mozilla is only Mozilla if we share our thinking, engage people along the way, and incorporate that feedback into our efforts to help reform the ecosystem.
We’re going to correct that, starting with this blog post. I want to lay out our thinking about how we plan to shift the world of online advertising in a better direction.
As we say in our Manifesto: “…a balance between commercial profit and public benefit is critical … “ to creating an open, healthy internet. Through that balance, we can have an internet that protects privacy and access, while encouraging a vibrant market that rewards creativity and innovation. But that’s not what we have in online advertising today.
Our theory for improving online advertising requires work across three areas that relate to and build upon one another:
This theory, and the work to test it, will become an increasingly integral part of the discussions we already have underway with regulators and civil society, consumers and developers, and advertisers, publishers and platforms. We will continue to set up gatherings, share research, and explore new ways to collectively share ideas and move this ahead for all of us – both shaping and being shaped by the ecosystem.
Fixing the problems with online advertising feels like an intractable challenge. Having been fortunate enough to be part of Mozilla for well over a decade, I am excited to tackle this challenge head on. It’s an opportunity for us to bring a whole community — including often divergent voices from advertising, technology, government and civil society — to the table to look for a better way. Personally, I don’t see a world where online advertising disappears — ads have been a key part of funding creators and publishers in every era from newspapers to radio to television. However, I can imagine a world where advertising online happens in a way that respects all of us, and where commercial and public interests are in balance. That’s a world I want to help build.
