Slashdot Mirror
Non-banner Ads Coming to the Web
Masem writes "NYTimes has summary (CT:El Lamo free registration required) of how on-line advertizing is going to change in the near future. Banner ads have been found to be effectively ignored, so the next step is to visibly replace the content with ads for a brief period of time, as is currently done on radio and tv. The three methods described are pop up windows, redirect links that take you to an ad with the link to the final destination (aka "interstitials"), and a new technology that downloads the ad while you read the content, then displays the ad when you leave the page (aka "superstitials"). Unless you're running an ad blocker proxy, it's going to get really hard to ignore ads on the web soon."
Banner ads contribute to my page download times, which is significant because a lot of my Internet access is over a 28.8K modem. This extra time is important because many ISP's still have time-based connection charges. A 25K animated GIF can take a significant amount of time to download.
The only ads I tolerate are the ones on Slashdot and the hunger site (http://www.thehungersite.com/). When you click a button that says "donate free food", you are taken to a page that displays between five and nine small, static banner ads. The advertisers on the hunger site pay for basic food to feed the hungry in poor countries. These ads load quickly and also seem to cache well.
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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Well, someone will just have to code a browser like Moz that can selectively disable javascript features like popups (that would be GREAT!), while allowing other features.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I am dumbfounded at how far some marketeers will apparently go to annoy their target audiences. If I bought a shirt, spilled coffee on it, then returned it the the store claiming "This shirt was stained when I bought it," then they'd happily take it back. I've seen stores take back some questionable items. The principle at work here is that it isn't worth pissing off future customers over what are effectively nickels and dimes to a large corporation.
But with spam and web advertising this doesn't apply. Spammers creatively alter subject lines to get past filters. Now really, does this make sense? People who get annoyed by spam are filtering it out, so are they really going to be receptive to you getting around filters by adding a comma after each letter? Much web advertising is the same way. Trickery like preventing use of the Back button and popups that appear when you leave a site is *annoying*. This is doubly true for people with modems--the majority of surfers. Having your connection grind to a halt because some stupid Java application is popping up windows and grabbing images is the worst negatively publicity you can imagine.
Okay, that's not true. Making modem users sit through animated ads before viewing a web page is even worse.
no coordination required.
alt-f4
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I'll pay $25/yr for Slashdot if you'll turn off the ads. Make it an option. I pay that much for most magazines I get, and Slashdot is generally better. I hope the avertisers don't think my eyeballs are worth that much -- I've only clicked a couple of ThinkGeek ads in the last year, and have yet to buy from them. So turn off the ad, maybe add a few features, and charge me $25/yr. I'll pay, and won't even complain about the privacy problem -- and those that really care can just use a disposable credit card number. Anyone else willing to pay for your daily dose of slashdot? I want to see it as an *option* first; I'll also bet this crowd is more likely to pay than many. Show the world it can work. Maybe offer a $3 monthly also for new users, or whatever. Lemme know when I can send you my credit card number.
Well formed HTML - using HEIGHT and WIDTH properties to allow the rest of the page to load (of course, maybe they are already doing this, and it is just the ad server overload that is slowing the thing down?)...
You are correct in your assessment though - I guess overall banner ads SUCK!
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
There is, to the best of my knowledge, no example of a company failing and having to switch to an ads-only model (or succeeding and not having to switch) that I know of.
Would it be fair to characterise your understanding of what I originally wrote this way? If so, please reread it! Otherwise, please do explain why comparing a situation where a subscription-only company switches over to an ads-only model is relevent to understanding the potential success of an ads-or-subscription choice?
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
no matter what they do, they'll have to realize one fact.
People put up with those annoying javascript popups because it gets them to compelling content. Pr0n.
Until the other sites provide some equally compelling content, pushing annoyances like javascript popus on their users will only chase the users away.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I believe I may have seen something like this at MSNBC, a site which is notoriously hard to browse for users who've disabled cookies and blocked common ad sites such as Doubleclick. Recently I noticed that news URLs were being redirected through Doubleclick, apparently with an advertising payload attached (though this wasn't visible to me).
The article speaks of an acceptance of advertisements on TV and radio by many. Speak for yourself -- I find broadcast media ads intrusive to the extreme, listening exclusively to NPR at home, and tolerating commercial radio only in short stretches while driving with my fingers dancing over the pre-sets. The analog another poster made to Bradbury's 451 is apt -- I find ubiquitous advertising to be annoying and offensive in the extreme -- I am not a 24/7/365 marketing opportunity, thakyouverymuch, and will take my business away from venues in which I'm treated as such (Safeway, you listening?).
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Whenever consumers control programmable devices for displaying media, ads will get filtered. This is already happening with internet banner ads and the digital VCR's with 30 second fast forward buttons.
The only way the advertisers can survive is to make the ads part of the content. Ads on TV and the web will disappear, but there will be constant product placement and explicit references to sponsors. TV shows will effectively be long advertisements for a variety of products, with witty dialog and plots added. News will be the same thing.
Imagine: a "Friends" episode where they all agree to vote Democratic, except for some redneck loser in the coffee shop. A Simpsons episode where Lisa convinces Homer to drink Brand-X coffee "because the growers use ecologically sound practices - and it tastes better too!" Barney will start serving Bud instead of Fud. The CNN host will wear shirts with big GAP logos, and have a Folgers coffee mug on the desk. There will be Microsoft and Dell logos on the computer behind him. Web sites might end up being Flash only... and they will keep the format proprietary and protected by the DMCA so you can't reverse engineer it to filter the ads from the content.
Oh yeah. What a great world that will be.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Turn off Javascript
On the other hand, I haven't had much incentive to use proxies because I really don't find banner ads all that annoying. With this new scheme, I suspect that proxy use will skyrocket!
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
Just don't use those sites.
I'm already much more likely to avoid sites that I know have large amounts of annoying advertising on them. This isn't a deliberate decision, just that those sites are not worth the effort.
It will just make the sites less likely to be visited by the people they want to advertise to.
Sig is taking a break!
Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra
www.pogo.com
So lets try this on for size
Ad supported sites give me an option, I can use the free-to-me site plugged with banner ads and doubleclicks digital peeping tom software. The site remains free to me, albeit a little more obtrusive depending on the type of ads, and slashdot can still pay their OH.
Or, I sign up for some digital cash site that I pay into every month. When I visit slashdot, Im treated to a bannerless page that debits my account the amount that would have been generated by the banner ads (BTW, those of you that are guessing at $.02 are being WAY optimistic, think tenths of pennies). Of course the security implications are there, but these are the same concerns that we have had for every online transaction. This would be a huge thing for companys like ecash, not because they would see usage, but because they would create mindshare. Digital money will go nowhere until it gets its own killer app. This just might be it. Jason www.cyborgworkshop.com ...and the geek shall inherit the earth...
www.linux-skunkworks.com
Guess what guys...
Being ad supported means having Ads!
You can pay for net services by veiwing ads or you can pay for them out of your own wallet, but any net service that can't turn a profit is going to vanish.
So what if someone thought your post wasn't worth the high mod, get over it. Calling names at anyone who thinks differently just makes *you* look like a kid.
Like I said it's a humor thing (i.e. Slashdot should cache mods for 30 minutes or something and then apply them) watching the social effect like that. I'm not karma whoring otherwise I wouldn't have posted my followup (which you replied to), however it's just fascinating!
Risk, you ask? Why yes, I answer. (okay, nobody asked, but I thought I'd expand anyway)
Information and spin are just two sides of the same coin. Information is when you are empowered, spin is the same thing when the seller is empowered. Spin has much more appeal to sellers.
In an effort to expand the power of spin, I expect an even greater insinuation of corporations into the media (and into each other). This is nothing new, of course, but I think it will come to reach new heights as the media becomes increasingly monopolized. Like the "news" magazine TV shows that have the "inside looks" at new movies. Like the Mindcraft study. Only more so. Everywhere.
Of course, the skeptical few will still be able to figure it out. But while the masses are able to learn to ignore banner ads, spin is much harder to ignore because (when done well) you don't know it's there.
Not everyone wants to use it pirate DVD's
Granted and I apologize if I conveyed that. I think it's more a thought process that some people have. It's like rolling paper : Lots of people use it for legitimate purposes, but that doesn't mean it isn't assumed that you're rolling a big joint.
;-)
#!/usr/bin/perl
/^\s*$/)
$PORT = 31337;
use Socket;
socket SOCKET, PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 6 or die "no socket: $!\n";
bind SOCKET, sockaddr_in($PORT, inet_aton("127.0.0.1")) or die "no bind: $!\n";
listen SOCKET, 5;
while (accept(CLIENT, SOCKET)) {
$timeout = time()+2;
$fd = "";
vec($fd,fileno(CLIENT),1) = 1;
1 while ((select(($x=$fd),undef,undef,1) != 1 || <CLIENT> !~
&& time() < $timeout);
select CLIENT;
$| = 1;
print "HTTP/1.0 200 Go away\015\012";
print "Content-Type: text/html\015\012\015\012 ";
close CLIENT;
}
--
BACKNEXTFINISHCANCEL
You know when I was a bit younger I was a huge socialist. Here in Ontario I was a major fan of the NDP (a socialist party) and decried anything that "the man" did. I'm not saying that the perspective was juvenile, but rather that I'm not giving my perspective having grown up with the silver spoon because I most definitely didn't. (hehe...I have pictures of me having my bath in a big black barrell in my back yard when I was a kid)
Having said that most proposed systems that people advocate couple their perfectly envisioned,hypothetical system versus capitalism with all of its warts and scabs. It should be obvious which is going to appear superior. If anyone brings up examples of applied socialism (BTW: Capitalistic greed is responsible for most of the technical advances that you're talking about) then they will immediately be decried by the socialists as poor examples that didn't work because XYZ and XYZ...but if the world followed THEIR example...
It's a big world with nations all over the globe with varying systems and standards...yet where is the #1 area on the planet to live?
not viewing adverts is inconsiderate?? at least with TV I can choose to switch the channel when there's commercials, and there are rules governing those adverts. There is a maximum time for adverts on TV (I think 15 minutes for each hour), but I can still switch. on the web, I can't switch until the banner ads are gone, and their are no rules for those ads or the amount, but I can filter them. I don't force you to take down your ads, you don't force me to watch'em
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Yes, none of them are as consumer oriented as the Windows product, but then Linux users aren't average consumers. That doesn't invalidate my original point.
As for your suggestion that Windows applications are generally easier to install, that's pretty laughable. Windows installers require human interaction as a rule and perform very unpredictable changes to the system. RPM and other Linux package systems are much more efficient and easy to use.
By avoiding ads, we're making the system inviable? So what? The system is not viable anyway. Advertising must always push the barrier between advertising and non-advertising, it must always encroach on real information, because people naturally (without even thinking of it) see advertising for what it mostly is: lies. Not always straight-out lies, but lies nonetheless. And so people filter it out. They will always filter it out, because the human mind is good at that. And so advertising is always on the edge of becoming useless. And so the advertisers push harder. This can only end in the destruction of the medium itself, or the destruction of the minds and will of the advertising victims. I'd rather see the medium destroyed.
And I see no reason to apologize for that.
You never thought it would happen. But the answer to annoying pop-up windows and continually interrupting ads which switch you from page to page is Microsoft!
Think about it. How many times have you opened a "Free Pr0n" link and had it spawn half a dozen other windows like "CmdrTaco Nude!" "Hemos getting nailed!" et al. only to have your system Blue Screen of Death with a Page Fault.
Not even Joe Sixpack will stand for continual re-boots.
Yes people, the future is here, better living and less commercialization through crappy software.
"Microsoft: Where do you want to go today, Oh, I'm sorry, that page popped up two more windows and now I'm going to Page Fault. Enjoy our BSOD!"
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Unfortunately, the rating system doesn't work as I intended it unless you have javascript turned on. I'd rather have the message there so lynx people know that there is a text only skin in existence. If you have javascript turned off in a browser that supports it, thems the breaks.
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Perhaps it's just the accuracy of the response rates [for internet ad's] that's upsetting the advertisers. Unlike magazine ads or commercial television, they actually have an accurate indication of how many people showed an interest in response to the ad... And these numbers are very unpleasantly low, in their books.
But, to be honest, I don't think I have ever bought anything as a result of a television or magazine advertisement in my life! I may have visited a store because of an advertised 'extreme sale' or somesuch, but only to browse and usually only to buy a loss-leader item and leave thereafter. [I am an extremely conscienctious consumer, dedicated to buying the best products at minimal cost.]
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man sig
---
the pen is mightier then the sword. the sword is mightier then the court. the court is mightier then the pen.
sig:
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
Don't people pay for cable TV too? And they have just as many ads as broadcast television, and just as stupid.
That doesn't mean it's good. It only means that people can't do anything about it and are forced to put up with it.
I don't deny you your right to watch ads if you want to. In fact, it's nice to be able to sift through ads -- when you want to -- to find something.
But give me a Tivo. Or said differently, when people do have a choice not to watch ads, or a technological solution, they'll take it. Too bad Tivo's aren't so cheap as to be considered a common accessory to television. Wonder what will happen when technology makes it cheap enough to buy Tivo-type devices for, say $99?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
So what happens when it is legislated that thou shalt not circumvent advertising?
low-down, dirty, communist hackers.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I don't really disagree with most of your post, but I think we're talking about two different things. You're saying that banner ads are never going to work because the expectations are wrong (ie, not like magazine ads) and because they're poorly targeted. I'm talking about what will have to take place in order to get banner ads merely to the level of print ads, which can't be clicked at all (barring some demonic CueCat like device), and can only be targeted to general readership.
However, I do disagree with your claim that ads don't work because the web is like a big phone book. Parts of the web are like a phone book - much of the rest is like a magazine, and ads in magazines seem to work just fine. My point wasn't that people will never respond to ads on the web, no matter how well targeted, polite, and well crafted they are. I suspect that people will respond to ads once they improve that far, although never to the "click-through" level advertisers seem to be looking for. And for even that gain, it'll be likely to take a new generation of display technology - and restraint on the part of advertisers - to get us there.
I was just adjusting my user preferences (some AC has been acting up again), and I saw that you could adjust the posting preferences -- the format for your post. There was HTML Formatted, Plain Text, and "Code". (There were a few others, too.)
I don't quite know what it does, perhaps you've already tried it. But I just wanted to point out that it does exist.
BTW, I'm going to give the code a try. Thanks.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Oh, you don't have the time either? Quit lecturing.
It costs money to keep up good web sites, especially dynamic sites like news sites. Either you are going to have payments per story, monthly subscriptions, or ads. The ads will get harder and harder to avoid. Redirects to ads served off a server near or the same as the content server are hard to block.
Of course you can disable your browser. If you really hate graphical ads you can go to lynx and deal with text based ads. Do you really hate ads that much? If you watch TV or listen to the radio you are already dealing with ads. What makes the web different?
-- soldack
niceFire.com - Humor and Lego's or Lego's and Humor or Some Combination of
I agree that flipping text into banners or popups are a big lose. Instead, advertising networks should be moving into audio and video ads in streaming media. That's going to be the only (halfway) reasonable way to present in-context advertising.
I understand that these people need to be reimbursed - but I think micropayment is a MUCH better option than intrusive, high-bandwidth ads.
Yahoo does this to a degree, but not to the degree they need to. Every single ad has to be relevant to every single piece of content.
I went to Yahoo and searched for "Eminem" and was rewarded with a banner ad for ink jet labels. Now see, that's wrong. About half of the searches I did turned up ads relevant to the content. That's good -- but not good enough. If I were in their shoes, and not beholden to the financial communities that they are surely beholden to, I would GIVE AWAY advertising until every single ad was relevant to the content. I find an asparagus wholesaler and give them ad space for searches for asparagus. It would increase the worth of the rest of Yahoo's ad space by more than double!
Here on /. the ads are the one thing that is not editorially controlled, i.e., the Slashdot community has no say as to what ads appear up there. Now see, that's wrong. Sure we understand the reason for it, and since advertisers here probably desperately want to appeal to the /. community, /. ads are better than 99% of the ads out there. But we are here for the community, and since the ads are not a part of the community, there is a significant disconnect going on.
Furthermore, interstitials and the like are part of the traditional media thinking -- again! -- that the web is like TV. Every single time they think like that, they fall flat on their faces.
Lastly, the value of sponsorship has not been explored. In the olden days of the US, every mom and pop store had a sign that was half theirs, half Coca-cola's. Fifty years later, those signs are almost all gone but they're still a cultural icon. Similarly, Nike should be spending a million bucks to sponsor kids' soccer league web sites. They could give away hosting space and the web tools needed to make such sites look good.
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In a related press release, AOL (NYSE:AOL) today announced that all customers who visited their astrology forums would be automatically signed up for the superstitials.
BTW, a here's a better link to the article, without the annoying popup window ad.
--
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
And they think TV ads aren't ignored? Bah! I ignore them all the time, including the money begging on (formerly non-commercial) public TV. The big difference here is that TV has totally saturated the mass market, and regular use of the Internet is still done mostly by the more intellectual, who don't succumb to these ads.
TV is also different in the sense that you intend to "participate" without any control. It's fed to you in time sequence, and a chance to take a bathroom break, or grab another cold one, is appreciated. The web lets you do those things any time you want. A banner and a couple boxes here and there don't bother anyone as they are easy to ignore. Popups will be bad, but only until everyone figures out how to prevent them (it won't be all that long, either).
Maybe it's time for sales people to realize they have to be kindler and gentler, or else it's just not going to work out for them. We will prevail.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The reason people mind having pop ups and other interactive stuff happen while they are browsing and interrupt their activities, but don't bat an eye when it happens on the radio or television is because a radio or television is not capable of doing anything but blindly pouring forth some streamed content from elsewhere. On the other hand, a computer is an active piece of hardware. It is in essence running a program that is basicly hostile to the individual user, even if for economic reasons it's necesary. Even users who don't understand at the technology level seem to have an instinctive grasp of the idea that the advertisement is _taking control away_ from the user, very much against the whole philosophy of the personal computer movement. Some program, set up by some nameless entity at the other end of a communication line, with some obvious ulterior motive is taking control of the user's own PC, which they payed damn good money for so they would have control of their own machine. How does that sit with the individual?
I think that the way to handle this is just the way it's handled in print... Have you ever picked up a copy of the New York Times Magazine, the glossy insert they have on sundays, right? Okay, if you go look for the cover story which is usually about 10-12 pages long... Instead of being in one 12 page block, it's spread out in 1 or two page blocks, interspersed with the high-paying glossy two-page-spread ads for cars and expensive designer clothes, etc... If you want to follow the cover story from page to page, you have to thumb through multiple pages of ads, and to keep you from seeking to the correct page, the pages with ads are not numbered...
Some sites already do this, they will have an article split up into several pages of html with larger than banner ads in between sections of text, and it works fine. It's just like reading a magazine. Anything more intrusive or active than what's done in print will perminantly scare off users.
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Play Six Pack Man. I
In the article a Michael Tchong is quoted:
"Rudely interrupted? Hey, we do that with radio, we do that with any serially served medium...It's accepted in other media because they grew up with it"
That's as may be for other media, especially where the technology involved is an on button and a volume control. But we haven't "grown up with it" on the web. In fact, advertising is generally so un-intrusive that it's ignored by most people. There are a number of usability and technical issues to be dealt with before intersitals become popular, let alone the standard method of advertising on the internet.
In the end it will come down to whether that kind of advertising becomes "accepted practice" like banner ads did. Some sites will try it, but unless big traffic sites (and I'm basically talking Yahoo and AOL here) start using them, so-called intersital advertising won't work.
my blog: good times, man, good times
If sites start putting in full ads before and after content, it should be pointed out that we're paying for the download of the ads. Might be fine if your on an unmetered system, but this still imposes an extra cost to the users.
If they're going to try to use the TV metaphor here, then it should be pointed out that technically TV is free (just raise an antenna to get a signal), were as this strikes me more of the junk fax type thing.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Here are some for Unix based Operating Systems. Here is one for Macintosh that still runs in OS 9.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Hopefully I'm right, because I can't see how web users will accept advertizing if it becomes so obtrusive as replacing content or a forced popup on page exit.
Sure advertizers may entice web sites to try these types of approaches if they pay enough, but I think the result will be people staying away in droves. There's enough choice of information sources on the web, that no-one has the monopoly power to force users to put up with crappy ad-laden web sites.
The other reason ads get ignored is because they are one of a dozen on a website. To kiss a little Slashdot ass here, at least their one banner ad per page pertains to the content and is the only one. I will never ever begrudge someone from making an honest living and support ads on websites so long as the website isn't one big billboard.
Why don't people click on banner ads? Because they have come to a website for the content and aren't interested in being sidetracked to a different site. If they are just surfing around, they might click on a banner ad but that also signifies they really aren't interested in making a purchase.
When I am shopping on the internet, I already know the sites I am comfortable buying from. Ads are more about awareness which is almost impossible to calculate the efficiency of. Just because I didn't click on the banner ad doesn't mean it didn't have an impact on me. When I started to explore tools for a professional content site, I recalled a banner ad for eGrail as seen here on Slashdot. I didn't originally click on the banner ad but only know about it because of the banner ad.
The same goes for many other banner ads I have seen.
Know, with that being said, I guarantee any website that superimposes ads on content or forces the surfer to click through the ad space to get to the content will suffer a dramatic decrease in traffic. Even if the content is golden, anything that complicates the now very simple process of getting that content now, will deter visitors.
The web is not TV. It is not a medium that gets fed to the people. Although it could be forced into that mold, it would be cutting off a significant portion of its potential. Because of that potential we must explore more passive ad placement, not more annoying ad placement.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
<sarcasm> /dev/audio is constantly playing Sibelius' symphonies -- you mean I might
actually have been missing some audio adverts? God forbid that I use my soundcard
for anything other than what the webmaster intended!!
Whoa?? You mean all this time I've been missing content from ad-filled webpages?? No wonder I find no interest in returning to those sites! My
</sarcasm>
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mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
Actually, squid can do some (all?) of these things. My former company used to use a squid proxy, and they'd configured it to automatically remove popups from a number of well known annoying sites (Tripod, GeoCities, etc.)
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Aw, c'mon guy's...pop up windows are the best platform-independent version of 'whack a mole' out there. I've gotten good at nailing them before the script can execute the next window pop.
Not only do they not realize that we have more control over the web, but do to technology we are gaining more control over Television also (you can almost hear the media cartels blanching).
Right now I will often video tape something, and do work, or play on the computer, just so I can zip through the comercials later, instead of being held captive by them. Alternatively I usually get a few pages read in whatever book I am reading, or I practice my flute, on the comercial breaks instead of watching them.
If I get a Tivo (which I have been concidering more and more each day), then I will only need to set it to pause for lets say ten minutes, and then watch it in a 'tape delayed' fasion where I can fast forward through the advertisements.
Right now TV advertisements have been getting more anoying and stupider with each passing year. The exceptions are usually sharp and funny, or at least considerable. How many people thought the Amazon.Com Acapella ad was cute the first time, but thats it? Now, how many would tune in the Snickers 'voting booth' ad that was a dead-on satire of both candidates and kept me laughing as much as Comedy Central's "InDecission 2000" election coverage?
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
We're there already. But its not even a few lines of a song that people are singing.
Its... "Wazzzzzzzzzzzzuuuuuuuuuup?"
Baz
These people believed that, due to the few available options, they would gain some marketshare. Well.. The truth is that people seem to dislike ads. and this whole concept turned out to be a failure. Remember; here we are only talking 2 parties; one big (expensive) monopoly and one (cheap) firm who finances a lot with ads.
The Internet is a totally different story. When I go to Google and search for something chances are that I get a "zillion" results (esp. with the more popular items which will function as a magnet for ads). In other words; much more competition. If one site would start this webspam and another won't then I think I know the outcome. So its either all or nothing, and I truly do not see that happening. Unless they completely band together but... on the Internet? I don't think so Tim ;-)
I would gladly pay 2 cents to read the article immediately via an efficient micropayment system. However, I will not waste 2 to 5 minutes signing up to read the article for free. My time is more valuable than that.
And really easy to stop visiting web sites that use obnoxious techniques for displaying ads. Once visitation metrics start plummeting, the ads causing this change in behavior will disappear.
Why is the web different from radio or TV in this respect? Because audience behavior is so easily quantified.
Either that or they'll lobby for laws that make circumvention of adverts illegal...
;P )
At least here in the good ol' United (Corporate) States of America...where the almighty dollar buys anything - even laws.
(No...I'm not bitter or anything
I think you're missing the point - which is that anythig that is a barrier to content, makes it more likely that said content won't be seen.
;) ) - and again, I've avoided the ads.
Content is what keeps people coming back. It's what's made the 'Net so popular, and what has kept it going. It's what the 'Net was made to convey.
Now - if you start sucking up bandwidth and time with super-obtrusive ads that can't be ignored - not only will bandwidth usage skyrocket (inflating 'net access costs along the way) but people WILL NOT feel obligated to buy your product. They'll be pissed that it took them another 1-5 minutes (depending on connection type) to access what they wanted to see.
People keep saying that it's "just like TV" to do this - I hate to bust bubbles, but it isn't -- I can turn on the TV at 8:00 - watch until 8:10 - turn off the TV for 3.5 minutes (7 30 second ads) - turn it back on, and watch till 8:20 - lather, rinse, repeat - and avoid 90% of the ads (I realize that this isn't an EXACT schedule - I'm just using it as an example).
I could also flip the channels as soon as an ad comes on, and watch something else for a couple of minutes (that's how we originally found Iron Chef
What they're proposing for 'net ads are COMPLETELY different - they subvert focus from your browser window (in the case of popups) [TV analogy: I turn to Food Network, the TV goes to Ad Channel 4 instead, until I change the channel a SECOND time], keep you from closing your browser (in the case of on-exit scripts) [TV analogy: I turn my TV off, but it instead changes to Ad Channel 2 - I again try to turn it off, and it instead changes to Ad Channel 5, ad nauseum], or worse, force you to view the ad before seeing the content (in the case of "interstitials") [TV analogy: I turn my TV to the SciFi channel, and it instead turns to Ad Channel 8 for 2 minutes, then changes to my desired channel].
The more barriers there are to the content, the more people who will simply get fed up with it and go elsewhere. I'm one of those people. Companies who use these forms of ads won't get my eyeballs. They'll get my anger and resentment.
Of course, I can't simply bash the concept without offering an alternative. Micropayment CAN work - they just have to figure out a way to do it right. People wouldn't mind paying a TINY payment to download their mp3s or read commercial news articles.
I won't lie - Free (speech) sites would always come first - but I definitely wouldn't mind a small payment for decent content.
adds a whole new meaning to the phrase ad nausium...
[...] said Peter Petrusky, the director of new media at PricewaterhouseCoopers. But with some of these new ad formats, he said, "There's a level of intrusiveness that advertisers and publishers are going to have to manage."
Spoken like a true marketing type. How about the level of intrusiveness as it relates to the marketees? Marketing as it exists today is like feeding a city's population by dropping 1,000,000 lbs. of food all over their houses. The smart marketers of the future that actually want to make money will find a way to help them to the grocery store.
--
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
The situation with advertisement gets really comical. From one side, advertisement is meant to sell you something, i.e., to convince you that advertised product is better than alternative. Or it meant to make you consider buying this product, i.e., to convince you it's something good.
On the other hand, most people are really annoyed with current advertisement, and are actively seeking means to get rid of tehm, either with mental measures (such as ignoring all content that looks like banner or advertisement) or passive filtering (switching channel on TV, scrolling down web page, turning off the radio, turning the page of the newspaper) or active filtering (TiVo, junkbuster proxies, Mozilla image loading settings, spam filters). So, advertisement agencies become engaged in war with the same people they have to please and make them love the advertized material. What do you think average user will think when new wave of the advertisement appears and he'll be unable to block them? "Oh, they do it so good that I must buy it?". Hell no. The reaction will be "I need better protection measures, those spammers got me again".
So, the question is - why businessmen continue to pay advertisers to wage war on consumers? Shouldn't they instead vote with their money for more consumer-friendly (and less annoying) ways of advertising? I don't believe that it's impossible to find - if people are able to make 1Ghz processors and Mars landers, why aren't they able to think out advertizement that won't be hated by the consumers? The only thing needed for that is active wallet-voting from the side of the advertisers.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Yes, we have more control, but the general public doesn't. The average slashdot reader is well aware of the various filtering proxy options, even if we choose not to use them. All this is likely to do is tip the balance between using a proxy and not using one. For the general public, however, the issue isn't so clearcut. The only option they have is to not go to sites with annoying ad content. That may in itself be enough to prevent it becoming widespread, but I suspect not. Never underestimate the stupidity of the masses. After a while, the majority of the content will be presented with annoy-ware ads, so they'll accept it as the norm.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Advertising is very tricky stuff, and it's easy to let the technicals get in the way of the underlying principles. The purpose of advertising is to help a business (or other interest) reach their intended market with information on why their goods or services will be of value to members of that market. For this to be effective, you have to:
Targeting an ad can be very difficult, and sometimes the placement of the ad can not only destroy the positive value of the ad -- it can make it negative. Examples that come to mind of unwise placements include beer commercials in the middle of a Mormon Christmas Special (not to say that non-Mormons wouldn't be watching it, but, still, you're hitting a market that's largely uninterested in your product -- a football game would be better), or ads for feminine hygiene products during the Super Bowl (which has happened).
Different media have a different nature when used for advertising. Print media have the options of display ads distributed through the content of the magazine or newspaper, or classified ads that are less expensive, more dense, and easier to search if you're seeking a specific kind of product or service, all of which are easily ignored by a determined reader, yet which can be very effective at putting the information you need in the hands of your potential market. Radio and TV ads replace the content of the station which are broadcasting them, providing a higher chance of attention to a given ad than in print, but facing hard limits on how much advertising can be done on a specific station.
The web is a different kind of place. It is inherently non-linear and unorganized (although it can be linearized in places, and is also organizable to some degree). Advertising models based in print have proven more applicable than radio/tv ads, because the web remains inherently a text/document based medium (albeit hypertext). Trying to ignore that nature isn't likely to prove all that effective -- in part, because of the technical work arounds which would inevitably pop up, and which are already being discussed around here.
I think it'd be helpful if web advertisers reviewed exactly what they're trying to accomplish in their advertising, and get more realistic about what is likely to happen. Putting an ad on a popular site isn't necessarily going to result in a boatload of hits from people in your potential market. And hits don't always turn into sales by any kind of linear relationship (where more hits means necessarily more sales). Ultimately, you have to view each advertisement as an opportunity, and you'll have to have a way to determine whether the cost of that opportunity is justified by its yeild or not. Very basic stuff, but it seems to be missing in the "put up an ad and get rich" expectations people are having.
The web is not inherently about business or business opportunities. It's about sharing information, some of which will be about business and products and services, and it's based in the idea of freedom for the web user. When people find that they can't get what they want on the web without having to go through advertising they don't wish to see, they will stop coming, and the value of the web will diminish. This is a goose laying golden eggs, friends -- let's please not kill it.
Hmm...
If a url redirected to an ad, and then to the real content? If this became widespread, I would whip up a java servlet that would parse the ad page and get the real page, returning it to me. Yeah, there's probably much neater/faster ways to do it, but Apache and JServ are free, and I know how to use them.
Of course, by the time I'd gotten around to doing this, someone else will have already done it in a much neater and faster fashion, so I'll just use that. This would be a white-hat hack. How long do you think it would take a benevolent hacker to work something like that out?
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
Actually, I don't think everything should be free. I pay for HBO. I subscribe to quite a few magazines, and even Consumer Reports web site (which only charges you if you access it). Charge me 10 cents, or a quarter every time I read an article, or better yet, charge me that for every day I access it, which is a fairer standard.
It's a measure of intrusiveness. Here I am, doing something, and it's interrupted by a pop-up. For example, SciFi channel tries to make their commercial endorsements part of the content, and even will go looong stretches without advertising. CNN (not the web site) throws out advertising when something interesting happens. They realize that sometimes the revenue generation methods must sometimes take a back seat.
It's the commercial-channel metaphors (ABC, NBC, CBS) that provide the most advertising, the most intrusive advertising, and the least content. Channels like Comedey, Cartoon, HBO, SciFi, all are somehow making money, but I mind their commercials less, the commercial placement less, and enjoy the experience more.
As for adverts in print, I never look at the ones in newspapers. Some of the ones in magazines, I look at. As for blow cards and tear-outs, I go through a magazine, remove them all, then begin reading. Blow-cards = pop-ups = intrusive.
I quite realize these companies need to make a profit. But selling advertising space isn't the be-all end-all method of making money. I know that, with print, my subscription really just pays for creation and delivery, but that advertising pays for writer/editor salaries.
Okay, I turned Javascript off... Now I can't access my bank (Anouther rant, I used to turn javascript off after their check and everything worked, not nothing works because they changed things for no good reason)
Come to think of it, the only time I'm not using lynx is when the site requires java, javascript, or images. I've accually seen one site that required javascript and could not possibably achive the intended result with out it. (Some sort of reaction time test done by a psycologist). Otherwise images are the only useful thing about netscape.
That might be an interesting idea to have sites such as slashdot charge say $5.00 for a year's subscription in exchange for no ads. It should be easy to setup. Just add in a field on everyones account "ads-enabled:0" who subscribed. Then it would pull up the page w/o ads. Of course, for $5.00 I would expect more than just "no ads" but I'm not sure yet what more I would want. Maybe an email alias at slashdot.org or something.
What do you guys think?
witty sig goes here
Internet junkies make great haste in ranting about banner ads, popups, etc. but as usual, noone can provide an alternative. What will we all do when Google goes down because they cannot stay alive without pop-up ads? How many people here would pay for search engine access? Or Slashdot?
Generally, the most vehement opponents of banner ads also won't pay for subscription services either. Much of the internet can remain free, but the NYT won't run their site if they cannot get either subscriptions, revenue, or ads. I think that the pay-per-page approach is viable. I would pay 1 peso to see that article on NYT. I can subscribe with some service who bills me monthly, or maybe via my ISP, so that NYT doesn't have to know my info (or wastefully bill me every month for 5cents).
http://404.cjb.net/ is the worst. Not only does it have TWO popup ads, but it asks you if it wants to be your start page.
Quite possibly the most annoying 404 banner ad I've ever seen. All it needs is a Java applet and some MIDI music playing.
As a plugin writer, I rely on the onload and onunload events for serialization of my code (in some instances), so "whacking" these events may not be a good idea. It would probably be better to have an option where you could disable events selectively.
No group in the history of mankind, (NOT the Wrestler,) has been as annoying, ineffective and as perversely pernicious as advertisers.
Their most effective techniques come from "The Triumph of Will" and other Nazi propaganda films by Lenni Rifenstahl. Those didn't sell anything, they grabbed you by your emotions and wrung your brain out until you'd swallow anything, including justification for euthenasia and genocide.
We REALLY have to improve search engines until their effectiveness can be demonstrated to be better than the noisy dross people are trying to full up our screens with. If the search engines are so desperate for revenue, and they are, why don't they try micro-payment adn set up an indexing service which would review pages and categorize them. I'd pay a nickel a search for the information I want and NOT what somebody wants to shove into my eyeballs.
The Web is a terrible place to advertise but until you can show something more effective, you're going to have these morons selling inappropriate use of the 'net and the web to other morons who are just reiterating their desperate efforts to perperuate themselves. (And annoying the crap out us all. in the process)
I stopped watching TV two years ago because I just couldn't be bothered to sit through 18 minutes of ads to be subjected to 42 minutes of product placement masquarading as content every hour.
I don't visit sites that carry advertising beyond my tolerance level. I no longer go to AltaVista, AskJeeves and several other sites because they're just junk, noise and dross.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
>>advertising is fundamental to the way that the internet has grown during the previous few years
Yeah, that's why the Net sucks so hard now. I probably haven't just surfed for the adventure of it in over a year. I have a couple dozen sites bookmarked because they contain something useful or entertaining in a bearable format. I look at about 6 of them on a daily basis. The rest is just too painful to endure.
Banner ads are mostly OK, but I couldn't count the sites that I've backed off of because the animation in the banner sucked all of the BW so that I never got the rest of the page. When advertisers learn to provide useful information about their product in a non-irritating way they will start to see a lot more return.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
The story mentions a 12% clickthru rate on the TacoBell interstitial that ran for a while last year on some site or another. The story also mentions that Unicast requires a "close" button on every interstitial. Now imagine if you could "close" commercials and move right on to the remainder of your programming. Would you watch any commercials?
I daresay that their 12% clickthru rate will drop to 0.12% with the combination of proxies and user intervention. Web users are not TV-watching couch potatoes, as they become experienced, they become more interactive, not less. And the more advertising interferes with their browsing, the more they will "interact" by finding a way to filter the annoyance.
Heck, the remote control proved that was even true with couch potatoes. Advertizers had to force TV stations to synchronise their commercial breaks in order to guarantee revenue for the slots. And now there's Tivo...
As information technology improves, there's going to come a point where the user has enough control to avoid the advertising he or she doesn't want to see. The only advertising a user will see is that which he or she has subscribed to. Therefore, advertisers would be smart if they started now figuring out how to make advertising that we want to see, instead of forcing interruptions upon us. You'll know we're there when an advertiser sues for the right to force their message upon some audience or another...
I can see the fnords!
The nice thing about having a slow modem connection, is that you can close pop-ups before they actually display anything.
You can almost always deduce from the content on the main page whether or not the pop-up is useful. If the site is one you visit regularly, you get to know the "personality" of the site. For example, Intellicast pop-ups are never useful. When one appears, I dismiss it before it has any chance to display content.
That's not to say that all pop-up windows are bad. The online finance people seem to have the most useful pop-ups, but they are voluntary ones. Nasdaq's customizable ticker is a good example.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
> The problem with turning off Javascript is that some sites use
> Javascript legitimately.
Really? I have yet to meet one. The closest I've seen is a conference
registration that used it to come up wiht a subtotal. However, this could
have been done on the server as well.
With that half an exception, I have yet to see a use of javascript that
didn't boil down to advertising, laziness, incompetence, or showing off.
Plain and simply, if your site can't deliver its content (graphical
and sound content excepted, of course) under lynx, your site is wrong,
not the user's browser's capabilities.
Oh, and I have seen a single use of java that wasn't abusive, too--
it's an animation as part of a statistics text that repeatedly
draws a sample, showing hte results.
hawk
Are there any options in current web browsers that can disable things like "pop-ups" ? That shouldn't even be allowed. It's just not nice on your system. Maybe a Yes/No question? Now that we have some good open source browsers, we could always just hack it in if the developers never get around to it.
[X] - Always ask before opening a popup
"Question: This page is trying to open a new browser window, is this ok? [Yes,No,Always,Never]"
Perhaps the "Always" and "Never" options would be on a per-domain basis.
Just a thought.
-Justin
Yay! New technology! The constant flow of progress. For example, these new innovations help solve the problems of "Not enough annoying 'in your face' web content", "Signal/Noise ratio of web is too high", and "Surfing via modem is too blindingly fast".
[/sarcasm]
I suppose it's a lost cause, but I REALLY wish that advertisers would just give it up, and leave us in peace. Unfortunatly, what I see as a "advertisment-free sanctuary", they see as "an unexplored market demographic". And sadly, since they're the ones with the money, their vision wins out. Hmph. I think that when I get rich, and have made my millions, I'll pick couple hundred worthy websites, and offer to finance them so that they can dispense with the banner adds forevermore.
Have you ever found one of those sites that had content worth seeing, or even worth turning javascript on for?
hawk, who just managed to end a sentence with two prepositions
Possibly true. But the Internet grew up just fine w/o much commercial support. There are sites out there that exist w/o it, and would continue to exist w/o any prospect of commercial support. Despite the success it has brought and can bring many businesses, money is not the only motivation for putting stuff on the web.
The point is lost on some people, but maybe that's OK. It seems likely that the non-commercial portion of the web will remain that way no matter what the current ad-fad is. Then the ad monstrosities can be avoided and people can start looking at real information and Twinkie experiments -- what the web is REALLY about!
--
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
If I didn't post already, I'd mod you up :)
:) sick of these spoiled brats on here.
Preach on brutha
--
>
> I want at least
> A way to disable animations,
> A way to disable resizing, and
> A way to disable pop-up windows
> A way to disable any script when I exit the page
Based on how long it took Mozilla to add enough chrome to sink the Bismarck, and still managed not to include these, probably at least another three years, if ever. :-(
All I want from a browser is something that renders as fast as Netscape 3.01 did, and which allows has the four features the previous poster cited. Nuke "My Netscape", gimme "Toggle Javashit on/off". And gimme back the rendering engine from 3.01, 'cuz it's 10 times faster than the one from 4.x.
Look at half the stuff on CNN - instead of a link to an image, they require you to have javascript enabled so they can open a pop up window - that way you don't leave their site.
Sure, not just CNN, but lots of sites do this. I normally browse with javascript turned off. Sites that don't let me access content without javascript stop getting hits from me - I can find news, and pretty much any content I want, from a site that doesn't dictate to me what I have to do.
That includes javascript, cookies, etc. Slashdot is a great example of the right way to do it - cookies make it easier, but you don't NEED them enabled to access content.
----------
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Dogs is already as passe as the Budwiser frogs. (When I gave up on TV. Its great. Now I READ.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Sorry if I've rambled endlessly; the mention of preventing pop-ups reminded of the list I have here...
________________________________________________
suwain_2
With Yahoo's personal address feature, not only do you pay for the service, but you are required to advertise for them:
If I were to host my snowfox.net domain with Yahoo, every outbound message I send would still have those fucking advertisement footers attached that you get with the free service. They want you to pay to advertise for them . You cannot turn these off.
Frankly, if you can't tell, this pisses me off.
How long will it take until Mozilla and other open-source browsers have automatic filtering built in?
In the official source?
Mozilla development is paid for by Netscape+AOL+Time/Warner
Think about it.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
How hard is that? (well, for someone who already knows their way around the Mozilla code)
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
My idea would be to have the from page deleted from the history so that going back goes back to the last page you looked at, and going forward again skips the auto-forward page.
If the auto-forward page is reached from a bookmark perhaps the program should offer to fix your bookmark?
Unrelated, but I have always wanted buttons on the page that say "home" or "back" to work in the history, perhaps by having the browser search up the history for a match to any url it jumps to, and act as though the user selected that item off the history.
You'll find that the opinion on /. is that micropayments will work better than ads. I'm sure if you think about it for a second, you'll realize that Uncle Bob with his iMac wouldn't know how to fill out the form to even make a micropayment. Advertising for revenue does not require user interaction.. user interaction is something that many people who use the web have not quite mastered yet.
Plus the whole mentality of alot of people is that they shouldn't pay for anything (warez, mp3s, divx's) so I'm highly doubtful you'd find micropayments useful on a site with an audience that for the most part doesn't give a shit about the site administrators. Slashdotters scream micropayments in the same post as boycott the MPAA and RIAA (while downloading MP3s and DivX movies). I'm doubtful that most of these people will pay for anything. Yes yes, there are different ideologies behind the RIAA/MPAA thing and not paying for websites, but I'm betting that most people "boycotting" these entities are doing so because they can just get it for free.
I'm not boycotting the refridgerator industry if I don't buy a fridge and then go jack one from the local Sears after the store closes.
--
Why not add a feature when Javascript is turned off (or in a browser that does not understand Javascript at all) that looks for URL's in the Javascript and assummes that a click on that thing is a jump to that URL? This should not be hard and would make the WWW usable without Javascript.
I wrote the following on this. Basically said that the porn industry again leads the way.. You pay $30 or so a year (or even a month) for a block of web sites that subscribe to a given system. You could have themed setups, such as news organizations, geeky things (like slash, fresh meat, etc), general entetainment, etc. These organizations would compete for famed web sites, so web sites with a lot of fan fare would get to charge a lot of money for the access control providers, or cable blocks, whatever you want to call them. This undermines advertisements, but so does HBO nobody seems to fight them. A web site could still even have adds, but they just couldn't be obtrusive or real-estate stealing (as part of the agreement). Since this is something that would make web masters more happy than anyone else, I see it really only working as a consortium of web sites with tiered subscriptions. I'd gladly pay for garunteed uninterrupted slashdot viewing.. It already cuts deeply into my work time as it is.. If I had to spend an additional half hour on advertisements, there would be hell to pay (or worst case, the loss of my viewer ship). I suggested in my other article that advertisers should set up virtual malls with catchy themes such as the home shopping network (which actually seems more appropriate here). Things like price-watch work really well. Ironically, this could also be part of such a subscription service.. If people pay to use a shopping service, they'll be more likely to use it. There would be a consolidation of web sites, since those with high ratings would have more money, much like the TV industry. -Michael
-Michael
1) Java/Javascript allow this to happen, so turn it off
2) use junkbuster (http://www.junkbuster.com) to block ads from being downloaded
3) Turn off image loading.
Right-click blocking: Occasionally a banner ad will really start to tick you off, especially if it keeps coming from the same domain or URL. I'd like to be able to right click on it and choose "Block this URL", or "Block this (sub)domain" Or maybe just "Don't load any image that is placed right here."
Mozilla already allows you to block sites from loading images, in almost exactly this fashion. Right-click on the banner that you dislike, and choose 'Block image from loading' from the menu. This blocks all images from that site - fine for ads.doubleclick.net, etc. but it doesn't allow you to have a part-path yet - that may come. You can review which sites are currently blocked in the Image manager.
Firewall-like controls:I'd like to be able to tell Netscape/Mozilla to "block traffic from doubleclick.net", or whatever. I can do this if I mess with the firewall, but I'd rather leave it alone.
You can't block all traffic with Mozilla, but you can block the cookies from a site too. Enter the cookie manager and select the cookie you wish to remove. Check the 'Do not allow cookies from this site again' box and click 'Remove'. Of course this doesn't solve flash plugins or Javascript, but I'm fairly certain that as the need for these features grows, we'll see it added to the Mozilla codebase. At least with an open source project, adding this sort of functionality is possible.
I'm not about to state that Mozilla is the epitome of stability, but the number of crashes I have with build 2000121404 is none. But it's only been four days so far.
I also advocate running with Javascript off if you are visiting sites you suspect of useless popups.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
I hate pop-ups. I don't even look at what they are. If you can't have the navigation as part of the window, why bother?
And while I'm on a rant, don't check what resolution I'm running at, then resize my browser. Maybe I don't want to run my browser maximized.
Stop applying print and television metaphors to the web! It is a new medium. Break some ground! Do something interesting! Think out of your tiny little boxes! I don't want my browsing interrupted every three minutes for a one-minute advertisement, nor do I want only 21 minutes of content for every 30 minutes of air-time.
Mosaic, Netscape 3 and earlier, etc., have a window by window option for image loading, rather than having it buried in slow-loading preference windows that affect all windows. Also, you can use alt-I to cause them to load.
hawk
I like this product, and it's free for personal use, so I'll rant a minute:
One of the best tools for removing web advertising is Webwasher. Unfortunately, it's a Windows-only program, however it can serve as a proxy server, so you can still serve your Linux box.
Webwasher does some nice things which none of the 'nix tools yet do. It can filter out Javascript cued on opening/closing windows, remove pop-ups entirely, and reclaim space which would have been used by banner ads. It can even remove entire frames if it suspects that advertising was their only use. It also periodically updates its own block list if you allow it to.
As a plus, if you have a bizarre Microsoft Proxy Server in your office that isn't configured in a Linux-friendly manner, this is an excellent way of helping yourself out.
I've bought a couple things through slashdot banners.
I can't remember the last time I bought anything through the tube...or even the last time I watched TV.
Oh, it was about 6 weeks ago, and we watched a dvd, not broadcast.
This will do nothing but piss me off and give me a negative impression of the advertisers and site.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
NYTimes Channel Link1 8STEL.html
http://channel.nytimes.com/2000/12/18/technology/
To enable POP3 access, you have to allow Yahoo to drop advertisements in your mailbox. The paragraph of text you read before clicking to turn on the POP3 access explains this to you.
like adult sites currently do, with popup windows if you try to leave one, etc? This could get ugly. And even then, ad proxies won't help all that much - you'll still have to go to, say, doubleclick's site to continue to the rest of the content. I was getting annoyed at Wired et al for putting articles on multiple pages... this doesn't bode well for those who try it first.
That said, the biggest complaint that I have is that this invites dead links by the thousands to a web near you, as the ads get replaced and links to the rest of the content die. While we can't remove banner ads completely, destroying the ability to retrieve content is fundamentally against the spirit and character of the web.
If I want your web site to make noise, I'll lick my finger and rub it on the monitor.
No, I won't turn off my audio, because (you're right) audio feedback is important.
But I will - and have - nuked the .DLL Nutscrape uses for embedded MIDI files on my Windoze box.
Wake me when there's actually better advertising out there. (And no, the Times' Tide pop-ups don't count - they aren't very effective at all, and they're certainly annoying.)
sulli
RTFJ.
Remember what the Internet was like before the suits got to it? That's where we're headed again. The greedheads thought the Web was a Big Fat Golden Mountain, but it turned out there isn't much gold there after all. They will eventually go away. So what? There will still be plenty to see and do on the web, but it won't be VC-funded, subscription-funded, or advertising-funded. It will be grass-roots and hobbyist-powered, like the old days.
- Have a picture
You speak for me also.
Moz developers? Anyone getting this?
Finkployd
I think what a lot of the guys that are proposing these ideas don't realize is that there are easy ways around this stuff (we all know what they are, so I won't bother listing them). They have become so accustomed to the idea "Hey, if it works on TV, it'll work on the web" that they are missing the crucial difference between the two (i.e. we have a LOT more control over the way we browse than what we see on TV). This mindset has to change for web advertising to be successful, because let's face it, most of the time commercials suck. I guess I'll just have to keep waiting to see if anybody in ANY marketing department can come up with a good way to make money from the web.
You rush a Miracle Man, you get rotten miracles - Miracle Max, TPB
That might be their prediction, but I don't see that happening from a content-provider's perspective. I know that on my sites (at least one of my sites gets 2M impressions/month, no small potatoes), I would never subject my users to that. Neither would Slashdot, Wired, Freshmeat, Salon, Macintouch, or any other sites in this vein, I daresay.
The popularity of this format among some sites will not, I don't think, add up to web-wide interupptions. This is to say nothing of what I believe to be an inevitable consumer outcry; I know I'd refuse to sites that did any such thing. MSNBC.com pulled that on me once 2 years ago, and I (no kidding) haven't been back since.
-Waldo
I also really want a way of assigning a bundle of feature toggles to a single button (e.g. load images or not, allow ads/javascript or not). Opera has some (hard-coded) buttons that are very nice - one to load images when you press it, and another that used to render illegible pages readable by applying default formatting (until they broke this in 4.0...).
Would somebody who knows Mozilla be interested in writing a patch that eliminates the window.onload and window.onclose events and whacking the window.open function? Yeah, it'll break a couple of pages... w00p. Ideally, it'd be a pref. For extra bonus points, only allow window.open when it's in a javascript link that I clicked on, since the rare site does actually use that.
These simple measures would make the web a lot more pleasent to use.
As an unrelated comment... does the web really have the "usability" reserves to pull stunts like this? A normal user might not actually close windows, but allow them to float to the back. How are 'normal' users going to feel when they wonder why their computer is so sluggish while browsing, so they close the browser, only to discover 40 windows frantically flashing advertising and "special offers" at them? How many people will be chased away by these policies?
At least banners were more-or-less unobtrusive... of course, that's their main crime, isn't it? Not obtrusive enough. Sickening.
Micropayments can work both ways. "Site pays User" models are sorta dying out. The reverse " User pays Site" are not really in use yet, but those that are trying to back digital music/movie/book distrubtion with a fair payment going to the artist are pushing micropayments such that every time you played a song via streaming from a site, for example, you'd pay 2 or 3 cents for that (put on a tab of course). This really hasn't taken hold yet either.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I rather doubt this is going to work well at all. People are getting used to freely available information, and they are not going to react well to this annoying stuff.
Hotwired tried interstitial ads way back (1997?) and they bombed bad. Lasted about a month at best, then they had to abandon that idea. We all know how much we *love* popup ads, so that's not going to please anyone.
In short, who is going to buy stuff from people who do this? Not me. I mean, I get amused by TV ads sometimes, but usually I *change the channel*. In an ADD-obsessively-hyperactive world, that impulse will be that much stronger.
So, in short: nice idea, won't work.
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
Without effective online advertising techniques, no advertiser would pay to place ads online. Without ads, there would be little or no free content on the Web. Sure, we complain about being bothered by online ads, but what's the alternative? Paying for every piece of online content we access?
It's at junkbuster.com.
-schussat
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
This is the key to making ads go away. It really doesn't matter in what format ads on the web take, if people ignore them and don't buy products/services from online advertisers, then the ads will be deemed ineffective. Marketers may spend endless amounts of time and money to ram ads down your throat, but clients won't. Banner ads are a money pit, we tell all our clients that...but really most of them know it already before they ask. IMHO I don't think online advertising has much time left in this world. Pay for play will take its place.
/."
"I'm not a bitch, I just play one on
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
They're trying to change your behavior to force you into the old model they're used to.
I would agree with this and I think the model they're use to is return on their dollar and that isn't holding true for web advertising : $1000 in advertising is not equalling $1001 in additional profits. As bizarre as it might seem, television commercials have been proven to work: Put a name in someone's head and they might give it a second chance at the super market. Namespace is a very confounding thing but it's so true : Put your name in people's minds and they're more likely to buy your product or services (it's like the old "any advertising is good advertising" motto). Remember that while the net started off as the realm of the intellectual elite, it is now the domain of every facet of society, so the advertising is going to evolve into the standard namespace advertising.
Having said that do you really think advertising in the way you mention would work? Remember that advertising is a science as much as it's an art : These people know what they're doing. They study and research and follow and test. They analyze the impace of every type of image, colour, sound, etc. If there was an ad saying "IBM Deskstar 9ms 7200RPM ATA100 - Fast!" I wouldn't even notice it...and that's the problem that advertisers are finding : People simply don't notice ads on the net. On TV the ad takes over the TV (they've been trying other things...during a F1 race last year they tried doing a thing where they had side screen ads with the race still running : I TOTALLY didn't notice the ad while trying to concentrate on the race, and I'm sure they found this to be universally the case as they never did it again) so you can't help but notice it. Hell advertisements are some of the best things on TV (see http://www.adcritic.com) but it's because we give them a chance in the first place. Banner ads don't get a chance on the web. Hell on Slashdot I scroll down so quickly I never have a clue what the ads are. I think once there was one about a penguin stepping on Redmond but that's the only one I've ever noticed.
A large part of the "freedom" of the internet, in my opinion, stems from the fact that anyone right now can stake a claim and put up a homepage (on geocities, or whatever) or sit in their room and hack away and make a website (like I did.)
My site is a bit of an exception to the rule, since it actually has money based on donations (and ad banners, which bring back a bit of money.)
The thing is, the money to supply the hardware and bandwidth has to come from SOMEWHERE. Before commercial interest in the net came to be, it was quite a pain in the ass to set up a decent website, and you had to drop money out of your own pocket most of the time. The only exception was acadamia, which was funded by tuition anyway.
I remember having my dinky homepage with 1MB of space that I payed $20 a month for. Now I can put up a larger site for free if I look around, or, if I can get the hits, I can break even on advertising some of the time if I'm using the right amount of bandwidth/ad displays if I wanted to run a more complex, database driven site.
I'm annoyed by banner ads and commercialization just as much as everyone else. There's probably a better model for revenue, but people shouldn't bitch because nobodys thought of one as of yet.
Sure, if all commercial interests in the web vanished tommorow we'd lose priceline.com and nytimes.com, but we'd also probably lose sites like stileproject and x-entertainment, who are run by dudes with nothing better to do, but need ad money to keep them going.
--
I never buy stuff with logos. I do wear logo stuff if it was given to me for free... and I don't have anything else clean to wear. My only exception is maybe shoes, and even then, I go for the subtle stuff.
In one sense you're sort of delcaring your "tribe" by wearing logo'ed products. As far as I'm concerned, if you're paying Nike to advertise Nike products, you are part of the stupid tribe.
And where do you get an honest opinion about which product might be best for you needs? That never comes from an advertiser.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
I can see the next wave of windoze ad-blocking proxies now... free popup/interstitial/superstitial ad blocking software, suppported by banner ads... ugh.
Sean
While I don't like banner ads, popup ads, or even advertising on television or the radio, the people who provide the content that you rely on (for example I have no problem with the banner ad on Slashdot here. If I had some moral objection I simply WOULDN'T COME TO SLASHDOT. It would be moral theft to use Slashdot's hardware and programming without allowing them a chance at financial returns) have to make money (hell most of them are begging only to make enough to not go under next month...let alone the idea of profit). Even if it's Jim Bob running a moderately successful fanzine co-location or a high speed connection doesn't come for free, neither does the hardware that he's running it on, neither does the electricity that it's using, etc. You may not like advertising but if you're looking for someone else for info, entertain, or enlighten you then stick to the .edu domains (where you're still paying for it through taxes) or realize that people have to survive.
It seems like an awful lot of people out there are of the mindset that they should be getting everything for nothing : The world owes them. Warez software while claiming that open source is the wave of the future, all the while giving pathetic excuses about how software companies make too much money anyways. Warez MP3z all the while talking about the evil music industry and how mainstream music sucks (What's that? Make your own music and provide it to the world for free? NO WAY MAN!). DeCSS DVD's while claiming that the evil movie empire makes crappy movies anyways (What's that? Make your own movies or actually watch independant "Free" movies? NO WAY MAN!).
Capitalism is a funny and remarkable thing and it's very unfortunate that it is put into such a bad light (usually by ignorant youth who have neither the experience nor the wisdom to have the slightest idea what they're talking about, but they're looking for some anti-mainstream platform to try to differentiate themselves). Instead of chickens and wheat being traded back and forth we pass around dollars. You do something that I want : I pay you for it. I do something you want : You pay me for it. There is nothing evil about that system, and in fact it is remarkably fair and workable quite frequently. Advertisers sort of confused the situation by saying "We'll pay for the service you want hoping to get you to buy our service over our competitors". That's how NBC, ABC, CBS, etc. work. Advertisers are trying to apply the same fundamentals to the web but unfortunately technology is denying them the value that they are paying for (again they are paying for a service that YOU are using), so they're trying to change the model. Makes sense to me for the free world to continue to exist.
Having said all that I really think a lot of the web will be reverting to a pay structure soon, and personally I'm looking forward to it. If I could pay a good, very high quality, good research technology paper $40 a year or whatever to have access to knowledgable articles that are up to date and frequently changed (there used to be lots of these but they're all finding that the advertiser supported model simply doesn't work on the web where there are so many cheats), I would do that in a minute. Of course a bunch of socialist, no-clue-what-they-talking about little fucks would undoubtably start ripping content and posting it somewhere else all the while talking about how the model doesn't work (which is akin to throwing firebombs into old age homes and saying that a non-police state just doesn't work). My company would pay $X a year to have corporate access to something like Deja news, or even something like Google. Again we realize that these things cost a lot of money to run, and they're providing us a great service, so if they need that model to survive then I would absolutely support them.
Or at least that's my take no things. The irony is that like government services, it all costs you in the end. Advertisers have to recoup the cost in their products for the services that they paid for for you so it's all the same anyways. Alas.
I want I want I want micropayments. I would gladly pay $0.02 to read the NYT article, if that is how much they are getting from an advertiser for showing those nasty giant banner ads on the sides. As it is it is easy to ignore banners, but that is no way to make money on the web. So the content providers obviously need money, I just hate the way they do it...Ah, well. Since most of us don't want to spend hundreds a month on web page viewing, ads will continue, I just with they weren't so evil. Salon.com gets it right -- they have a bunch of those stupid links in the story itself, eg "View these sites with SafeWeb" or "Backflip this page." I get the feeling that many more people will be turning off JavaScript now...
And it's akin to IP. You don't really have a right to dictate to a content provider whether or not they choose ads, barring a contract granting you those rights. You have no "right" to force, say, Yahoo!, to stop airing ads; they're the content provider, not you. They were never even obligated to create the site, let alone follow your specifications.
You're free to design your own ad-free portal serving e-mail and other services to hundreds of thousands at your own leisure. You can ask it of Yahoo!. But you have no right to compel them, any more than they can compel you to visit their site.
For now, you're legally free to block their ads via proxies and so forth, or even editing the source of a free browser and using that. But Yahoo!'s owners -- its shareholders -- have the final say on whether or not ads will be there.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I've been wondering recently why ads in print media continue to be used, while "banner" ads in online media are universally decried as ineffective and ignored by consumers.
Look at your average full-screen pop-up. Now look at your average full-page print ad. Notice the similarity?
Banners are "decried as ineffective" because click-through rate (the most commonly used statistic) is not a reliable indicator of the effectiveness of an ad. I've recently seen banners that make no attempt to build a brand; they don't even give the name of the product or company. The real power in advertising comes in building the brand in viewers' subconscious minds.
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I want at least
A way to disable animations,
A way to disable resizing, and
A way to disable pop-up windows
A way to disable any script when I exit the page
All of this configurable in general, and specifically for each site!
In Murphy We Turst
For ad blocking, I heartily recommend Guidescope. Here's a company that respects people's privacy, provides a great service, and has a program that actually works--cross platform, cross browser.
Incidentally, one of the great ironies of being in the ad blocking market is that you're assured that when you advertise it targets only those people who don't already have your product.
--
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Very very simple point:
/interesting/, and the advertising must offer value. A better model for advertising would be interactive-advertising whereby the advertiser offers a small service (sports scores to a cell phone, contest entries, etc) right from the banner (or whatever you want to call the advertising content space.)
.. those people with 'content-for-free' demands are living in a dreamworld. We all work for companies, and our companies rely on advetising, in whatever form, to be able to print your paycheque, so you can browse the web in your spare time and check out sites that are kept in business by advertising ... etc, etc.
Sites are kept alive by advertising. (slashdot included.)
Advertisers will stop paying for banner ads.
Advertising isn't going away.
The suggestions made in this article may or may not work, but they miss the point:
Advertisers have to find a way of making advertising
Anyhow, its not going away
http://www.mp3.com/subatomicacorn
"Old man yells at systemd"
why should an ad be there, I already pay to use the internet.
You pay to use an Internet connection; the advertising pays for the content on that connection. All content created on or after January 1923 (pretty much everything on the Web except Project Gutenberg) is under perpetual copyright; somebody needs to pay royalties for the content.
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The real problem is that people want to advertize, and they're going to keep trying to think up ways of doing so to keep one step ahead of the blockers. The real danger is that the ultimate in advertizing is not far away: product placement. Of course with media conglomeration this is already at least somewhat underway, but it's only going to get worse. How long is it going to be until web sites start incorporating ads for their commercial partners into the main content of their pages? I guess that search engines are already well down that road, from Google's "sponsored link" to goto.com's outright selling of placement to many other search engines' more insidious under-the-counter acceptance of pay for better search results. How long until other web sites start similar practices?
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
I look through the forum here, and I can see a bunch of people who have obviously never run a professional website.
This thing you call the Internet, while yes, originally came about because of hackers and geeks, thrives today not only because of them, but because of invested capital in companies based upon projected profits from advertising. This is the case with not just e-commerce sites but many sites that you probably use daily and take for granted that they exist.
I'm so tired of people bitching about advertising on the internet. Yes, you can ignore it. You can turn off javascript, and outside banners, or whatever. That's fine and good, but it's also pretty damn inconsiderate when you realize that while it is an annoyance, it is what is driving the people (alot of the time) to keep the site running.
I run a site that has a very promising future. I posted an article on k5 about it, and it was completely bashed because the site has banner ads. I was shocked at how naive everyone was about the magnitute of revenue ads generate and their purpose. Bandwidth isn't free. Hardware isn't free. My ad revenue doesn't even get mailed to me, it gets mailed to my provider since they're DONATING bandwidth since they have so much faith in my site and are LOSING money because of it.
Once again, the geeks come out in droves and show me how spoiled they are. This Internet revolution is possible not only because of the software and design, but because of the money that's been dumped into it as well.
--
The argument could be made that this kind of advertising is an unauthorized use of your computing resources.
Until every site out there starts including a EULA stating that by entering their domain, you give your explicit permission for them to transmit and display ads in your browser. Blocking, or otherwise interfering with the transmission or display of such ads is illegal under the Digital Millenium Advertisers Revenue Protection Act, and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and fines of up to $25,000 per offense. Additionally, trafficking in programs designed to steal revenue from advertisers via blocking or otherwise interfering with the transmission or display of advertisements is illegal under section 12.4(b) of the DMARPA, and is punishable by up to 8 years in prison and fines of up to $75,000 per offense.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
sorry but if I don't want to watch ads on TV I can either change channels or turn the thing off. Thus, me filtering ads cannot and will not be against the law. They can send all the ads they like but I don't have to read them. Thank god they cannot force that on us :)
Well, for your information, amazon.com uses pop-up ads. And I believe amazon.com is supposed to have their income from customers (although they haven't had any net income yet).
Amazon is a special case : They're doing everything they can to try to keep investors believing that they're going to be profitable one day and that it's worth $7.1 billion dollars (wow not too long ago Amazon was worth $40 billion...amazing). It's sort of like the capitulations Deja went through trying to discover itself and in the process forgot who it was.
Expect anything from Amazon. It reminds me a lot of Sears actually : Sears is one of those places where when I was a kid I associated their name with quality clothing and home products. Now after seeing just about every type of shady IMHO) service with the Sears name emblazoned on it their name is more of a liability. I always wonder what these people are thinking when they spread themselves so thin.
Hey, guys, we all know there are plenty of tools for filtering out ads and popup windows, etc. Most of us probably use them, too.
Let's just continue to use them and let the advertisers happily spam all the non-nerd users while we slide through the system with less visual clutter, not being tracked or bombarded with images of products we'll never buy anyway.
Sounds like a win-win situation. Advertisers maintain the status quo and those of us in the know get to avoid all the stupid advertising.
Sounds obnoxious? It is. But the alternative is to pay for useful sites or see more ads. I'd prefer the former if it comes down to that.
Shhhhh! Don't tell anyone what we are up to.
Rick
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
1) They were small (byte wise).
How many times have you been to a site with banner adds and it seemed to take forever to load just the ad? Many times for me.
2) They weren't animated.
Relating to #1 above, animated ads account for a lot of size issues - the most hideous being a Flash or Java-based advert. Animated GIFs can sometimes be just as bad, when they don't do thier compression right (or do a 24 bit GIF, or something equally tacky). Plus, the animation is distracting.
3) They weren't pushed in your face at every click of a link.
Slashdot is probably the sanest use of banner ads, but even they get somewhat annoying. Some sites make you look at ads constantly, relying on Javascript (or Java?) to keep the ad "in-the-window", no matter where you scroll (Geocities does this with there "G" symbol down in the corner, do they think they are a TV station?)...
4) Put at the end of the page, instead of the beginning.
If I want to read your advertising, I will read it last - not first. Then, and only then, will I decide if I want to click on it. Many a time have I been to a site that I wanted to see the content, waited forever to load the banner ad, then said "Screw it!", and closed the window, before even seeing a thing (sometimes, including the banner ad)...
---
Marketers just don't seem to get that the internet is a communication medium, and as such, anything that interupts the flow of information will be ignored and scorned (in the end). Stop interupting us, and give us something worthwhile (heck, even a free tee-shirt would be cool in some cases)!
Sadly, I think product placement ads are soon coming - since these porno-site tactics are going to fail instantly (do they really think people are going to like whack-a-mole?)...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Has anyone wondered what will happen if ad-busting software becomes mainstream? Stuff like www.junkbusters.com?
Is it possible that we could see legislation that made "devices" that would disable web ads illegal? Like an EULA for a web page that specified that turning off ads constituted "circumvention", thereby making an ad proxy an "anti-circumvention device"?
I haven't heard anything to this effect, but I'd sure love to know if anyone in the e-commerce business knows if steps are being taken to fight ad blocking software.
Internet Explorer 5 for Windows will refuse to show many web pages if the banner ad's web site is redirected to localhost. Try it - set ad.doubleclick.net to 127.0.0.1 on a window's box's hosts file, then try to load yahoo. you get a blank page.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
Look, ads that annoy me too much, like Java downloads that slow my page reads or pop-up ads that keep popping up, or animated GIFs that take too long to load do succeed.
They succeed in making me NOT buy the product. I go out of my way to think bad thoughts about the company that does such ads.
That said, I love the animated penguin squishing Redmond HQ. But that's because it's topical, interesting, and very funny.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I don't know of that many ad proxies. But one that works well, I find, are:
.adclick.com/ will block out all data from *.adclick.com]
ATGauard 3.22 (windows)... (just a stand alone proxy). [This program blocks ads, via a list of usual ad names... such as
Mozzilla has one (all supported OSs) [I don't know how this works, never really checked it out]
Taxi (MacOS, which blocks adds by image dimensions, and I think by url reference as well [lick ATGuard], but can't remember).
If you people know more, post them... long live freedom from advertising.
Money cannot buy happiness, but can buy something soo darn close, that you can't really tell the difference
I agree that flipping text into banners or popups are a big lose. Instead, advertising networks should be moving into audio and video ads in streaming media. That's going to be the only (halfway) reasonable way to present in-context advertising.
As for radio, I don't listen to commercial radio anymore. There are plenty of non-commercial radio where I live (San Francisco Bay Area), and my radio experience has improved 10-fold since I ditched the commercial pablum. And yes, I do make donations to non-commercial media.
-- $SIGNATURE
You push him away, but a small boy dressed in annoying colors grabs on to your shirt and holds on to you throughout the shop. Every time you pick a new item from the shelf and put in your basket, he starts jumping up and down in front of you and screams with an annoying pinchy voice: "POKEMON CARDS. GET NEW POKEMON CARDS!"
When you finally reach the cashier, the little boy is gone. You hand the cashier your groceries, and he sums up the total and ask you to pay. You show him your credit card, but he shakes his head, looks upon you with a stupid smile, and insists that you have to read the numbers up load for him. As you don't want everyone in the shop to hear this, you object, but he insists on it being perfectly safe.
As you leave the shop, the annoying salesman you saw on arrival violently grabs your arm, turns you around and screams (this time right into your left ear): "BE SURE TO VISIT OUR PARTNER SHOP TIE-HEAVEN. PLEASE VOTE FOR THIS SHOP AT THE MALL INFORMATION DESK. HAVE A GOOD DAY SIR!". After screaming this, he doesn't let go of your arm. He just stands there with a glassy look in his eyes completely silent. You carefully remove his grip by bending away his fingers.
There are two exits. One of them lead to the main hall, but it is just a small hole you have to crawl through beside the main exit. The other door which is big and wide leads directly to other "partner" shops. As most other customers there, you have no interest in this, so along with all the others, you choose to crawl on your knees through the little hole in the wall.
As you are about to drive out of the parking lot, each time you set your car in reverse, a guy jumps up on your car, and tapes a large poster to your front window. You don't even care looking at the poster, just get out and tears it off. This happens six times before you are finally able to drive out of there.
Thank God! And people wonder why dotcoms are failing...
Not Junkbuster - The Proxomitron is a million times more powerful than that.
Is there a proxy for Unix that works in a similar fashion as the Proxomitron, i.e. let's you match and replace web page contents and HTTP header contents using regular expressions?
I heard of webfilter, but it is just too old, unmaintained and contains too many vestigial CERN code in it.
You can't choose whether on not to be manipulated. If you a smart, lucky, and aware, you can choose (to some degree) how and by whom you are manipulated.
And right now, some Madison Avenue sucker-of-Satan's-cock is filing you under the "anti-advertising" demographic. "He says he's too smart and willful to be manipulated. So we'll do a campaign that plays on that, like those 'Image is nothing' Sprite ads but about twenty IQ points higher, play like we're giving him straight facts to make a logical decision (but of course we spin them our way) but put it in a framework that congratulates him on his logic for making the `right choice', which of course is us..."Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Okay, strictly speaking you have a point. But realistically, I do this, and I get one message from yahoo-spam every 2-4 weeks. This is about 2% of the amount of unrequested, unjustified spam that gets sent to my inbox by random people for no reason at all. I think it's an incredibly small price to pay for POP service. I think it helps that I UN-checked every single "interest" in their list of categories... now I don't match many advertisers' profiles :)
I hate pop-ups and ads when I'm surfing at home. That's why I use webwasher . It stops the banners but not most of the pop-ups (sigh).
But to pay for my computer and other things, like food and rent, I work for a website that makes money through advertising. These advertisers pay my bills. I want them to be happy. I have no wish to be so altruistic as to starve myself. I read that NYT article with an eye to increase advertiser satisfaction, while not annoying visitors to our site.
Now that funny-money stock options and IPOs are proving to be ineffective, websites have to find ways to generate revenues. The good ones use advertiser revenues to provide good content that brings in visitors that bring in page views that encourage more advertising. It is a virtuous circle. Sies that get greedy and make it hard to get to the content throught the advertising, like crazy pop-ups, lose visitors and thus revenue and go out of business, another virtuous circle.
I detest self-righteous asses, hiding in their basements and expecting the rest of us to give up our prosperity so that we can all be doctrinaire losers with no money.
Advertising is a pain in the ass. I try to avoid it when possible. But I can live with it. I'm all for any techniques that make advertising more effective in generating revenue while keeping them unobtrusive.
And yeah, Doubleclick scares the hell out of me.
How long will it take AOL-TimeWarner to buy a Digital Millennium Advertising Revenue Protection Act to make filtering proxies illegal. After all, by using filtering proxies we're getting all this content without paying for it, denying hard working Shockwave artists of their hard-earned money...
I don't know how many times I've seen redirection that pauses a few seconds and sends me to a Page-Of-No-Return. No amount of clicking on the back button will take me to where I cam from. It brings me back, complete with pop-ups along the way. And these "mistakes" seem to be most common on pages that come with spam, so I can only assume that they are intentional. Yes, I know how to get out, but does my mother?
This has upped the ante considerably in the war on unwanted "content".
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
The moderation system here at Slashdot is remarkably good but it's still funny seeing certain things when you push some people's buttons the right way. I've watched my post go up and down several times over the past couple of minutes. Someone likes it and mods it up then some pimple popping geek espousing his great new paradigm of an everything for nothing free world, between asking mommy for his allowance, mods it down. Society is a fascinating thing.
Homer said it best : "When will people learn? Democracy doesn't work!"
Of course that's tongue in cheek.
Don't know if I agree. Look at DVD's. You don't have _any_ alternatives for Digital video. DVD was started by a consortium of people that wanted to get it right.. They wanted complete control over the content so they could maximize regional profits, which included things like forced airing of the copy protection laws, and now forced airing of commercials in select DVDs.. Are you going to protest a given movie becuase you can't skip past the commericals? If you're like me, and have spent thousands of dollars on a home entertainment center.. Don't you feel cheated if your only "option" is to use cheap VHS pseudo-stereo?
.01% of the people care about at that given moment.
What happens when advertisers "choose" to only pay well for sites that agree to use such intrusive forms of advertising. What happens to Slashdot and friends? Pay themselves for advertisements?
Look at PBS.. Even they can't get away from advertisements.. Their commercial free broadcasting has hours a day (or so it seems whenever I happen to watch it) of "please give us money" segments. Personally I like the entertaining commercials better than that pity fest. The only escape seems to be direct monthly payments. Once again, the porn industry leads the pack. You pay $30 a year and you get to view a block of web sites. So you go out there and say, hey Slash, freshmeat and this and that is part of this premium group. So on and so forth.. That way you pay for the types of content that you think you'll like to watch. Then what's left are the non obtrustive forms of advertisement that I OCCASIONALLY think are cute and curious enough to click through.
The real problem is that people need to advertise. The web is an excelent medium for finding what you want, so a given service provider / producer has a better chance of being matched with perspective clients than anywhere else.. But the old mentality is that people don't even know that they want you yet (consumerism at it's dirtiest). I think portal sites like amazon and price watch are valuable in this respect. People enjoy going to the mall to window shop. So advertisers should be interested in producing consumer attractive online malls. They just need to find the right gimics. One stop shopping that can feed revenue to the millions of dot coms through such portal shopping. It would be just like the home-shopping network, where people purposefully want to see the commercials and gimics. The main difference is that you're not stuck watching a stupid ring that
-Michael
actually that's one of those truely unique ideas that you would think people would have thought of long ago. Believe it or not, most people still surf the web over *shudder* modems and if the NYT is any indication, it takes a while for the "second page" to load up. So why not shove an ad in there whilst it is loading? Because of the low atten... wow, shiny thing! .. span of Internet users there's no real reason to believe they won't click on the advertisement, especially if it has lots of motion and pretty pictures and swirly things and sound effects. Seriously, I don't think I've clicked on a banner this year. Maybe last year. Oh wait, I think there was one thing on Slashdot about 3d goggles but I didn't buy em.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It's amazing how this "We must force all customers to receive advertising" bullshit is driving the industry. If Yahoo mail would give me POP3 access for a small fee, I'd pay the fee, but instead they force me to download spam. So I don't use it. So I also don't buy the much more valuable "own domain" feature they're offering at the moment. I don't want spam. I have money, I'm willing to pay for things. Why does nobody want my money?
Friends, I'm rarely click on banners. You're wasting your bandwidth serving these things up to me. I don't want to install Windows just so I can use a "free" long distance phone service. I don't plan to buy an airticket with ridiculous terms and conditions from Priceline just so I can save $10. I read those adverts, I can't miss them, I just don't want what they're offering, and if I had the choice, even if I did want what they're offering, I still don't want my reading interrupted by adverts.
If you prevent me from reading something until I've read an advert, you haven't forced me to read an advert I'd have otherwise missed, you've just pissed me off. And if any site, even those I love to death, from Yahoo to Slashdot, from Snopes to Salon, forces me to download crap in exchange for reading the content, I wont read the content. I'll ignore you, and your ads, and your advertisers. Katz et al may think that it's dreadfully "old economy" for people to pay for content, but some of us are quite happy to do just that, and unless you provide us by the means to do so in comfort and without wasting time on stuff we really don't want, you're not going to get my business.
You wont get it like A&E doesn't get my business, because they think interupting my viewing every 10 minutes is ok. You wont get it like NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox rarely get my business, because you don't let me watch TV for reasonable periods of time without interruptions. You wont sell to me products and services I'd have otherwise been willing to pay for, because like Yahoo, you're not willing to let me and too interesting in PISSING ME OFF.
You want to piss off the customer, you go right ahead. We'll take the first door out, and screw you and your advertising too.
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I have always thought that audio ads were going to take over. There would be embedded sound files in web pages that would play while you read.
You say, 'sure, people can just turn off their audio', but finally audio feedback is important from a computer so you can't turn it off without missing something.
The same goes for JavaScript, as people were mentioning above. JavaScript is necessary anymore.
At any rate, the browsers should add in features to turn off ads, but that won't happen. The Internet survives in a large part off of ad revenue. If everyone turned off the ads, there would be big problems.
Advertizers can go too far though...
EverCode
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* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
There are people that have work to do and cannot dick around and recompile every third app that they want to run. If I can do a purchase req. for Webwasher and run its auto-install, that saves my client hundreds of dollars over having me scavenge the web for an open-source Linux app that needs to be recompiled, manually installed, and then configured using some arcane series of command line invocations and spells. Yes, I know that there are exceptions, but, by and large, it's a lot less painful to install and run Windows apps (just ask id Software).
Besides, I have yet to see you (or anyone else) recommend UNIX/Linux alternatives that are comparable in features, ease of use, and performance to the aforementioned Windows products.
P.S. I run Caldera OpenLinux 2.4, BeOS 5.0, and FreeBSD 4.2 (in addition to Windows 98 and Windows Me) so don't even think of claiming that I am unaware of non-Windows OSs.
It's bad enough that companies so often copy the ideas developed by free UNIX/Linux software and release proprietary Windows versions. Then recommending such software back to UNIX/Linux users just seems insulting.
I'm already paying $40/mo for internet access. I'm not going to pay to watch ads too. There are plenty of ways to make money without advertising.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
How many things advertised in banner ads can people really buy? Perhaps they aren't clicking because they just don't want to buy that stuff right now. Making the ads more prominent is just going to annoy people more.
Internet advertising has worked well in banner ads, but I don't think that the advertisers are measuring their success properly.
The point of advertising in the past (TV, radio) has always been more to demonstrate the product in question or to show what great deals the advertiser has to offer. This investment(hopefully) is returned in increased sales of the product or increased sales (in general) at the store. Ultimately the strongest drive for this is building your name in peoples' minds so that when they shop they visit your store or consider your product. The internet, however is being played differently. The problem now is that the advertisers are equating their ad success to click-thru counts. Frankly, if I am not in the market for a given product a that moment, I will not visit your site no matter how intrusive the advertising is. In fact the more intrusive it becomes, the more likely I am to avoid your ads with proxy filters or reduced surfing at the sites you advertise with. Unfortunately, the business models on the internet rely so heavily on advertising for revenue right now that it will only become an increasing annoyance.
I think that if advertisers were to do a better job getting their product or service across in the existing space that they would indeed reap higher benefits. Differentiate yourself, show the product and link directly to pertinent information to increase traffic and sales. Bigger, flashier and equally vacuuous content only serve to anger your target audience and force them to remember the useful info they got from somewhere else...
I just tried it. I even turned javascript on. It seems to be a site that *doesn't* work with javasript.
:)
It loaded properly without it. OK, well sort of . From viewing in both lynx and netscape, it seems that those things on the side are supposed to be ads--but if junkbuster was getting them, they'd be broken images rather than question marks . . .
It seems to have some of those stupid menus that only work with javascript. It has links that only work with javascript.
S I tried turning on javascript. Instead of the site, I get a banner add surrounded by some of the script that is supposed to load it.
Nope, this isn't a site legitimately using javascript
hawk
The same forces apply in both scenarios. In most cases, the software not only has the hours of free time put into it, but a free web site to support it. So clearly it can be done.
For me, and my web site Poliglut it boils down to the 'love of the game' or 'gift culture' mentality. I enjoy politics, so I simply use the reading that I would already be doing as a boostrap to putting together a site. If people like it (and so far they seem to) great! I'll keep doing it. If not, that's ok to. Kind of like any one of dozens of open source projects. Most of them are junk. The few that are *really* good tend to be the ones put together by a passionate few.
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This reminds me of Fahreinheit 451. One of the attributes of the "future-is-hell" society is that advertising was everywhere and had gone beyond unavoidable to being the only real form of entertainment. Specifically I remember a scene in which Guy is riding on some kind of mass transit (I think it was a train, it's been a while) and a song for something called "Denton's" came on. Everyone on the train started singing it, and enjoying it, but it was just the same lines over and over and over again...
The only careers you could make real money in were entertainment and advertising... But there was no different between them. This concept, frankly, terrifies me.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
- [RFE] Backend support for all page prefs on a URL by URL basis
- [Feature] JavaScript auto-disable per-domain RFE
- Prevent repeating pop-up windows
Have fun!Cheers //Johan
Installed the Bubblemon yet?
Lots of people are criticizing pop-up windows, their intrusiveness and waste of system resources. A website I've designed uses pop-ups to provide brief definitions and pieces of ancillary information without interrupting the flow of the parent page. I'd like to describe my use of pop-ups and find out whether they avoid the complaints here.
First of all, my pop-ups are backwards compatable. I use the code
page" onClick = "closeWin();openWin('page?popup=1','myWin'); return false;">
for links, where openWin opens a popup called myWin. But if Javascript is unsupported or turned off, or if you choose "open in new window," it's interpreted as an ordinary link.
closeWin() closes myWin, ensuring that no more than one instance of it will be open at any time. Additionally, the parent page contains the tag , so that it won't hang around after they move on.
So, is this an improvement? Would you accept this kind of popup?
- Michael
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
That sounds better, still, you can accomplish the same thing with Proxomitron.
I don't really see Netscape and Microsoft going out of their way to make it easy to avoid advertising, so I think consumers are on their own on this one.
However, as long as the Web still runs using a simple ASCII-based and easily hackable protocol (HTTP), there's nothing they can't do that we can't break.
Rick, running Proxomitron and filtering about 9000 ad server domains...
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
What if everyone became a computer programmer?
Brilliant! Seriously you've shot a hole right through the whole social interaction thing. Society, obviously, is a complete failure.
Porno sites must be lightyears ahead of the game when it comes to online marketing. Afterall, everyone who visits one just LOVES the 5 gazillion popup (pun intended) windows that surface. Even banner ads on regular pages are causing a window to popup now.
The reason most banner ads don't get clicked is simply because the creative sucks. I mean if you actually look at and read a few banners you can't even guess what the hell they are advertising in the first place. Taking that same lack of creative talent and putting it in a pop-up window isn't going to make it any more effective. Another problem is simply demographic: putting ads in front of an audience that doesn't care about whatever is being advertised.
So I think a novel new idea for web advertisers would be to create a few ads that send a clear message worth clicking on.
Way back before Wired's online presence got bought out by Lycos, they experimented with this format. The interstitial ads were everywhere on the site, but were perhaps most annoying when trying to get to their "Threads" discussions (long since gone). There was an overwhelmingly negative response. One friend of mine went as far as to inject ads for his own nascent web design company into his posts on their discussion groups, then crow, "Let's see how you like it!"
The problem is that regardless of what streaming multimedia enthusiasts would have you believe, the web is most often used like a big phone book. Or a magazine. Sure, more often than not, the magazine is Hustler, but people are flipping through indexes (Yahoo, Google, Alta Vista, AskJeeves, MySimon) to find the content they really want (porn, home electronics, news, music). It's not like a TV where we expect a certain show to be on a certain channel at a certain time, which is exactly what makes television ads work. Banner ads are, in some sense, more appropriate than interstitial ones because they look more like magazine ads.
The only reason magazine-style ads don't work in the online world is because display technology has such a long way to go. Think about the number, density, and (comperable) quality of the quarter or half page ads in the average color glossy monthly publication. Think about putting something like on a single web page, so that you could get ad and content on the screen simultaneously, without compromising the readability or navigability of either. It's enough to give a web designer fits.
Ironically, it looks like Wired has gone back to interstitial ads on their Hotwired site. Pity. It's a long time since that site has been useful for anything (other than as a portal to Webmonkey, Wired, or what appears to be their biggest advertiser, but I remember when there was some pretty good political and social commentary on that site. Sigh.
OK kids, let's review the latest strategies from the advertisers...
Pop-up ads
Maybe these advertisers should take a lesson from Geocities: pop-up ads don't work. Nobody likes to go to a page, only to have a window with some flashing ad banner pop up. My reaction: close them and move on. Nowadays, I have Ad Filter (DISCLAIMER: Windows only) on my machine, which keeps the ads away from me.
Still, history has proven one thing: pop-ups simply don't work.
Interstitials and the such
Unless you're rich / at work or school / lucky, chances are, you're still stuck on a 56 K modem like the rest of us. Who wants to wait for some gigantic 2 MB Javascript ad to load, especially when you're putting along on a modem? It doesn't matter if it "quietly" loads in the background or not, it still sucks up the same amount of bandwidth. Not everybody has a cable modem or higher in their homes.
Conclusions
Why do advertisers think that big-ass Javascript ads are the way to go? Sure, we all grew up with ads on TV and the radio, but until around 1994 - 1995, the Internet was still commercial free. Not all of us grew up on a banner-filled Internet...and some of us who did grow up in one still don't like it.
PS: The channel link works. Neener.
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The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
I look forward to the people with the QuickBuck mentality going away soon.
"These are the words that the elves of Netscapethrond heard, and knew that they were betrayed...
Argh! Spam! Nagathuluth
Awk! Spam! Nagathul
Argh! Spam! Crapatitlook!
Argh! Spam! Howawful!"