Slashdot Mirror
Salon Goes For Annoying Jump-Through Ads
macsforever2001 writes: "It looks like Salon is going to try to ram ads down our throat in a very offensive manner according to this Yahoo article. Now they won't directly link to articles, but instead link to a Web Ad which then links to the article you want. I think Slashdot needs a new category just for Web Advertising." Not as if web ads weren't already becoming more annoying, but the companies that run Web ads are probably as interested in ads that people don't hate as you are in not seeing the awful ones. What can we tell them?
It's worth it, gets you access to additional features, and you aren't annoyed by ads. As a side benefit, you support one of the best sources of online journalism.
If you only read the occasional article, then don't bother, but don't complain about the ads. If you read all the time, then why haven't you signed up yet?
Naked Chicks!
Really though... I think this is just the first step towards full-scale Comercials popping up every 13 min. Yikes, hope M$ doesn't think of that...
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
but if you reject cookies (as I do from Mozilla) then you get stuck in a loop at the advert. The "continue on" link just spits the ad back up. Not nice at all.
Jump throughs do //not// beat pop-ups. I can turn off pop-ups in Mozilla using a user-pref. I can turn it off in less intelligent browsers by disabling JavaScript.
Jump-throughs are trying to force people to look at the ad, but they will only end up getting ignored just like every other form of advertisement on the net. Likely, by Salon getting ignored.
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who know binary, and those who do not.
this is what porn sites do all the time - it's nothing new - it's just interesting to see a mainstream site do it. (but wil a mojority of web-traffic being porn i guess porn is the majority, isn't it? ).
either way - if you read salon that much you probably ought to caough in a few dollars as it is.
-shpoffo
Dumdeedum... downloaded Mozilla 0.9.4....
Added "user_pref("dom.disable_open_during_load", true);" to prefs.js.... restart...
Ooo. The web without any onload pop-ups or pop-under adverts. X-10? Who? Surfing actually seems pleasant again.
But my solution for click-thru advertising is simply to get my content elsewhere, and wait for this upsurge in irritating adverts to die down. And it will. Advertising drives money to content providers, but if the adverts drive the readership down, the money stops coming into the advert companies from their clients. There's a point of equilibrium that most print magazines have found, and it's just a matter of time before that balance settles down in the online-content world.
I think not...(*poof*)
Popups can be disallowed with some browsers, though I haven't yet seen anything which allows you to filter only window.open (as opposed to all JavaScript) on a site-by-site basis....
Take a look at Konqueror 2.2.1. You can globally deny/accept window.open, or specify a pop up box to set the policy for the site on first encounter.
troodon.net
(Copied shamelessly from here in the hopes that some of you might read it before forming an opinion. Emphasis, where used, is mine.)
About our new ads
A note to readers
Sept. 24, 2001 | Today Salon introduces a new kind of advertisement -- a full-screen message that will show up in your browser when you click on a link, and will play briefly before moving you on to the page you requested. (The ad should only show up once per day per user, unless you have turned "cookies" off in your browser.)
As most of you know, this has been a difficult year for advertising-supported publications, online and off. Like many other companies we've responded by trying to innovate for our advertisers -- so we can remain financially healthy and continue to serve you. As with any innovation, we expect to learn from our experience over time, to keep what works and drop what doesn't.
We know that some Web users find this sort of ad intrusive. But before you send in that irate e-mail, we ask you to consider that the content you come to Salon for -- independent-minded, thought-provoking, unavailable elsewhere -- does not come free.
Today we have two ways to support our writers, editors and the rest of the staff that keeps Salon coming to you every day -- through advertising and through subscriptions. If sitting through one five-second ad before you can read an article is simply too much of a delay for you, we offer a Salon Premium subscription as a different way to support Salon -- you get access to exclusive content and the option to turn off most ads on the site. (For more information, click here.)
Our intention, as always, is to bring you the most intelligent, provocative, fearless coverage of news and culture available anywhere.
Scott Rosenberg
Managing editor
while watching TV, there is about a 3:1
entertainment time to advertising time... and even the commercials are entertaining sometimes...
but for a web page you spend more time closing/avoiding ads than you do on actual content... I am at a HIGH volume destination (18 web servers, each producing around 1 gig worth of log files a day) average time spent here is 6-7 minutes...
I have yet to see many banner ads/pop up ads that were remotly interesting or entertaining..
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Saw it this morning, but I was just unable to reproduce it. Went to AdCritic and all of a sudden, everything on the page faded to a transparent state (javascript), and then an ad came up selling something (don't remember the product). To get back to AdCritic, I had to click on the "Close Ad" button. Pretty cool, but it'd get real annoying after the first couple. Has anyone else seen this type of ad?
- [grunby]
If you are running Windows the solution is quite elegant. Go to http://www.flaaten.dk/prox/ and download PROXOMITRON. It's totally configurable proxy which already contains filters for many existing ad systems. If it doesn't contain the filter for this kind of ads, you can definitely create it yourself if you are familiar with regular expressions. Just create the filter that identifies the ad page and replaces it with simple page that immediately loads the article page (whose URL will be extracted from the ad page). It's really one of the simplest things that you can do with Proxomitron...
--- Frantisek Fuka (Yes, that's my real name and you have no idea how it's pronounced)
First, I think Salon is pretty cool. I frequently surf to the front page. Less frequently to the articles. I like it, but not enough to contribute. Why? Because the portal I *do* contribute to is znet. I actually feel passionately about the material on there, and I want them to succeed. Even though they have never had any ads. But zmag is a niche market, with about a million hits a month. Big enough, but not in the Salon category. I think this is Salon's problem: they want to be both a mass media portal, as well as sufficiently "alternative" to convince their advocates to pay. But you can't be both. I think Salon has recruited about as many paying subscribers as they're gonna get, which is quite a lot for a niche player, but not enough for a major media franchise. They want to be both. They want to be the "New Yorker" of the net. But even the New Yorker has been bleeding red ink, and I don't the economics of the net can sustain this.
There are simply too many other destinations which offer poeple exactly what they want in the way of their own personal hot button issues. It's these issues that make people excited enough to fork out the dough. But by definition, all of those sites are small.
The shortage of choice and a more uniform culture which allowed publications like the Atlantic and The New Yorker to thrive in the past will not be repeated on the net.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
I just went to Salon.com, and read several stories. Didn't see any of these ads. There was one popup which I clicked closed. Possibly because I have most banner sites blocked on my hosts file, and already had Salon's cookies blocked.
Salon's editor wrote that the new ads will be only shown once per user per day, and use cookies.
I've found that denying access to java.yahoo.com via HOSTS file blocks those :)