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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?
publicity will be interupted by information.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
As a web site owner, I love this. You get it for free so accept the ad.
Ya the ads are annoying, but jump throughs beat popups anyday! with these you can either wait for a breif pause or you can click a link to skip ahead to the article. Either way it's better than having to shuffle windows in order to close an ad that the page opens behind itself, like those X10 pop-ups. THOSE are annoying!
WURD!!
MSNBC does this to some of their sections. Not a big deal to me. If you don't want to see them subscribe to Salon.
Some way or another, content has to be paid for.
Just start using lynx as your default browser.
Steven V>
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
For example, I do not like the outdoors or games. Why show me camping information or video cards? I do like gambling in Vegas -- show me some banners for deals offered by casinos.
Click here or here.
This bothers me less than popups. They have to do something for revenue. I can live with it.
Salon is in financial trouble. They started a premium service to get more money, but still offer a lot of content for free. I guess if more people subscribed as premium members, this would not be an issue. If they need to do this to stay afloat, then that's their business. Salon is a great site, and I'm personally willing to put up with a few ads. I just hope they keep going.
``It's less intrusive than the pop-unders. It's not creating a new window and it gives the consumer a choice. They can click it and go to the story,'' said Jupiter Media Metrix analyst Marissa Gluck.
And the other choice, presumably, is to utter a hearty "fuck you" and never go back to salon.com again?
Look... here's what web ads come down to: if it's something like a pop-up ad that keeps moving when you try to close it, that's simply not ok. But if nothing sneaky is going on -- and it's not here, because you're just detoured through an extra page on Salon's site -- we may not like it but there's no reason to say that the company is doing something wrong. Salon started a subscription service as a way to allow people to pay for the otherwise-free content they were getting before. Obviously not enough people are contributing their fair share and more drastic measures had to be taken. If you don't like it, don't use Salon's bandwidth or read the stories that they pay people to write.
Salon has been trying to find new ways to make money, the jump-through ads are much less annoying than the pop-ups, IMHO. Not much different than commercials on TV. You have the option to subscribe to Salon if you want to avoid them, just as you have the option to subscribe to HBO if you'd like commercial-free programs (though HBO does not offer a commercial channel, so you either pay up or do without the Sopranos...)
Everything can't be free. I'd rather have the click-through ads than pop-ups. Actually, I like Salon enough that I bucked up the yearly subscription fee, though it really doesn't offer so much more than the regular Salon.
Deal with the ads, stop bitching or don't be surprised when Salon goes under like so many other Webzines.
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
As evidenced by their 'Salon Premium' and in-page ads. It's a shame, too, because all the other good editorial sites are almost all virulently conservative.
While I hate to see it go, I think we're going to see Salon go the same way IGN did.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
This isn't a new thing at all -- all of the IGN.com websites do this. (DVD.IGN, PS2.IGN, etc) However, the IGN method is closer to television advertising -- you have to look at the advertisement for something like 5 seconds before the "continue to the article" link becomes active.
They've had this on MSNBC for awhile. If you click on the news categories on the lefT nav bar instead of mousing over and choosing a story, you get a big ad blocking your screen, and you have t go up to the top nav to actually get to that category. There's no free lunch anywhere. I guess if I didn't want to be annoyed, I could just read a book.
I follow the like to the Yahoo! page talking about bad advertising tactics, what happens? One of them damn X-10 camera adds pops-up. Geesh...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
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.
We're sorry! We promise to click on those banner ads! We were being bad little surfers. Just don't torture us anymore!
Has anyone tried this yet?
RFC2119
There were ads.
Then there were filters.
Then there were pop up ads, pop-under ads, and ads that pop up when you close the browser.
Then new filters were devised for these as well.
Now we have jumpthrough ads.
What we have is a continuing battle, geek against geek, for control of the eyes of the content-hungry Netizen.
Of course, all arms races are a bad thing. Eventually, this one will lead to more and more intrusive advertising and more and more destructive anti-advertising.
The solution is to de-escalate the arms race.
How do you do that?
Well, stop filtering the ads. Read them and click the ones that you are interested in as compared to the other ads.
Even if you are not interested in any of them, click the least offensive.
This will, eventually, lower the overall offensiveness level of advertising while helping to provide ad revenue to some of your computer-industry brethren out there.
Remember, advertising is a legitimate industry. Let's minimize the amount of social control it has over our lives by treating it as such.
Goat sex free since 2001
Online is a different medium than TV or radio- the same rules don't necessarily apply. Especially when most of these ads seem to be for things like dry cleaning a cat, or other nonsense. I don't see Pepsi or Coke popping up all over, but even Yahoo pops up that damn X10 camera ad. I feeling is that eventually online content will split into 2 groups once a good micropayment system is worked out, the free and spam-filled side, and the pay but no ads side. Don't get me wrong, I love free content, but I can only see advertising get worse until large groups of people are willing to fork over some cash to _not_ see more ads.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
For me, the most effective ads are those that are entertaining/interesting regardless of the product and/or about something I want more info on... this applies to billboards, televison and the web.
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
I did see one add that actually got me to see it without being so intrusive that it just pissed me off too badly. It was on weather.com (the Weather Channel's web page), and it was an add for HBO's "Band of Brothers" series. Basically when I first went to the web page, it loaded as normal, then ran a little animation of a series of c47s dropping paratroops across the page, with accompanying sound, then some bit of text appeared saying something like, 'See Band of Brothers on HBO at some time or other.' which then retreated to a standard banner add and sat there. The whole thing lasted maybe 3-5 seconds.
:P
I was on a broadband connection, so I have no idea if it would make the page take longer to load, but their web page has so much graphics that it probably would take forever anyway.
The one thing they could have done to cut the annoying factor would be to put a cookie that tells the page not to run it everytime you go 'BACK' to the main page from a sub page.
And it didn't even crash Netscape
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
What really puzzles me is that these intrustive ads clearly do anger readers, and don't seem to work very well...yet this arms race of distracting ads continues unabated. There is at least one example of really effective web advertising, however, and that's Google's. Heck, they're even considering an IPO. Here's why it works:
- Their ads are entirely textual and unobstrusive, so I don't have to hotwire my brain to tune them out. They're easy to ignore, so I can pay attention to them when I want.
- They are right next to the content I care about (search results), but don't interfere with it by creating a visual distraction or a longer download time for the page. So I don't mind them being there at all.
- Above all, the ads are sometimes for things I actually care about. Google matches ads with searches, and so I actually have some incentive to pay attention to them.
The lesson, I think, is that ads have to be inobstrusive and useful. Why aren't more companies picking up on this?I sympathize with their need to make ad revenue, but I find these ads the most annoying thing on the Internet. If this is the future of web advertising, I'll be getting my news elsewhere. It is incredibly annoying and distracting.
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
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
As a web site owner, I love this. You get it for free so accept the ad.
But will their readership tolerate it? Probably not, as most people are already feeling harassed by popups. I predict this will only hasten their demise.
Harassing customers != good business practice
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
seems to me /. is fishing to see what impact changing there ad 'style' from banner to something else. :)
I realy don't understand how a paper can make money by placing ads next to story, but can't make money doing the same thing on the web.
I have come to the conclusion that media companies are doing there web content wrong, so maybe thats it.
I wish I had the ear of a newspaper exec. because I see several ways to improve the overall revinue of a newspaper company, using the web.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is obviously part of a two-phase approach.
Salon has already made it clear that they intend to slowly move content behind the subscription only wall. This is one way to entice people to subscribe... the carrot if you will (though since it was once freely available content, it has a stick aspect as well).
Increasing the amount, variety, and annoyance level of the ads is the true stick in their strategy. If you're not sufficiently motivated by the subscription-only content (of which you get a tantalized 2 paragraph preview if you aren't subscribed), then perhaps you'll be sufficiently annoyed by the advertising that you'll buy the o|4/\/\N3o| subscription.
Given their financial situation and the relatively low revenue that advertising generates nowadays, they really don't even want non-paying viewers. So they slowly advance the border between free and paid content and increase the advertising until they have everyone they can get.
I really like Salon's coverage and there have been several times I'd really liked to have read one of their subscription-only articles, but I'm just not motivated enough to pay. Too short an attention span. I hope one of these days they snag me, because I'd love to see them survive.
-StaticLimit
on bandwidth-intensive stuff like news slideshows. it's no big deal to me.
sulli
RTFJ.
I know of at least one site that already does this. Sony Station, an online gaming site, pops up ads when you start games. It's easy enough to close the window before they finish loading. I'm sure the advertisers don't like this, but oh well.
I also hate how TV shows are interrupted to show commercials too. Oh, that's right, TV networks are *profitable*.
It's about time these web people tried to actually make money. Annoying, yes--and necessary.
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
- The ad can be more informative (and thus perhaps even a useful source of info if I'm interested) since it has more real-estate to work with.
- The Ad goes away.
- The ads Doesn't distract me, get in the way, or otherwise take up valuable interface real-estate while I'm reading the actual article.
- Similarly, the ad doesn't take up ink, paper, and printing time when I print a page out.
- If I don't want to waste time looking at it, I can switch to another window for a while. Ignoring that damn flashing dwarf in the ThinkGeek ad on slashdot is next to impossible.
Drawbacks:I think Salon is risking their reader base by using this sort of ad system. News and article meta-indexes, like World Net Daily and the Drudge Report and (yes) Slashdot will hesitate to put up links that are so annoying to their users. And that will ruin what revenue Salon was getting with their banner ads.
The whole premise of these intrusive ads is wrong.
Intrusive ads in TV is acceptable because we are just sitting there like bumps on a log and it give us a break to go do something. We know the commercials are going to last a couple minutes and we expect it. Digging deeper we all understand that those commericals paid for the content.
Web surfing is entirely different. We are interacting with the computer to find information. Basically we are in control and are most likely actively searching, or discussing and not just trying to be passively entertained. We want to find our information, or post our comment and be done with it.
Advertisers are having a tough time on coming up with a creative way to advertise on the net since their previous method (banners) had limited success, they are falling back on what they know. But what they know is a method designed for a passive medium and not an interactive one.
The one thing they have going for them, is that like TV, web advertising for the most part is targetted at groups and not so much individuals. Slashdot is going to run tech related ads. TechTV (the TV channel) is going to run tech related commericals. Generally, the specific group you are looking for will see your ad. They need to expand on that without taking it to the extreme.
One option: large ads that are not intrusive. I wouldn't mind if an ad takes the top portion of my screen. I do mind if though some fancy javascript, it follows me as I scroll, or randomly appears or is in a fixed frame. Just give me the ability to decide whether or not your products are right for me and let me continue on with the content. If you're watching TV and you don't want to see the commercial, you see what else is on or you go to the fridge or bathroom. Basically you can decide what's relevant. Advertisers are trying to take the position that they know what's relevant and you just need to spend as much time as possible looking at their ad and eventually you will buy.
With the economy the way it is, consumers are being smarter, and web-users are getting smarter about the products they purchase. I guess I'd say that the advertising isn't failing, it's the products being offered.
I'd rather deal with them then some other popular types of advertising. Several people already mentioned the flash animations that are becoming popular. I find those horrid, for it's like trying to read a book and having the words obscured. I want to know where the ads are and choose whether to look at them or not, not have them crammed down my throat. Any ad that obscures text automatically gets my negative attention.
Rant mode off for a second, I think jumpthroughs are actually good in that it gives a solid measurement of who's looking at an ad. You can use jumpthrough instead of click-thru metrics to set ad rates, much like in TV or radio or print. I would rather see online advertising go that route rather than getting more annoying in the hopes of a clickthru that won't happen (like those darn flash anims).
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
Apparently, if you take any of their story links and tack on "?x" it takes you straight to the story, skipping the ad.
Perhaps someone could make an add-on like junkbuster that would modify any URL at a given domain via a rule (s/.*salon\.com/$1?x/) or somesuch?
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...
If companies had half a brain they'd figure out that ad banners don't work very well because nobody wants to see their stupid product and we're annoyed at their ads. I dunno about everyone else but I know how to find things when I want them and I don't have to keep hitting reload to find the right ad to get me there. If they must show ad banners then I think making them as tightly targeted as possible is the real key. I do click ad banners on Slashdot more than any other site just because they often lead places I know I like such as ThinkGeek and AnimeFu. The ThinkGeek banners that show off their new products are probably the most effective ads for me because that is exactly the sort of things I'm interested in buying. If a company like Amazon could target ad banners for book/music/movie types I usually like that'd be effective on me too. Ads for things I don't want to see and I don't buy annoy me and cost the company placing them money. Googles very targeted itty bitty side ads are probably among my favorite types of ads. They are non-offensive and they tell me things I want to know. However I think they need to charge per-click rather than per-view because a lot of people just don't click ads. I'd be willing to pay a lot more to place my ads per click than per view because I know that person is actually going to my site. That is what I want.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Even for less well targeted readerships, look at newspaper ads for ideas of things that work. Announce a sale for your online store, mention a new product, or give people some other reason to follow the link! Make pretty, flashy ads, and people will tune them out. Make informative, intriguing ads, and people will follow.
Also, one more suggestion: make an advertiser index, like magazines do. Sometimes an ad will look appealing, but you don't have time to follow up on it just then. Later on, you can't find the ad again, so the site doesn't get the hit it deserves.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
i wouldn't mind this either, as long as the web designer made it clear that i was reading an ad page.. that way you can just click right through imediately. of course it's going to really suck when they realize they can use javascript to delay the display of the 'continue to the content' link by x amount of seconds..
_______
2B1ASK1
Stop reading salon.com.
Paying them to become a premium member to make the annoyances go away is rewarding them for bad behavior.
Don't get me wrong, I liked salon.com's reporting, it was quite good. But when they shifted to being essentially a pay service, that's when I stopped reading them.
There's a distinctive difference between "it's no longer free, but we'll let you sample some of the articles" and "we're going to irritate the heck out of you until you pay up and make us stop." Unlike most sites, they didn't distinguish between which articles required premium access and which didn't (although I just looked and sometime recently they started doing that). They had many irritating editorials basically accusing their readers of being deadbeats. And all along the attitude was increasing belligerent, "start subscribing or we'll make the ads more annoying."
There are other good news web sites, with better advertising/funding models, like economist.com. They'll get my money if they ask nicely. Salon.com started trying to extort it, so I left.
If a company doesn't value me as anything but a mindless consumer, I'm not going to buy anything from them. If I wanted to be forced to watch ads, I'd watch live television.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Either put up with the ads, or skip the site. I don't read NYTimes articles more than once every month or two. I haven't seen anything worth reading from them that doesn't show up on another, less annoying site, sooner or later. The exceptions (for me at NYT) are the articles I really want to read now.
Pity; Salon did have some good stuff on occasion.
I recall in the late eighties the sheer outrage directed at someone who had the audacity to post a *gasp* commercial message in a newsgroup.
O Tempora! O Mores!
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
Konqueror [konqueror.org] does exactly that. Disable just window.open(), or disable is for specific sites. You can also enable-disable Java/JavaScript in general on a site-by-site if you like. It also supports accepting cookies only from specified sites. Makes me happy.
When Mozilla does this, I'll be a true GNOME convert. Until such time, it's apt-get install konqueror task-ximian-desktop enlightenment for me.
Welcome convert! Stick this in your .mozilla/*/prefs.js file and say good bye to popup ads on page load/close.
user_pref("dom.disable_open_during_load", true);
Now that Mozilla also has tabbed browsing, what are you waiting for (Ctrl-T for those who don't know about this yet in the latest nightly builds). In fact the only criticism is that features get added to Mozilla followed by the UI some weeks later so unless you keep your nose in Bugzilla you miss tricks.
Still it all adds to the excitement.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Although I have been reading Salon fairly regularly lately, I was unaware of the new ads until I happened to read an notice about them on the Salon site. The reason being that I make heavy use of the "Open in background" feature in K-Meleon (also available in Opera - why can't all browsers have this very useful feature?). I tend to go through the main page and open all the articles I am interested in in the background then close out the main page. By the time I open the window with the article, the ad has already played itself out and loaded the article.
Trickster Coyote
Ideology is for ideots.
No, I don't want Salon to go away--*something* has to remeain to make slashdot look like serious journalism.
Then again, maybe I shouldn't be so harsh--I've never heard any other editor admit that they used a single source, knowing of a prior perjury conviction and an axe to grind against the target of the story, and explain it away on the basis "it's ok because republicans are evil." . . .
[yes, I really did see this in an interview on one of the cable news channels after they ran one of their lap-dog pieces trying to refocus attention during the impeachment.]
So they make you read advertising on the way--the content of an ad is less biased and more truthful, anyway . . .
hawk
My Windows boot up screen has a an ad for "Microsoft Windows". The really annoying thing is that it makes me view it for like 2 minutes before it lets me log in!
m00.
As a web site owner, I love this. You get it for free so accept the ad.
As a typical netizen, I hate this. It does not matter if the content is free, if you annoy me too much, I simply will no longer go to your site.
This annoys me to no end. If advertising on the net was not so offensive, there would be no need for ad-blocking software.
The choice is simple though, Salon is free to implement this if they think it is a good idea, and I am perfectly free never to browse their site again...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
"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?"
Why don't you stop whining like a little girl and thank them? These people are busting their butts trying make the business model of ad supported content work so you can read the stuff for free! If you don't like it, send them money!
Commercial internet sites cannot make money with nonintrusive advertising. This is why thousands of web sites are disappearing every month, and eventually there won't be any free content sites left that are not provided by the people trying to sell you more of the same content. It will hit everyone, even sites like Slashdot.
Don't go there. Then it won't bother you, and if enough people don't go there, they'll stop it. I do think that's pretty low of them, to change course in midstream like that. Seems like a lot of people enjoyed the site until this... well, stop going.
~ now you know
FilterProxy
--Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
I'm not sure what the current situation is, but as of a few months ago Salon was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. If you enjoy reading the news and articles that they post, then you have two options:
1) Buy a subcription to their premium service. You won't have to click through the annoying ads.
2) Don't buy a subscription, but continue to feel that you have a right to read the news stories that they provide. Spend 0.5 seconds a day clicking through an ad which I'm sure they're able to charge more money for.
I guess there is a third option, and that is to do neither of the above, and then moan that quality internet journalism has disappeared once they and many other online magazines go bankrupt in a year or two. I really hate invasive pop-up ads, but they do need to make money. If you value the service they provide, quit whining and click through the bloody ad, or subcribe! If you DON'T value the service they provide, well then, don't visit the site anymore. If I sit down to watch the evening news on TV, I have to put up with 5 minutes of ads for every half hour of actual programming. I don't have a problem clicking through an ad for a second if it will allow me to read quality news stories online.
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 advertisers would have just stuck to those. They didn't really annoy anyone. Well, there is always the "principle" guys. Those that invented the (unnecessary imo) filters.
Anyway, I am prepared to pay for services, at reasonable prices. One of the ways to pay is by viewing (and possibly clicking) on ads online. I say that is a fair price as long as the ads are not thrown in my face.
I have full understanding that it costs money to be online - and I am prepared to support good content online.
Furthermore, I think that if advertisers hadn't done what they have done, which is going to stupid extents to try and draw our attention, they would still be able to live on advertising.
I mean, if an ad interests me, I actually click on it. Such as those that appear here on slashdot for instance - they get my interest now and then. A popup ad however... it gets killed before it can show me anything. Not to mention those that popup 5 and try to set themselves as my start page and so on...
And no. I will not get any filters or similar. For the first thing, I should not need it. For the second, see above: I actually support online advertisments that are targetted, discreet and "good" (whatever that means).
If ads is a way to pay for, and encourage good online content, by all means bring them on. But keep to banners. Those that are interested WILL click on your ad!!! Those that are not will not because you give them 200 popups.
Thank you.
What's most important about this is only obvious if you're a regular Salon reader - it's overall the best news site on the Web. Especially for politics and consumer/corporate issues, Salon is simply indispensable. I paid for a "subscription" the day it was offered, and I'd pay again, and pay more, for the kind of kickass independent journalism only a site like Salon can provide.
Ads? I don't see them with the "premium" service, but who cares? I don't understand why
There's other places to get news - but they don't make money! There is no Internet-only news site that makes money - period. Salon is a very high-profile experiment that will, one way or the other, guide many decisions made by corporate managers about whether online is a viable market.
News organizations pay a LOT of attention to Salon and how it's doing, because they know it's a bellwether. Take it from a media professional - if Salon goes down you will feel the repercussions. Even the most insular geek sitting in the dark will feel the absence of useful journalism on the Web. And it will be because you, the Slashdot reader, didn't care enough to make it happen.
Pay! It's only thirty bucks, you know you can spare it. You'll be doing yourself more of a favor than you know. And if you can't be bothered to shell it out or deal with ONE ad a day for a few seconds, fuck you - no free lunch for you, asshole. Thanks for ruining it for everyone else.
On the bright side, content providers will need to upgrade the quality of their content as they increae the level of annoyance experienced by users in accessing it. This means less content will be subscrption only. Users will demand more and higher quality content from providers who insist on iritating their users with this garbage.
Sites who adopt this advertising strategy, who have previously been confident in their levels of content quality and associated user loyalty might be in for a shock as their viewership plummets through the floor - or at least I hope users will be able to voice their discontent this way.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
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)
An interesting thing I noticed that was quoted of Marissa Gluck was that they were trying to "emulate television" by having a short spot before a news broadcast (or similar anaology).
/. and want to support it, but I'm not going to support /. by supporting something that I find offensive and 'rude'.
Had to break it to you, but this is the net, not television! Why are you trying to shoe-horn advertising methods invented 30+ years ago into the new technology of today? Why try to continue on with the same old shit of "barrage the customers with flashing graphics and maybe they'll buy something." Actually, the stupidity is multi-tiered. The Companies using the advertising agency are convinced that if enough people see their ads they'll get more sales (sadly the argument is that this is true) and the advertising company wants to do everything it can to stick the ad in front of your face so it can tell the companies that they are advertising for that they got X click throughs or Y impressions.
Last time I clicked on a banner ad it was an accident, even on sites that I like. Even the thinkgeek ad above offends me, and I will type 'thinkgeek.com' in the url bar instead of clicking on it. It's not that I don't like
If companies would come out of the fucking stone age they (like the RIAA) would realize that the technology is there to do some amazing things that, wow bring their services to the people who want them, and make peoples lives easier, instead of just annoying them.
It should be interesting to see how this makes search results change for webcrawling spiders and such. When I search for Frito Lay, is it going to list a (possibly defunct) web page advertisement on Salon?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
That's nice and all, but they've actually got a staff and people who are paid to produce content. Unlike software, reporting/commentary isn't exactly something around which one can build a service/support revenue model. The other web site you mention is just a part of a huge publishing conglameration -- Salon is independent, and the banner-ad thing wasn't working for them. You're certainly well within your rights to stop reading them, but don't complain later when MSNBCDisneyAOLTimeWarnerGE is the only source of news in the world.
For sites I hit daily, like that one and this one, I'd gladly fork over money to get rid of the annoying ads! I just hope people don't start abusing (sharing) their login ID/Passwords. I'm sure some simple scripting would ferret out those abusers for appropriate treatment.
Check this out if you think the ad on Salon.com is annoying.
If you think any client-side methods can force someone to view an ad, think again.
What kind if checksum will you put in Javascript? Great! That means that webmasters who use Javascript responsibly will lose out, because everyone will surf with it off.
You can't force people to view ads. Instead, make ads that don't suck, so people aren't tempted to block them. Like Google - its ads get higher clickthroughs and suck less.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
You can always pay up, mooch. Or you can just read the 95% drivel other places in the hopes that you will find the gem amongst the gravel.
I don't know about you, but I value my time enough to see that it is worth paying for some things.
I just feel it's important that they know where at least one person stands on these things. Put the ad in the contents, no problem, litter my desktop with these things, big problem. Yeah, I could just shut down Java, but then I have to enable it when I go somewhere else. Best just to sound off.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I agree. Moreover, I am troubled by what appears to be the majority, if not near consensus (but certainly not unanimous) attitude of Slashdot users: "We want all digital content for free." "We want to read it for free, copy it for free, and distribute it to anyone and everyone we want for free." Call it a generalization, a first order approximation, a rebuttable presumption -- hell, call it a "profile" -- about the average user of, and consensus on, Slashdot.
And if you ask us to read an advertisement, any advertisement, in any form, to help pay for the content, we will of course bitch, whine, moan, and use our considerable expertise to disable, block and/or render useless you advertisement. Disable pop-ups, block banner ads, and then gloat about it.
The New York Times puts its content up on the web. It asks, if you are a not one of their business partners, only that you register, for free, to read their content. Heaven forbid. What a travesty. That would interfere with your natural law, "Constitutional" (snort) right to access all digital content for free. So somebody, in order to GAIN karma, inevitably posts the "partner" or "archive" link to access the newspaper without registration. What a hero for free speech.
If you ask us to pay for digital content, we will bitch, whine, moan, and explain to each clueless retard content provider that, besides wanting to be anthropomorphized, "information wants to be free." That we can easily and economically copy and distribute digital information, that you can't stop us, so fsck you. Then gloat about it.
And when content providers come up with technology, legislation, and/or a combination thereof to try to protect and/or receive compensation for their digital content we... you guessed it... bitch, whine and moan. We also despair over the fact that perhaps we will no longer be able to gloat, that we will no longer be able to be the bullies we claimed to despise (but instead envied and dreamed to digitally emulate) in high school.
In other words, we efficiently demonstrate via the web for all to see, world-wide, that we are selfish, juvenile, immature, pigs.
The loathsome, immature, disgusting selfishness, is demonstrated not only by our desire, and indeed feeling of entitlement, to all digital content for free, but also by many of our responses to the crises of 911. Yesterday, there was a story about a call for hackers to come to the aid of their country, and to help fight terrorism. The majority, and perhaps consensus response? Again, you guessed it, to bitch, whine and moan. "Oh, they demonize us." "They call us names." As others bury their dead (or wish there was enough left of their loved ones that they could be buried), Slashdot users engage in paranoid libertarian fantasies about a "trap." (Just a hint, we aren't worth the effort.) They bitch about the fact that maybe, just maybe, they cannot break into other people's systems with impunity. That maybe, if they do, others will think less of them or, heaven forbid, actually put them in jail for breaking the law. Pathetic.
Are all Slashdot readers like this? Of course not. Some willingly pay for content, register, or put up with ads. Some, in other words, accept the content pursuant to the terms under which it was offered. Other go farther, and actually give and contribute to society. Many, many helped during the crises, and continue to help.
Are the content providers saints who never overreach, never attempt, and indeed succeed, in limiting the right to fair use? Again, of course not. They, too, can be loathsome.
But to bitch about advertisements on Salon which provides good, quality content for free is simply pathetic.
And, on the broader issue, to think you are able to protect yourself and your family from a terror attack on the scale of 911 because you are a libertarian Ayn Rand worshiping owner of a nine millimeter is not only morally pathetic, but also pathetically stupid.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Yesterday most of their stories were subscriber only, "premium" content.
However, many of these stories are available for free at the author's main sites (which usually are not salon.com).
For example, there was an article by Arianna Huffinton which was marked "premium" , but it's freely available at her site.
http://www.ariannaonline.com/
Same goes for Horowitz articles.
http://www.frontpagemag.com
I think if salon is going to charge for premium content, they should at least bother to pay for some type of exclusivity. It doesn't make any sense to pay for something that is legally free elsewhere.
- sigs are for wimps.
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.
People want information to be free because, in most cases, they're providing it for free. If that information costs money, they will usually stray from it. As for advertising, specifically... I go to the web for a combination of information and entertainment, usually together on the same sites. I will not visit a content site that is scaling back its content due to money issues and making my visit incredibly annoying (the opposite entertaining) at the same time.
I think a lot of people aren't so much bitching about advertising, as they're bitching about the fact that that advertising will cause them to never return to a site that they liked, namely Salon.
These 'jump through' ads have been around for ages, only they used to be called 'interstitial' ads. Now we're just sensitized to dislike any new form of advertising.
Kevin Fox
Of course, what happened was that the ad companies convinced the dot-coms that it was something about the ad itself that caused the click-throughs. And now that the click-throughs are drying up the ads companies are totally panicing, since they convinced themselves that they were responsible for them before, even though they actually had no idea what was going on. Now they're screwed, and they're pissing off everyone else as they go down the drain.
I use three techniques to nuke ads - a Filter, a hosts file that black-holes most ad servers and I've disabled animated gifs and flash. To me, the Internet is a quiet, subtle place with a lot of interesting content. Whenever I use someone else's computer it's like stock footage of Las Vegas, or that Futurama episode with the ads like the birds from Hitchcock's movie. I don't know how advertising executives sleep at night.
i think you're right, but that doesn't stop a lot of these companies from TRYING to use websites to make money. eventually those who don't get it will either learn or go away.
-sam
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
I will occasionally search for a product name on google, just to see who sells it! I do this because the ads on Google are not intrusive, annoying, etc. -- they are just informative!
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I tried to read the Yahoo story, but a huge x10 ad popped up and took over my screen. How's that for irony.
When you make a Flash file, you get the option to remove the options like 'play' 'loop' from the users right-click menu. Leaving the user no way to stop the animation.
They shouldn't do this. They should always have those options there, as well as a option to fully stop the animation (ticking off 'play' doesn't stop the animation completely), and a mute option.
All the major browsers have a way to stop animated gifs, Macromedia must do the same for flash. They are partly to blame for making adds annoying.
I suggest that people go to their site, and complain about these things, 'cause that's the only way they will change it. They already know that botching up the users interface is a bad thing.
"The ad should only show up once per day per user, unless you have turned "cookies" off in your browser."
Let us track your internet browsing through cookies and we won't pester you (quite as much).
"Like many other companies we've responded by trying to innovate for our advertisers"
Because why should we try innovating for our readers when advertising is where the money is?
"so we can remain financially healthy and continue to serve you"
You = advertisers.
"we ask you to consider that the content you come to Salon for -- independent-minded,"
Four legs good, two legs bad!
"thought-provoking,"
Did NASA fake the moon landings?
"unavailable elsewhere"
Just like the goatse.cx site!
"Today we have two ways to support our writers, editors and the rest of the staff"
Well, two ways that we'll admit to.
"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."
Ceasing to visit Salon is not an option.
"Our intention, as always, is to bring you the most intelligent,"
From the same people who thought up jump-through advertising!
"provocative,"
Gratuitous use of the word "sex."
"fearless"
Unless somebody threatens with a lawsuit.
"coverage of news"
The kind of news where Bill Clinton's name appears twice on their main page nine months after the end of his presidency.
"and culture"
Insert the word "pop."
"available anywhere."
Anywhere = salon.com
I like the idea. Set me up with a free account on your ad-free server and I'll start creating content which is ad-free. I'll need mod-php, access to mysql or postgresql, and about 4 gig of space for now. Man, people are just gonna love you. Your idea r00lz!
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Hey, if people bitch there is a reason.
....
:( It used to be a click on every Nth and now it's 0.00032123 percent of that". Well because there's nothing to click on!
.... well... anywhere on that lady with 38D that works for X10 (XXXXXXXXXX ? ) on "politics" section of newspapers. Loose 10 pounds ads everywhere. Psychic readings. Find your pals. Over and over and over again.
:)
I don't mind ads in what I read. In fact, sometimes I see nice ads that actually interest me. That look nice, not boring, not being over 200Kb (just because someone at sales dept wanted a flashy thingy to flash on their product). Fine. I like those. But where are they?
Why every freaking time I see SPRINT PCS? Once -- ok. Twice -- hm.... Three times -- do you really thing I will click/buy? Four, five, six
They do not care if reader is really interested.
The attitude is "hm... he didn't click on flashy banner, let's put three more on the side and one full page".
After that industry starts to cry "they don't click any more
And the amount of irrelevant ads increases rapidly. Little cameras that you can stick up
Until they stop showing me this crap I ignored about 1384 times I will be bitching about how stupid, ignorant, irrelevant, annoying, NOT WORKING online ads (and online ad industry) are.
I bet banners on Tomshardware.com have double (if not triple) click-through average to the rest of the web. Because they're relevant.
*Author is not affiliated with any of listed resources, all opinions are personal
Hyperom.com
However, I would like to pay sites like Salon with micropayments. Really, those ads do very little good. I mean, I would rather pay them directly what they get for each impression, than paying through the products I buy, since the marketing budgets really make the products more expensive. We really don't need marketing in the sense that we see now, what we need are databases with good information about different products.
Unfortunately, W3C closed their micropayments activity for now. There wasn't very much interested in it. However, we need this to fly, soon, or it may threaten the development of good, independent content on the web. If it can't be done within the W3C framework, someone else should get working on it.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
While most of the banner ads are not annoying to me, even if animated, there is one that is. That one is the PlanetHardDrive.com ad. Maybe it's just me, but that sudden brief white flash prevents me from being able to read the page. Fortunately I can just reload or scroll it up off the edge. But I won't be going to that advertiser's web site under the assumption they are the ones who made the ad. If CmdrTaco or whoever wants to tell me different, please do.
I don't ban ads for the sake of eliminating banner ads. Normally they don't bother me and I know they support the web sites I view. But I do block a few ad sources due to things like extreme annoyances or web bugs. Don't make me have to do this to Slashdot, because I prefer to keep supporting it.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
...it's the ridiculously long Flash preload on the front end that will kill traffic to their site. It took 75 seconds this morning to load the Flash for the topmost banner ad over my miserly dialup. That's 75 seconds before the front page even begins to load. Loyal readers (like me) may be willing to tolerate that sort of delay, but most new visitors won't. When a site doesn't give you anything in 10 or 15 seconds, most people move on. That's Web 101, folks. Salon may manage to retain their existing readership, but it's gonna kill the growth of their reader base, and that, in the end, could well kill Salon.
Fried ice cream is a reality. - George Clinton