Advertisers Escalate Banner Ad War

AnonymousComrade writes: "In today's Newsbytes, there is an article about MediaBEAM GmbH, a German company that say they have developed Web server software that can detect whether a home browser is blocking banner ads or pop-ups. If the Web server detects blocking software, a message appears on the screen advising the 'free-loading' surfer that he has two choices if he wants access to the Web site's content: pay for it or be exposed to the ads. This sounds strange to me. Can they really include something in the download (Java or JS, I assume) that detects whether an ad picture has been downloaded or not? What if you have blocking S/W that not just blocks the download of the ad picture, but also modifies the HTML on-the-fly (a la the Proxomitron). Can they really distinguish this from a remote ad server that just isn't responding? And how long will it take before ad blocking S/W is updated to block this blocking-detection mechanism?"

Comments

They can just check the access.log

[lameluke]

This sounds strange to me. Can they really include something in the download (Java or JS, I assume) that detects whether an ad picture has been downloaded or not?
They can just check the access.log - however they will never know if it actually has been displayed.

Re:They can just check the access.log

[Tet]

They can just check the access.log - however they will never know if it actually has been displayed.

Yep, or more likely, by the use of a web server module that does the sme thing without having to actually parse the logs. But that's not what they're claiming. In the article, they say that they "make contact" with the user's browser to determine if the ad has actually been displayed. The only way I can think of doing this is by embedding some JavaScript that checks to see if the page has been rewritten en route, and if so, posts something back to the web server, which can then modify its content accordingly. But even that won't be particularly effective, and your favourite blocking proxy should just be able to filter out the offending javascript anyway. And even if it didn't, it still wouldn't catch proxies that just serve a blank image instead of the requested ad. As far as the browser is concerned, it's been given the image it requested. I'm sceptical, but then all of my assumptions are based on having a sane browser. Who knows what MS have put in IE to give content providers control over the browser?

This is just a case of too little, too late

[The Ultimate Badass]

Had this been introduced in 2000, the dot-com crash might have been averted. As it happens, this will not have much of an effect, since most of the sites that ad-impressions and money might have saved are already gone. It's a nice thought, just not timely enough.

These guys would probably have ruled the dot-com world, if they'd gotten their act together and released this when it might have been useful. As it is, the internet is dying from lack of funds. I'm starting to find dead links in google for crying out loud!

Re:This is just a case of too little, too late

[cshotton]

Had this been introduced in 2000, the dot-com crash might have been averted.

A charitable view of this product, but a seriously naive view of what caused the dot-com crash. First, not every dot-com had its business model predicated on ad revenue. But the real reason that the dot-coms crashed is a simple one. They weren't creating any value. In an economy that rewards profits, very few of the dot-coms' business plans actually recognized this simple fact. Many were predicated on some Ponzi-like exit strategy (if they had one at all), be it an IPO, acquisition, or the holy grail, viral adoption.

The reality is that there was simply too much venture capital and too few experienced investors. In '98, you could write a business plan on a piece of toilet paper and get it funded by someone. Now, if you don't have a clear path to profitability with 24 months, a shipping product, near break-even revenues, and a seasoned management team, don't even bother wasting the trees to print your plan. The VCs don't want to see it. They're still trying to dig their way out of billions in failed companies and trying to save the companies they still have.

These guys would probably have ruled the dot-com world, if they'd gotten their act together and released this when it might have been useful.

Probably not. Most likely, they'd have gone the same way as all of the other companies who were part of the failed VC food chain. Once the capital dried up, it would have only been a matter of time before companies stopped buying their software. This is the secondary fall-out that killed all the companies with products and sales that were geared towards dot-com infrastructure. These guys would have been no different. As it stands now, this one shouldn't even be let out of the gate.

Re:This is just a case of too little, too late

[Artemis3]

Oh, c'mon, you really think there is a large % of people actually blocking ads? It's a small group, 10% at best. Most of the crowd visiting those pages don't even know what a proxy or ad blocking software is, in fact most let spyware remain installed without they noticing.

The DOT.com crash was the result of its own demise. Some people were sold the idea of internet being the ultimate and biggest ever shopping mall, so they created an artificial sense or bubble that simply popped up when the reality check came; which was, basically, way too much more offer than real demand. Everyone knows that actually 70% of the DOT commers were in excess; it was simply a matter of time.

Now would you really check how much is asked for getting to the net on the first place, why they seem to think you have to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month for T1 like links; when people in Sweden pay 20$ montly for 10mbps lan speed like links to their homes?

I have to pay 80US$ for 256/64 DSL with forced NAT and no real ip or higher speeds options available, since this is "residential service". Now tell me, do i give a damn if the .coms don't get their .000005 cent for an ad banner display that i am never ever going to see or click, yet steals *my* bandwidth and even attempts to identify *me* with their stupid cookies?

Their "business" models were flawed from the first place.
Liberal capitalism is darwinian by its nature; leaving everything to the market forces alone will result in collapse of the small or the weak, no matter what.

Re:This is just a case of too little, too late

[onepoint]

>>Oh, c'mon, you really think there is a large % of people actually blocking ads? It's a small group, 10% at best.

I'm willing to wager that a person that knows how to block advertising has an income of >40K, has an e-mail list of 25 people with simular income or greater. And when discovers a new product that they like, they create HUGE buzz within their little circle. And that circle will most likely have people with the money or authority to purchase the product.

so give me a way to target them I'll do it. ( google dies it best I think )

-Onepoint

this bites..

[newr00tic]

damn.. Stuff like this gotta break some rule of "personal preferences" (or whatever..)

Using frames or suspended uploading

[sveinb]

Just make sure the ads would be downloaded before the good stuff on a normal browser. Then hold the good stuff until the ads are loaded (from the same IP number). If no ads are loaded after a timeout period, send bad stuff instead of good stuff. I suppose you could do this with frames, or by partial uploading of html pages (upload the html referring to ads, and hold the rest without closing the connection).

Svein.

How?

[keesh]

Only way I can think of is to make popup windows named, and then use JavaScript to check that mypopup.images['myimage'].src (??? not used JS for ages) is what it should be...

your browser will be assimilated ...

[beanerspace]

I dunno, but this sounds awfully "BORG" like. Even if they can figure out exactly what's getting through to, and visibile to my browser, do I want someone to know that information ?

Do websites using this bleeding edge ad technology take into account the variety of settings and the reasons for them ?

For example, the public library or a school. It bans ads to protect the little kids doing homework, but can't afford, not equitably employ "pay per play" sites.

Likewise, what about those who are in work situations where firewall and proxy filters are employed ?

This entire scheme seems almost too myopic ... and too borg like ... to be successfull.

There's a third option.

[Basalisk]

Always there is a third option.

In this case, it is to ignore the offensive website. When a company starts to insult the decisions of potential customers, they lose more customers than they gain.

But what if you need something that the website provides? Look elsewhere. When there are enough people requiring the services of one company, but who do not want to go to that company, another can come in. By being freindlier to their customers, all else being equal, they can gobble up market share.

But it's your choice whether the companies force-advertising you will succeed or not, because they depend on you, and not the other way around.

I see many problems...

[sfe_software]

Lots of problems with this:

- The biggest problem I see is that many sites run ads from a third party network (eg, Doubleclick). More than likely this would only work for ads served by the same server.

- What if you simply disabled image downloading all together? Or use Lynx? Or disable whatever technology they are using (Java, JS, whatever) for other reasons, if that's the case?

- If you're behind a proxy, often times images are downloaded via a different IP than other content (images are generally considered cachable). I've seen this in my logs many times, mostly with scripts (which are generally non-cachable). Or, the user may download the image from a cache, and the server might assume the user hasn't seen it. With larger ISPs who cache content, this is easily conceivable.

- If you chose not to see ads, you probably aren't going to purchase any products advertised. So the advertisers get cheated, the visitors annoyed, and the site owner is the only one potentially gaining anything (though pissing everyone off isn't a good way to make money).

I'm so sick of ads personally, I've disabled Flash and Java (both of which seem to be used more for ads than anything else). I've also added *.doubleclick.net and a few others to my DNS cache (on my home network), so ads from those places simply come up empty for me (no ad servers at 127.0.0.1 :)

This reminds me of the CD copy protection crap: trying to extend a basic technology for purposes it wasn't intended for, for corporate gain, that only serves to harm the consumer. It won't fly.

What makes banner different from paper ads?

[edgrale]

I'm not trying to flame anyone.

When we read our daily paper (which we pay for) we get ads too, right? What makes sites that much different? We don't pay for the contest on sites, in stead we see ads, is that so bad? Sure, I hate pop-up ads as much as you do and I thing those should be shot on sight.

But really, does a small banner like the one on slashdot bother that much? I'm okay with the ads on Zdnet and C|net too (the ones in the center of the article). Just ignore it, no one is forcing you to click on it. Just as no one is forcing you to go and buy whatever is advertized in your local paper.

Keep it as it is now, don't force people to click on ads or to close a window that pops up each time you surf a site and people will have no problem with the ads.

Just my 0.02 euros :)

Re:What makes banner different from paper ads?

[costas]

Banner ads worsen the user experience; print ads do not. Regular banner ads take up my bandwidth and worsen my browser's responsivenss. So, yeah, I will use a proxy, no question.B ack when I had a 1.2M DSL line, I didn't care about ads that much. I only resorted to the Proxomitron when pop-ups and pop-unders became the vogue.

The industry needs to get smarter. Download ads after (not before) the content of the page has loaded. Stop annoying the user. A click-through ad is much better than a pop-under or a flashing fake Windows alert box any day of the week. Sponsor content instead of obstracting its delivery. Something.

Most web sites need an income

[samael]

And how are the web site owners supposed to pay for the bandwidth you're using?

If you don't want to give them an income directly and don't want to give them an income indirectly, are they just supposed to pay out of the goodness of their hearts?

Re:Eventually, the DMCA would apply.

[sfe_software]

I'm not sure if removing adds from a page is legal, even without the DCMA.
The author wrote a page with an add, and a filter app modifies the page and removes the add picture, without a permission from the author.

Most browsers allow you to override fonts and colors, toggle image downloading, disable scripting, and so on; blocking ads is only one more tiny modification to the page. Modifying the page is something that is commonly accepted for other purposes (accessibility, user preference, etc), so I don't think that argument will go far.

But modification is one of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner.

I'm not sure if this applies. You certainly can't modify a copyrighted work and distribute it, but if you purchase a book, you're free to scribble notes on the pages. If you listen to a CD, you can EQ it to taste. Thus, if you download a web page, you should be able to modify it as you wish for your own viewing.

Selling an app that's only purpose is to remove adverts from web pages could infringe the authors rights.

That's what some say about Tivo and Replay TV... and so far, I don't think a real big fuss has been raised. The difference of course is that commercial-skipping isn't the only use for the Tivo (nor is it an advertised feature), so ad-blocking software might have a more difficult time... but a general proxy with ad-blocking as an extra feature might be fine.

Re:Eventually, the DMCA would apply.

[xigxag]

But modification is one of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner.

People keep saying this, but it is obviously not true. If you buy a magazine, it's legal to clip out the coupons, or draw a moustache on Tatjana Simic, or write notes in the margins. It's even legal to resell a textbook after you have underlined large portions of it in various colors. What is not legal is to modify something and then redistribute it as the original or as your own work. Since apps like Proxomitron only modify the code for your own use, it is unclear how anyone can claim they violate copyright.

That only works for some sites

[Eimi Metamorphoumai]

A lot of sites really don't have anything to sell. Sure, the idea of Amazon or eBay having banner ads is a bit absurd, but news sites, opinion places, comic strips, or basically any place you go for information also needs to be able to support itself, and I really doubt /., for instance, could make a living of selling nifty t-shirts.

Re:That only works for some sites

[mangu]

news sites, opinion places, comic strips, or basically any place you go for information also needs to be able to support itself

Before there was an Internet, I bought newspapers, comic magazines, books, etc. We used to pay for whatever information we wanted. Of course, newspapers and magazines also got a large part, perhaps most, of their income from advertising. But it was well organized, there are separate pages for ads, you don't have to read the classified pages to get to the editorial.

What website managers need to understand is that they have to offer value to their customers. And it's so easy. Why not offer better search engines? How often I have searched for something I wanted to buy, by poring through page after page of Altavista or Google, while having to see an endless list of stupid, blinking, obtrusive ads offering something I definitely do not want to buy.

Re:That only works for some sites

[egburr]

Generally the price you pay for a newspaper is for the delivery, whether by hand-delivery or locked in a paper-box. Advertising pays for the paper, press, ink, and employees' salaries. This is just how online sites whould work, too.

The difference is that online advertising is no longer something you can skim past while reading the story. Online advertising is now a very annoying, can't-be-ignored, get-in-your-face irritation. On top of that, much of the onlie advertising also tracks you to see where you saw the ad, how often you saw the ad, who you are, what other sites/ads you may be seeing, etc.

Back when online advertising was just a simple banner ad, I never even thought about trying to block it. When online advertising starting tracking where you went and what you did, I started looking at blocking options and started a half-assed attempt at blocking. When online advertising started getting really annoying and very difficult to just ignore, I got serious about blocking the ads.

The advertisers did it to themselves. They tried to force more upon us than they did with newspapers. They tried to gather much more information about us than they could with newspapers. (They probably are also paying less for the ads than they did with newspapers.) If they had left well enough alone and not gotten greedy, most people probably would never even have thought about blocking their ads.

Re:That only works for some sites

[Bongo]

The advertisers did it to themselves. They tried to force more upon us than they did with newspapers. They tried to gather much more information about us than they could with newspapers. (They probably are also paying less for the ads than they did with newspapers.) If they had left well enough alone and not gotten greedy, most people probably would never even have thought about blocking their ads.

I really agree with this--online adverts are pushing too hard. Like a pushy salesman in a shop--you just get fed up and leave.

I use some software that's "ad-ware" (Eudora, Opera) and it really doesn't bother me. The ad is confined to a window region and doesn't animate much.

But imagine what it would be like to watch tv and have ads appear overlayed over the program you're watching, or in boxes that pop up and cover half the screen in the middle of a moving scene.... it would drive everyone nuts, and that's what online ads are doing.

What about ad blocking software that...

[frleong]

downloads the ad anyway, but directs the browser to skip the image? The ad would still be useless, at the cost of bandwidth. I'm sure that no web server can detect this trick.

Or...

[athmanb]

Or they're running log analyzing software on both the web page and the ad server. When a client requests more HTML pages than ads, he's obviously using a blocker software.

However, such a software can easily be countered by loading ads and then not displaying them, which would hurt online advertising much more than today's blockers...

Oh RIGHT...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, now, according to YOU, the peer-to-peer free flow of information THAT IS THE INTERNET (and had been for 20+ years) is suddenly "leeching" because some loser dot-bomb can't think of a real way to make money? Give me a break.

I don't recall Sunsite or Tsx-11 forcing ascii-ads down our throats in the FTP banner back in '93. I don't recall Tim Berners-Lee pining for an internet full of banner ads and griping about "leeches". I don't recall seeing the official DOD document subsection about preventing "leechers".

The usual mantra that originates from the dot-bombers, which you so aptly seem to parrot here, is that if you somehow block ads you are then "stealing" from the web site.

Excuse me? I pay for MY end of the pipe. I pay for the packets going in and out of MY end of the internet...are the dot-bombers going to pay ME for their use of my bandwidth to broadcast crap? Oh, didn't think so...the shoe is on the other foot now. Most spammers scuttle away like roaches when you say this to them, too.

Here's a newsflash: despite the best and worst efforts of dot-bombers, the Internet IS NOT LIKE TELEVISION. This is a peer-to-peer network we all share in. DON'T LIKE IT? THEN CLOSE UP SHOP AND SET UP ON AOL INSTEAD OF GRIPING ABOUT INTERNET "LEECHERS". If you want to force ads down the throats of the clueless in a server-based environment, AOL and MSN are designed for you...but not the Internet.

(We put up with 4 years of dot-bomb hyperbole and BS, and now we have to put up with another 4 of the former dot-bombers griping about how it was everyone else's fault they didn't make any money.)

Re:Eventually, the DMCA would apply.

[DGolden]

> But modification is one of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner.

NO. NO. NO. NO.

Modification, followed by subsequent redistribution is restricted by copyright law.

The mainstream media giants have managed to socially engineer this knowledge out of the vast majoirty of the sheep^H^H^H^H^Hpeople.

If I, upon legitimately obtaining copyrighted material, screw around with it, I'm not breaking the law unless I give a copy of it or the modified version to someone else.

Think about it - if I buy a painting from you, I'm free to draw a silly moustache and glasses on it, but, according to societal conventions currently enshrined in our legal system, I can't (a) sell copies of the painting without your permission or (b) sell copies of the modified painting without permsission. (I'm also usually allowed sell the original painting to someone else (this area is much murkier, and the reason behind the legal blurb at the start of european books about "may not be sold on without imposing similar conditions on the buyer" stuff)- that's the freedom that UCITA and software EULAs try to fight)

That's all pretty much a mixture of common sense and courstesy - but what the lawyers and media giants have done, is, via tricky wording and paying for new laws, is destroy all that.

Via assinine laws like the DMCA, and WIPO treaty provisions, our feudal overlords / corporate masters have managed to erode such "fair use" rights of the average person.

Paper does not consume a public resource

[twitter]

Web ads use a public net for private profit. When some poor MSIE serf hits some advert bloated junk site, and is forced to look at all of it, the junk site annoys me too! All of that crap gets in the way of you and me getting to real content. That the profit may be small or not exist does not change the intent. The intent is to make the web resemble a push media and it's doomed to fail.

It may be argued that trees are a public resource as well, but most news print comes from recycled paper or stands that were planted for the purpose. It's hard to argue that trees privatly planted are a public resource.

This stupid stuff will never work. Blocking or otherwise anoying users will just reduce the number of users the publication has. No readers makes for no revenue. Publications that depend on advert revenue will have to adjust to the world as it is. The rest of us will have to find other ways of getting information if those publications fail.

Re:Geeks fight, others watch

[Anonymous Coward]

The effort, which is necessary to fool the webserver into thinking that ads are shown while in reality they are cleverly redirected to the bitbucket, is bigger than just downloading and suffering through them.

This is false.

There will be considerable effort on the part of the first (few) programmer(s) who figure out how to circumvent whatever methods are being used, and who write next-generation ad-blocking software that works around these new restrictions.

There will be minimal effort on the part of the millions of ad-blocking web users. They will simply need to track down, download and install the latest version of their favorite ad-blocking software in order to take advantage of these capabilities.

On the Internet, if a single person has solved a problem, then everybody has solved that problem along with him. The cost of communicating the solution to everyone is asymptotically zero.

Why banner ads don't work.

[Penguinoflight]

The problem with banner ads is they're messed up. You shouldn't be responsible for making people click on banner ads, they should be good enough for people to click on them out of curiosity.

Just for a few of the people who don't know how banner ads work, let me explain: Back when banner ads used to work (they really did make money once), they were run on a per-veiw basis, not per-click. When I got started advertising on my site (about 1998), per-click, and per-sale were becoming popular.

Now here's the problem with either of those methods: People don't really care how creative the ads are, so everyone gets bored, and the sites running the ads go broke, while the advertiser doesn't get many ads, but at least they aren't loosing anything.

Per view is a better way IMHO, because the ads seem to be less boring, and the sites make more money. In turn the advertiser will get more people because the ads are less boring. Putting this back into the topic... People might not block ads if they were less boring.

Doesn't require Javascript or ActiveX

[Isofarro]

The only way I can think of doing this is by embedding some JavaScript that checks to see if the page has been rewritten

Sorry, I'm being a muppet! No client side functionality is required - it can all be done using a web server module.

Its really simple:

• create a session for each "visitor"
  
• Initialise two counters in the session - number of pages requested and number of banners requested.
  
• For each page request received from this visitor, increment the page counter
  
• For each banner ad object (image, applet, flash, activeX etc) increment the banner counter
  
• Every now and again, divide on by the other.
  
• If the ratio is not good enough, warn user.
  

Since each banner ad needs to be HTTP requested from the server - and proxies tend to remove instances of <img src="bannerad.gif"... with their own blank image, its a doddle to track.

So what is wrong with paying for content...

[Dog and Pony]

... by for instancem, viewing ads? It isn't exactly free to host sites, especially good ones.

Sadly, I can't stand the popups either, so I am very depressed by the fact that the advertisers didn't stick to normal banners, that would be the best choice. Doesn't really bother anyone, and if it is interesting... I click. Otherwise, I don't.

I'm equally depressed by the sorry mofos that use filters. That is kinda like stealing. Well, I guess you think you are Robin Hood liberating the internet. No, you are lowering the quality of the internet, by driving providers out of business. By taking their stuff for free. Do you do the same in stores?

I love free internet, and ad-free internet - but I don't demand that everyone can afford to bring you the latest news, articles or whatever it may be for free. Can you do that?

Re:And what about text/speaking browsers?

[BadDoggie]

Some browsers don't support JS, and cannot download images...

Correct.

I very much believe that these users have more of a right to keep this off than an advertizer has to force you to look at an ad.

Also correct, but not in the you mean it. The page owners and creators -- as well as the advertisers -- can't force you to do anything. You go to a Web site by choice... most of the time, anyway.

However, you do not have some intrinsic or inalienable right to view the content of any site out there. Some sites you have to pay for (like Westlaw), some you just need to have a free membership, and some sites (like mine) don't care.

It galls me that so many people here piss and moan about having to register to read a NYT article. For fuck's sake, it's free! It takes a minute to do and, if you allow a cookie, you'll never have to bother with it again. In exchange for this, you get access to current stories in what is arguably one of the better US print journals (it's certainly referenced often enough here!).

Is the NYT in cahoots with the CIA, NSA and the Illuminati? Who cares?! As far as the NYT knows, my name is Mr. Potato Salad, I'm an 83 years old labourer and I live at 123 Happy-Go-Lucky Lane in East Timor. All the NYT cares about is being able to show advertisers unique visits/impressions so that the advertisers can pay instead of you and me. How fucking hard is that?

I draw the line when the ads become intrusive. Pop-unders, JavaScript, Flash, new windows, onOpen/onClose, etc., as well as any ad over 30K (if I'm on a dial-up) or more than half the data size of the page I want. This kind of crap has a tendency to crash my browser, disrupt or destroy work in another window. It also costs me a lot of money when I'm using a modem in Europe.

It's because people went ballistic at even the most innocuous of ads and started an arms race that we have the sorts of intrusive ads and methods we're now facing.

If you keep blocking the ads, then the advertisers will give up and you will get to pay for the content. It's that simple.

It doesn't take a lot of effort to hack the binaries and change a couple of spellings so that new instances can't be forced open, scrolling can't be blocked, etc. Now I just need to know how to stop the lame animated GIFs -- can anyone please tell me if there's a way to halt them in Konqueror the way I can by hitting ESC in Mozilla/Opera/IE? Maybe there's a way to display them only as static or disable the LOOP command.

My guess is that soon, content will be served only through the advertising locations, so that blocking the ads will block your receiving the content, as well. There will be a way around it, but it'll be a lot more complicated than adding a couple lines to the hosts file.

woof.

If the ad is condescending or annoying, I avoid the product. If it's informative, I pay attention.

Umm, seems simple enought to me...

[Telek]

Most likely they just detect if the banner has been displayed. On the client side blocking software, I'm assuming, just doesn't download the banners and blocks popup windows from even oppening, so if the ads don't get loaded successfully first, don't display content. Once the server has a successful load of the ad, you can send the content.

This of course won't stop anti-ad software from simply downloading the ad and not putting it on screen, but most blocking mechanisms just don't download the ad anyways.

However I think that we should not use blocking software. You are getting "free as in beer" content, so you should be required to "pay" for it, in this case with your time. The servers that you are reading your pages off of have bills to pay, and the only way that most of them can do this is to serve ads. The only reason why ads have gotten so fscking annoying is because the conventional style isn't working. Why isn't it working? Because people block it. So thus the more you work against the system, the nastier it will become.

Now seriously, how much trouble is it to read around a huge ad in the middle of your page? I'm being serious here. I have mental filtering. I just don't notice them anymore. I close popups usually before they're finished loading and even sometimes if I think the content is good I'll go and click on the ad just to give them a bit more money. Having these ads maybe adds 5% to the time required to read the article. Big whoop. Do it so that they can get paid. There is no free lunch, they have bills to pay and the least that you can do is to at least glance at the ads and sometimes click so that they can pay their bills. Because if people keep blocking then we will be forced to start physically paying to view pages, via micropayments perhaps, but we will pay because they have to pay their bills. It is much cheaper for us to just put up with the ads and that way it won't get much worse, and we won't be faced with having to pay physical cash to view the stuff that we want to view.

People aregue about "Artists' rights" and that they should be paid for their music that you download in MP3 form. Although I agree with this, the same thing applies here. People have spent their time to write the articles that you are viewing, and they deserve your patronage to put up with the ads so that they can pay their bills.

The Underlying Problem

[pantaz]

Advertisers are not receiving adequate response for the amount of money they sink into online ads. The proliferation of in-your-face pop-up ads was their first response. Those still don't generate the desired traffic. They mistakenly believe that this is caused by ad blocking software. Marketing types can't believe that anyone can possibly resist their clever, highly targeted advertising campaigns. Therefore, too many folks must be blocking the ads -- if they see the ads, they won't be able to resist them. The marketers fail to realize that the largest group of ad-blocking users are people like us. We're not going to click on the ads even if they are forced upon us. If anything, we are less likely to as a form of protest.

Re:Sometimes you can't just get stuff free...

[koffie]

Frankly, I can't see how you must think to be able to post like this, so let me try to explain why I see things completely differently.

As you correctly observed, bandwidth costs money. It still costs me money, even now that thank gawd the dialup days are over, for me.

I have always been very selective in what I download from the Internet, from back in the good old days before Mosaic. And I don't see why I should now let it drop and start downloading unwanted material. If a dot-com has a crappy business model it's their problem, not mine surely.

Why, pray tell me, should I waste my precious bandwidth to download useless shit I never asked for? On what grounds am I obliged to download crap together with the content I am interested in?

Thank gawd the modem days are over, bit it is still my bandwidth and it is up to me, myself and I to decide how to use it.

If you annoy me, I'll tune you out

[Ms.Taken]

Having stuff flash at me while I'm trying to read, is so annoying that I simply won't put up with it. If you use animated gifs, I'll turn of image loading. If you use Flash, I'll wait till it's finished playing. If you refuse to provide content without flashing ads, I'll go elsewhere.

Conversely, if you avoid annoying me, I'll probably let you stick around and might even pay attention to what you have to say.

There seem to be two main paridigms for online advertising, I'll call them Amazon/Google (AG) and DoubleClick (DC). AG ads are unobtrusive (static images or text), targeted (related the the webpage I requested), and informative ("Click here to purchase this book"). DC ads are intrusive (flashing), untargeted (random banners), and obscure ("We'll make you happier/sexier/richer!!"). As retailers become savvier, looking more at generated sales and less at the number of click-thrus, they'll turn more and more to AG ads. Until then, I don't care how technically sophisticated your ad-loading software gets. If it annoys me, I'll find a way to avoid it.

This is not stealing!!!

[Eric E. Coe]

Repeat after me 3 times: I am not responsible for a anybody else's business model (or lack thereof).

I have no intrinsic moral obligation to make sure that a vendor's business is profitable or is based on a viable revenue stream. The net is by default a public place. Putting up a website is the same as putting a notice up on a bulletin board. Filtering out banner ads (having your client software ignore them) is like ignoring them in wetware (which is what most people do anyway). Or zapping/muting a commercial on TV.

OTOH, putting up coercive software on the site to limit access to content is the vendor's priviledge. There is no intrinsic difference between password-protected content and this "must download the ads too" software. (I suspect that the customer response will be similar.) Your choices are: don't patronize the site, comply with the restictions, or evade the restrictions. There is no morality associated with any of these choices, it is merely a matter of market pressures and a technological arms race. (Remember, the closest ecological analogue of a vendor-client relationship is that of preador and prey. They are not your friends.)

The opinion of an ad exec

[sinster]

Ok, here I am, talking about advertising again.

Assuming that the software works 100% (read: it blocks content if and only if the ads weren't viewed), then it will kill advertising revenue. The reason is all about click through ratios. It goes back to my previous statements: if someone doesn't want to view ads, then they aren't gonna be clicking on ads. And if they aren't clicking on ads, then forcing them to see the ad only lowers your click through ratio. And that means that you can't charge as much for advertising as you would otherwise be able to. So your costs go up, your revenues go down, and things are bad all around.

This doesn't even address the repercussions of the simple fact that forcing your viewers to also view ads is gonna piss them the hell off.

And then there's the technology itself. I could see it done in 2 ways: java/javascript and redirected frames.

The java/javascript method would require the user to have java enabled. And if they don't have java enabled, clearly the system won't work. Trying to put up a website that doesn't work for users with java or javascript disabled doesn't work. There are far too many users out there who have them disabled. Hell, I wish all users disabled them, but that's just me.

The redirected frame would be the best way. Make the ad server serve out an HTML frame that contains a link to the graphic and another link to a 1 pixel frame on the host's server. The host's server sits there and counts the hits on this other frame, and when it reaches the right number, serves out the content. But this doesn't prevent the user from blocking the ad graphic at all. It works if the user blocks the ad frame, but doesn't prevent the user from just blocking the ad graphic.

The only way you could tell that the real graphic is actually displayed is to send out java or javascript that knows the checksums for the ads that the user is going to be served, and then compares the checksums before the real content is displayed. But once again that depends on the user having java or javascript enabled. And it also requires the ad host's webserver to be integrated with the ad network's webserver. Only really big sites can afford to do that integration, because it means that they have to own their own ad server and content server. Ad servers are highly expensive. Yes, there are freeware ad servers out there, but none of them have the speed that a high traffic site needs, or they lack reasonable targeting options.

All in all, I'd say that this new beast is going to be a miserable failure. The problem isn't that this beast exists, but that someone actually thought it would be a good idea. That means that I have to get back into the propa^H^H^H^H^Heducation war again.

Re:Eventually, the DMCA would apply.

[Elwood P Dowd]

No, the only thing that actually helps our failing economy would be purchasing the product that you see advertised.