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

Eventually, the DMCA would apply.

[Elwood P Dowd]

If pop up ads started using techniques like this AnonymousComrade suggests, eventually the DMCA would apply. They could encrypt their content, their ActiveX control could decrypt it, and hacking IE to kill the popups would be illegal. They wouldn't even have to use real encryption. They could use ROT13, and the legislation would still work. Then they can use the revenue generated by the ads to purchase more congresspeople. It'll be great!

Re:Eventually, the DMCA would apply.

[tlk nnr]

They could encrypt their content, their ActiveX control could decrypt it, and hacking IE to kill the popups would be illegal.

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

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

first

[Anonymous Coward]

the beauty of servers, the server knows if you DLd bannerad2.gif, so it doesnt have to depend on client side..that said just because you DLd it doesnt mean you have to display it

if they did do it with client side code the blocking software would be modified for that

double-click has for at least 2 years been using
clent code that will not display a page if the ad is not DLd..

Detecting

[tcr]

Can they really include something in the download (Java or JS, I assume) that detects whether an ad picture has been downloaded or not?

Hmm...
I guess they could cycle through document.images[..] in Javascript/JScript to check the existence/properties of each image element, and pop up a window if something was amiss...

Not sure what they could do if client-side scripting was disabled though. Other than perhaps checking the weblogs through a server script to see if an HTTP GET was made from your IP address to a particular ad object... sounds onerous.

From the article, sounds like the former?

Sounds evil but...

[gazbo]

I hate the ludicrous number of banner ads on websites as much as anyone, but is it really that hard to understand why sites would want to force people to download/display them? I mean, the vast majority of sites out there (no, I'm not talking about pr0n) are free. Some, especially topical sites, take a great deal of time and effort to maintain, and yet we are quite happy to sit here, blocking the ads that pay for their maintenance, on the flimsy moral objection that somehow they are 'bad'.

Now I don't extend this to all ads - pop-up windows suck ass; there is a reasonable objection here, as spawning new windows on your system definitely interferes with the normal operation of your computer. But harmless banner ads - if they piss you off too much, as they sometimes do with me, don't visit the website. You can't expect to get a product (the website) for free just because you don't like how you're paying for it.

As an alternative, I wonder how many people (I am one, btw) have donated to SatireWire via the Amazon Honour System?

And what about text/speaking browsers?

[Masem]

Some browsers don't support JS, and cannot download images (eg: lynx, or browsers for sight-impared people). At least in the latter case, there's a legit reason for them to not have images.

In addition, in today's age of worms upon virus upon other nasty things, there is a sufficiently significant (probably around 10%) of users that have turned off Active Scripting in IE or the equivalent in NS to avoid such problems. 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.

Re:And what about text/speaking browsers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Today's banner filters only prevent the loading/requesting of the banner images. All other images are downloaded normally. The server can (trivially) detect if you are downloading all pictures, none, or all except the banners. In the latter case, it can serve you a different HTML page.

The way to still fool the server is obvious: Have your browser request the banner images, but not display them. With The Proxomitron for example, you would remove the IMG tag for the banner and instead insert some javascript that loads the banner image but never shows it.
There is a slight loss of performance (you are wasting bandwidth on banners that are never shown) but it's better than being bugged by banners, popups, interstitials, etc.

Sure it can be done

[j7953]

The server can detect if your browser, after requesting an HTML page, also requests the contained images. I guess it works only if the pages are served from the sames server as the images.

Of course, you'll always see at least one web page, as the server doesn't know yet if you'll request the ads as well. If you don't, it can deny to handle further requests from your IP. They also cannot make sure (at least not by tracking requests) the ad is actually displayed, they can only make sure it's downloaded.

Still, I don't see a wide success for this technology. What about multiple people using the same IP -- the first one blocked ads, now the site is blocked for the other users as well? Even worse, dynamic IPs -- the guy who previously had my dial-up connection's IP blocked ads, now I cannot view the sites? Of course, they could require cookies, but those users that understand cookies will be really pissed off if they have to accept cookies they don't want to have to see ads they don't want to see.

Re:Sure it can be done

[morgus morphus]

From discussions I read on a german newssite from people who've tried this system it depends on a cookie to keep state.

So you needn't worry about other people in your flat being affected, however disabling cookies might defeat the system at the moment.

It would be theoretically possible to delay the download of the last 2/3 of the page until the banner has downloaded, however this would probably cause too many problems in real life.

As with any such systems it's not meant to discourage someone really determined but only make shure that 99% of pages get served with their banner.

The easy way to annoy bannerblock users

[Bender Unit 22]

The easy way to annoy users of banner blocking software is to name images vital to the site browsing something like banner or ad. That stops them right there, works very well.

With that said, I must say that I also use banner blocking software these days. I know that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and that bannerads helps paying for the site. So I have accepted banners for a long time.
But with the introduction of popup/under ads on so many sites these days, it was just too much for me.

Re:Most web sites need an income

[Basalisk]

By selling things that people wish to buy.

That's how most companies make an income, by exchanging goods or services for money.

Not by selling advertising space, and providing freebies or sausage sizzles or other methods to attract eyeballs.

These people are targeting the wrong customers. Instead of targeting the people visiting the site to buy stuff, they are targeting the people with ads to sell.

Re:this bites..

[EpsCylonB]

The two are different. By abusing young boys you are hurting someone else, it's clear cut, there is a crime and a victim.

Who are you hurting by refusing to look at an ad ?. Some people (bussiness men and politicians mainly) may try to force us to look at ads but my own personal opinion is that I would like to have a choice.

Also, I'm sure this will get mentioned elsewhere, but as a 56ker I appreciate blockers that stop the ads from being downloaded as it saves me bandwidth (my bandwidth, which I have payed for).

etc/hosts is your friend

[DrSkwid]

here's what I do :

I maintain DNS entries of the sites I wish not to receive ads from and map them onto a local machine.

I then configure Apache to respond to the requests using mod_perl to strip the paths from the URI and leave me with just the filename.

I then return an image OF MY CHOOSING to be displayed in my browser. I have set of images to choose from with pictures made in various banner sizes from anime / pr0n / abstract / auto-texture generating scripts / mandlebrots / swf files I have made.

It makes online life more interesting and colourful.

By logging your outgoing requests you can even change the graphics for programs like icq & other banner toting stuff.

Some places defeat my plan by using their own hostname (images.slashdot.com is one example) or by using IP addresses. I plan to build an Apache proxy module for these but haven't got round to it yet.

Most of the websites I visit are return visits anyway so you soon get a feel for the ways the ad system works.

By using a DNS & Proxy I can configure not just my workstation but my whoel LAN so it becomes OS/Browser agnostic.

M

how about this

[Apreche]

What if you download the picture, then don't just display it on the screen. Or turn java/javascript or whatever this technology uses off.
Isn't their some kind of law about this stuff? I mean software like that is technically "hacking" my computer. It's trying to undermine software I have installed. I guess it's ok to hack other people's computers when it is in businesses best interest, and not other times.

No one can handle 300000+ banners a year

[Cebo]

Statistics taken from my filter proxy in use (Webwasher) since March 12th 2001 :

Filtered images : 229994
Filtered windows : 15735

A good banner is a dead banner !

this site already uses the blocker

[perler]

www.directbox.com allegedly already uses the adblocker-blocker software on it's server.

try the button "gastzugang" on the bottom right...

PAT

Re:Umm, seems simple enought to me...

[decesare]

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

FWIW, I think that the iCab browser for Macintosh is one of the few that I've seen that can be configured to not display images of a certain size on the page, just leaving a blank where the ad would have been. And, it comes pre-configured with a list of typical ad/banner sizes to screen out. I believe that it's a "download but don't display mechanism". Is there anything like this in Konqueror (I haven't been able to find it).

Now seriously, how much trouble is it to read around a huge ad in the middle of your page?

Depends on how annoying the ad is. There are two issues here: one is that the ad itself can takes up computing resources to display. Maybe those with 2GHz P4 machines don't mind this, but for those of us working with older processors, it unacceptably slows down the page display.

The second is just how distracting the ad itself is. I'm still trying to train that "mental filtering" of which you speak to screen out images of fast-moving monkeys or flashing blue and white images that I've seen that distract from what I'm trying to read. Some of these ads have gotten so ridiculous that I can't read the page on which the ad is placed. And a concept that web marketers don't seem to grasp is that maybe people will remember a product backed by an annoying ad, but how many people will really buy that product if they negatively remember the ads for that product?

Who actually clicks on banner ads?

[Adversive]

Consider the types of people who are actively going out of their way to block banner ads and cookies... Do you honestly think these people would *ever* click on one of these ads on purpose?

I would be willing to bet that less than 1% of internet users know enough to actually use serious blocking software. The technology in this article is basically targeting power users who would never click a banner ad anyway.

Why don't the ad houses accept this and save bandwidth for the people who actually click on the "Your internet connection is not optimized!" windows?

Re:Doesn't require Javascript or ActiveX

[dasunt]

Under windows, I have a modified hosts file that blocks out the more common ad servers. Since images are rather ugly, I use eDexter to display a blank image for me.

So, imagine the simple version of this (assuming I have javascript turned on, which is wrong, and assuming I use IE instead of Opera as my browser).

The IE script (which probably breaks other browsers, but...) checks to see if the ad image has arrived. It finds one. Maybe it goes further and checks to see if the image came from the ad server. It asks windows what's the ip addy is, and windows tells it 127.0.0.1, so everything checks out.

As long as it relies on simple ad banners, it fails. More complicated scripts could present a challenge, but a challenge that will be quickly solved if the ad checker becomes widespread.

On the other hand, thanks. Forgot that I haven't installed eDexter on the laptop yet. Need to conserve my 33.6k PCMIA modem's bandwidth, y'know.

Re:Umm, seems simple enought to me...

[alecto]

Or, better yet, start retrieving the ad, and abort the connection once the server knows you've requested it, and save your bandwidth, too. This assumes separate TCP connections a la HTTP 1.0.

By escalating the battle, the advertisers are only making more people that didn't know about it before aware that there is ad blocking software. See also RIAA vs. MP3, et al.

It's a war of escalation

[GordoSlasher]

I've been blocking ads for years. Not that I don't like to see ads - sometimes I really am interested in the products being offered. But such a large fraction of ads are now so visually annoying that I can't take them anymore. I don't want to punch the fscking monkey. I don't want bouncing pong balls drawing my eyes away from a software review. When I'm at work reading financial sites I don't want a huge pair of hooters trying to sell me an X10 cam - it's unprofessional in an office environment.

I prefer magazine-style ads: occasional full-page ads I can easily skip or read, smaller ads in the margins that are not intrusive. When I look at them, there they are, and when I look away, they don't pull my eyes back. The web was like this in the early days of advertising. Then the monkey-punching games and Vegas-style animations started to take over, and now we have big honking animated ads with an inch of content wrapped around them, too distracting to read the actual web page content.

On TV the commercials are clustered together, then go away so you can view a few minutes of uninterrupted program content. If TV worked like the web, you would have a commercial running in the middle 60% of the sitcom stage with the actors squeezed into the margins around it, speaking lines between the commerical's music, and ducking under other smaller commericals, all competing for your attention. How long do you think people would watch such a program?

Bring back the days of less intrusive ads and I will turn off my ad blocker.

Re:There's a third option.

[An El Haqq]

"But what if you need something that the website provides?"

I've never, ever needed anything provided by a website.

What I would do is pretty much the same as how I act now with cookies. I normally browse the web w/ cookies filtered through Junkbuster, but if I'm shopping, I'll switch to a non-filtered browser. Big deal. It just means that the sites that force me to look at their adds will have to be that much more entertaining to justify opening another program.

80% library, 20% shopping mall

[Coolumbus]

I think part of the problem why banner ads fail is because of how the people behind them (not the end users here:) define their success. They seem to think that the purpose of a good ad will instantly, on click, end up in instant revenue. This much unlike how ads in other media works. Say tv for example.

At lest I think I know how the tv commercials affect my anyway. I watch some program and in the commercial hear about new improved detergent. Later when I go down to the store to buy some stuff, and I need detergent. Say that I see a couble of brands, some of them are unknown to me, but there also is the detergent I have seen commercials about. I most likely would buy the product that I at least had heard about - even though it only was trough some unbiased commerical.

The problem with Internet ads is that somewhere along the way the "interpretation" of the Internet has changed from "a big library" (rember that?) to "a big shopping mall". (At least for the banner makers.)

However, in a real shopping mall, an "on sell" sign might lure me into some speciffic shop to buy someting. This while most users don't interpreat the Internet this way - like most banner people would like to think. To the users the web is still more of a library than a shopping mall.

Have a look at:http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat_des.htm #d04

(Figures a bit old, but I think the main point still applies)

The point is that when I go to a shopping mall I went there to buy stuff, much unlike when I surf to my favourite pages. And they wonder why I find thouse blinking banner annoying? They are annoying because, most of the time, I didn't log on to buy anything.

So, to some extent I think that web ads sould be more like the tv commercials - "get this brand into your heard" kind of ad. But, the success of such ads are of course much harder to measure. Even though computer ads supposedly were to be the dream for copy writers et al. (Should be so easy to measure exposure etc etc)

Also, though it has been mentioned above, just clicking a banner on a site that I'd like to support would not help much in the long run. I'd of course have to click and buy.

A lot of bunk

[Fnkmaster]

I see a lot of posts defending the brave upstanding advertisers who have to pay the bills.
Let's get something straight - I think everyone agrees with that sentiment. Some people seem to feel for moral reasons that the web should not subsist on advertising alone because it is an inherently offensive mix, the freedom of the information frontier and the crassest sort of commercialization ever.

Part of the problem is that those upholding the advertiser's point of view keep saying things like "they have a right to do it" and "if you didn't block it, we wouldn't have this problem. Stop blocking ads now!". The reality is that the only reason blocking has become even slightly common is because the ads have gotten SO much more incredibly intrusive and offensive with the obnoxious javascript toys at the disposal of the advertisers.

And why have the advertisers gotten so obnoxious? Why the move to pop-under, pop-over, run-around-my-fucking-page-chasing-my-cursor sorts of annoying ads? Because there is some sort of myth that people are supposed to click-through on ads and if we annoy the living shit out of them, they will click through. I'm sorry, clicking on ads just is terribly unlikely to ever happen and is not a meaningful metric of anything. People don't WANT to interrupt their precious time relaxing and browsing the web for information, news, pr0n or whatever to read your ad shit. Now if you were nice, showed me a banner ad and let me click to queue something up in my bookmarks or some client side info-base, I might want to come back to it later, maybe. But you should be fucking happy that I even saw your ad, glimpsed your logo and have cognizance that you exist.

As soon as your ad association in my mind goes from "oh that looks neat" to "fucking assholes make me click all over the place" I guarantee you I'm gonna go looking for blocking software and I'm sure as hell not going to have positive associations with your product (apparently these advertisers don't care and they just want any association at all). But I guarantee I will never buy anything from X10 or anybody who gives me a pop-under. Furthermore I consider it outside of my contract of usage for a site that they can force me to waste my time chasing click-unders. Give me banner ads, fine, if they are too big and take up more of my screen than the content I won't read your site, IN THE SAME WAY I'D TOSS A PAPER PUBLICATION THAT DID THE SAME. But don't abuse javascript to wreak havoc on my browser or browsing experience or I will be forced to take defensive technological measures against your hostile advertising. I'd rather not have access to your site than feel like nothing other than a click-through prostitute.

There's a reason TV has something like 4 minutes of advertising every 30 minutes - if they had any more people would shut off their fucking TVs and cancel their cable subscriptions.

Idea (all sides win)..

[nightfire-unique]

How about an ad blocker, that still downloads all images or files marked as ad related (according to the ads database or logic code) .. so that the site still gets the money, but instead of displaying the ad and annoying the user, it simply pushes it to /dev/zero.

Sure, it still uses bandwidth, but other than that - no harm done. Anyone who feels this strongly is *not* going to buy the product of aggresive advertisement in either case (so the advertiser loses nothing), the website gets some cash, and you save screen space.

Thoughts?

Warez sites already do this ...

[AftanGustur]

When you make a request do download blabla.html, the web server makes a conneciton to the server that serves the ads to see if your IP address has downloaded /gci/ads?ad12345&UniqueID. If it doesn't receive a response in 30 secs, it assumes that you didn't download the ad and you don't get to download blabla.html.

This is already beeing done ...

Arms race prediction

[DickBreath]

You can do this purely on the server side. No cookies. No by IP address. No javascript. No Java. Possibly without even using frames.

First, with frames. Send them a tiny page with frames. A frame for the ad(s) and a frame for the content. The tiny frame containing html contains custom url's for both the content and the ads. That is, the "session id" is embedded in the url's, without using cookies.

When the browser requests the url for content, the content stream is stalled until the ads are downloaded, or at least started. Since ads and content are tied to the same "session", you can tell which content goes with which ads. But you don't penalize others behind a NAT. The server can still be load balanced because a database keeps track of the sessions -- which can be very short lived. So even multiple servers can be used, as long as they share a common database -- or some rpc mechanism to ensure evil ads have been served before "unstalling" the stream for the content.

I said do it without frames. Simply send the html stream of the main page. Ads appear in the stream before content, which almost means necessarily "above" the content. When the stream gets right up to the point where it is to start delivering content, you stall the stream until the ad image(s) are at least requested.

Possible problem: are there any browsers that cannot request the ad image while the main content page is stalled? i.e. non multi-threaded?

Possible countermeasure: when your junkbusting proxy detects ads, it must deliver fake ads to the browser (or better, rewrite the content stream so that there aren't even ad spaces in the content), and it must make a pretense of requesting ads from the server. The proxy would continue to suck down the ad images until the content is delivered -- then abruptly close the ad stream connections. This way, if the server isn't willing to unstall the content until the ads are fully delivered, all you wasted is the bandwitdh to get the ads, but you don't see them. If the server is willing to unstall the content as soon as ads are requested, then you drop the connection on the ads asap. Using such a proxy, the server is unable to detect that you didn't actually see the ads. You at least went through the pretense of downloading the ads.

I don't see any counter-counter-measure that the evil advertisers could employ. From their point of view, you are a normal browser, downloaded both the ads and content. How can they further tell that you can't see the ads without going to more invasive techniques like Javascript?

I've often wondered about using javascript to deliver the content. You send down a javascript program that writes new content into an <ilayer>. But the javascript can be obfuscated. Even the "content" can be compressed with the javascript effectively unzipping it as it writes content into the layer. This almost certianly requires real javascript running in the browser to render the content part. The javascript could attempt to detect that the ads have been rendered first.

Now the counter-counter-counter-measure. Let the javascript and rendering happen in the ad busting proxy. The proxy is designed so that its rendering engine renders a data structure in memory. You then run filters on this data structure. Pattern matching. (Lisp anyone?) It's like a regular expression, but without the same kind of syntax. You do the recognition on the final page, which is expected to be structured a certian way. The ad, which falls in a familiar place is removed, and then new html is written from the in-memory data structure rendering of the original html. The new html is sent from the proxy to the end user.

Then what about a counter-counter-counter-counter-measure? Well, the evil advertisers could start sending you the content as a java applet. The applet contacts the server via. a non http stream and gets the content through a secret non-standard means. But only if the ads were delivered.

But then the counter-counter-counter-counter-counter-measure is to run the applet in a faked environment that fools it into connecting to the server and think that the ads were deliverd on the local page.

But then the counter counter counter counter counter counter measure is to serve both the ads and content together in a single big applet which uses a proprietary non-standard means obtain both the ads and content over a special stream from the server. Any attempts to circumvent this is a violation of the DMCA. They automatically record your IP address, look up your location, and to an XMLRPC call to the local FBI office's server to send goons to your door.

Then the counter counter counter counter counter counter counter measure is to stop visiting such sites. (And to bitch and complain on slashdot.)

Then the counter*8 measure is to lobby for custom legislation that requires you to browse to their web site if you were a regular visitor before, and to watch their ads. Alternately they can send party comrads to your home to force feed you the ads.

Finally, you must download and install their TeleScreen(tm) applet which uses your computer's usb camera and microphone to give them two-way telescreen access to your home to ensure that you are watching your dialy minimum recommended allowance of ads, as determined by federal standards.

What is the counter*9 measure?

In defense of "the freeloaders"

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

I'd like to address the "just view the damned ads, you freeloading hippies" crowd.

Personally, the reason I started blocking banner ads (a little over a year ago) was because of one very specific ad--that stupid "punch the monkey ad".

It managed to crap more web no-nos into an ad than I ever though possible:

1. I froze my browser, as my browser had to load the Java runtime to display it. This is nontrivial time under Netscape, and used to be a lengthy wait under IE, as well.
2. It moved. Quickly. Very distracting when you're trying to use Altavista to look up a particular bit of LaTeX wizardry.
3. If my mouse cursor hovered over the ad, the ad captured mouse focus, and caused my mouse cursor to not always move as it normally would (largely due to the overhead by the Java runtime, I'm sure--I was using a SPARC LX at the time).
4. It would frequently cause Netscape to dump core, and would occasionally cause IE to just freeze-up completely.

At the time, it was a very popular ad. I don't know what I was typing to into Altavista to make it trigger (LaTeX->latex? Monkeys? WTF?), but I seemed to get it every five pages, and Netscape dumping core every five pages was not conducive to my finding out this LaTeX technique, which I needed right then to finish a CS paper (I'd have used Fondren Library, but this was before the Rice campus library stayed open 24 hours daily).

So, as a temporary fix, I disabled Java (I didn't need it at the time), used a different search engine (Google), got what I needed, and then installed Squid+Cameron Simpson's Ad Zapper (once I'd turned-in my paper), and the problem went away. I could have Java as I needed it (Rice's CS departmnet loves Java. Turning it off in a web browser meant not being able to do certain coursework), and my browser didn't crash because of stupid monkeys.

The clear message I'd like to deliver is I don't mind non-intrusive advertising. In fact, most banner ads are very interesting, so long as they don't flash or titter about annoyingly, and don't stupidly try (and fail) to look like dialog boxes (looks really stupid under OpenWin). Occasionally, I click one. However, if it pops up in a separate window, if it spawns things in other windows, if it creates offscreen windows, if it crashed my browser, if it litters my hard drives with cookies, if it prevents me from clicking on your page, or if it dances around like a stupid monkey, I will disable it, and I will go elsewhere.

There are probably a lot of technically-minded users that feel the same way. I don't want to steal content--I don't have this need to remove all adverts from the pages I'm viewing (although, I will strip them out, if need to print the page). But, my computer is my computer, and if your website can't sit in its window and behave itself, you've just lost a viewer.

Re:There's a third option.

[Evro]

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.

So you hate these ads so much that you're willing to stop visiting that site completely. Any time a site that tries to make money off ads emerges, you'd like that company to tank.

So let's look at a scenario: Salon.com introduces a new ad delivery method that most people find annoying. These people then stop visiting salon.com. Salon now has no source of revenue and closes up shop. Most other news sites trying new ad techniques meet a similar fate. So who's left? Sites funded by the huge media conglomerates you Slashdotters love so much -- AOL Time Warner, Viacom, Bertelsmann, Sony, etc. -- and MSN. Is this the future you want? You're directly contributing to a situation so many here have railed against for so long -- a media oligopoly. Welcome to the propaganda machine!

I do not understand this mentality most people (me included to some extent) that everything on the Internet must be free and that the site providing the content has no right to show any kind of ads. A popup ad is annoying, but it's annoying enough that you'd stop going to the site and support the media oligopoly I mentioned above? A game I used to play, Dark Galaxy, had so many popups that I resorted to adding nearly every ad server to my windows HOSTS file to prevent them. Every page generated super-annoying popups -- some of which didn't have a window frame with the min/max/close buttons (I know alt-f4 but I'm sure lots of people don't). I would have liked to support that site but when they go to extremes like that it's more than I can take. Eventually I stopped going to the site completely because the game was boring, but also I didn't feel it was right to use their service without "paying" for it.

In this case I just didn't feel that the content was worth the amount of annoyance they were including. I realize that this is what everybody is basically saying, but it seems that too many people have an exceptionally low tolerance for "annoyance". My threshold was multiple popups on every single page. Some people's threshold is apparently interstitial ads like Salon is planning to run, others "can't stand" the "huge" Flash ads on news.com, zdnn, and nytimes.com.

Really, I think if you want to have any hope of avoiding the media oligopoly you should work on lowering your annoyance threshold. And why not click a damn ad banner once in a while? Right or wrong, ad revenue is still pretty much generated on per-click, not per-impression. If you prefer banners over popups, click the banner and not the popup. But to completely stop visiting a site will surely sound the death knell for independent media outlets, except those run as a hobby or those that can profitably be run on a subscription or donation basis.

Current web advertising unacceptable

[Chris Johnson]

The current state of web advertising is comparable to TV advertisements that come out of the TV, walk over to you or follow you into the kitchen or bathroom and tug on your sleeve whining 'buy me!'.

That's bad advertising, plain and simple. It's been _proven_ through marketing research that if you get too annoying you unsell your product, most notably that's been proven through market research of particular sorts of TV advertising.

We're not talking about 'just let these poor people make money, will you?', we're talking about enabling them to hose themselves through severely stupid and bad advertising. The people using ad blockers are doing advertisers a FAVOR- that is valuable data, that information. They often accompany this with other valuable data- announcements that "if it was all quiet well-behaved banner ads that didn't blink or flash or move a lot, we wouldn't feel compelled to be doing this". That's valuable information. Since when is a random consumer's browsing history more valuable than an outright, impassioned statement of that consumer's preferences on how they want to be courted, advertising-wise?

Intrusive web advertising can be compared to billboards: the people attempting to use it can make a big fuss about how it's a moral imperative that they should be allowed to do this, but it's not only a lie, it's not even a healthy or useful thing to be doing. They are wrong in wishing to do it. If they are allowed to do it they will actually harm advertising in general- though this does create a window of opportunity for well-behaved advertisers, as well as substantially driving down the costs for well-behaved advertisers. Still... if you don't actively hate the entire field of advertising, it's hard to justify these abusive, useless practices, which harm advertising in general.

David Ogilvy considered advertising the art of 'speaking well about' things. Abusing people to the point that they are blindly, acutely hostile to anything resembling advertising makes it that much harder to do it properly and sensibly.

Just as restrictions are placed on the use of roadside billboards, I would like to see this abusive web advertising restricted by regulation and government oversight. It's plain that these people cannot and will not behave or police themselves.

Oh, grow up.

[Fantastic Lad]

Sure, Slashdot is partly funded by Ad banners. But I block 'em, and I will continue to do so.

I didn't ask Slashdot to be freely available on my web browser. I come here because it's a neat site which started off as a hobby/fan based effort and which I visit in the same spirit.

If it can't keep going on that kind of steam, then too bad. The world won't end without Slashdot. There will always be another place to read dumb articles and dance in the mosh pit of pseudo-informed public opinion. There have been and always will be soap boxes aplenty.

In any case, the net is SUPPOSED to be adaptive and dynamic.

But seriously, and this may sound Machiavellian, but if you are smart and savvy, you will ALWAYS be able to surf for free, both on-line and through life in general. Is this wrong? Is it leeching? You bet it is! That's the state of things in this reality. Every time you sit down to eat, something or several somethings have died for your consumption. The JOB of each and every spirit is to figure out how to exist in this reality with ease, grace and as much benevolence as possible.

Part of this learning process requires that you spend a miserable amount of time in the trenches learning from your mistakes. If 90% of the Web-faring populace makes the Web free and easy for the remaining 10%, and would do so regardless of my or anybody else's actions, then it would not benefit anybody to not take advantage of their behavior.

Where Greed DOES become a force in the negative, is when you actively withhold information. I'm certainly not going to keep the techniques of ad-blocking a secret from the masses for my own benefit; I explain the concept of ad blocking to everybody I meet. I tell them it's rewarding and easy to learn. Anybody who seeks further help, I take the time to describe to them the process. Of course, most poeple don't pursue this knowledge. This is directly linked to Karma (the non-digital kind which most of the shmucks here don't believe in), most people will simply not pursue higher knowledge until they have properly learned the lessons at whatever level they're currently at. And that's how it's supposed to be.

In any case, if one day the web becomes ruined because everybody has figured out how to block ads, (as if THAT'S at all likely), then fine. The Web's time will have come. The world will move on and adapt and be dynamic. And the 10% who are aware will quickly rise to the top of whatever new paradigm takes its place. Change is both healthy and ultimately, unavoidable. Stagnancy is death; luckily both are just illusions.

Everything is just a lesson in the end.

-Fantastic Lad

Re:Revenue is made by selling product, not banners

[Telek]

what product does a news site offer?
what product does /. offer?
what product does google offer?

they're all services. you do to use their sites. the only money that they can get back in return from the money that they spend such that you can use their site is by banner ads. I'm not saying that's their product, but I am saying that that is the only way that they are going to make any sort of money. readership on the net doesn't pay bills. popup ads and clickthrus do. If a site is sufficiently big enough and their normal ads scheme isn't working because of either insufficient readership or too much readership or people blocking ads then the powers that be will do what they must do in order to increase revenue.

Don't forget that it's not only rising costs but lower ad revenue simply because the advertisers are paying less now than they were before and the advertisers are demanding more intrusive advertisements. Some websites simply have no choice but to increase the obtrusiveness of their advertisements because otherwise they'd be out of business due to changing prices in either hosting or ad based revenue.

I wonder how you'll feel when /. announces that they've been told that they must increase their ads revenue.

And lastly don't forget that things are dominated by one thing : money. If you can make more money by doing this, they you'll do it. Very simple concept.

So I'm curious then. How do you justify the bandwidth that you use off the sites which ads you block? They're paying so that you can get free content and you don't even have the curtosey to view the ads so that they can pay their bills?

Sounds a lot like the MP3 "I buy more after I try!" talk that I hear a lot of. There is absolutely no evidence to proove that most people who listen to MP3s buy more CDs than before, and a lot of evidence that prooves the contrary... Increasing overall CD sales doesn't proove that at all. Someone posted a good comment on one of the other threads that said something along the lines of either :

a) pay for the CDs and give the artists what they're due
-or-
b) don't listen to their music.

This is the same thing. You are incurring them a cost by viewing their content that they are providing to you free of charge with the only request that you view advertisements so that they can pay their bills. How do you justify blocking those ads? If you don't like their advertising scheme then perhaps you should not be visiting their site.

Sorry if I seem a little bitter here, but I'm getting tired of the hypocrisy in general (not aimed at you).

Re:Using frames or suspended uploading

[flockofseagulls]

Charm wrote: "The real problem is that the web is 'stateless' without Java, ActiveX."

Not true. The web (actually the HTTP protocol) is stateless unless the web programmer does something to maintain state. Cookies are the most common solution. Session keys passed around in URLs or hidden form variables are another (these can be thought of as server-side cookies). You don't need Java, ActiveX, JavaScript, or any other client-side scripting to maintain session state.

It seems like a majority of people commenting don't know much about real web programming, judging from the number of comments that go out into the weeds. For example, URLs for banner ads don't usually resolve to an actual GIF or JPG file on the server; they invoke a server-side program that tracks the banner ad impressions, makes sure a single user doesn't see the same ad over and over again (try refreshing the page and see how they change), etc. The only requirement for the url in an IMG tag is that it retrieves a valid GIF or JPG or PNG image; it doesn't have to be the actual name of a GIF or JPG file.

Here's one way to determine if visitors are downloading banner ads:

1. When a visitor first shows up issue a cookie or session id (passed around in the URL). You can tell when they first show up on the site because they won't have a cookie or session id. All subsequent requests to the site will include the cookie or session id.

2. If cookies aren't enabled on the client browser, make the server-side code embed the session id in all URLs, including all links to pages in the same site, all GIF/JPG images, etc.

3. Whenever a page is requested the server logs a hit for that session id & page. Whenever a graphic is requested the URL actually resolves to a server-side script or CGI that logs the session id & requested graphic (banner ad), then sends the actual graphic back to the browser.

4. Any time the client requests a page the server can check that previous page requests were accompanied by requests for the banner ads that go on the page. If the user is blocking ads you can cut them off, threaten them, whatever.

Of course this kind of server-side agression will quickly be countered with client-side proxies that request the ads but discard the resulting graphic.

Without any client-side scripting the server can only determine what requests were made; it can't determine if the browser received the graphics or if the user ever saw them.

As for the analogies offered to justify one position or another, equating banner ad removal with theft is off-base. Instead think of a web site as a store. You can freely visit the store, read the magazines, wander around and read labels, sit down and rest, etc. You are under no obligation to buy anything. However the bookstore owner can bombard you with as much advertising as they like. Some people will tolerate a lot of advertising (like what you get in a Wal-Mart store). Others will walk out and shop somewhere else. If you had some way to browse the store without seeing or hearing any advertising, I think the store owner would be justified if he asked you to buy something or leave.

I already paid for the content

[cdn-programmer]

Yup - I already paid for the content and so has everyone else.

I paid a monthly fee to my ISP. My ISP has paid a HUGE monthly fee to the Telephone company and my Telephone company has paid an even larger fee to each backbone carrier they connect to.

If some of that money is not making it into the hands of those who create web content - then perhaps we should ask why. It is my pet peeve of course.

In economic terms - the flow of money is opposite the flow of goods and services. But in the net we have this situation.

Content:

website -&gt uplink -&gt backbone -&gt downlink -&gt ISP -&gt websurfer

Money:

website -&gt uplink ? backbone -&lt downlink -&gt ISP -&gt websurfer

It isn't the backbone who is the culprit here. It is the system where the telephone carrier is willing to pay the backbone operators for the connection because they need content and have no choice... but these same companies are typically unwilling to pay the websites that supply the same commodity. What difference does it make to a telephone company where the content comes from? If they are willing to pay say Sprintlink for bandwidth which supplies content - then why not the website operator in their neck of the woods? If the local webmaster's content weren't valuable then people wouldn't click on his website!

This creates the situation where Telstra (an Australian telco) pays for Australian content being delivered off USA hosting companies but at the same time Telstra is unwilling to pay an Australian company to provide content. Why an Australian company would be willing to pay Americans but not Australians is a good question to ask.

Of course - were Telstra to pay Australians for the content they create - then the question remains whether Americans or anyone else would be willing to pay Telstra for the opportunity to connect for the Australian content that Telstra thusly makes available.

Classic monopoly/oligopoly IMHO. Sometimes terribly unfair things get entrenched. It can be changed and there are questions in my mind how many laws are being broken. (1) copyright. Caching proxies dupicate content and this is specifically against copyright law. (2) Fair trade practices. Sometimes deals are offered to some content suppliers.. Microsoft? Yahoo? Thompson newspapers in Canada? but not to anyone else. (3) Anti competitive trade practices. IE - if we can trade shares then we can do business... Otherwise forget it. (that was the "convergance" theme wasn't it - between the telecomunication industry and the newspaper industry).

If the chicken farming industry worked the same way then every egg farmer would have to sign a contract with a retailer in order to get his eggs on the market. If retailers were given this much market clout then (1) there would be a shortage of eggs and (2) they would be a lot more expensive. Finally (3) Barriers to entering the chicken farming business would be way to steep for most chicken farmers.