Web Ads with Sound?

Mina asks: "Just noticed that some sites, About.com in particular, started piping sound adds in their pages - one in particular (the Harry Potter themed CocaCola subsidized reading campaign from Reading is Fundamental). This isn't something that can easily be turned off - unlike popups, they can't just be clicked on or elminated by a nifty browser plugin. I'm interested in seeing how the Slashdot community deals with the new, more annoying ads that the more desperate companies are implementing now. Do you just live with them? Are there even niftier plugins to the browsers that I'm just not aware of?" And you thought pop-ups were the worst, now you can get sudden and annoying sounds played as well. Maybe browsers will have volume sliders bundled with them in the near future. God, I hope not, but if such ads become commonplace, it may be a good idea.

Comments

Sure they can be turned off...

[kyz]

1. Turn the volume to 0
   
2. Play music instead (if you've got one of those sound cards that only plays one thing at a time)
   
3. Look at the server that the sound object comes from (like an IMG tag has SRC) and block it - put it in your firewall rules, make it resolve to 127.0.0.1 in resolv.conf or hosts.ini, or add it to your junkbuster rules, whatever.
   

Konqueror

[FroMan]

Well, Konqueror already allows for certain sites for cookies. Why not just add the same feature for music? Seems like a really simple fix to me. One of the best things the Konqueror team does is add really cool things to avoid annoying things like this.

Re:Use a better browser

[Snowfox]

IE 6 allows you to turn off sounds in web pages, kill dancing baloney, manage trust relationships with websites & control cookies with fine granularity.

This doesn't stop Shockwave, etc from making sound. The audio settings only affect the standard html and javascript-controlled sound. You'd have to remove all your plugins to stop the sounds in IE.

Re:New mozilla features?

[toast0]

appologies for the trollishness, but....

doesn't mozilla allready block flash plugins?

(i couldn't get mozilla/linux to work with any flash plugins available on macromedia.com... it tried to work, but instead of running flash, it crashed mozilla)

Do what I do

[DeadMeat (TM)]

Filter 'em.

Problem solved.

I started doing this when people started with MIDI

[ivan256]

Run your browser as a different user that doesn't have permissions to /dev/dsp

That way you can keep using all your sound generating apps without your browser butting in.

Unfortuantly all you windows users can't do this...

Sound? Like from a sound card?

[dwlemon]

I don't got one. I can't stand computers making noise at me.

Re:Just Don't Go

[terpia]

Also, Lynx was mentioned a bit further up. That's a really good way to avoid multimedia advertisements.

Yes, Lynx is a good way to avoid multimedia advertisements, as well as a lot of worthwile content. Thats like saying you should stop driving your red sprotscar and get a Geo, because youre less likely to get a ticket...sure it's more or less true, but its about the tradeoff and what you think is valuable enough to wade through ads to get at. Face it, not many sites get designed with the Lynx user in mind anymore.

Re:Use a better browser

[Snowfox]

Fair point. I don't allow any popup ads, so I don't run into such problems.

That doesn't stop the new noisy banner ads.

deaf ears

[josepha48]

If a tree falls in the woods and noone has a sound card, does it make a sound?

You can always disable your sound plugins. Unless you are going to download a movie they really should not be doing that. I know that when I worked at a web portol we had strick guidlines about sound on the site. If it existed it should play only once and the user should be able to disable the sound. If this site does not do that I'd like to know what the name of the sites that are doing this are and then I can avoid them, which is what I'd really suggest you'd do unless there is something that you MUST have from that site and cannot get elsewhere.

Easily, get the Proxomitron

[Echo|Fox]

Get the Proxomitron here: http://www.computerstuff.net/prox/

Not only will it block all conventional banner ads and popups, it also does useful things with respect to stopping embedded multimedia. By default stuff like flash, embedded quicktime, embedded midi's or wav files, etc are all filtered out and a link to them is inserted in their place so if it is ever something you actually want to view you just click the link and it loads.

Works flawlessly... no aggravating floating flash ads at IGN, makes it easier to save embedded videos (right click on the link, save as), and I haven't seen a popup since I installed it.

Re:What you need is a browser firewall

[Rick the Red]

I'm afraid that in the next version of Windoze it will be more like "IE is trying to play a muilti-media file. Shall we bill the RIAA/MPAA royalty to your Passport.NET, or your MSN account?"

Re:Annoying flash banner that makes noise...

[DNS-and-BIND]

There's one at gist.com that's pretty good. You can customize your listings, which I like because I only have basic cable (required to have a cablemodem) and I only want to see the channels I have and not be tortured by the goodies on the real cable channels. A few weeks ago they started running pop-under ads once a day, so be warned.

yay, a luddite!

[Wakko Warner]

I also don't use a monitor because I can't stand my computer being able to show me things.

Email the advertiser

[SirSlud]

The ad serving party (ie, the ad network serving the ad) will do nothing about complaints. They are getting paid money to show the ad, and unless you're willing to offer them more, they will likely show up at work in the morning, read your email, and snicker.

So email the actual company advertising .. and everyone that actually cares, DO IT! Companies, contrary to popular belief, are fairly sensitive to feedback from marketing campaigns.