Slashdot Mirror
New Ultra-Intrusive Pop-up Ads Introduced
CrashRide writes "According to this story at AdAge.com, Unicast is attempting to introduce a new on-line ad format that takes over the entire screen of the PC for about 15 seconds and must be closed by the viewer. "The ultra-intrusive new format opens when a user is on one page of a Web site and clicks a link to go to another page on the same site. Instead of seeing that new page, the user sees an ad that fills the entire screen.""
Disable page moving, page resizing, and bringing page to foreground.
It sounds like mainstream sites won't be using them. It would just alienate users too much. From the article here are quotes from guy at AOL and CBS MarketWatch:
When asked about the new Unicast full-screen format, Chuck Gafvert, AOL's vice president of ad technologies and sales engineering, e-mailed back that "we are looking at a variety of ad formats -- including Unicast -- that advance advertiser interests without in any way negatively affecting the member experience. We look forward to expanding our advertising offerings."
Scot McLernon, CBS MarketWatch.com executive vice president of sales and marketing, said: "We're still in discussions with Unicast about the full-page on how we want to best utilize it. We might use it as you enter into channel headers, but I don't want to interrupt the reading of a story."
Of course, they did go along with 1st generation pop-ups; anyone with half a brain could tell they would only annoy users.
Mozilla already allows you to turn off all of those things.
Unicast has their gallery of examples here. See the examples for "full-screen superstitials" -- Unicast's name for their format.
Unicast claims these ads will be *less* annoying than pop-ups, because, rather than open new windows you have to close, this ad format temporarily takes over the existing window, and people are used to this style (think TV commercials).
And, for those posters who wonder what types of sites would consider using this...Unicast has a list here.
Forget popups, even worse are those Flash ads that pop up, make all kinds of horrible noise, and cover what you are trying to read. I almost stopped going to wired.com because of those. After a visit to CounterExploitation , I discovered the Proxomitron and tried it out...It has eliminated 99% of ads. It even lets the "good" popups though, such as when you are shopping online and your cart pops up. Sometimes it causes problems with legitimate sites that require certain Javascript commands to operate properly, but it's easy enough to temporarily turn off Proxomitron to see those sites.
It basically works by acting as a local proxy on your computer. As web requests comes down, it rewrites the http stream on the fly to get rid of objectionable commands (blink tags, status line scrollers, background midi music, popups, etc). All filters are 100% customizable, but the ones it comes with do a great job.
-R
This just makes me more thankful for Privoxy. As an example, here are some fun rules I created. (Note, the regexps should be all on one line, regardless of what your browser displays.)
Remove IGN interstitials: this skips them for the most part. I'm sure it can be modified for other places. (I pay for IGN Insider and shouldn't be subjected to this. Granted recently they've introduced a feature to switch off ads for insiders, but this is still a useful example.)
Just add +filter{ign} to your default.action.
Here's another one that makes a certain site you might be reading look considerably nicer:
Of course, you should support any sites that you like. As I said, I subscribe to IGN, as they provide a great deal of extra content for insiders, in addition to an already great site.
But ads still suck.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
They call the Superstitial ads. They're very proud and excited about them. You can see them here.
Basically it looks like a full screen java script pop-up with flash content. Fortunately, Konqueror immediately complained about java script wanting to open a new window (I have it set to prompt), so it looks like these won't be much of a problem for the clueful user.
Still, the fact that a company is expending effort in the development of more intrusive advertising is reprehensible. Therefore....
Slashdot them here
Plus newer builds of Mozilla can block pop-ups on a per-site basis now, too (and enable on a per-site basis), so if your bank just INISISTS on opening up a popup for their site to work properly, you can let it and still have an ad-free environment. Wonderful stuff!
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
I'm still not sure if popups actually exist out there. I guess I have to go fire up IE and check it out sometime :)
Thanks, team Mozilla!!
Mozilla 1.3 has an option to play a user-specified sound when a popup window has been suppressed. It can also display an icon in the status bar (the default).
It's already possible, simply install a user stylesheet that turns off flash by default and turn it on for those(that?) page you want to use flash on, I use this one:
http://dion.swamp.dk/dl/userContent.css
Read a bit about it here:
http://dion.swamp.dk/stuff.html
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
Note: Slashdot seems to put a space in between the 5 and 4 up there, there should not be one.
--Drunk as in Beer
Interesting story.
Ad-Aware has an option to backup files that you are removing. Did you do that or just permanently remove them? You could have restored the files in safe mode and that would have proven your theory beyond a doubt.
It may work for some people. But not me. I've always been interesting in wireles cameras (for RC vehicals etc). But if I ever get into it. I will never get it from them. Hell, I'll never visit their site, because I don't want to show support.
"37% lift in purchase intent" my ass.
/rant
I've worked in product marketing and know firsthand that such "research" can be highly misleading. Generally, these results come from focus groups where you bring people in (for pay) to evaluate an ad or campaign or whatever. When being asked to view an ad, then answer a series of questions, people invariably tend to be more favortably inclined because of the context of their experience--i.e. "I'm at a focus group to look at ads."
If they are on their own time, and attempting to access whatever content and are delayed by an unexpected ad which hinders them, the effect is almost universally negative.
And I'll only mention the psychological desire to please the questioner in passing (ever notice how they always pay for focus group participation and ply you with tasty goodies before showing you the "exciting new ads that our client wants to share with you").
If you've ever wondered why so much marketing seems so blatently stupid, a lot of it has a lot to do with the ubiquitous "focus group" system. it's a classic case of the "Emperor's New Clothes." Market research firms tend to wind up being supportive of the hypothesis as a simple matter of survival. They usually don't cheat the numbers per se, but they stack the deck ridiculously in their favor.
If I were to set up an objective test for these ads, I'd tell the participants that the objective is to "read all the slashdot articles of interest to you" (or whatever) and then interrupt them with the ads. Although even this method is flawed (most people are savvy enough to know what's being tested), I would bet that the results would be different.
Most focus groups are a scam. They exist to cover Marketers' asses and rubber stamp their ideas because they're too gutless to innovate.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
Here's a better user stylesheet rule that blocks all Flash but lets you click any blocked Flash animation to play it. It's compatible with your idea of completely unblocking certain Flash (so you don't even have to click)... I think "-moz-binding: none" will undo the binding.
The shareholder is always right.
1. Telephone sales:
- Leave person waiting. That is, first ansver, let him/her start up then say "oh, just a sec..." and go take a bath. I'm not talking quick shower here, take a real long soaker. Then go back and see if they're still there. I have actually never experienced a person calling back after this treatment. It also works great for busy people as you don't have to waste time on the phone.
- Blow off some steam. I know this isn't nice to the poor people on the other end of the line, but hey! They called me!
When I was in the states there a while ago I worked in an outbound call centre for a week or so. I should warn you that abusing the agent is probably the best way to ensure that you get more calls.
We had a database and when you called someone you had a call outcome thing to enter.
ie if the number was a dud you'd enter it as invalid, if it rang off you'd put down 'call back later' etc.
When ever I got abuse off a customer I'd always put them down as 'call back later'....
However, if someone politely asked me to take them off the list, then I'd be happy to put them down as a dud number.
Remember, telemarketers are humans too. They just so happen to be humans who are being exploited in a shit job.