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.""
Can't pop up killers take this out?
_+_+__+_+_+_+_+_+_+++
when i moo u moo - just like that
Anyone else worried about the quality of the net degrading? How long until peopel are so fed up that they just stop using it?
Ok So I'm not going to stop using the net, I will continue to do what I always have done. When a website resorts to these Ad tactics, I either a) give them money to stop as is the case with slashdot. ONLY if the content on the site is worth the price they are asking though b) use the handy features of phoenix to make the site usable, block ads from this server, nuke this image, dont allow pop ups or javascripts. or c) stop using the site all together.
I imagine these ads will piss off users and confuse the hell out of net illiterate types, to the point where they just stop visiting that site. What good is running a website and selling advertising space if NOBODY is watching anymore? Seems to me if sites are so desperate for advertising dollars, there is a better, less intrusive way to do it. Or maybe they should call it quits.
I like my slashdot subscription, but im curious if they makes more money from me removing the ads or from me viewing the ads?
This article said the ads would be 300k. Imagine some poor sap on dialup who has to download that crap when he is quickly clicking through links and subjected to 4 or 5 of these stupid things.
If I ever get one of these awful ads shoved in my face, I assure you I will not be coming back for seconds.
no seriously - like the subject says - until they develop a digital technology that invades my ass without my permission - then they best lay off prepending "Ultra" to that shit.
otherwise you leave yourself no room once they do develop ass prodding software in ads.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I used to see a lot of popup ads before Mozilla could block them. Are the advertisers still using them?
See what I've been reading.
Disable page moving, page resizing, and bringing page to foreground.
where's my copy of Lynx!
While surfing around at work during some downtime and all the sudden you land on a questionable site and BAM a big vagina pops on your screen for 15 seconds...
You begin freaking out but that doesn't compare to the reaction your boss is going to have when he walks by...
100% Insightful
1. Think of a bigger and better ad.
2. Piss off everyone that sees the ad.
3. ???
4. Profit!!!
webpage
I predict that, if this kind of thing becomes popular, future browser releases will include disabling of JS window resizing and JS foreground/background control, just like we have pop-up control now.
If it gets obnoxious enough, people will find ways around it.
This one will work quickly to do two things.
1. make sure a user of a website is forced to see at least one ad for 15 seconds.
2. make sure the user goes "wtf is this shit?" and go find a better site without that kind of crap.
even if it becomes pervasive, and 90% of sites use this kind of 'feature' in its ads, it'll force people over to the sites who don't... which will in turn increase their traffic and own ad revenue.
tards!
Power users won't have a problem with this. Either this will be easy to block with Mozilla or only work with IE or people will get so fed up that it'll peter out quickly. I've been using Mozilla so long it's always a harsh shock when I use IE and pop-ups start cluttering everything. But I'm sure there'll be plenty of people who get used to sitting through this crap and it'll catch on.
Don't see the point of a pop-up. However I have set my Mac to emit a large belch every time it smacks down a popup for me. I like that.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
..for me when I'm not sitting at the computer, so I can replay "my" browsing session without ads later on. Just delightful. I just can't wait until the whole world is super-broadband so these delightful adverts can feature full video and sound. Sigh.
"Trust in haste. Repent at leisure"
RealMedia has cornered the market on "ass penetrating" software for the past several years.
That's certainly one way to discourage traffic at your site. Maybe they should make sure it flickers through a whole bunch of colors really, really fast just to make sure that no one will come back. Oh yeah, and don't forget really loud obnoxious sound either. The advertising trifecta of annoyance!
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
These have been in common use in porn sites for years.
Of course, this is not through personal experence.
Of course.
In Soviet Russia, beowulf clusters imagine YOU!
Why not just call them "Stop all future traffic for your site" ads.
I know the _instant_ I ever see anything like this, that will be the very last time I go near that site.
This is just like interstitial ads which have been around for ages and pretty much force you to view the ad until you can continue to the next page where the content really is.
Hopefully popup killers will be able to nuke this new type though.
Garbage like this just makes b0rken browsers like IE less and less tolerable to Joe User. Making Joe unhappy with IE is good because the sites the rest of us need to use will be less and less able to count on IE as some "universal standard."
As the French Revolutionaries put it, "The worse, the better."
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Yet another plus to using Mozilla, or Firebird, or Opera, or... Well, another plus to using anything *other* than IE, actually.
This Program is fantastic for killing popup ads. and better yet, it's free. you can export your list so you can use the same list on other machines, and you only ad the popups that you want dead to the list. so, at first, you'll be busy adding them to the list, but eventually your system will kill a series of 5-6 popups just with pow sitting with its tiny footprint in the system tray.
A pop-up ad is one thing. It's small code and content-wise. It probably takes 3-4 seconds to download, but the article states that these new ads are 300K!!! That's almost a full minute to download at 56K modem speeds.
If their going to force people to spend 1 minute to download an ad (plus a forced 15 seconds to view the ad), they had better come up with a way to reimburse people, either financially, or with MUCH better content.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
The real victim here is going to be the ability to use scripts on web pages. It's almost to the point where I'll turn off scripting entirely just to get away from these terrible things. It's like the ability to put macro things in emails. It could provide valuable new capabilities, but it's ruined by abuse.
I think it is a good thing, it will speed deployment of mozilla, and other browsers with pop-up blocking features.
The most dissapointing thing is I think adult sites have been doing this for a while now. So it really isnt new.
Anyways this technology doesnt really affect me as I dont have the features enabled to take advantage of their new ads.
They're free to do what they want with their sites but we're also free not to view their sites.
I think that with AOL reducing pop-up ads that you wont see too many of this format.
My coworker was fuming after a full-screen ad took over his screen after while he was going to msn.com.
If he's any indication of whether or not these things work, well, I think this won't go over well with people at all. It may turn some people off of the advertised products. In any case, use mozilla or netscape with pop-up blockers...and don't set msn.com to be your homepage *sigh*.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
I've felt all along that at some point the internet would let me know that I wasn't needed anymore.
I will admit that it was subtle. I thought the pop-up ads were a plea for attention, but the concept of full screen ads is a direct hint that I am no longer needed.
It's time to curl up to an ex called sunlight.
http://use.perl.org
1. Find out who does these ads. 2. Do not buy products or services from these places.
How is this different -- or worse -- than sites that stick an interstitial between pages. Even Yahoo makes you view an ad after reading more than a few Groups postings, then you click "Continue on to the next message" or the like.
At least if this is a genuine pop-up, you can use a pop-up blocking utility to kill it. With the interstitial ads there's no way around it because they're actually integrated into the page.
filmcritic.com - Movie reviews on Internet time
I'm sure this is just a natural progression of advertizing and
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Support Think Geek
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
it will go away eventually as it is deemed ineffective. Unfortunately all the IE users are going to be stuck in the meantime. Another plus for mozilla.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
This is nothing new. Porn sites have had these full screen pop-ups for years. The worst ones are the ones with sound. Nothing worse than trying to masterbate quitely at night when one of these pop-ups take over your screan and plays at a volume load enough to wake up your roomate "Ooooohhhh! Hi, my name is Candy and I have a secret web site." That's intrusive.
Wonderful. So, in essence, Unicast is attempting to bring the lovely porn site advertising model to the entire internet.
;)
Except that there is just one tiny problem... porn sites have a carrot that can entice their prospective patrons into looking past such distractions: PORN. Most web sites don't offer anything that has such a powerful and nearly universal appeal.
I predict that this new advertising paradigm will have a half life measurable in weeks...
to get rid of many pop ups... just resolve pesky ad hosts to 127.0.0.1. Works like a charm
127.0.0.1 ads.x10.com
127.0.0.1 ads.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 popup.msn.com
127.0.0.1 media.fastclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.iwin.com
-Afreet
I quit visiting CBSMarketwatch (mentioned in the article) and MotleyFool simply because of those types of ads. When Weather.com got pop-ups, I nearly quit going there as well, but I guess I can live with pop-ups. What I can't live with is something that zips accross my screen and makes all kinds of sounds WHILE I'M AT WORK! But I'm sure no one visits CBSMarketwatch at work. Yeah, right.
You use, you lose. Would Google be search engine king if it had pop-ups, flash animation, things zipping across the screen, or 15 second full screen ads? I refuse to sink to the level to even answer such a simple common-sense question.
Those ads probably cost more and therefore generate more initial revenue for anyone visiting the sites that use them. But if you make enough surfers annoyed (as this will), eventually they won't come to your site anymore.
--
Slashdolt
Talk about killing the goose and all that. Piss your readers off. Maybe Wired should go with the Salon model (view an ad, get a few pages).
Didn't read the article because it's apparently /.ed but if from when the blurb says is correct, then these ads effectively take control of the user system without their permission and prevent the user from doing anything for 15 seconds. Could this not be construed as hacking the user's system?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Since they'll probably do this crap with flash..
How to Uninstall Flash Manually (for Linux users)
Direct link to Win32 Uninstaller
"TK-421, why aren't you at your post?"
Pick your poison:
Phoenix/Firebird - blocked
Opera - blocked
Mozilla - blocked
Netscape - blocked
IE - oh thats a feature.
Let's hope no one combines this pop-up technology with.. THE LINK. (you know which one I'm talking about.)
Having that image full screen for a mandatory 15 seconds.. *shudder*
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.
"We believe that just like in television, the creative you build is what gets shown, the technology should not get in the way," said Allie Savarino, senior vice president for global marketing, Unicast.
Heh. I agree wholeheartedly on the point of technology not getting in the way--if what they do annoys me, I'll work around it, regardless of whatever technology they employ to keep me from doing so. The marketroids may not yet realize it, but computer geeks know how to use technology, too!
I'd say that this is like biting the hand that feeds you, but it's really more like biting the ass that flaps at you from a passing car's window. It's a really, really bad idea, the execution is almost guaranteed to be ugly, and in the end, the marketer's face is gonna be in a whole lot worse shape than the geek's ass...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
"...the creative you build is what gets shown,..."
Run that by me again?
char sig[120] = "\0"
I first saw porn sites that popped up an ad page, hid all the window decorations and then maximized the window about 5 years ago. Of course I haven't seen popups at ALL since I learned how to turn off javascript about 3 days later.
/etc/hosts now ...
I guess I'll just have to alias the entire unicast.com domain to the good old 127.0.0.1 IP address in
utter rubbish
It's a screen with a blue background with some text on it, can't find a way out of it though :)
Surely these adverts can be killed on Windows by pressing ALT F4 or CTRL ALT DEL then kill the window.
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
Remember that these aren't just popups -- they're pop-up inters...intestin....er, pop-up intermediate pages between where you clicked and where you were going.
A simple pop-up blocker that blocks ALL pop-ups won't help, cause you'll click on the link and nothing will happen. A pop-up blocker that blocks unrequested pop-ups but allows those you "asked for" with a click won't stop them, they'll show up ('cause they appeared as a result of a click).
Finally, something that recognizes, even for "requested" pop-ups, that it's a fiendish full-screen hijacker pop-up, won't help too much if it simply resizes the window, shoves it into your current tab, etc. It'll still have to dig into the pop-up data to figure out what link to go to next (which might not be obvious, could be randomly obfuscated, etc.) Plus, they could put a bunch of links into the pop-up, for more information, to get on a mailing list, etc., and only one of them (which one??) would continue you through to the original link.
Basically, you can turn 'em off, but you can't get to the content w/out living with it. And there are LOTS of ways they can prevent you from getting there, automatically, without seeing their ad.
(at least, this is what I'd expect, as I haven't seen any of these yet. but I haven't yet seen anyone come up with a way to skip the interstitials (there's that word again!) on, say, salon.com.)
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
It doesn't work like that in a newspaper at all... Do they hire some guy to force you to stare at ads in between articles?
Now *that* would be ultra intrusive...
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
The impression I got was that the ads are 300k and must be pre-buffered before they'll start playing. If someone (i.e., me) is still on dial-up, they're going to be sitting on their thumb for about 1 to 2 minutes while they're waiting for that thing to preload. That, I think, would be even more irritating than the 15 second ad itself.
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
Mods, ANYONE who has access to the STATS can this be quantified ?
MrCaseyB,"I like my slashdot subscription, but I'm curious if they makes more money from me removing the ads or from me viewing the ads?"
Would It be better if I just gave in and clicked a couple dozen ads a day on a site I liked and wanted to support, or does micropayment scheme work out better ?
This is like the VOD, a pipe dream, the bandwidth isn't there, and why would the customer front the bill for it anyways ? Maybe it is time for a viewer micropayment system, keep track of the ads I watch and ensure my isp is credited with them, and I get a discount based on my demographic contribution ?
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Get yourself a copy of Privoxy (www.privoxy.org) -- it's Free, and it's really sweet. I've stopped using Mozilla's anti-annoyance features because privoxy does it better. I especially like the ability to disable links that launch new windows -- man, do I hate those.
Method of processing duck feet
Wouldn't that be a nightmare?
-Lucas
Honestly, why do marketers think that if they beligerently prod us with their advertisements, we will want to buy their product. For me, the more annoying the ad, the higher the degree of vengence I swear upon that company.
:-p
And as soon as I find my trusty steed and finish off these windmills, I will unleash my wrath upon them all....muahahahah!
"we are looking at a variety of ad formats -- including Unicast -- that advance advertiser interests without in any way negatively affecting the member experience..."
Like that's ever going to happen.
Then again, we are talking AOL customers, here...
All I want is a kind word, a warm bed and unlimited power.
I get a large window with the "click here to get the plug in" link :)
Pays to browse with just about everything turned off/not installed.
I think the best defense against this sort of thing is to email the company in the pop-up add telling them you saw the add and because of it you are instigating a 6 month boycott of their product. Company gets enough of those, and they might rethink their adverting methods.
These galleries didn't work for me. Apparently they use Flash for the ads, which I have disabled.
I have a batch file that renames the Flash plugin. I've noticed almost zero decrease in the quality of my net experience -- it seems to me most uses of Flash are obnoxious, irritating adverts. The web is a quieter, friendlier place without Flash.
If you're using IE under Windows, the plugin can be found at:
c:\windows\system32\macromed\flash\Flash.ocx
Globe199
Do they hire some guy to force you to stare at ads in between articles?
Yeah, they used to tie up Vinny and throw him on my porch every Sunday. He was a really nice guy with a real talent for breaking arms and hammering toes when I skimmed passed the Classified section or glanced pass one of those ad boxes on the bottom right.
Unfortunately, he suffered from splinters and abrasions after the rainy seasons when my wooden porch fell into disrepair; and, when the new paper boy started throwing him in the cactus planter, he put in his two weeks.
For a while it was kinda lonely and pointless reading the sunday paper. I kept reading from article from article until I completely forgot to focus on the "New Paint for Your Clunker" and "Vaginal Rejuvination" ads.
I hear they've hired a guy named Guido to take his place, so looks like I can finally get back to the consumer indocrination I agreed to by purchasing a paper.
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
...to piss off potential customers? I cannot imagine this doing anything positive for an advertiser. Then again, 90+% put up with IE, so maybe I just have too high regard for the masses.
In the UK the online version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire used to have full screen adverts. If you used IE a new window in kiosk mode would open and a flash animation would play out. Whats bad enough is the huge obnoxious advert, whats worse is that the task bar is hidden. For me that wasn't a problem, I just hit Alt-F4, but for less computer literate users they must have been annoyed/panicked when this happened.
I might be wrong, but surely covering the taskbar and denying the user the means to control their computer must break some sort of law? Even if it is only for a few seconds?
These ads didn't seem to be used for too long, so that must say something about how effective they were. Thank goodness for Mozilla!
Is it really asking too much to insist that we not be bombarded with advertising everywhere we look, everywhere we listen? I guess that makes me a curmudgeon.
One sure way to get rid of this is to get rid of the idiots -- both those who run such ads and those who are susceptible to them. But then, I'd have to get a real job.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
What I do not understand is who is doing the programming for these intrusive ads. Judging by the numberous posts on this subject already, very few if anyone enjoys pop-up ads, let alone the new "take over my screen" ads. No offense to the many marketing men and women out there, but in general your technological skills are "weak." This means you have to employ a geek to do the work for you. What we are left with then is, a bunch of geeks who hate intrusive ads, and a subset of these geeks who are selling their souls to the marketing devils. Does anyone else see the dilemma here. There are traitors amongst us. I say we all take a pledge to never ever write these horrible intrusive ads. Who is with me!
What will it take to rid the planet of these advertising scum?
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
http://www.unicast.com/pressroom/whitepapers/full_ screen.asp
According to their "research" 78% of people find pop-ups annoying, but only 30% of people found the full-screen interstitials annoying. 59% found them "entertaining"...
The sad thing is that with our culture, I am starting to believe those numbers...
-sker
nonsig. unsig. desig.
"We believe that just like in television, the creative you build is what gets shown, the technology should not get in the way..."
- In television, we pay $26 + change per month for basic cable, so that we can have clear reception on the two channels we ever watch. We pay $64.95 per month for "Enhanced DSL" so that all our computers have their own IP addresses.
- In television, I usually have a pretty solid 10-15 minutes of show viewing between commercial breaks. Interstitial ads will be entirely subject to reading and interpretation speed... faster is worse.
- In television, I am almost always watching for entertainment. I use the web to get news, learn, shop, and a variety of other things I find a bit more important than Buffy the Vampire Slayer (as important as Buffy can be).
- In television, content is scheduled and periodic, and the commercials are built into that. On the web, I have no idea how long it's going to take me to read this story or catch up on the day's events, so adding in 15 seconds hits harder.
- In television, commercial breaks are usually around 2-5 minutes. That's enough time to go to the restroom, grab a snack, tell an amusing anecdote. 15 seconds is not enough time to do something else, and too much time to stare at the screen.
- I sit farther away from my television than my computer screen.
So it's not just like television. Any chance they'll figure that out someday?
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
On my latest visit to my favorite PCB house, I noted I could no longer see their site. They upgraded. New Microsoft technology. Lots of Java stuff. Well, I don't run Java for these reasons which I noted in an email I fired back off to them to complain. But then I realize the position the company executives are in... they have their customers on one side that are connecting and doing business, and they have a corporate rep right in their office, shaking their hand and buying them lunch. The rep wants to leverage his corporate force by using his software on their system to help force the public into using a certain browser. The decision has to be made... use a technology the people already have to run their site, or use the new "upgraded, improved" stuff a lot of people don't have. They view the Corporate rep who just took them to lunch and have to tell him they won't "be a technology partner" and fall in line with his plan? They have to look at whats important in the big picture. What's really important? How expendable is a customer base? Do you really need customers anyway? I mean your customers did not take the time to come to your office and shake your hand and buy you lunch. The sales rep cared enough though.
And now I see this. 15 seconds tie-up time. 300K Downloads. On a "56K modem" through and ISP that often slows down the actual send rate to like 2.4 kilobytes per second. Thats the entire 15 seconds assuming I get a steady send.
This crap I have to put up with to connect to some business sites is absurd. I took a class in a community college on HTML, PERL, CGI. At the end of these simple little classes, I feel I could write pages far better than that I see on websites run by multibillion dollar corporations. Pages that loaded fast in any browser. Pages that did not require plug-ins. Pages that did not require my visitors to put their machines at risk. Just plain interactive pages - that followed HTML4.0 standards. Pages that work. Didn't even need any fancy editors, any plain ascii text editor worked fine. Why is it that when corporations put up pages, many can't make them work?
I know this is a bit of a rant, but I am really getting miffed off at technology being used to make a pain in the ass out of itself, and even businesses I trade with using the dollars I send them to work in collusion with those to force this on me.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Seriously, why is it not illegal for them to send us advertisements in the first place? They are wasting bandwidth that we pay for. I could see a business case where you got internet access for free, so long as you agreed to receive advertisments, but when I pay for my access I do not want to receive advertising. The internet is not cable television and should not be treated as such.
I think it will be only a matter of time before you begin to see websites that won't let you enter unless you agree to view advertisements. Quickly following, the MPAA will start to encroach further upon the freedoms of the net surfers by lobbying (successfully) to make it illegal to not view advertisements. Similar to the situation we have with DVD players not allowing you to skip previews, PVR devices not allowing you to not record commercials, and commericals in addition to movie previews in theaters. The culmination will be the MPAA and RIAA working with the Madison Ave. folks to force commercial breaks in schools for your children (you know....to generate brand loyalty early)
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
This will degrade the internet explorer experience and will be more and more of a reason for people to switch to better alternatives. Especially if explorer allows it 100% the same way it accepts pop ups. I say bring on more intrusive content. Mozilla can handle it.
check out the best blog ever:
http://oehlberg.com
Oh yeah, I switched to Opera to block shiat like that. :)
Spyware?
Crap that crashed Mozilla and IE?
HA!
I fart in your general direction.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Heh, Opera didn't show it either. Had to go over to a windows box and load it up in IE to get the full effect.
Funny how the MSN "butterfly guy" is the first one up, screaming "UNWANTED EMAILS INVADING YOUR INBOX?"
Yeah, and your showing me a full-screen, unwanted ad is somehow going to convince me that switching to your service is going to free me from annoying internet content?
"It's better with the butterfly"
How? Is that because he at least gives you a reach-around?
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
How many of you are aware that you can pay Slashdot to stop serving you ads? I do this - I consider it an enlightened balance between the need to pay the bills and my desire to not see the annoying ads.
Over the past couple of days I've had an exchange with a guy who runs a web site for owners of a particular marque of cars (which includes me). The site is full of banner ads, both at the top of the screen and down the sides. I run Norton Internet Security at home which blocks all of these.
The site is sponsored by a number of companies, and I went to the page listing the sponsors as I wanted to visit some of them. But all I saw were text descriptions of some of the sponsors, no links. Hmm. So I send the site owner mail, asking that these be made text links, and when he realizes I'm using an ad blocker, he flies off the handle accusing me of stealing his service and violating his terms of use (which are not published anywhere you can find them.) He threatened to block me from the site if I used an ad blocker (he has scripts that test for this and log IP addresses.)
I explain to him that I do support the site, in fact I had just bought a $25 classified ad there, and wanted to patronize his sponsors. I also mentioned how other sites handled this, through ordinary donations or selling a "no ad" service, such as Slashdot. I even volunteered to make a donation in lieu of viewing ads and did so. (One site I visit a lot asked for donations towards a new server and raised some $5000 that way!)
Nevertheless, he persisted in saying that I was trying to "pay selectively" for his service, and he didn't accept my view that he had offered a service freely and then got annoyed when people skipped the ads. I asked if he read every ad in his newspaper or ever fast-forwarded through ads on TV shows. (FWIW, I'm an avid TiVo user!)
In the end, he "thanked" me for my "brilliant" insights and said that the site would survive despite me. Sigh. I was trying to be constructive...
I understand the need for ads to pay the bills, but making them annoying and intrusive is counterproductive - I'll either find a way to block them or I'll go elsewhere. There are sites I've stopped visiting because the ads are so annoying. I am willing to pay for content or service I find valuable, if I'm offered a chance to do so.
I browse a lot of sites in korean,
/. publicity. Maybe the bandwith requirements of having a 640x480 ad is why this is hitting stateside but this is something that is already happening in parts of the world.
http://www.daum.com
http://www.dreamx.net
http://www.yahoo.co.kr
and lots of portals tested this kind of advertising on their homesite 18 months ago. even major players like Yahoo Korea had the F12 feature of taking over your whole screen for a 15-30 second flash animation/advertisment. The unpopularity of these ads made the hosts pull the ADs but unscrupulous (read PORN) advertisers still use this technique. I hardlly think that this technique is new, the code has existed to enable this for quite some time, this is just
I think the best way to really avoid this kind of blitz AD is not to use IE.
As do many other sites, including yahoo groups, when you click on reading the next group, they first take you to an add and you have to click again to go to the real site.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Alas.
As I read about all the pop-up blocking that Mozilla does, I can't help but mention that Safari does the same thing. I also seem to notice that a lot of the super-intusive ads only really do their thing on Windows + IE. Finally, an UPSIDE to being in the software minority!
People already hate advertising, they'll do what they can to block it or otherwise mentally ignore it. The advertisers know this, they've made it their quest to make the ads even more intrusive annoying and otherwise harder to ignore, as if being forced to watch the ad is going to make us buy the product. If anything it's going to make me boycott the product and probably the sites supporting this new ad format.
The problem with current adverising is really that they're either in your face annoying or suspicously attached to a glowing review of their product. Targetted advertising is good in the fact that it's actually related to something you already use, but you trade off personal privacy.
There used to be websites where upon registering you'd get a whole checklist of marketing categories you were interested in, which were then reflected in the advertising. It's still targeted advertising but better in the fact that you have control over what the adverisers know about you. Unfortunately you don't see this much anymore.
Of course, the way I look at it this whole article is just an advertisment for UNICAST's ad format...
- MbM
[flash disabled] [click here to enable flash on this site]
It's one of the best utilities I've ever used. And yes, it runs on Linux with Wine.
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
"Hey, I need to see this on the 'net. It says I need to install this thing called RealPlayer to see it... how do I do that?"
I am not the IT guy so I cannot tell them what to do, so I simply discourage them strongly. I tell them that, "RealPlayer is broken. It doesn't work anymore. The company died in the dotbomb. It is dangerous. It is created by terrorists. It destroys computers. You should never install it, and tell your friend that they should not use it. We can't play RealPlayer on our system. It was used on the old C-3PO operating system. Our computer doesn't support it. It is full of viruses. IT WILL KILL YOUR COMPUTER."
I hate lying to people. Hate it. However the urge to play anything, and I mean anything, no matter how inane, by their corporate buddy in another cubicle is SOOO STRONG (I mean moth to bug zapper strong) that they simply cannot exsist witout RealPlayer. After all, you are telling them not to do something, and they want to see that guy light his own flatulence. You see why you lose in that situation.
However, if you don't tell people a thousand reasons IN THE MOST EXTREME TERMS why they should not use RealPlayer, then the little moron will dodge your advice and install the danged thing. Then they will come to you with a computer that is half the speed that it was before and screws with you at all times. Then THEY START THE REAL LYING.
"I didn't install RealPlayer! No I didn't! You told me I shouldn't so I didn't!"
-TWO MINUTES LATER-
"Okay... Well, I just HAAAAD to see that baby dancing video! I saw it on an Ally McBeal rerun and it was soooo cute!"
It amazes me how many people have come to me for casual advice and then utterly bypass it to their own detriment. It is one thing to not know and accidentally install RealPlayer. It is another thing to ask, and then after hearing "EVIL! EVIL! EVIL!" from a person who knows, and still install it.
why should the bombardment stop? don't demand advertising silence from the advertisers - they're making too much money to give it up - demand it from yourself.
for the last five years, i have been persuing a policy of personal advertising exposure reduction. my formula for it is simple:
- kill your television. if you haven't figgured out that programming is just the coating to get you to swallow the ads... well, you're not paying attention then! donate yr tv to the women's shelter or something. if you must get the content (say, 6 pm buffy) nab it from bittorrent.
- commit to ad-free radio there are ad-free and ad-reduced radio stations out there such as your state provider (cbc, bbc &c). your local university probably has a good radio station (the one in my town is awesome!)
- don't be a billboard, eschew visible branding you pay $20 more for the shirt with the nike swoosh on it. why pay them to be their billboard? de-logo-ize your stuff and avoid purchasing items with large, visible logos. (you may argue about band tee shirts now, if you wish
:>)
- avoid points programs does every store have to have a points card now? don't play! the "savings" and bonuses you reap do not represent a decrease in the retailer's profit but, rather, an increase in the median price of services and products offered. the primary purpose of the campaigns is to gather data on you for future marketing and advertising campaigns. don't participate.
obviously those aren't hard "rules" (who the hell am i to tell you what to do?), but if you want to live with less advertising, it's a good way to start. the most important suggestion i can make is to spend a fair amount of time deciding how you classify different kinds of advertising and what you want to achieve. what do you think of classified ads? band tee shirts? the chrome logo on your car? think this stuff through early on!2 1337 4 u!
"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
There are places in the world where people pay for their Internet connection based on the amount of bandwidth they use. In other words, their service providers know how many megs of information was sent down that person's line and charge accordingly. Now imagine for a moment that you live in one of these places and you receive all kinds of ads. Not just web site ads, either. I'm talking about all ads... banner ads, popup ads, and even SPAM mail. Sure, your email program might be configured to erase SPAM mail, but it still has to get downloaded to you. Which leaves you doing what? Paying good, hard-earned money, our of YOUR pocket, because some jackasses in China or at some CBS site are sending you JUNK.
Online advertising simply sucks, especially when you can just go into Google and punch in what you're looking for. (Here at Harvard we do not end a sentence with a preposition. Alright, punch in what you're looking for, asshole.)
Why is this happening? Because too many people are sheep.
Yes, an enormous number of people are sheep, just following, unconciously, what the herd is doing. And guess what? Consumer mass-marketing is simply a science devoted to pulling sheep around by the strings. People are unconscious. See, in Spanish, we have a way of saying that someone is unconscious such that you would understand what I'm talking about... if you say that someone está inconsciente, you mean that he/she is medically unconscious, as when a big hammer falls on someone's head or something. But if you say that someone es inconsciente, you mean that he/she is unconscious as in Orwell's 1984, where the people don't think that the Party is unfairly controlling them simply because they don't think. The world is passing them by like some kind of television show and they're just letting it carry them along for the ride. This is the audience of sheep that we're talking about. There is such an alarming number of these sheep that it is going to reduce our world to a piece of shit. Legislation that doesn't really bother the sheep, but takes away real, useful rights of intelligent people like YOU. Television programming that sucks and is filled with commercials made for stupid people. So, you have technology that removes ads from webpages? Oh, well, we've already patented that (tomorrow), and we've already made it federally illegal with jail terms of at least 500 years (the day after tomorrow). And that pisses me off.
This is caused by shitty education systems that get people used to following directions and not thinking for themselves. Oh, there's an ad I have to look at for 15 seconds... oh well, maybe I'll buy their product so I can put it in my already cluttered beyond recognition house, so that my car has to be out on the driveway because the garage is full of so much shit.
SHEEP!
If it turns out that Camino doesn't block them, it looks like its time to go back to Lynx.
No, it's
Intrusive 286
Intrusive 386
Intrusive 3.0
Intrusive 3.1
Intrusive 95
Intrusive 95 OEMSR1
Intrusive 98
Intrusive 98SE
Intrusive ME
Intrusive 2000
Intrusive XP
XP stands for eXtra Penetrating.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Alt-F4 with that window "active" will usually close the window (same as clicking the X in the corner, especially if you can't reach the corner).
Hello Mr. Destiney.
I was wondering if you can search for people by their country in destiney.com. Can you? I want to ask that before I register (and upload my pic..)
Can you?
-0-0- idle