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Commercials Come To The Net (After This Word)
ctwxman writes "Say it isn't so. Full-motion commercials, when you go to click off a page, are coming to a website near you! The New York Times (standing in a bathtub with an electric iron required) reports: "Beginning tomorrow, more than a dozen Web sites, including MSN, ESPN, Lycos and iVillage, will run full-motion video commercials from Pepsi, AT&T, Honda, Vonage and Warner Brothers, in a six-week test that some analysts and online executives say could herald the start of a new era of Internet advertising." Unicast, the company responsible, says the ads will play regardless of pop-up blocking. "The only format that loads completely before it is allowed to play, the Full Screen Superstitial is guaranteed to play perfectly for every consumer, every time."
I work in TV where commercials pay the freight. Is this so wrong on the net? It's not what we're used to, but maybe we're asking for more than is reasonable. I just don't know." I think I hear the whip swinging back, but harder ...
Unicast, the company responsible, says the ads will play regardless of pop-up blocking.
The good news is that this requires Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player, so I don't even need to modify my ad filter to keep them from showing up!
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
"The only format that loads completely before it is allowed to play, the Full Screen Superstitial is guaranteed to play perfectly for every consumer, every time."
I was curious about this Full Screen Superstitial advertisement so I checked the Unicast website here http://www.unicast.com/gallery/gallery.asp and found that shockwave is required in order to display. Under firebird with no shockwave plugin installed (on Win2K no-less), all I get is a 'Get Plugin' page. Glad to see that this 'technology' is defunct from the start!
- mkaltner
You won't need a plugin to hide it. It requires Windows Media Player, so you'd need a plugin to see it in the first place.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
The Mothership
Unicast claims 300 kb per commercial and that they can play the commercials between page changes, so you're looking at paying $.06 per webpage.
-- Dick Hopple, CEO Unicast Communications
Unicast Communications Corp.
160 Varick Street 6th Floor
New York, NY 10013
0.5 seconds to click "View Source"
10 seconds to find the advertisement tag
2 seconds to add the host to the squid banlist ACL
2 seconds to restart squid
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
And my userContent.css will suppress even that: I don't have the plug-in installed and this suppresses even the alert.
However, they can easily code sites such that you can't find out the real link destination until the flash movie completes and redirects the main browser there. To bypass this with Mozilla, it would need to be able to decode the Flash movie (or whatever they use) and find the redirection. Assuming they haven't obfuscated it amongst many false leads or made the ad too interactive.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I use a mozilla-based browser with the ad blocking userContent.css that can be found here. I find that also helps.
"Looks like this will push Flash blocking through quickly. :)"
Flash Click to View:
Why are banners and ads able to be "forced" (term used loosely) to your PC while telemarketers and text messages from businesses aren't able to call you or send messages since it costs me money. My internet bandwidth is not unlimited so shouldn't it be right to say that ads are costing me money. I would agree that it is somewhat debatable since your visiting that site and so you are almost agreeing that you'll accept the ads. As an arguement to that, how do I know a site will pop up advertisements (ie to the extreme, porn)? Should a site notify you before it loads stating that "to view the site, you accept that advertisements will be displayed on your computer"? Where does customer/visitor accepted advertising start/end?
Just some thoughts. Anyone have any thoughts on that rambling?
Remember, bandwidth on the Internet has to be paid for by both the subscriber and the provider of content. Once the advertisers get tired of paying for the staggering amount of outgoing bandwidth needed to send 30-second video clips that are unrequested by 100% of the viewers and skipped by 99% of them, you can expect full-screen superstitials to go the way of the 110-volt rubber duck.
Who's forcing them to go to these sites ? Last time I checked, you had access to this smart little "X" button that would close the window. I'm all for those ads. They dont try and trick you by using faked windows, they just plain make their sales speech, and then you move on. If you dont like it, there are a bunch of other sites around that dont use them.
That's just it - they *DO* trick you. The article clearly states that *while* the user is browsing a given web site, the full motion video ad is being downloaded in the background. It is only when you leave the site that the video starts playing.
You don't have the option to check the "No thanks, I pay by the MB for my downloads" button. You don't even know about the large download until after it's done!! That's the offensive part.
One can only hope that the sites which feature these ads have a warning.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
The mozilla "click-to-play flash" add-on that you can find here
It's not the slickest thing, but if you run Firebird you can install Flash Click-To-View. It does exactly what you'd think it would do - replaces any and all Flash content with a gray box saying "Flash - Click to View." Works pretty well, except gets annyoing on those flash-only navigation pages.
Cue The Sun...
1.0 seconds to copy URL .05 seconds to hit tools .05 seconds to hit internet options .05 seconds to hit security .05 seconds to hit restricted sites .05 seconds to hit sites .05 seconds to hit add .05 seconds to hit f5
1.0 seconds to paste URL
No more ad loading in IE on that site.
With that said - What about users on a FUP connection? Do they even care?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
According to Unicast, each advertisement is aprox
15 seconds
300k file size
Full screen
Plays between pages during consumer transition
300KB/7KBps == 42+ seconds of *extra* download time, presuming the user is downloading at a full 56kbps. Just think, if every page has this ad technology, this is going to make for some very long browsing sessions for modem users. I don't know about the rest of you, but I never was able to reach a full 56kbps when I used to be on modem. It always dropped back down to 26kbps or a similar speed.
Imho, it is advertising suicide. Then again, not every user knows there are alternatives to MSN, ESPN, etc...
Myself, I just leave Flash uninstalled. Every few months there's a site I want to see that has Flash. I install it, look at the site, and uninstall it. It kills a few minutes, but to me it's far preferable to seeing all that Flash crap I don't want to see.
t ml
However, now that I've learned about
http://www.squarefree.com/userstyles/xbl.h
I'll give it a shot.
My favorite quote (from near the bottom of the paragraph):
I'd sure like to see the terms of that guarantee... <grin>
I use a mozilla-based browser with the ad blocking userContent.css that can be found here. I find that also helps.
The css file blocks content from being displayed. In other words, the unwanted content still gets downloaded. Thus, these ads remains a problem for modem users and pay-by-megabyte users.
I doubt very much that the download would begin on through Mozilla without Mozilla telling me something. If IE doesn't work for you, you can always switch to Mozilla or Opera.
"How are you to know which sites use these ads and which don't if you don't know about the ad until it's already been downloaded!!"
So you get screwed once and you don't return. That's the all point of the internet, isn't it? You never know what you're going to get until you try, and then you only end up trusting very few web sites like google or slashdot.
If you check out the specs sheet of the "Superstitial" full screen ad format here: http://www.unicast.com/formats/htmlspecs_fs.asp?do cument=FullScreenSpecs%5F05277521%2Epdf. At least the specs are reasonable.
- All ads are essentially Flash movies with set limitations
- max file size 600K
- limit to 15 seconds max
- *MUST include sound off button
- *MUST include a skip commerical link
- if no buttons are visible at any point during the commerical, clicking on the commerical itself will allow the user to "bail" from watching it.
- embedded videos can be no larger than 320x240
And all interactivity and motion/animation is done in flash, most using actionscript. It almost seems like a crime to pass this off as new technology, when it fact it just appears to be flash movies forced to run full screen.
And no I don't agree with what they're doing, and I don't believe that I should have to pay with my own bandwidth to watch someone elses ads, but at least they're giving up the option in these ads to skip them... Which isn't much a silver lining but..???
The most important thing is that when we see these commercials, we should not click on anything but the "skip" button. If we make sure the skip them all, I think our message will be heard loud and clear by advertisers.
From the people that brought you (and are still bringing you) Kazaa Lite comes Supertrick, effectively a Hosts file used to redirect the servers that provide advertising to your loopback address. Also, if you're not already running a server, you can get eDexter to make any "blocked" into transparent GIFs that don't break the page. Should work pretty well for these background loading ads. :^)
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Blocking http://*.unicast.com/* and http://*.enliven.com/* seems to take care of this new annoyance quite handily.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
http://adblock.mozdev.org
:)
Lets you selectively block Flash objects, as well as filter out a whole bunch of other crap. Like Slashdot ad banners
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Just don't use crappy IE and you won't be exploited by this crap.
Some good catch-alls for Adblock
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
> junk calls on your cel phone(for those who pay to receive calls).
I don't know about where you are, but as I understand it here in the US, telemarketing to cell phones is illegal.
-- Gone Crazy, Back Later
Well, it didn't work for me, but that's a nice benefit of not having shockwave installed. Of course, I just ended up with a large blank page that did nothing. Handy
-Brad
Its interesting how many people have pointed out that cable TV used to be commercial free. So why are we now paying to receive ads on cable? This should give you some insight. Basically everyone in the United States who subscribes to cable or satellite is paying a Disney Tax, mainly due to fees for ESPN. That's right, when you watch ESPN, you are bombarded with commercials, you see onscreen advertising, and on top of it your cable companies are charged out the ass for the rights to carry ESPN. But should they decide to drop ESPN or move it to a premium package, Disney will threaten to pull ALL of their channels from that cable company. This means no Disney, ESPN, ABC, and whatever other channels they own. The cable provider would lose lots of subscribers over this, so they must play along. But why does Disney feel that consumers should be forced to pay to watch ads? Because they clearly are willing to do so. Sports fans who pay almost $100 per game ticket and then $12 for a beer and slice of pizza, and then watch ads all through the game are more than willing to pay whatever they are charged for ESPN. What is unfair is the fact that every cable subscriber must pay whether they watch sports or not. The summary of this post is: Fuck ESPN. Fuck them in the ass with a concrete dildo.
The Onion started doing interstatial ads. I don't know if they still are, because I stopped going there as soon as it started.
:(
A pity, because other than that they were an excellent parody site.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Patent# 6,466,967
Looks like it should be easy enough to block:
Those guys can't provide cable in NZ's largest city, Auckland.
The ripoff company he is getting his DSL through is the only vendor of DSL, Telecom. Telecom know they have a monopoly, and they totally and utterly rape us, because they know we're fucked if we don't want to go back to dial up.
The more affordable options for DSL involve monthly limits of 600MB or less, and 20c for every MB over that. The less affordable options have limits of 2GB, 5GB, and 10GB, with prices dropping all the way down to 16c per MB, and the monthly fees for those levels far outweigh the cheaper options.
After visiting their site I find "2MB for 30 seconds". I went to the demo page, which took several minutes to load to 99% before stopping -- probably because I use Opera. Investigatng my cache I found an exe file these pricks had sent. WTF are they trying to do? What an excellent way to install a Trojan.
Look at the HTML source at:
:)
http://www.unicast.com/gallery/
Check the 'Full Screen Interstitial' example. It isn't Flash, but Windows Media Player. It bails right away if you aren't running IE with the right version of media player. Also requires Javascript.
Not a problem for me.
- Necron69
Proxomitron is a local proxy that lets you write powerful scripts the alter your incoming and out-going browser data-stream 'in real time'. Yes, you can intercept Shockwave/flash as easily as any other sort of file, as well as Javascript and .CSS files. You can not only block ads and pop-ups and cookies, you can customize your entire browsing experience! You can also SEND things like spoofed cookies and other codes that let you control your browsing experience. The add-blocker CSS for Mozilla/Firebird is good but but this is an order of magnitude better.
Proxomitron. Get it, learn it, keep up with the cookie snoopers and pop-up pushers.
http://www.proxomitron.info/
Not according to the Learn More button on that page.
"The Video Commercial is:
Up to 2 MB
Up to 30 seconds
Full Screen
Broadcast quality (564 kbps) - plays up to 8 times faster than broadband video (100 kbps)
Completely pre-cached* -- 30 frames per second video that plays perfectly for every consumer, every time"
"The Video Commercial IS NOT:
Streaming video which inevitably results in buffering and freezing even on a broadband connection
Partially pre-loaded or "politely" loaded which does not guarantee consistent playback
Flash video"
It specifically says it's not flash.
The big chains (Dixons, Comet, Currys) will not sell you a region free DVD player.
You can get them in other reputable shops like RicherSounds, but is by no means a generalized given.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.