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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 ...
Some people, particluarly in smaller countries, pay for Internet by the MB. How much are these ads going to cost?!
How will this help people on modems? They'll sit at a blank page for 5 minutes before seeing a commercial then having the page load.
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The Signature could not be accessed. Please try again later or contact the administrator
Remember that when sites can make money off advertising, they have less need to directly charge their visitors...
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
You're kidding, right? For dial-up users, this will be absolute murder.
Myself, I have a cable connection, and I do not want to have commercials force fed to me.
So this will work in spite of pop-up blocking? Then the next feature I'd like to request from Mozilla is commercial blocking. I have more important things to do with my bandwidth.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
not impressed, here one visitor that isnt going to be going to their sites
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
10 minutes to discover how it works.
1 hour to code the block.
1 day to submit to mozilla.
1 week till al bugs are out, and a patch is out and woring for windoze, linux, BSD, MAC, and maybey even DOS.
Nothing to worry about.
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
Full Screen Superstitial is guaranteed to play perfectly for every consumer, every time.
Like those godawful, browser-filling Flash interstitials they already use? Those do a perfect job of grinding my poor little laptop (600mhz, but only 300 or so on batteries) to a halt as they load up. Not to mention, the volume levels are usually jacked up so if I'm using headphones, I'll get my eardrums popped.
Dear web advertisers - I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.
--riney
p.s. I hate you.
So many problems with this idea.. Cell phone browsers, PDA browsers, Modem Browsers, Pay by the MB browsers.. Maybe we do expect too much from sites that take money to run, but with more options like those at 1and1.com showing up, why should it cost so much to run a web site?
"...the Full Screen Superstitial is guaranteed to play perfectly for every consumer, every time."
Oh, I doubt that. I doubt that very much. I have CSS2 on my side, after all. That, and I never go to MSN, ESPN, Lycos, or the rest anyway, and certainly won't now.
And what's the guarantee? Free week's worth of ads every time someone hits your page with lynx? This guarantee business is baloney from so many points of view.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
"I work in TV where commercials pay the freight. Is this so wrong on the net?"
Gee I thought that monthly bill from my ISP meant *I* was paying the freight.
I went to the city because I wished to live without deliberation.
The mozilla "click-to-play flash" add-on will probably prevent this from running. If this doesn't use flash, then it would have to install some other player which the user could just cancel (no no such opportunity was presented, then that would be legally questionable). Of course such a player wouldn't even be available on unix, so we wouldn't even see it.
Either way, ad blocking is here to stay and I highly doubt that these ads will remain unblocked for long. In fact I'm looking forward to them. It lets me practice my regular expression skills in privoxy!
Sites that don't let me in without forcing me to see an ad I just don't need to go to. Why don't these people learn from google's plaintext advertising experience. You don't need large, obnoxious ads to get people to buy your stuff.
Well, you and your "Mozilla based Linux distro of choice" who really beg to differ will really see a "please upgrade your browser to see this page" notice...
Since you/we are not the main audience, I think you/we will be left off by those sites...
Perhaps someone out there will come up with a neat powertoy to better allow us control on what flash content is loading.Perhaps by blocking flash content on selected sites or something.
It will be great to see such a tool, unless of course there is one already, which I'm simply not aware of.
HAHA Injured Hippies
And Java is write-once, run-anywhere...
I don't even know where to begin to describe what is wrong with this obvious bit of market-droid nonsense!
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
1. It's not free
2. The free one sucks
2. Not having it saves you from a lot of stupid content and spares your CPU
I'm in .au, where its perfectly normal for business grade connections to be provided with a 19c/meg bandwidth charge, sometimes as low as 9c/meg. Excess charges on home ADSL connections vary from 1c/meg to 20c/meg. Many home connections are shaped after x gigabyte, for some major providers to as slow as 28kbit (yes, thats slower than a 56k modem on a bad line).
.au pricewars at the moment) to download such an ad would take 41 minutes (assuming constant rate of 2,000 bytes/second).
To put that in perspective, for some people:
1 full motion advertisement, weighing in at 5 megabytes would cost up to $1 AUD to download (.75USD == 1AUD at the moment).
2 Advertisements would cost as much as an iTunes track.
For, say, an optus cable user who's already used their allowance for the month (was 3 gig, now 6 gig, is going up to 12 gig thanks to some stiff
Yuck.
A little overkill never hurt anybody.
Unfortunately for us, companies need revenue to provide content. That means at least one of 1) subscriptions, 2) advertising, 3) pay-as-you-go.
Take the NY Times for instance. The same content that one needs to pay $6 a week for a subscription is available free on the web. Some of that cost is newsprint and delivery, but -over the long term- they need a way to make revenue from their product.
Personally, I wouldn't mind a system where I would be charged $0.05 to read a particular article. I usually only read a few items each day.
The other option that we, the community, have to maintain are user experience is to attempt to actively patronize advertisers who choose less intrusive means, and boycott those who choose intrusive advertising. If the least instrusive advertising is most effective, the more intrusive methods will be abandoned.
Or if the ads still work, just use Lynx.
I am happy to see targeted banners and text ads - I regularly click slashdot banners or Google AdWords because they relate to the site I am browsing and are actually interesting and sometimes beneficial to me.
I tolerate useless banners that tell me I have won a prize or there is an urgent message waiting because they are just the work of a misguided webmaster trying to pay the bills. I never click these, I don't want their crap and I don't support their cause.
I block popups altogether - anyone who wants to hijack what I'm trying to read rather than become part of the page does not deserve listening to. If they want my help then they should be polite - I don't expect my newspaper to flash an ad for 20 seconds before I can read the story.
Why should people have to *pay* to receive corporate advertising?
Why should the websites that these people are seeing the ads on be forced to develop and support a website free of charge? Those sites have to pay the bills somehow, and for many, ads are the way to go. That sucks if your internet connection makes it such that larger ads cost you more. If that's the case, get your news/entertainment/what-have-you from a site that doesn't use such large ads.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
It's a six week test - presumably the companies want to get some feedback. If the ads annoy you, just e-mail their customer service department or wherever with a polite request that they stop using the ads. See where that gets us.
According to the article, it will be possible to skip the ads by clicking on a button, and also they'll be designed to work with Windows Media Player. It would be interesting to see whether the pages in question function correctly in something lacking WMP (e.g. Konqueror) - if they don't because of sloppy JavaScript or whatever then that would be another trigger for a polite e-mail.
I think it was Henry Ford who observed 'Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don't know which half.' Our job must be to suggest that it's the half spent on ads which actively impede our enjoyment of the web.
Reading the unicast site and viewing their ad demos, it uses Flash.
:)
Looks like this will push Flash blocking through quickly.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
I work in advertising/marketing. And yes, it IS so wrong on the net. Repeat after me, "THE NET IS NOT TV". We're not asking for anything unreasonable. The net was fine the way it was before, and now its broken, horribly, because of companies who want to clutter it with push content, and because of "ad agencies" (i use the term loosely) who create this kind of software that evades popup blockers.
To all companies out there considering using this advertising method. Don't. If I block popups, it means I don't want to see your message. I don't care how much you think I want to see your bandwidth sucking ad, I don't.
The reason advertisers want to turn the net into tv is so that you have no choice about what you see. With banner ads, most people just kind of tune that area of the website out. Popup blockers are the next step. So with every method you have of controlling your choice, that is one less venue for a company to deliver "an urgent, important message" to you.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
It'll just mean I won't go to those sites. There are plenty of good alternatives to those major sites (IMO those major sites suck anyway).
well, that's one way to lose your audience.
well, I know ESPN's site is now completely within MSN, so it's sounding to me like a MS thing/deal...
Good news for us though!! You wanted "the sheep" the consider other browsers, other portals? Well, sounds to me like MS is shooting itself in the foot... Like selling LZBoys that dominate so no-one can sell a chair to compete, BUT then LZBoy adds electric shock for each time you sit down! Good news for competitors. Let them force video ads on IE and MS customers... you think this is bad??? (anyone say "switch")
I'm at work, so I had a Windows box handy to check this out. I went to the Unicast site and loaded an example ad. Sure enough, it took up the whole screen.
That, while being the selling factor for advertisers, will also be the downfall of the medium from a user's perspective. Full screen ads work fine on TV, because there is no concept of a window or multitasking.
Users quite often have multiple windows open while surfing the web, either multiple browsers or multiple applications. I will quite often type in an address, hit enter, and then switch to a different window while the page loads. Or I will simply queue up a site knowing I'm going to need it in a minute as a reference when writing a document.
I wouldn't mind these ads so much if they were full-window ads. Who is the advertiser to say that they have the right to become full screen, and become the focused application when I may be typing into a word processor or code editor?
People typically watch TV and aren't concerned about getting things done. However, using a computer they usually have are trying to accomplish a task. Any form of advertising that gets in the way will not be tolerated.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
The analogy between television and the 'net is spurious. Here in NZ at least, and most other countries of the world, TV is broadcast free to air. The Government supports it a little, but it's bread-and-butter is paid commercial advertising. Fair enough, I say, it's how they make enough money to stay in existance.
The net, on the other hand, is a totally different kettle of fish. We _already_ pay to use the net. We pay a monthly access fee (in NZ, broadband pays by the Mb, too). We pay for our hosting space, and our domain registration. We pay excess bandwidth use if we have a popular site, or if we want extra mailboxes or services.
Someone explain to me _WHY_ we now have to watch commercials as well??!
I guess every consumer is running Windows media player, or maybe the other 20% of internet users don't consume anything.
Clearly you're not versed in marketing lingo. If you can't see the ad, you're not going to be a consumer, hence the guarantee stands. Remember that next time you hear somebody claiming high user satisfaction!
And why do we need "YOUR COMPUTER IS BROADCASTING ITS IP ADDRESS" or "YOU HAVE ALREADY WON" or other similar forms of deceptive advertisers to pay for internet content anyhow?
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
That's all well and good, unless of course it's a "forward" command at the end of the flash movie that sends you to the web site you were trying to view.
I'd say the real solution is that if you don't like the adds, don't visit the websites. The beauty of a free market economy is that you have choices.
and internet junkbuster easily blocks the ad's.
I silently installed internet junkbuster at work and redirected all the machine to that proxy about 2 years ago.
corperate recently after a takeover made changes to our network and changed the proxy settings on everyone's machines without my knowlege (I'm the local IT guy) and then called me asking why out network useage spiked up by almost 24%. my response was to the new It operations manager on how the regional IT made changes to my machines without my knowlege or notification and eliminated a bandwidth saving system I had in place..
now they want to use it corperate wide.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Why should the websites that these people are seeing the ads on be forced to develop and support a website free of charge?
Forced? Sorry, do we live in different countries, where your government holds a gun to peoples' heads and tells them "update your website or we kill you and your family"?
No one "forces" websites to do anything. They don't "need" to work for nothing - They simply don't need to work at all.
Those sites with an actual product, which at the moment appears limited to storefronts, some news outlets, and porn sites, deserve to stay solvent because they actually provide a service people will pay for. Every other site can go pound sand, or stay up because its owners love doing it (ie, most personal sites, blogs, and certain hobby-oriented informational sites).
Naturally, the obvious followup question involves Slashdot's status under this idea. Personally, I think it falls into a "hobby site that trades bandwidth and hosting costs for massive amounts of good karma for OSDN. That might not have a direct dollar value, but in terms of effective advertising, it means more than all the half-time SuperBowl commercials put together.
To address the parent article, I for one will not EVER visit a site that shows any advertising that I can't either ignore or circumvent. I said that long ago about popups, and well before popup blocking became incorporated into the major browsers, I wrote a crude local proxy server for myself and a few friends to do nothing but filter them out. I'll attempt to do similarly for these new ads, but if the hype holds true and they really do prevent me from visiting the site without watching it, I can guarantee them the permanent loss of one visitor. And I doubt I'll act alone in that regard. People avoid ad-heavy sites already - Having to watch a full 30-second spot will turn off even the most computer illiterate grannies out there.
I've been updating this list for a few years now and it works fairly well with very little to no blocking of legitimate content. Enjoy.
Before I get flamed for "blocking ads," first off its my PC and I'll do as I please. Don't like it? Switch to a subscriber model. When Salon.com went pay I sure as heck forked over the money. I can't imagine doing that for msn.com or the other sites mentioned. If their content isn't worth it chances are they're going to subsidize their lack of worth with gimmicks like these.
Secondly, text ads are far superior, convey real information, and the google method puts them in the context of the website itself, so you don't get car ads on a site about bicycles.
These guys sound like the brilliant types who decided that I could afford to spend a dollar or two a month to visit my favourite websites. "Anybody can afford that" they say. The bozos forget however, that I visit *hundreds* of different sites a month. And suddenly my "easily afforded" monthly bill for web page subscriptions is upwards of $200 a month.
The reality of the situation is that I simply stopped visiting those pages asking for subscription fees. Just like I'll stop visiting any pages who use these new ads.
... is that anyone can set up an Internet site, whereas very few people have the ability to set up their own TV station. So let these guys make their sites as annoying as they want, it will only encourage alternative sites to spring up. One day, ESPN will wonder where all their viewers have gone, only to find they have migrated to opensports.net or somesuch.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
"Is this so wrong on the net?"
Yes. It is as wrong as if a TV commercial could prevent me from changing the channel, turning on the radio, or going to the bathroom while it was playing.
A full-screen advertisement as herein described consumes my bandwidth without asking (potentially forcing me to pay more to my ISP), hijacks my entire computer interface (which usually does much more than just web browsing).
I have little problem with net advertising in general, as long as it respects my control of my property. A website that requires you to click-through a page of advertising may be annoying if you are in a hurry, but is completely reasonable and up front. A website that silently loads a high-res movie in the background, then takes over your entire screen when you try to leave, is an abomination.
But it ain't already free. They're just being greedy and trying to make more money out of it.
Pretty hypocritical, considering it wouldn't exist without a lot of donated tax-money research and net-hacker time.
I'd be willing to bet real money Mac users won't be affected by this crap.
Not that I go to any of the sites mentioned anyway.
And I've got dozens of ad-servers blocked at my router. So I'll have to ad a few dozen more, who really cares?
If advertising gets that far out of control, I'll just stop using the 'net entirely. I'm already using it far less than I did a couple years ago. And I've nearly completely stopped watching TV. I've got a lot more time to do useful stuff these days. (But all I really do is play Halo. ^_^;;)
Most of us are aware that the Internet isn't really free. We the web browsers usually pay an ISP or put up with an ISP's adds to pay for the "free" Internet access. The same is for those who provide Internet content. It costs something to be connected and costs something to keep it running (and that cost is not always money.)
Then there is the perversion of the Internet(motly the World Wide Web). The Internet was created to share information in a platform independent way, not to pop up endless adds, not to display animated adds jumping around, not to run code like JavaScript, and Visual Basic, and expecially not to run ActiveX controlls.
Yes, a lot of what has been done is really cool and things on the Internet should change and grow, but the changes really should be for the better. If your website only works right on an IE browser but not on ANY other, there is something wrong. If a binary or script can be automatically run, something is wrong. Any time you add something to the Internet that only takes something away from the people, it is a perversion!
So what does this have to do with Internet adds? This is another change to the Internet that does not improve anything. In fact it makes things worse. It will at least cost some people browsing the Internet money, and annoy us all.
So what do we do? (1) E-mail the companies using this service and tell them you will stop using the service if they continue run such commercials. (2) Stop using the services. (3) If only one company is going to be spitting out the adds, time to do a little local DNS editing or block traffic from those spicific Internet domains. (4) It sounds like it is a new type of file since it loads compleatly before playing. Switch to a web browser that does not support it.
Okay, so how does this format load and play when I browse the web using the text-based LYNX browser? How much is a guarantee worth when it is impossible to deliver?
So exactly why is it good business sence to piss off your customers with adds? I get pissed off going to a Movie theater and see TV commercials and go to other theaters.
Not all websites are free of charge. Ever been to a website that requires you to login? Some of those charge a fee for an account. Those services are usually worth it (or they would have gone under).
"The Internet is my tool; I refuse to be the tool of the Internet." -- MrNybbles
How to make Adds NOT piss people off
Many DVDs put adds/previews/whatever in a bonus section of the DVD. MAKE ADDS OPTIONAL!
In magazines I can skip the add pages. In addition, some of those adds are actually more interesting than the magazine content itself. MAKE IT UNINTRUSIVE! MAKE IT INTERESTING!
Losing faith in humanity one person at a time.
Why should the websites that these people are seeing the ads on be forced to develop and support a website free of charge?
Wrong. At least one of the named companies is a nationwide ISP that charges its users for the privilege of receiving banner ads on its home page, and presumably will now be charging them to receive these new ones. This same company is about to release a major browser update that blocks pop-up ads. (BTW, I don't see much difference between this situation and D-Squared Solutions' alleged extortion.)
How convenient that this ISP will concurrently "enhance" ads blockable by its new browser with unblockable ones.This is one situation where I hope it will work only under Windows.
Jory
...you lose. Advertising becomes obnoxious when advertisers forget that people are theoretically the purchasers of their goods, and that their money comes from those who willingly choose to exchange money for goods and services. Instead, some seem to think that they have an inherent right to the money and attention of others. Previously (or maybe only in my fantasy world), a business had to have goods that someone wanted and might actually consider purchasing. Now some businesses take for granted that obnoxious and obtrusive ads (let alone spam for dru9s) will earn them my attention and not my anger and annoyance. Other businesses intimidate their customers (or people who should be their customers) for money they believe they should get (SCO) only to find out that they don't have any customers anymore.
My bar has ads in the toilet which are run by a company which says as its tagline (I think) "ads for a captive audience". Pop-up, -under, etc. ads, spammers, etc., are the same way - instead of having products that people might want and choose willingly to look at or even buy, companies predicate their income on an absolute right to my attention. They seem to forget that there are few people with an absolute right to my attention (parents, GF, boss, etc.), and that they aren't on the list. If they attempt to force the issue, then they will lose any attention I might ever have willingly given them, and any money that might come from it.
The market comes from the willing exchange of goods and services and money. Any business that is predicated on forcing you to watch their ads is probably doing so because they don't have anything worth selling, and thus deserves to lose. Don't enrage your customers, and they might give you money (and only a few will take from you). Screw them, and pay the piper as a long line of angry people take you out of the corporate gene pool.
Actually, you know... I'm _not_ anti-capitalistic. In fact, I'm probably as pro-capitalistic as it gets.
However, my idea of capitalism, dunno, has more to do with what it used to mean, a long time ago in a galaxy far away. The idea that you try to build a better product. That you try to give people something they need, and they'll give you money for it.
At some point it used to be, at least theoretically, that a transaction produced value for _both_ parties involved.
E.g., if I'm a baker and you're hungry, for you a loaf of my bread is worth more than the price I ask for it. And for me, having more loaves than I can possibly eat myself, that money is worth more than the loaf. Thus the transaction is a profit for both sides involved.
Now in this high tech market all this got turned upside down. The whole idea is to rape the consumer as hard as you can. As long as you got their money today, fsck 'em.
Just in the software industry alone, billions of USD worth of _worthless_ software is sold each year by marketting, bribery and lies. The kind of snake-oil transaction which actually produces a huge _loss_ to the buyer (e.g., the wasted time of 20 contractors over 2 years trying to work around the bugs) for a tiny profit to the seller. In fact, the kind that rapes you harder than if they just stole that money out of your account.
Plus it's sad to see everything thrown back in time some 500 years.
A _very_ long time ago, long before computers or even electricity, merchants had discovered that being honest and respectful pays. It paid big time. A satisfied customer was a customer which came back tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and next year. And often brings other customers.
Those people were planning to be in business for a long time. For generations, if possible. _Not_ to pull a quick scam.
Nowadays, again, that all got turned around. People are not planning to be in business for generations. At best they plan to show a bigger figure at the next board meeting. Plans now span a year, or in the worst cases barely weeks.
Hence, now it's perfectly acceptable to sell snake oil, and doubly so to screw the customer hard. He may not buy from you again next year, but, hey, who cares about next year? Rape 'em with a red hot poker, if that's what it takes to get their money NOW.
Dunno, somehow I think this is _not_ what capitalism was supposed to mean. Most of those business models are IMHO closer to the good old medieval highway robery, or to flying the Jolly Roger and plundering the Spanish Main, than to anything capitalism was supposed to mean.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.