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Unicast Claims Success With Internet Commercials
LightForce3 writes "Remember that trial run of full-motion commercials on sites like ESPN.com and MSN? The BBC reports that Unicast, whose caching technology makes these ads work, is claiming a strong favorable response from Internet users who viewed the advertisements. It looks like they could now be making long-term deals with clients (the article mentions Forbes.com and weather.com). As a dialup user, I am less than thrilled about the idea of an extra 2 MB download each time I visit one of these sites."
What is the best way to suppress these commercials? (browser-wise, not legislatively!)
As a dialup user, I am less than thrilled about the idea of an extra 2 MB download each time I visit one of these sites."
Then don't go to their websites.
Boycotting is still an effective tool, unless of course you are in the minority, which you may be, since I'm sure there are a couple million sports freaks who won't mind the commercials.
I read the ESPN website pretty regularly, and have never seen one of these. What am I doing right^H^H^H^H^Hwrong?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
... The format is based on Microsoft's Windows Media 9 Series and uses Unicast proprietary pre-cached technology.
:-)
What a shame. I use Linux!
Then get with the times, Luddite.
Hey, can't these ads be just blocked out using firewalls, or by using some plug-ins for browsers like firebird? I don't think this is going to be successful if we have to download an ad just to view a web page. PS : But I did like *that* ad which showed a girl in bikini :-)
"In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."
Can anybody tell me how this "caching technology" works? It looks like they cache video while a user visits several pages on a given site, and when everything is loaded, the video is played back. How do they make sure the caching operation keeps storing stuff while a user jumps from page to page? As far I know, when you switch to a new page, any javascript/java/activeX code on the old page is stopped and its data is deleted.
:-)
Frames could be an option (have a invisible subframe keeping on storing stuff), but this would mess with the URLs, which I think is not the case here.
Any insights? Thanks!
Keep this person away from me. Thanks.
I can see it already. New AOL 11.0 Super-Ultra Mega Turbo Hyper High Speed, now with pop-under ad blocker! You read it in this comment first, folks. :P
I admit I would be more excited about the advertising arms race if something interesting came out of it, besides finding exciting new ways to connive people into watching a commercial for your product.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Great; as if those full-motion flash ads and other flash ads with the hidden "Close" button weren't annoying enough...now I can watch banners/ads in their full 30fps glory!
... that Forbes.com's new spokes...amphibian may have been a factor.
I've seen a few advertisements that take up the whole browser window, but none of them had motion, all static pictures. And I havn't seen any fullscreen advertisements on the those sites in the past couple months, event after hunting for them. How much people actually saw these ads? Maybe they were limited to region..
I'm already trying to block as many banner ad sites as possible, using MozillaFirebird on Linux. Now, I'm seeing text ads in their place, along with flash animated ads. How can I escape this barrage of advertising? I rarely, if ever, click on any of these ads unless there's something truly compelling about them.
Y'think?
Never ask the sales person how good their product is, all you'll get is whatever they can spout off the top of their head as the newest sales line.
"Our stuff is great, people love it and can't seem tio live without it" - Every sales person that ever lived
Heck, why bother asking the originating company when you already kn ow what the answer is going to be. 1. The company will say the customers love it, 2. The customers will be pissed off at yet another intrusion and time wasting tactic when all tey want to do is see the content they came to see. This isn't TV ya bastards.
Whee signature.
I've tried to look at the demo on their website many times, however it never works because of the requirements:
...but you can't get the MS JVM any more :-( And I don't use IE (although I appreciate most of the world does).
Windows
Internet Explorer
Windows Media Player
Microsoft (not Sun) JVM
You can try it yourself here. If you do, be sure to comment what it's like, because I've never seen it!
At least its free, some people pay for that kind of treatment ;)
Seriously though, I'm guessing you've read the Observer article on Sunday and now have yourself an opinion. But you are being far too general and reactionary here, your gripe is actually with the American government and its war machine, not with the people of America.
Just my two-penneth
http://adblock.mozdev.org/ there you go
IAAL
You mean pop-up's and spam aren't enough.......now I have to dodge full-length commericals on the web too? Anyone remember when it was the information highway and not the advertising highway?
I've seen two seperate types of ad pages with Flash/video. I've seen the forced type, which loads a sort of splash screen, and then forward you to the real content. These usually allow you to click through, skipping the commercial. I've seen the other sort where the ad loads over the page, blocking the content. Usually these load after the rest of the HTML. If the ad blocks what I want to read, I usually don't bother watching. But of course at both points I've already seen the beginning of an ad, the name will still be in my mind, regardless of how I feel about their advertising methods.
Nothing but the finest in meaningless drivel
Will Adblock be able to block these ads. It would be usefull if it did.
As annoying as ads may be, I'd rather have a site with heavy full motion ads and quality content than no ads and poor content.
After all, content producers need to get paid, and ads are among the few ways to achieve that without subscription services. As long as there are no feasible ways to internationally pay for content safely I'll put up with ads rather than loose the information I can get completely.
.: Max Romantschuk
As a dialup user, I am less than thrilled about the idea of an extra 2 MB download each time I visit one of these sites."
Maybe you could set your Internet Options to restrict the space for temporary files to be less than 2 MB?
An online survey of more than 3,500 users who saw the ads found that just 28% said they were annoying
Ok, first of all, I'm pretty sure that number is way too low. But even if it's correct, would you place a technology on your website that's proven to annoy at least 1/3 of your potential customers?
Underholdning.info
No one tell them about Mozilla on Linux...
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
I can't believe they're saying that. It's a load of garbage. I personally don't like things pushed down my throught or taking up my resources. Yes, I can handle little banner ads or billboards on the side of the road. However, I don't like going to some site and having to wait for it to load just so they can show me a full motion ad. If I wanted that, I'd turn on the TV. It's a waste of my time and resources. Also, I will probably never go back to that site again. I refuse to go to sites that have large (KB) and/or intrusive advertisements. INHO It's bad business and they're losing credibility and customers.
I am in no way willing to pay ridiculous amounts of money to WATCH advertisements. Don't get me wrong. I am totally pro-advertising, I do understand that advertising is a way for content providers to make some money, but I prefer textual targetted advertising.
So what would I do? Firstly, I will try to find a way to block these ads. If this fails, I will just boycott these sites and find alternate sites. And I figure a lot of people will do the same.
So these people will lose the audience to gain revenue. Doesn't sound logical now, does it?
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
These must be the same people that actually enjoy getting spam.
There's no shame in being a pariah. -Marge Simpson
If you use Mozilla/Firefox you can install Flash Click to View fromh p/flas hclick
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info.p
(Remove the space inserted into the link by Slashdot)
With the plugin, the browser loads the Flash content but displays a blank button with the text "click to view" instead of the animation. So now you can go to the site that require flash, but won't be bothered unless you want to.
With regards to the full motion video - where do they find the drooling idiots in the test group who want the net to resemble TV more? Do you believe the "only 28% of users found it annoying", or are the advertisers lying? (And why not, it's basically their job anyway)
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
I think they'd run out of beer commercials with naked chicks pretty quickly if they tried to do that.
Yup, I'm sure this "technology" is as much as "success" as SiteFinder.
"We removed all negative feedback and all we were left with were three glowingly positive emails! They were from upper management, but who's keeping score anyway..."
If you can't believe the people who are implementing an idea in order to make money to be honest about their success, then who can you trust? yeesh.
- c -
I dont mind the ads so much, as long as audio does not come on right away in them.
Also, these people need to understand a lot of people are going mobile now, and with b/w usage fees, people are going to be getting hefty bills from their mobile providers. Also, people with internet with very low caps pay over for usage, and probably arent expecting that the news sites they read are feeding them 2mb ads.
I always have a Firewall running now! Removes loads of ad sh!t! I personally hate ads! If I want something, I'll go and get it myself! The ideas of larger ads being introduced total sucks! TV is nearly just as bad, start watching a proggy, 10 mins later, ADVERTS!, 5 mins later, back 2 proggy, 10 MINS LATER! ADVERTS!... and so on! Advertising has gone stupid! If they kept it within moderation, it might not be tooooo bad! (All in all, it sucks!)
1xRTT, 1xEvDO, 3G GSM, 4G, you name it. It's because of things like this that most users won't be able to afford wide-area broadband connections. Why do content providers never consider the sensitivity of the connection the user is on?
Will I only be able to access new and exciting services wirelessly with a PDA or cellphone, but not with my laptop? A simple weather check for an unknowing user might suck away 10% of their bandwidth allotment. I mean, forcing dialup and ISDN users to endure this is bad enough, but what about poor Joe Schmoe with his laptop on the road hooked into his cellphone with packet data service? These are oft-visited websites! Either:
I'm not saying that the sites are wrong for doing this, but I am suggesting that some attention should be given to actual connection speeds and types. With laptops outpacing sales of almost everything else, a browser cookie is most certainly no longer good enough.
--Jasin NataelTrue science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
In order to view the Video Commercial demos on our Web site, the following system requirements are necessary:
Windows Operating System
Internet Explorer browser
Windows Media Player version 7.1 or higher
Microsoft Java Virtual Machine (JVM)
An online survey of more than 3,500 users who saw the ads found that just 28% said they were annoying.
That's almost a third of those surveyed found the advertisments annoying. Who would want to piss off a third of thier users?
And how do they count the number of users so annoyed that they go off the site and don't bother filling in the survey?
Tk
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
The company behind the trials said that people found the commercials much less irritating than other ads on the web.
So it's less annoying than DHTML animated adverts that move around getting in the way of what you're trying to read or those red/yellow flashing "You've won" banners in the middle of an article. What an achievement.
You have to wonder at the mind set of advertising executives. "People aren't taking notice of our adverts. What can we do?" "I know, lets make them even bigger,more intrusive and waste megabytes of our potential customers bandwidth as well". A serious case of needing to stop bailing and plug the leak.
since I use the Adblock extension for Mozilla and Firefox, the net has become practically adfree for me. I remember a time when ads didn't disturb the reading pleasure of a website with all sorts of motion and sounds. I even clicked on banners sometimes back then. But since all those flashbanners and whatnot appeared, I rather block them
You see, I firmly believe timothy works for Unicast. Now EPSN and MSN sites will have a slashdotting ammount of visitors and that obviously will lead to insane ammount of ad views and "Success With Internet Commercials". :P
An AC mentioned this above, but it's worth noting:
Opera will disable/enable plug-ins with one click, and yes, that includes windows media and flash. i have mine set up this way, as well as animated gifs turned off and javascript disabled unless i request it.
I know everyone is in love with Mozilla, but honestly, what's not to love about Opera? i'm HOOKED on the mouse gestures and the ability to emulate a text-browser if i feel nostalgic.
also, it's available for linux (though i haven't tested it on a linux box).
hope you'll give it a shot.
** Chigusaaa!!! You're the coolest girl in the WORLD!!! **
It gives them a chance to get up and take a piss and grab a Cold One(TM).
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I've been using PopUp Cop for some time now when I have to use IE and the first time this story was unleashed claiming then to be unblockable I dropped a line to my friends at PopUp Cop.
The fine folks at PopUp Cop assured me that UniCast was NOT using any new and they would definitely be able to block any ads, especially those requiring a download. So there!
Besides their is always Mozilla, Opera and Netscape. Besides if this "new" advertising method requires a client-side download how are they going to force users to download it if they don't want it? And it better not have any SpyWare included.
Boy, these sites... ahh large greeding corps, have a lot of nerve trying to claim they are "losing" money of their websites?
With the proliferation of adverts on every spot you can imagine (I can't even enjoy the view on a public bus ride no more with the massive eye-searing ads bombed across the windows), there has to be a point at which the average consumer no longer conciously registers an ad. So then what's the point of advertising?
They only polled a market share that would give them the response they were looking for. Noone i know would react well to another form of in-your-face advertising.
More marketing fraud if you ask me.
I, personally, will be boycotting any company that uses this form of advertisment.
Much as also avoid anyone that provides me with a popup or spam.
Regardless if it was them directly or thru a 'e-marketer'... Same result.. they lost a customer for life.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm sure like all different marketing the novelty will wear off and if history has shown us will be copied by everyone until it's no different than telemarketers and spammers.
To be ignored and detested by all.
Some aim to please, I aim to tease.
This is as bad as spam. Worse maybe.
We're not given the choice of whether or not we want to view it (as with all advertisting, it's thrust in our face without concern for whether or not we're interested), and we're paying to watch it.
I feel for the Telstra Cable customers on 300Mb p/m plans who generally won't know any better and will visits sites containing these ads which may very well contribute significantly to their download limit. Worse, once they hit their limit they're charged AU 20c per MB.
Something like this could get expensive fast. I hope it does, and I hope/pray that lawsuits ensue.
But, knowing this wonderful world of ours, I sure as fucking hell doubt it.
Wow. That is one heck of a url!
But anyway... It doesn't work in Opera nor in MSIE, even on my 100mbit connection. And this is Windows XP, so I dunno...
However I haven't updated Windows Media Player in ages, simply because I don't want any of those new "features" MS keep saying i need in order to enjoy high-quality media.... So it migth be a WMP-issue.
I don't want, nor need, Windows DRM Media, and if the reason the ads don't work is because they use this technology, well I got one thing to say:
To me this seems like a very nice advertising solution :)
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Where? I haven't seen ONE of them... But then I use FireFox with Adblock and Flash Click to view plugins ;)
Corporatism != Free Market
But these internet commercials would have to follow some rules:
... what were they advertising? Ah yeah, SmartBeep. But back to rule #1, it should be voluntary.
Rule #1: I can turn them off
There are some other rules, but they aren't as important as the first so I won't list'm.
Some TV spots are rather entertaining at times. I believe if internet spots were at least as entertaining, people would watch them. Now I understand that a lot of slashdotters here are generally against anything commercial and I respect that, but I also recognize that gobs of people respond to spam and other interent advertising that isn't half as nice as a voluntary commercial ad.
Some of these things, if done well, would be something worth sharing from time to time. One case in point is the famous farting woman from
A lot of great things can be done even on dialup using Flash or similar technologies by the way...
Probably not the outcome they expected,
but the Demo test can be used to make sure your system WONT play their video!
Doesn't suprise me at all. People want things simple, let's agree on that at least. And what is more simple than TV? And people so stupid that they don't see anything wrong with things like DMCA, PATRIOT-act and so on... Well, there seems to be a lot of them, and they'll probably want things as dead simple as possible.
Not everyone appriciates the wonders of interactive mediums. You know, it requires the users to have some understanding of the medium itself.
And as far as understanding goes... Let me quote allmighty Bush on this one:
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
In MS's minds there are I would say 3 diffrent types of computers.
1. End User -- Should be running Windows Meida Center edition, turning it into a glorified TV with the ability to play some games and write an email. All power user options should be carefully hidden from the consumer. (Example, in Win9x you could turn off auto-insert via a checkbox. In WinXP you have to actually hack the registry to do so.)
2. Workstation -- These PCs are ones that are admined by MCSEs and should be locked down by them to make sure that they only do what the company wants them to do. If they are doing something other than that, well, you need more MCSEs then don't you?
3. Servers -- Pretty self explanatory. Again, boxen that should be admined by "professionals" who know what they are doing.
I could go on but I'm offtopic enough allready.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
I really enjoy your comment - I find it very entertaining. However, I wish you would admit that you work for Unicast.
Adblock is wonderful, especially as Mozilla and Firefox get more popular and therefore web page code gets optimized more for them as well. That said, I think the time where expecting companies to care for the sensibilities of dial-up users is long past. The people these sites target are in marketing categories called "early adopters" to "mainstream" (technically it's called something else, but I don't recall) - that being the the groups of people who adopt new products early, and show the way to others. These people already have cable on a statistically significant level, and so dial-up users will get ignored in favor of the promotion techniques that work on the target.
Put static ads with static content. I don't have anything (well, much) against putting video ads with video content (as many sites do).
It wouldn't surprise me at all of ESPN and MSN site viewers liked the ads. First of all, most sports fans are droolers whose idea of quality TV and filmmaking isn't "Six Feet Under" but a beer ad where the women go topless and dogs fetch beer, plus, they're very "watch TV" oriented, not interactive oriented, so they're conditioned to a TV-like experience.
The MSN crowd is largely the same, except you can drop "sports fans" and replace it with "reality TV fans". Same neaderthal content, same neaderthal reaction. "MMMM..TV PICTURE WITH FUNNY COMMERCIAL...AND ME NOT EVEN WATCHING TV...MMMM...MIRACLE..."
I'm sure I'll get modded down as flamebait, but is ANYONE surprised that ESPN fans and MSN fans like commercials? Given the dreck they otherwise watch, it's hardly surprising.
I've installed the ESPN Motion and don't mind the ads at all. Based on the comments about having to wait for an extra 2mb download and the such, I'll assume very few people have actually seen this in action. What the thing does is sit in your "notification window" and download the video in the background. Then when you visit the ESPN.com site, the video has already downloaded and is ready to play. Kinda cool (of course if I was bandwidth limited I'd be pissed off about the thing downloading 6mb of golf highlights in the background).
But more importantly I think the article fails to mention why people are ok with the ads: Because they are the cream of the crop, best ads out there. You are talking about Gatoraid, Nike, SportsCenter and car commercials that have a better production value than 99% of anything on TV or the in theatres.
As soon as McDonald's starts running those terribly unhip, awkward and just plain dumb "I'm lovin' it" ads, I think they'll find people's opinions changing pretty quick about putting up with ads on those sites.
Because the internet is not a mature medium, until it is as braindead as TV and purely satisfies corporate interests.
A medium that gives the user control is clearly evil and most definetly encourages evil. That will have to be counter-eviled.
How is it that the people making decisions fail to realize that the internet (or web that is) isn't a push-medium, but pull-medium?
You'd think people get that by now? Or am I to optimistic?
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
This can not possibly work if the user blocks all PARAM and EMBED tags. Personally (emphasized), I don't see any use for these tags whatsoever for any ordinary web-usage.
So... With plugin-support entirely removed, tell me again, how can this work?
Oh... I forgot. This is probably aimed at the clueless WinXP, MSIE, WMP-users who doesn't mind that their mediaplayer controls you, not visa-verce, and is tied into the kernel and the webbrowser. They probably also doesn't mind that the webbrowser is tied into the kernel and has flawless scripting support for full remote system-access.
I guess we (/.ers) probably won't have to worry about these ad's.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Anybody remember when the real highway didn't have ads covering it?
Me neither.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Focus groups will say anything for sweet, sweet candy.
And finding one kind of intrusive web add less annoying than another is like finding Gallagher less annoying than Pauly Shore.
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
The only proof of commercial viability of any advertising mechanism is that of clients who
have tried it RENEWING THEIR ACCOUNT.
Nothing else matters.
Here's an exercise:
Radio used to be usefull... Then it went commerical. Then all the stations tried to reach the same (most profitable) audience and turned very much alike. Then they turned even more alike as they embraced formating the broadcasts. Then big "evil" business bought all the radiostations and they all uses the same formating. And now they are ad-ridden with intrusive ad's at double the volume (fuck sake) of the ordinary broadcast.
Radio is now useless and braindead.
TV used to be usefull/entertaining. TV went commercial... And blahblahblah..... Now? Useless, braindead shit. And I can't even stand TV any more. Fuck it.
Internet used to be free for everyone and usefull. And it wen't commercial as well... Guess what?
See a pattern forming, anyone?
We'll have to invent a medium commercialism can't ruin. And patent it. And copyprotect it. It's the only way to be sure!
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
REPEAT: THE WEB IS NOT TV
. html
It's almost too obvious a point, but apparently it bears repeating: The more the Web is like TV, the less we need it. TV already does a pretty effective job of delivering what Net content people call "broadband multimedia information and entertainment" to the home, and most consumers already own the hardware. What sells the Internet to newbies is its promise of things TV can't deliver: "many-to-many" communication via bulletin boards and e-mail; interactive services that go beyond catalog shopping; quirky content unavailable on TV's limited number of channels; specific, accurate information that's there when you need it, whether it's sports stats, stock quotes or plane-ticket availability.
from: http://archive.salon.com/march97/21st/webtv970327
Seven years later, and it still counts. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. People will either block those ads, or go to other sites. Just like TCP, they will learn to route around the problem.
The web is not TV, it is not a one way communication channel where you can shove as much commercial bullshit to the other side as your CFO requires you to do. You don't have regulations on the number of channels, you have an unlimited number of them, and they get popular or less populer in a matter of days/weeks/months.
What Unicast doesn't seem to realize is that the internet is really not, in any way, a comparable medium to television. Today's newspapers and periodical magazines have proven that effective, well-placed static advertisements still work even in today's multimedia-crazy world. Even though the news channels offer live, full-color, slow-motion replays of the latest news events, many of us still turn to the old-fashioned, ad-supported newspapers as a reliable source of information. Similarly, we go to web sites like ESPN, MSN and the Weather Channel to *read* information. Full-motion video ads only distract from that purpose.
What, exactly, is a "favourable" response to advetising? Not going postal? Not stabbing yourself in the eyes? Not smashing your monitor?
Seriously, am I expected to believe that anyone likes Internet advertising?
I tried to read an article on GameSpot yesterday (yeah, first mistake there...) and they had some sort of streaming video ads embedded in the pages. But, of course, the streaming video ads had to play a streaming video ad indicating that the streaming video ad would start soon. I wasn't that interested in the information so I closed the tab.
- chrish
We need to boycott every site that employs FMV ads. If enough people do it, they will get the point. Also, email any site running the ads, and for the fun of it, email unicast too. Let's make it known we hate those ads. Don't just feel sorry for those people that don't have unlimited bandwidth, stand up for them.
Don't their current EULA's essentially force you to authorize them to download and install system "upgrades" at their will?
In Windows 2000, it was added to the SP3 EULA. It was removed from the SP4 EULA.
I don't know about any other version.
(from the unicast website)
Unicast is committed to ensuring that all ads either play perfectly or not at all.
At times, we make temporary decisions to exclude certain browser and/or configurations that contain known bugs or perform inconsistently in our testing and quality assurance environments.
Unicast has temporarily blocked the Sun JVM as a result of some modifications made with the most recent Sun releases. Unicast has seen consistent instability with this configuration and will continue to evaluate updates and new releases as they become available.
Should you have additional questions or comments, please feel free to contact us.
My other UID is 1337
As an option to "get around" the advertising issue, my boss informed me sometime ago of Mozilla. Since then I have been a loyal user. When Firebird was released I thought there was no use for me to use it, as I was running the latest build of Moz. He otld me that Firebird was the same browser just a lighter version, and tha there were a few things it did that its larger companion didn't. What impressed me was FIrebirds ability to surpress banner ads. Turns out it filters out more than 90% of them. Now I am not sure in the authors case whether or not it would work, but were I he I would give it a shot.
Life without banner ads, No longer do I need to read "Meet HOT singles in your area today".
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Yes, it works for Windows too (look in system32\drivers\etc\hosts). See here for details.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
a dial-up user? baha! ;)
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
You have to reload the page to make your image/javascript settings take effect. Considering I do this on about 1 in 3 pages, it gets annoying fast. Also, Opera has the 'g search term' feature, which is faster than clicking on the Google bar. The mouse All-in-1 guestures are kinda buggy. Mozilla does a much better job of loading pages cleanly, though. Opera can't handle some sites well.
Excellent info - I just switched to Firefox (from Mozilla) and had not configured this little gem. Many thanks! I'd mod you up if I had points.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
If any of you remember Acrophobia from long ago, it had an advertising method that worked well. Twice per game, you got hit with commercials, that were full motion and sound, but loaded fine over dialup. The game was well done, and the commercials made it feel like you were in an interactive game show.
Too bad that version isn't around anymore, it's now a java/flash browser app, and it's lost much of the appeal.
Commercials in websites? I don't really see that. But in online gaming (ala Pogo, or Yahoo games), I can see commercials fitting right in.
Just use Firefox/Mozilla and download the adblock plugin. Then you can block any content you want. If these ads are coming from http://ads.foo.com, you can block it with *ads.foo.com* or *.foo.com*, etc. If for some strange reason you want to use IE, you can still stop this junk. Under your internet options, go to the security tab and click Custom Level and select prompt for all the Active X options. Then when this thing tries to run just deny it. There are other ways as well. For example, you can put dummy entries in your hosts file for the servers that these ads are coming from, block it with a firewall, etc.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
The only way this intrusive abuse of my bandwidth would be justified is if every commercial features Jennifer Garner and/or the Coors Light Twins.
This is not negotiable.
My eyeballs are for sale. So is my money. Just give me a product I am willing to pay for. Yes folks, you need have to have a sellable product to stay in business.
They put up a public website on a public net and I don't have to right to access it as it suits me?
Tell me btw, does Lynx count as circumvention? Last I checked Lynx, does exactly what you say I don't have a right to do. However it is designed to be a lightweight product for lightweight use. Do you consider Lynx-usage ethicly wrong somehow? Then shut up, allready. You have misunderstood the web for something it clearly isn't.
Jeez. It's you putting the site on the net. Consider that advertising enough. Now we know you exist. Now we know you are available.
Most (commercial) websites put on the net which has a actual business apart from this, profit from their sheer presence on the net. Think ecommerce and the like.
If you can't afford to have a website, or a your website isn't profitable, it's your choice to keep it there running or to let it die. Don't blame the people accessing it. If your business is a good business, people accessing your site is good. If it isn't, that's not my bad.
Don't tell me it's my responsebility how you invest your business money. What is it with people these days, taking it for granted that they somehow, magically have a right to profit?
People like that make me sick.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Left of the dial! There are good college stations at the far end of the left part of the dial, or between say 88.5 and 92 for you people using that newfangled digital tuner crap ;)
I never listen to any commercial radio. It's all garbage. I get a bunch of decent college radio stations where I live and that's all I listen to for radio.
Do you really think the company would say that people don't like the ads? Doesn't sound unusual at all.
*twitch*
But given that MS is being forced to remove it's own JVM, and pack the Sun one instead, surely they're shooting themselves in their own feet?
Unicast is committed to ensuring that all ads either play perfectly or not at all.
At times, we make temporary decisions to exclude certain browser and/or configurations that contain known bugs or perform inconsistently in our testing and quality assurance environments.
Unicast has temporarily blocked the Sun JVM as a result of some modifications made with the most recent Sun releases. Unicast has seen consistent instability with this configuration and will continue to evaluate updates and new releases as they become available.
I think most
Join the Free Software Foundation
An online survey of more than 3,500 users who saw the ads found that just 28% said they were annoying
One of out four of those people is me.
Screw dial-up... what about all these ISPs that are suddenly becoming bandwidth counters? If you surf a lot of content-heavy (read: inefficient and greedy) sites, it's going to up your bandwidth usage significantly....
--D
I was surprised to find an ad playing on weather.com last week for air tran airlines. Why? I have Norton Internet Secuity "Suite", which works extremely well, no pop ups, or pop unders, no ads really to speak of. For sure, they are not missed.
The movie playing was low res, full motion video that ran for about 2 minutes. It was rather funny actually. What caught my attention was why the ad was playing in MY browser.
The ad was produced by a company called bluestreak. They specialize in the annoying flash banners that you see. Bluestreak and Unicast have a lot in common.
Unicast uses flash as their primiary execution environment. The new ads go a bit further, and check five things when loaded Your OS, Your Browser, Flash, and what version of a JVM your are using. If any of these fail, the movie will not play! Easy enough to defeat even if you are on a windows machine. Also, it appears that if you use a microsoft JVM, that the movies won't work!
With bluestreak, a small applet tag is document.write() to your browser. This applet is essentially a bootloader for the bluestreak player technology. I imagine using reflection and some nicely designed interfaces, the movies is loaded as the class files are downloaded to your browser. Once the engine is downloaded it gets the content and plays it to you. My guess is that the ad blocking software didn't work because of the type of tag being created.
Both technologies are absurdly intrusive, and consume bandwidth that you might otherwise want to use for something else. All is not lost however, a few simple things you can do, or purchase will prevent their delivery to your computer.
Unicasts's technology is based mostly on the notion of poping up a window to show the "content" to the user. Your best defense is a pop-up blocker. If you are a windowz user you can change your JVM to M$ to prevent the execution. Also, most of Unicasts content is flash based and easily found by products such as norton internet security.
Blue streak is a bit more incidious as it's delivered in a rather clandestine fashion. I believe that it is also cross platform given the Java nature of the execution environment. This will require you to either turn java off, or get software that blocks content from the bluestreak domain.
Good luck.
Yes, I aced every economics class I ever took, and I know all about capitalism and its requirements.
In my opinion, it is perfectly acceptable that most of the internet be run by hobbyists. If people don't want to pay for internet access and then pay for content on top of that, then content-providers will simply have to find a different buisness model. Adaptation and innovation are just as much a part of capitalism as profit.
Before businesses discovered the internet, it was full of value and appeal. It didn't need to be full of pay-for-access sites to be useful. So useful was it, in fact, that business took notice and started trying to think up ways of turning it into a profit stream. In doing so, they added some quality, but also subtracted some openness. Personally, I dislike this, which is why I don't pay for content, and don't visit sites that require it.
Preferences/Advanced/Style Sheet. Works like a charm!
Don't underestimate the seriousness of this threat to the free software movement. Even here in slashdot, there are many posts in defence of the need to advertize to pay for freely available web content and circumvension of adds is controversial.
M$ is finally in a position to take charge of internet web development. They have the browser space firmly in control now(?90%). So, now the push from them is going to be the strongest. They want companies to adopt M$ only solutions so you can not browse the internet with anything other than IE. (Spare me the bull**** about how you just won't go to those sites.)
The commercial idea has a lot of potential to do harm for us because marketing and advertizers have been waiting for such technology for some time. So this is going to provide that to them, and it's unlikely that any other media format will be used for this.
Unfortunately, the EU was too stupid to find the one remedy that would have actually helped. Instead of making M$ make a media-less version of Windows(how stupid are they?), M$ should be forced to ship available free software with every version of windows. The free codecs for OGG Media, divx playback etc, and OpenOffice, Mozilla, cygwin?... Oh, but that would require having brains.
Jeff Carr
the company that has the most to loose by this technology going away says it was a success. Come back when you have real news.
Don't visit.
....
I have not seen ESPN since Mosaic was the prevalent Web browser
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
This is not based on ESPN Motion (which is also evil, evil, evil, btw). I don't have ESPN motion and yet I see the ads. You just need to be on the site long enough for the entire ad to download. I see the ads most often when I'm trying to follow the scores of a basketball game that's not on TV.
CBS.Sportsline.com is much better anyway with extensive personalization. Unfortunately for me, some games are only on ESPN.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.
--"This dream brought to you by LightSpeed briefs"
Just a side note, but /. must not be too strapped for cash, because when I tried renewing my slashdot subscription, the submit failed. So I dutifully mailed the error message to subscriptions@slashdot.org and asked them what was up. Well, its been over a month, and I still haven't heard from them. Go figure.
I went to Unicast's site and tried a few ads in the gallery, and they failed to run each time. First I tried it on Opera (on WXP Pro), and the button to run the ad wouldn't even respond to my mouseclicks. Next, loaded the page in IE6, clicked the button, and it asked me to wait a minute while it verified my system meets the requirements. What do you know, it doesn't, b/c I've disabled the MS JVM and am running Sun's instead. Fwiw, here's the requirement list for Unicast's fullscreen interstitial to work. I doubt any /.'ers are going to being seeing any Unicast ads anytime soon...
In order to view the Video Commercial demos on our Web site, the following system requirements are necessary:
Windows Operating System
Internet Explorer browser
Windows Media Player version 7.1 or higher
Microsoft Java Virtual Machine (JVM)
If you believe that your system meets these requirements, yet are unsure whether you have a Microsoft JVM, you can determine your configuration and enable the Microsoft JVM with these steps:
Go to the ?Tools? menu of your I.E. browser
Click on ?Internet Options?
Click on the ?Advanced? tab (top, far right tab) within the ?Internet Options? window
Scroll down about half-way and look for ?Microsoft VM?.
Be sure that ?JIT compiler for virtual machine enabled? is checked (note that if all Microsoft VM boxes are checked, that is fine)
Once checked, scroll down and see if there is a ?Sun JVM? in the ?Advanced? listings. If you find this and it is checked, uncheck these.
Once complete it may be necessary to restart your computer
By altering these settings, you will not be limiting your access to any online content or opening your system up to any additional security risks.
If during the steps above, you found the Sun JVM, but did not see the Microsoft JVM and would like more information, click here.
For information on why Unicast requires the Microsoft JVM, click here.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Its simple, you dont want to support the site making money while offering you content, then don't go.
I'm sure many of the sites that will be using this technology will offer (or all ready do) the ability to purchease accounts that dont have these ad's.
Buy one of these accounts and support your damn content provider, either that or view their ad's.
TruePunk | Games
Are you sure about that? Installing stuff without the users' consent? This sounds like a really really bad idea... Do you have some proof for this?
This is absolute bullshit theres no way they can make us believe people actually like this crap! 'less intrusive?' give me a fucking break i had 3 Intel adverts playing simultainiously just because i multi-tab browse, they make sure your client has downloaded the whole thing so that pretty much kicks off anyone with a poor connection. Whos been smoking the crack pipe and who has been bloody pulling the wool over like spin doctor?? The simple and undisputable fact is that if the ad-server checks that your computer downloads every byte then traditional pop-up etc ads are much better because of the lower file size: you can disable any advert with relative ease and any browser that isnt produced by some sell-out corporation will have decent ad-busting built in and aslong as you have actually downloaded it theres nothing they can do - do the people who were surveyed even realise they could turn traditional adverts off?
I have a feeling the average computer user who doesnt know any better has been blaitently lied to, if they realised that the tools to stop annoying web practices were well within their reach they would bloody well demand that they were treated with respect.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
> Even before the click through debacle. Now that we have seen how that littel beauty worked...
What ``click through debacle" are you referring to? Please forgive my ignorance.
I notice that you are not a subscriber, so does that mean that you enjoy posting and taking part in this site without paying for it by allowing items to be advertised to you? For many sites the only way that they can make money from their content is to have people pay for it either directly or in advertising potential, but many of the people currently on the internet, and it seems to be mostly made up of longer term users, feel that they have a right to view a website without paying for it.
Which seems to coincide well with some websites' feeling they have to right to provide me with incredibly annoying ads, full of blinking colors, annoying pop-ups, poorly constructed dhtml ads that cover the content and even a few mindnumbingly lame with sound. I wouldn't accept my newspaper spraying konfetti to draw attention to an ad when I opened it either.
That is a blatant abuse of the limited control I give them over my machine when I let my machine interpret their page. And so I have disallowed the content providers certain privileges, such as the permission to open pop-ups on my machine, or to run animated gifs, or to run flash content automatically. And as long as they show as little regard for what they're doing as they do, I don't feel sorry for them either.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Hmm, I use Mozilla, havent seen any yet. Well, I did see one, because someone decided to shut off my popup blocking.
I don't have time to comment my code, the program is late already.