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Unicast Claims Success With Internet Commercials

Posted by timothy on from the what-else-would-they-claim dept.

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."

5 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Never works for me... by DrPepper · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've tried to look at the demo on their website many times, however it never works because of the requirements:

    Windows
    Internet Explorer
    Windows Media Player
    Microsoft (not Sun) JVM ...but you can't get the MS JVM any more :-( And I don't use IE (although I appreciate most of the world does).

    You can try it yourself here. If you do, be sure to comment what it's like, because I've never seen it!

  2. Re:Technical Background? by Sla$hd0tSux0r · · Score: 5, Informative
    It is worse than that.

    It downloads and installs client software that runs 24/7 in the background, downloading the latest content. So if you ever happen to go to the site, the videos are ready to play right from disk.

    As far as I can tell, you have no options for configuring when or what it downloads.

  3. adblock by piquadratCH · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  4. Re:Supress these commercials? by edbarrett · · Score: 5, Informative

    In addition to AdBlock (and Flash click-to-view, which someone mentioned further down the page), take a look at the adblocking CSS on texturizer.net. It really does an amazing job of killing just ads (including all the ads on Slashdot-- I'm not going to click them anyway, so I don't want to see them.)

  5. Re:Supress these commercials? by Rigor+Morty · · Score: 5, Informative

    Privoxy is the newer version of Junkbuster. And for all that ad-free goodness, I chain Privoxy to Proxomitron (in Windows XP).

    Prixovy - http://www.privoxy.org

    Proxomitron - http://www.proxomitron.info/files/index.shtml

    Also, get a patched hosts file from here,

    http://remember.mine.nu

    And run Edexter to fill in the banners.

    http://www.pyrenean.com/edexter.php

    Ad-free pop-up free content. On dial-up, it's like sweet freedom.

    --
    Remove the spamfreak to speak.