Coming Soon to a Wireless Hotspot Near You: Ads

mindless4210 writes "A new generation of spam is born with the launch of FreeFi's new Wi-Fi advertising network. It is the first service of its kind, with intentions of delivering ad content to hotspots around the world starting in mid-Summer. FreeFi's President, Lawrence Laffer, says that the service displays a 'persistent set of ads adjacent to the user's browser without use of invasive advertising software or pop-up ads.' He also claims '[their] market research indicates that, except for pop-ups, people really don't mind ads.'" This seems like the kind of thing that would keep me from using "free" wireless access, but I've a feeling I'm in the minority.

Comments

Mod parent up

[jargoone]

I was going to say this same thing, thanks for saving me the time.

In other news, television, magazines, radio stations, newspapers, taxi cabs, and sporting events may soon have to turn to advertising to help cover costs.

Re:Ads... so what?

[crackshoe]

I'd rather deal with ads (although i'm undecided about flash adds with cutesy soounds) to get free wireless access, although i've had some bad experiences with hotel's that offer free wireless - mostly that they periodically shunt you to a very slow loading, grpahics intensive splash page. Still... free with a catch is still free enough.

what browser?

[Hatta]

This seems like the kind of thing that would keep me from using "free" wireless access, but I've a feeling I'm in the minority.

Yep, the majority of us will just find a way around it. I kinda doubt they'll be putting ads next to my lynx window.

Free with ads? No problem here.

[RobertB-DC]

Submitter: He also claims '[their] market research indicates that, except for pop-ups, people really don't mind ads.'"
CowboyNeil: This seems like the kind of thing that would keep me from using "free" wireless access, but I've a feeling I'm in the minority.

Actually, Mr. Cowboy, you just validated their business plan.

While the idea of free wireless Internet access is fun for the user, there's still the annoying fact that someone's paying for your bandwidth. Ideally, geeks like us would be more than happy to open their broadband connections to the world -- I would, if I could get broadband in rural east Texas.

Unfortunately, there aren't enough altruistic geeks per square mile to sustain that "business model". So someone has to pay the bill. Why not advertisers?

I run Opera, but I'm too cheap to pay for it. So I have a banner ad built into my browser. I even click it sometimes -- out of curiosity, or to send Opera some ad clicks. I'm willing to put up with advertising to get the product, and lucky for me, the model is working.

I hope ad-supported wireless access takes off. I wouldn't put my money in the companies, though... anyone remember Bluelight?

Must be closed

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious problem with this, is that you'll need special software to be able to use it (so that the ads will be displayed). It will probably be Windows only, and you won't have acces\s to source code, so you won't know what you're really getting or have any idea if it's secure or not.

Maybe you can run it inside Vmware, and have your "real" OS route through the virtual machine. Or the crossover guys could make a hacked WINE just for running this client and network interface.

Re:Must be closed

[KingOfBLASH]

That's not necessarily true. They could set up the access point to run all connections through a proxy, or even run the wireless access point as a proxy, which basically would allow the computer to change web pages on the fly. So they could force all content to resize into a frame (or iframe, or table, or do any of a number of HTML tricks) on whatever portion of the screen they allocate for content, and then put the ad bar in. Or they could create a flash "float over" ad bar. Or they could do any of a number of things to modify the web page, without requiring the user to install any special software at all. Note this would even allow you to play games / whatever online, because it would only modify traffic going over port 80, and then only modify HTML.

It's pure capitalism

[Jack Wagner]

Lets face it, nobody wants to look at an ad, but companies blast them out for a reason. It's the seed that drives the revenue that makes the giant capitalist machine plod onward. You need look no further than the former communist Russia if you want a failed model for how to do commerce, why do you think they never had a spam problem in Russia???

Sure the ad system isn't the best but it's functional and beats having to wait in line for 45 minutes to buy a pack of $20 ciggarettes in a Socialist/Communist society.

You can't have your cake and eat it too I'm afraid.

Oh, this will play out as usual.

[Sevn]

Someone will write an application/patch/work-around that deactivates their ads without effecting the service. Those in the know will use it. Those not smart enough, or not clued in won't. This is how it always is. The application/patch/work-around will be brought up here of course. It always is.

Re:Past experience, but

[millahtime]

But, Netzero, Juno and others got themselves a customer base from offering free then converted to pay. They turned many of those customers to pay customers. Same thing could be applied here.

It's like drung dealing. First you get them addicted then you start charging.

Larry Laffer?

[jelevy01]

Larry Laffer, I guess he got out of the pimps and hoes business and retired the leasure suit.

not ads

[photoblur]

I'd much rather the hotspot be funded by charging an extra $0.10 for coffee, or whatever the business may be. Actually, I just set up a WiFi hotspot for a local coffeehouse and the "free" WiFi has brought him enough extra business that he feels quite justified in not charging extra for the service.

WiFi should be a condiment, like catsup or salt or paper napkins...

Re:Ads... so what?

[kallisti777]

Who f'en cares if there's a little bit of your screen taken up with ads that will be easily ignored?

Amen. I'm just waiting for the deluge of "How dare they!" posts to begin from people with Hotmail and Gmail accounts.

Somehow I doubt they'll see the irony.

Not Really Spam...

[zokrath]

If the free wireless internet access is funded via advertisements, then those ads are not spam. Television ads are not spam; spam is widespread and unsolicited advertisement.

This is not to say that advertising is not often irritating and intrusive, but beggars can not be browsers without being subjected to ads.

Of course, they could very well be monitoring and recording what you are doing online, above and beyond simple browsing information, in the name of 'targeted marketing'. But that is for the tin foil crowd to determine; I do not have a laptop, let alone use wireless access in public locations, so I am not too concerned about the privacy implications, 'First they came for the WiFiers' be damned.

Didn't NetZero try this and fail miserably?

[kryonD]

Granted high speed has more value to it than POTS dialup, but is this company really going to be able to compete? Several states are starting to consider WiFi as a viable public utility that they provide for "free" using the Tax Base. Benefit to the people is seamless wireless access without ads. Benefit to the state is reliable high speed access for public safety and services such as fire, police, EMS, etc.. Plus, once they ensure that everyone is online, they can begin reducing costs by allowing a great deal of government red tape to be handled electronically. (i.e. paying speeding tickets or applying for building permits)

Re:Ads... so what?

[Cruciform]

Agreed. Advertising makes the market go 'round. If it pays their bills, and allows them to offer the service, then more power to them.

As long as the ads don't pop-up or pop-under what I'm viewing, or blare out annoying audio soundbites, I don't mind them.

Unobtrusiveness is the key.

I've never had a ThinkGeek ad try to commandeer my attention through brute force, but they still get my clicks now and then. The same can't be said for the ads that come with full audio and video presentations. If I can't block them, I stop visiting the host site until they're gone, or if there is a readily available contact for the advertiser, let them know just how annoying it is.

There's no chance in hell I'll every buy a "Solo" cell phone after the endless waves of annoying ringtone ads that permeated local news sites, and those using geo-specific adware. But if I could get free wi-fi at a local coffee shop and see ads for local businesses letting me know what they have to offer, I wouldn't complain. Heck, I'd even fill out an "interests" questionnaire to generate an *anonymous* cookie if it meant that the served ads were relevant to me.

Advertising does not have to be the enemy. They just need to learn how to deal with their prospective audiences. And then small businesses can offer great things like free wi-fi without eating the overhead themselves.

No problem at all

[DaHat]

Long ago I took up updating my hosts file with data from http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/ which provides a list of known ad servers that you then point back to your local machine.

I decided to take this one step further and change the mapped to IP to be that of SCO, so that each time I come to Slashdot and don't see their ads, I instead see a small bit of the SCO homepage, what you might call a mini DoS

better than what scumbag hotels are doing

[straponego]

I've stayed at a hotel (C??rty?rd) which, on top of $10/day for Internet access, has proxies configured to hijack requests for Amazon. If you try to buy something through their connection, they rewrite the headers to get the referral credit. This should be illegal... I noticed because at the time I stayed, their code was a little broken, at least with Moz/Linux, but it was clear from the error message what they were attempting. I just used an SSH tunnel through one of my systems for the rest of my browsing... but I'm sure they made some nice bucks from the victim class (MS/IE users).

Re:Past experience, but

[JohnGrahamCumming]

> It's like drung dealing.

I'm sorry it's nothing like that. Dealing in one of the 56 ethnic groups in China is totally different to this.

I've never received a supply of free Chinese people only to have them turn around and ask to be paid.

John.