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End Run Around Pop-up Blockers
An anonymous reader writes "The pop-up arms race continues, cnet has this article on how advertisers are responding to pop-up blockers." Can't wait for a full page of javascripted user-initiated pop-ups.
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I have not had one popup since I fully switched to FireFox (around 6 months ago).
There is also a FireFox extension that blocks those annoying Flash popunder ads.
If the code is on the page, The Proxomitron can kill it. I haven't seen a pop-up that has been able to get past it yet, and even if one did, I could just make a new filter to kill all pop-ups of that sort.
It also blocks other ads, background midis, flash animations, and all sorts of other annoyances in addition to adding functionality to other sites if you're clever enough to write some nice regular expressions and HTML code.
Wonderful little program.
Click here to see some sneakier popup methods. Some even get around firefox popup blocking, although I'm certain that once they become popular, the army of mozilla hackers will find a way to block them.
That knife cuts both ways. You'll keep developing new ways to serve adds, and we'll keep blocking them.
I do think, however, that there are more people who dislike popups than who benefit from their continuing as a viable marketing option.
Advantage: Us.
... and add it to their hosts file pointing at 127.0.0.1 ...
I don't get this.
Why does everyone advocate pointing these to 127.0.0.1?
127.0.0.1 is your local machine. It's not some magic blackhole address. Using 127.0.0.1 really messes you up if you happen to be running a web server on your machine (doing web development, say). It's bad advice.
It's so much easier to point them to 0.0.0.0. That works just as well in the hosts file, and since it's an invalid IP address, attempting to open a socket returns immediately with failure. No need to bounce the requests off your local machine, and your web browser instantly blocks images, pages, etc. from those domains.
I agree that it's stupid. I will actively avoid buying products where their adverts have annoyed me; but I think the logic is supposed to be as follows:
The target of the ad does not actively think "Wow - I really need that" but instead, when going to buy a product of that nature, they will go for the one that they've been exposed to the most. They don't buy the no-name deoderant, they buy the one with all the ads, etc, etc. I can tell you from experience in the food industry that often the difference between several products is just the labelling (and the price
The other explanation for it is the way that the businesses work. In the larger companies, advertising departments can have a lot of influence. They also have to justify themselves. I think there is a tendancy to view the public as a mindless force susceptible to their advertising. If they see that a lot of people are browsing the web rather than watching TV or reading magazines, then panic sets in - "Oh my $DEITY, we're not getting the coverage we were before. We must get it back."
I think it's this latter panic that is really the source of such bone-headed and irritating advertising.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I develop a contextual/live feed advertising system (yes flame me if you wish) and we have one guy who attends IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) events here in the UK, so I get to hear about all the "latest and greatest" advertising formats.
/.ers don't have too much to worry about.
In response to the adblocking technology several new ad formats are being approved for general usage and they all suck.Basically the new ad formats are much much bigger than the current sizes. I can't remember what sizes they were but I was crying when I was told. (bad luck 800x600 users)
Other "great" news from the cutting edge of advertising is that more full movie streaming ads will become popular (obviously with advertisers not with users)
And worst of all what are currently blockable popup ads will be replaced with Flash overlays that fly around screen.
Apparently the IAB did an expensive study in the states into what normal users thought of all these new ad formats (pop-ups, pop-unders, flash overlays, dhtml etc,) And the result was that most users call all annoying ads "pop-ups" and they really hate them. Well duh, I'm not sure what the point of *that* study was for.
On the plus side I remember hearing that IAB guidlines will recommend all flash overlays have a close button.
So in general the whole state of affairs depresses me ALOT. I don't think the IAB/advertisers have even got Avalon on their radar yet, but I imagine Avalon ads will enable a whole new generation of annoying ads.
For normal users this will all suck, but most of the ads probably won't work on a standard debian install so
Popups are irritating because they, well, pop up, when you least expect it, where you least expect it, and have to spend time and nerves closing it. But when you use tabbed browsing and set new windows to open up as new tabs, this problem is gone. It is when I use a browser without tabs for some time and notice those ugly popups that I think - why don't I ever notice any popups? And this is because when an ad appears in some tab, I just click where the X that closes the tab usually is and get it over with.
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Windows opened from scripting are treated as children of the parent window. When the parent window closes, so must the child window. When the parent window is moved to the back or minimized, the child windows must do the same. (You can still minimize or dismiss the child window, of course.)
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Windows opened by scripting should retain some visual association with the parent window. They
should overlap it at least slightly, unless the
user moves the window.
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Windows opened by scripting have a user-settable maximum size. Anything bigger than this comes up with scroll bars.
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Flash animations must be closeable and blockable.
Flash, and all other "controls", should run in a jail, permitted to talk to the screen and the originating site only. There must be right-click menu options to kill any "control", whether it likes it or not.
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All windows have close buttons.
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No script can open more than one window per user click.
We need to keep control of the browser GUI in the user's hands, no matter what the site tries to do.This probably has something to do with the fact that a large percentage of pop ups use deceptive techniques to get someone to click on them unwittingly.
From 'System Needs to Update, click anywhere in this window to Update your system', to 'Your system is not secure, click anywhere in this window to secure your system', to "Error Xb3t10-2, click anywhere in this window to continue", to ads that simulate windows and have their own 'close' buttons that are just part of the ad graphics, (Even I have accidentally clicked on those a few times,) there are myriad different 'strategies' that advertiseers use to trick people into thinking that the pop up is not an ad, but an essential message from their computer machine that they should obey.
Meanwhile, people have learned that 'click to win' banner ads generally aren't worth their time, and so they have stopped clicking on them as often as they used to.
With the current batch of viruses growing larger and more dangerous, there will be more people that know they should be worried abotu viruses,
As to floaters and various flash ads, browser makers and macromedia need to take some responsibility and provide options to prevent that kind of crap. Going to a website and then having a floating ad with motion and sound that I cannot close, or an ad that floats over what I am trying to read, is quite irritating, and I will never purchase.
For some companies that I normally buy from, I have sent letters explaining that their intrusive ads have caused me to lower my expenditures on their products. Generally I get back a canned response that places the blame on the advertising firm that made the ad. Apparently advertising firms are privateers now, that companies give payment and blessing to, and then take no respoinsibility for.