Not Enough Ads? Install Adbar.

An anonymous reader writes "Jesse Ruderman brings the worst feature of Opera, Advertisements, to Firefox with his extension Adbar. According to the page, 'adbar displays Google ads related to pages you view. Because the ads are relevant, they are occasionally useful. When adbar isn't displaying ads from Google, it displays Firefox-related things such as silly Firefox slogans, ads for other Mozilla software, and requests for donations to the Mozilla Foundation.'"

Comments

Sometimes people actually want ads

[MrRTFM]

When I'm buying a car or appliance, I like seeing ads - I go through all the catalogs and magazines looking for them.

Although, I wouldnt it it as a sidebar on all the time, and I cant imagine internet ads being usefully targetted.

Well

[mfh]

I'm going to take a funny stance on this subject. Normally I would be annoyed by this sort of thing, but something occured to me when I read this /. article. Because Adbar is *not* spyware, I'm going to install it. I think people should support advertizing projects that take the high moral road. I'm going to reward these guys for staying legit and we'll see how it turns out. I wouldn't mind Google ads on pages I'm surfing, because there might be cool products or services I can buy related to the stuff I'm looking at. And, no, I'm not affiliated with this project in any way, shape or form, so don't ask! :-)

Re:Well

[robochan]

I think people should support advertizing projects that take the high moral road. I'm going to reward these guys for staying legit and we'll see how it turns out.

I honestly think that's the most grotesque, the most disgusting, thing I ever seen posted to slashdot. If you honestly beieve that ANY advertiser is moving ANY sort of morality - you're in serious need of intensive therapy.
I used to be one of those advertising guys. I was surrounded by like people all the time. No advertising/marketing person that's ever walked this earth has ever given a shit about you, your browser, your wife, your children, your hamster or any moral high ground. The ONLY thing that's cared about is the bottom line.

Re:is there a version for

[LostCluster]

Actually, there is sorta...

If you're an AdSense publisher that is. All of us who run Google ads can install a tool that gives us access to a preview of what ads Google will run next to a page so that we can decide if we want to put the ad code on the page or not. The thing is, the tool isn't limited to our own sites, and apparently isn't very well secured in any way.

What's wrong with you?

[0x0d0a]

Some guy decided to write an extension. It's interesting research -- can ads be made useful enough that people will actively seek them out? It isn't included with Firefox, and it isn't taking up a single byte of your download space. I think that denigrating the guy is going a little bit over the top. He could just as easily say "I'd like to see AssProphet writing some useful open source instead of wasting his time insulting me."

Re:IT'S A TRAP!

[adamjaskie]

Time to RTFA I suppose...

Maybe that would be a good idea. From the FAQ:

Who gets money?
adbar uses the "test" adsense mode, so advertisers don't pay Google and Google doesn't pay anyone.

It's obviously a joke. The guy says you can pay him $19 to register to get rid of the ads, followed by uninstalling the extension.

That's the thing about ads

[FunWithHeadlines]

Ads are not inherently evil creations of hellish spawn (although it certainly seems that way at times). I can remember back when I was reading print mags for tech subjects, and being very interested in the ads. They were targeted at a subject I was interested in, and some of the products were products I was thinking of buying. Those ads helped me. I enjoyed seeing them.

Some TV ads are so funny, you look forward to watching them (until you get sick of them.....WISE.....ER......BUD).

I accept the usefulness and necessity of ads for providing "free" access to some information that would not otherwise be free of direct cost (or even possible) otherwise. This may sound surprising to anyone who has read the About page on my web site, where I diss advertising executives. But that's different. I run a hobby site, just for fun, designed to make people laugh and then go about their lives. I pay for this myself and I don't believe advertising belongs on such Web sites, sites the Web was created for (person-to-person communication, not selling wares). But I don't hate advertising as a whole. I just want to see it kept in its proper place.

And if you can make the ads relevant, interesting, useful, and even fun, it helps a LOT.

How advertising will survive

[Douglas Simmons]

As technology improves, along will consumers' ability to "block" ads, whether on the computer or on television with a tivo-like hack. This is an example of the marketing industry returning fire by making forms of advertisements as appealing as possible to consumers (in this case, by letting them opt-in to receive ads of relevance).

Take the Superbowl, to use television as an example. People tune in to that event even if they're not football fans just to see the ads. Millions were spent on those thirty second spots, and in a situation like that, millions more get spent on ad agencies to come up with entertaining ads.

As more people learn how to "block" ads on different mediums one way or another, the greater the demand will become to write and produce advertisements entertaining enough that people will want to see them in addition to companies creating several different ads at a time so viewers do not get hit with so much repitition. This Firefox plugin illustrates my points by allowing proud consumers to be informed about what they could spend their money on by filtering out ads that will most likely be of no interest to that Firefox user. This way, if Firefox somehow figures out that you already have a big penis by analyzing your slashdot posts, then you won't be seeing that type of spam. Instead you'll be advised of products that your computer deems worthy for that purpose by judging its relevance to your MO (deduced by Firefox from your web behavior).

If ads could be both very entertaining and minimally invasive, in addition to pushing products/services you'd most likely want to buy in a spontaneous situation, why wouldn't you install this? Not all of us are broke, and most of us want more stuff.

Honestly

[nwbvt]

I might actually install that if they made so that income generated from selling the ad space went to the mozilla foundation. I'd get to be cheap and financially help out mozilla.

Can I hack it to pay myself?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you run Google ads, Google pays you. Can I program this toolbar so every link I click pays myself?

Kinda like setting up an Amazon affiliate link on your own page to get a 15% discount on books?

FYI

[mfh]

> you're just another schmuck who hasn't read the damn article

I did RTFA, and I posted my response to it. The fact they are doing the test thing doesn't bother me. Google will likely make them change servers, so it's kind of a non-issue to me. Their product will move to whatever mechanism works. The fact they say you have to pay to be removed is likely a joke, but even if it isn't, I would rather know that kind of stuff *up front* rather than find out after I've installed something that it won't come off (like Gator). And it's the fact they have designed this project knowing full well that many people won't use it because it's ads, but yet they still branched the advertising medium into something else -- something moral -- I just feel like they deserve to get as many people supporting them as they can. Really, wouldn't you like to see the Internet advertising medium shift gears into something that doesn't hijack your computer? I certainly would.

I actually feel this way...

[gerf]

I've recently started to use Adblock with Firefox. Now, not only are all my pop-ups blocked, but I never saw an ad. It seriously took me a week to adjust to actually reading the information in front of me. Before, I'd automatically scan past most pictures and words before reading anything.

Honest to God, it freaked me out. I even mentioned how weird it was to other people. Of course they gave me a weird look by saying all of this, but nevertheless it's true.

Re:Resolution to burn

[iMaple]

Unused !! you must be crazy . My bookmarks toolbar goes there. May be u have a huge monitor and dont care abt destop space but since I run a measly 2048x1780 on my tiny 21inch pda I do need to be stingy abt every pixel.
Anyway do try keeping the bookmarks toolbar next to the menu .. it does save space.