This Headline Is Not for Sale

r.jimenezz writes "Adam Penenberg's latest article on Wired News discusses the growing trend of inserting ads more directly into online content, as publishers strive to keep readers clicking and to stretch advertising dollars, most of which go to a few big companies. He mentions the example of Vibrant Media, which links 'certain words in an article' directly to ads, and has been covered before on Slashdot, as have Penenberg's previous articles."

Comments

How to block them ...

[Chran]

I use Mozilla Firefox and it's a breeze to block those ads using AdBlock

Just create a rule to either block 'vibrantmedia' and 'intellitxt'.

Easy as pie!

Re:How to block them ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Many ads are done by number of impressions, when you go to a site and block an ad you're taking away an impression the website operator otherwise would have gotten. I too hate most advertising, but I also operate a website and that costs me more money the more popular my site gets. If I were to become sponsored by some company, I would be under great pressure to skew facts in the sponsor's favor out of fear I would lose their support. This isn't even considering the fact that I've spent hundreds of hours and produced thousands of lines of code to power my site. No one is forcing me to put something online, but I do it because I like to. I also feel I am providing a service for the people who use my site, so simply dropping offline because of increasing costs isn't ideal. Putting a single advertisement up can pay for the entire site's hosting for the month. So, you can block ads, but you can also help keep a website running for allowing an image or some text to load (you don't even have to look at it!)

adblock, flashblock, hosts file

[Janek Kozicki]

remeber to use a custom hosts file. It increases browing sanity a LOT. Much more than just using adblock and flashblock (which I use too).

Sometimes when I have to browse on someone's else computer I'm almost stunned by the number of ads that appear on sites. Yeah it's easy to get accustomed to comfort of browsing without ads.

So... don't wait any longer! install custom hosts file NOW!

BTW: I'm curious if it will soon be included into some of linux distros by default, it would be great - self maintaining and updating custom hosts file... (it works with windows too, but I doubt it will be a part of default windows install anytime ;)

Re:Toms Hardware

[tomhudson]

One good thing about the spammers switching to html to "hide/present" their message is that it's easier for those of us who think html mail should be shot on sight to classify stuff as spam.

As for the metrics on TomsHardware type ads, there are programs out there to request the page then request the ad page, to generate fake click-thru stats.

I don't mind google-style text ads - but what's really getting my goat nowadays is the stupid flash ads. Makes me really tempted to remove flash from firefox.

Re:This Post Brought To You By Toyota

[julesh]

But that isn't what they're talking about. What is being discussed is a situation where, for example, an article is talking about caffeine containing drinks, and you'll suddenly find a random link... perhaps they'd be talking about coffee and then when you click on the link you find it isn't more information as you'd expect, but is rather somewhere trying to _sell_ coffee.

I recommend the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, by the way. ;)

just add this to your hosts file...

[me101]

127.0.0.1 itxt.vibrantmedia.com

and hey presto, they disappear!

or you could always install a much larger hosts file which takes care of quite a few nasties :)

for those using a proxy

[Anonymous Coward]

hosts files do not work if you are using an explicit proxy server for web content (ie your ISP)

Windows MSIE users can add advertisers sites to their "restricted sites zone" this will stop javascript for just those sites and so will significantly cut down on adverts and other such cruft