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Firefox Users Bad For Advertisers
rocketjam writes "According to CNET, German advertising technology company Adtech reports that during the months of October and November, Internet Explorer users were more than four times as likely to click on ads than Firefox users were. During the period 0.5 percent of IE users clicked on ads compared to 0.11 percent of Firefox users. Speculation on reasons for the difference in click rates range from Firefox's integrated pop-up blocking to seeing the average Firefox user as more tech-savvy the average Internet Explorer user."
Having something like AdBlock probably doesn't help their click % for Firefox either.
Hooray for extensions!
OMG - hello. I expect everyone in /. agree when I say:
One of the reasons we use Firefox is because it blocks pop-up ADDS. So why would a firefox user go and proactively click on adds after going to all that troubl???
Sheesh, go figure...
... isn't it rather that the people who use Firefox generally are more 'technical' than the people who use IE, spend more time online, etc, and therefor simply are less likely to click on the advertisements, rather than it being due to Firefox' ad-blocking technology ?
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
For example my mom, the noob IE user, clicks on those "Warning: Your computer is broadcasting an IP adddress" banners. People using Firefox are more likely not to be duped by scams, that should account for most of the discrepancy.
Benz drivers are less likely to crash because they tend to be more car-savvy?
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
It seems to me that the reason is fairly obvious. Many users have switched away from IE because of ads/spyware/etc. It would seem to make sense that they would be more aware of how ads function - and not click on them.
The fact that the users use ad-blocking tools and that the users are tech-savvy are really the same issue, not different ones.
(And, aside from that, they can stop most all of the ad-blocking problems by just having the website proxy all advertisement images on it, so they really shouldn't bitch about something with a fairly simple technological solution.)
Speculation on reasons for the difference in click rates range from Firefox's integrated pop-up blocking
What are they looking at for views? How many times the owning page is viewed, or the image (or popup) is viewed? It should be very easy for them to answer this question by comparing the views. They don't say much about banners either (which can also be blocked).
When most users that seek out an other internet browser can identify what the internet is, and most IE users call the internet, "That's the little blue thing, right?"
They just might be a bit more tech saavy.
I think the Adblock extension makes a lot of sense, since it is on the first place of the mozilla extensions site. I also use Adblock, and it blocks almost every ad (including those on /. ;-). Just enter "ad.*", that will block a lot of ads. I also think the most Internet Explorer users /are/ users that click on banners, or those annoying banners who are just like little windows.
All this means is that they don't click on ads. Most likely because the ads are blocked at some level. The solution is to use ads that cannot be blocked (ie: text-based ads that don't use iframes), like how google ads are made up. I *do* click on those on occassion. Not because I feel I should as courtesy to the site I am visiting. Instead, it's because those ads have something I genuinely need or find interesting.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
What ads? Where?
Most Firefox users are Open source fans.
As we all know, open source is all about free software, and if the users here are anything to go by, free music, and generally speaking a free ride.
Advertised products cost money, and usually don;t work with Linux. They also usually have no way to circumvent paying for them. What interest would a firefox user have in clicking one of these ads in the first place? It could only cost them money or waste a click.
owned!
Aside from the obvious Adblock extension, there are also extensions available to spoof one's browser id. I usually set my ID to IE in order to avoid a lot of pages' JavaScript popups telling me that I need to use IE to view their page (which is no longer true).
I'd be curious to see the figures on that.
You may treat all information submitted above as wild speculation.
I would probably say that there are only about 20 sites on the Internet that I visit with any kind of regularity. Between Adblock and pop-up block, I've removed most advertising from the sites I visit. No ads makes the visit refreshing and a whole lot faster. Whenever I do wander to a new site and get inundated with ads, it seems...so intrusive.
Maybe it is just that most FireFox users don't like ads and all the crap they represent, so they don't bother with clicking on them. I do not think that is a brower dependant factor at all. And if it were, the advertising companies should make BANNER ads that are browser-independant [aka: gifs, not .swf or Java Applets]
_
Free 27" Sony WEGA TV
Considering the fact that adblock is one of the most popular extensions(if not the most), is this really surprising?? :-).
I don't even see the ads(except for google text ads).How will i click?
TechSutra
woah! shh!
This is one of those things where things have got confused. These 2 facts coinside:
- If you've used your computer for longer then you are likely to have discovered a new browser.
- If you've used your computer for only a short time you are experiencing run away popups and all that you get when you click an AD.
^ combine these 2 and remove how you made the connection and you can make it seem like firefox users are just tight.
Don't descriminate against firefox users! I expect the same could be said to any non-windows browser, and any browser that isn't installed already with PCs you buy at Walmart and PC world.
A blog I run for the wealth
Firefox users are just smarter
Built-in pop-up blocker, AdBlock extension and a hefty userContent.css to block banners, ads and other junk infesting the net has made me a happy surfer!
Or they could have Adblock installed, and didn't see the add.
I don't think that it's too devastating for the ad companies, but I think it will encourage them to change their ads to an acceptable format. Popup ads are not an acceptable form of advertisement. Google ads aren't blocked on my Firefox, but almost everything else is.
I would think that Firefox users are probably the type of people who wouldn't have clicked on the advertisements anyway. So what's the fuss?
Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform
The article says that over 4 time more people have EVER clicked on an ad. Because FireFox is reletively new, this is far from an apples-to-apples comparison.
what has this got to do with browsers? if i like what i see in an ad and see a buying opportunity, i will click on it. and the proportion of pop-up ads to the total population of ads served is probably immaterial as the "industry" has tried to cut down on pop-up ads anyway . . no? so how relevant are these stats?
Anyway, when Firefox hits 95% market share, and IE drops below 3%, then the lower statistics for Firefox just become the norm again.
Maybe someone should code up a random-ad-clicking extension for Firefox?
I work for an internet advertising company.
Many adverts aren't rendering correctly on firefox, including some flash/dhtml combos and some dhtml ads.
I don't expect this is the main reason, but it doesn't help.
Also, click through rates and conversion rates are different issues. Probably many more IE users accidentily click on ads or click on them and lose interest than firefox users who are much more likely to only click through on an advert if they are interested in buying. (this is a guess we don't breakdown by browser type at the moment)
That's because I use Adblock!
Ho ho ho!
I'm wondering if the internet ad revenue economy will just collapse because of my single act of civil disobedience. Perhaps the advertisers and content pages will just get pissy and make jpg's of all content and then put the files in the same directory of ads preventing wild card use.
Oh well it wasn't good content anyways.
are either originally clear of ads or I block all the iFrames that contain ads, so sites such as The Register load up beautifully.
Does anybody know where you can get those lists of ad-sites that you can enter into AdBlock so most ads will be blocked by default, without you having to go through the (very small) trouble of blocking them yourself?
What are advertisers worried about?
The nature of users hasn't really changed. Those who click on banners still do and those who block popups at least ignored them before they had means to block them.
The only thing that's really changed is the installed browser base. A user who used to ignore dodgy ads in IE now uses Firefox and still ignores dodgy ads now.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
I ALWAYS use Firefox, I think it's brilliant. I Despise The Ads!!!
-- There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, And those who don't.
I think it's important to consider which pages are most popular for IE and Firefox users; it's not a matter of browser but more a matter of the interests of the user. This click-ratio metric would only be relevant if we compared visitors to the same website, and know that the users have the same interests and are just as likely to click. This would be more accurately done in a controlled environment than using pagelogs.
That said, I do accept that Firefox and IE users have different attitudes towards internet use, but the point in TFA about IE users thinking the banner is a system notification made me laugh :)
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
I know there's got to be a better term for them than "inline popups", but I'm not sure what else to call them. I'm talking about pop-up ads that appear *in* the page, on a layer above the page itself, thanks to the wonders of DHTML/CSS/what-have-you.
.js includes from other domains, if that's not something that's already being blocked. If not, they could be really insidious and hard to get rid of.
I've seen a few of these in Firefox. They were actually advertisements for big-name movie releases. They were pretty intrustive and were usually animated, sailing across the page I was trying to view. They were relatively well-behaved, at least, offering a tiny "Close [x]" button in some corner of the ad. Of course there's no guarantee that future ads will be so generous.
Since they don't launch in separate windows, obviously current popup-blocking technology can't touch them. I wonder if this will be the next "big thing" since users and browsers are becoming more successful at blocking popups or tuning them out.
I also wonder how easy they'll be to block. Sadly, I didn't bother to look at the source, but I have a hunch they're served up via a Javascript include file that's hosted on the ad company's servers. If that's how they were done, I guess they would be easy to block... just filter out
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Personally, I block any flashing ad I see. That in addition to blocking all popups. This means atwola and doubleclick are dead to me.
I don't mind plain ads and Google-style ads. I'll click on them if they're pitching something which interests me. I've even purchased stuff that way.
But "punch the monkey" is the kind of flashy , content-free ad that drags my attention to it just long enough to piss me off.
Hey advertisers, newsflash: not all publicity is good publicity. If your ad pisses me off, I'm not going to buy your product. Hey advertising agencies, newsflash: I have the power to block you. If you permit ads in a style which pisses me off, block you I will.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I block ads with two-frame flashing colours, or two-frame "jitters". I do this partly because I think it's a particularly obnoxious way to advertise something, but also because I find it quite migraine-inducing.
Firefox users are twice as good as IE users - 11 is bigger than 5. Idiots.
As a sidenote, I use Firefox, and have all the ad blocking stuff set up. But I still can't help but think that it is very unethical to do so. Websites cost money. The site owner may need advertising money for revenue; there is nothing wrong with this. If a browser actively encourages people to never click on adverts, and therefore never help out the sites they frequent, it is bound to have a negative effect on the internet. I just feel that, although annoying, adverts do serve a purpose.
Maybe, we're just at the point where the flashing "click here to win" gets so annoying that we block the offending site.
Or, maybe it's because Firefox makes it so you dont end up with a fake looking Windoze dialog box with the fake X that when u click on it opens 55 popup windows.
Or maybe it's because Firefox blocks the "Ad Chains" where you go to an ad infested site, and it resizes all of your browser windows, then opens 43 popup windows going to all different sites.
Users are speaking. We're taking back the web.
= Grow a brain...
The people that use firefox got it to get away from all the damn pop up adnasums that IE used to do nothing to protect you against.
IE people are probably the type to actually click on the "Your computer may have spyware, please click here to get more spyware, virus, and have your comp join our spamming zombie army" banners
Is either user the better for it? Who can honestly say...
...firefox-users are SMARTER than IE-users?
this sig is useless
The "Block images from servername" option is the real godsend. It's always nice to see those lovely gaps in articles where an annoying ad might be. (Yeah, I guess I'm freeloading.)
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Waitaminute.. 11 is bigger then 5! They're just trying to trick us FireFox users into clicking even more, don't fall for their clever ploy.
I've been following open source software development too long now. The first time I read the summary it didn't make sense because I thought 0.11 was more than 0.5
Many of these pages that the funky ad blocker works against are funded by advertising. Sadly the days of venture capital supporting these sites has gone. The hard reality is that you may hate ads but apart from subscription there are very few ways for publishers to make money. Most users are reluctant to share personal information online, so even targetted ads are a problem.
Blocking ads will eventually kill some of your favourite sites.
IE users can jump on the bandwagon as well by using a hosts file to redirect ad requests into oblivion.
On XP, if you never want to see ads from adserver.example.com, just add
0.0.0.0 adserver.example.com
to "C:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts".
I'm a sworn believer of Firefox. (even giving it as Christmas presents this year) But won't all this ad/pop-up blocking bring advertisers to use new methods of advertising?
Begining IE: Ooooo! A button! Why yes, my computer does run slowly!
During IE: Grr...you wouln't lie to me again, would you? *click!*
Experienced with IE: Liars! Every last one of you!
Begining Firefox: I can block those liars? Wo-ho!
(Yep, I know that you can block adds in IE...it's just not integrated or as well done.)
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Those of you blocking ads on slashdot better be paying for your subscription.
Aside from being tech-savy, I think Firefox users tend to be simply more experienced users. Users who have been using the web longer have determined the features they like (tab browsing, module integration, simplicity, skins, etc), and the features they dislike (advertizements, pop-ups, single-tab browsing, etc). For this reason, a more experienced user is likely to latch on to mozilla. Without even being savy, they know what they like, and they know that clicking on an advertisement will only waste their time.
...the advertiser complaints that people refuse to believe the advertisement, disapprove of its contents
and/or actually not buy the product they are advertising!
The advertiser believes that this behaviour is shocking and unjust and it should stop immediately.
It lobbies actively to lawmakers to introduce a new law that will force customers to actually buy every 3rd product they see an advertisement for - or they have to pay a commission of 5% productvalue to the advertiser directly for the hard work they put in the advertisement.
In other news... Bill Gates admits he runs Linux everyday.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Firefox users tend to be savier users I believe. I can't prove it just as they can't prove cause between firefox users not being convinced to click on ads. Anyway, if they are savier, they won't click on false ads that look like windows widgets and crap.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
My opinion is clear. They have to make advertisments that isn't annoying, so we Adblock them. You see, there is a reason, that we Adblock them=)
If Advertisments were stylish and wasn't flashing and jumping up and down with Flash stuff etc. there would be no reason to remove them.
Come on, even the google toolbar blocks popups. I use IE and I *never* click on ads. Except of course when my computer crashes/IE behaves mysteriously and the cursor clicks in unwanted places without my permission.
Now that I think of it, maybe switching browsers wouldn't be a bad idea.
And why shouldn't they be, they are perfectly safe inside their car.
ioccc.org reports that visitors to their site would appear to be more likely programming oriented people rather than management or marketing folk.
What's this world coming to? What next? kernel.org reporting linux to be the #1 OS?
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
Republicans are intelligent too. Probably more so this election for NOT voting for Kerry [soo many bad attributes]. But the arguement stops here. I use FireFox too...
Also important is that according to the same Mozilla contributor interviewed in the article -- "Firefox users may be more likely to click on targeted ads, rather than other types. "Most people I know are more happy with Google's targeted ads--they don't like big banner ads that are totally unrelated to what they're looking for"
[alk]
I've found Filterset.G to be pretty effective.
Track this story's companies and topics
Looks like Firefox wasn't a significant topic of the article. Someone should alert them.
The add looked like an IE error message.
At least that happens lots of times for me, I get an add that look like an IE error message on a default Windows XP install, with white background and a blue rounded titlebar. But it fails completely on my system, since:
I use firefox.
I don't have the Windows default blue/white colors.
And I switched to "classic" mode, because the XP fancy themes would not allow me to chose some good colors without buying "Plus" or third party skin software.
So, it looks just like viewing a Windows screenshot on a Mac, or a Mac screenshot on Windows: Completely out of place.
...found at http://www.adtech.de/index.php?lang_id=en -> News.
Some notable figures:
"Several billion banner requests were evaluated"
"[Firefox's] market share in Europe rose from two per cent at the end of August to 5.5 per cent at the end of November"
By constantly harassing unexpecting visitors with numerous popups per page, fake OS interfaces, epilepticly blinking discobanners and after clicking treating them with even more annoyances, no wonder people are trying to avoid them.
That, and the fact that still a lot of ads badly placed (for example, selling morgages on a britney spears fanpage) no wonder no one clicks on them.
I do think ads can work in benefit of advertiser and visitor, but now most web users have grown such an aversion to them making ads more and more ineffective.
... since you don't automatically become more aware of banner ads and stop clicking on them just because you switch browser. It's the same user behind the wheels. Maybe it has more to do with people getting more aware of them in general as they get more used to browsing the World Wide Ad Web.
It hurts popup ads of course, though, since Firefox blocks them, but so does IE too nowadays.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Actually, my blocking all addverts is of benefit to the advertisers.
When something is advertised by banner/popup/flash monstrosity/whatever is shoved in my face, at best its a waste of the advertisers paid for bandwidth. At worst, if its a product I'm interested in and they manage to get a brand name over to me then I'll check out their competitors first.
Essentially banner adverts & popups tell me "Low grade company, low grade product, probably a scam", and I'll no more consider following such adverts than I'd consider clicking "unsubscribe" in a spam mail (even if I did allow my mail client render HTML).
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
- Advertisers happily overload IE users with pop-ups
- Those tired of said pop-ups tries different browsers
-
Advertisers panic, and
- throw a few extra pop-ups in there to "increase chances"
- start using new, currently not blocked features for advertising (e.g. keywords)
- FF starts blocking the new advertisement techniques
- IE users are even more overloaded, and get another incentive to try other browsers
Repeat steps 2-5 until IE is gone, and web advertisements are deemed bad business. What a wonderful world...Not only does Firefox block popup ads, it also blocks popunders and popovers (like at pr0n sites).
A lot of these are simply scam artists trying to collect ad revenue. The site being advertised can't tell whether the user actually clicked or whether the site was brought up via automatic script, so the site ends up paying for these extra views.
As Firefox becomes more popular, the revenue from these shady schemes should eventually dry up (since pr0n is the #1 industry online).
The problem of blocking the ads will only go bigger with more Firefox users having also enabled the AdBlock extension. Firefox is a better browser because it make surfing the web fun again : That mean in a sense surfing the web like when there were no ads. But since those ads are not clicked or just seen anymore mean less revenue for web sites owners and then less money to invest to make those web sites interesting. So it's like the web sites owners will tend to find that firefox is not a browser to have on its list of visitors. You can imagine the rest !
Somehow I think ther's a pretty loose definition of "loose" being used. Those extra "clicks" that IE exploits tricked me into performing convinced me to switch to Firefox.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I'd like to know how many of the IE click were Popups with that Fake "X" or "Close"....
That most Firefox users know are fake and will not click....
I've found that alot crap adware/spyware is install by users clicking the fake "X" or "Close" to get rid of the ad.
And teaching no-tech savy users to click the Real X, is harder then you would think....,
---- There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't
---- "NIPPLES!! I HAVE NO NIPPLES!!!" -- Happy Noodle Boy
Anyone up for quick round of the blame game?
I blame the advertisers themselves. Ads kept getting more and more intrusive, abusing pretty much everything they could. In response, users started blocking pop-ups, keeping an anti-ad hosts file and generally ignore advertisements altogether. Firefox is merely another thing that makes it easier to get rid of ads. If they'd remained the nice, standard non-moving/flashing/whatever banners, users might not hate them this much.
I realize that Ads are important revenue stream for sites that I visit. So I "generally" don't block ads. I occasionally see something legit I am interested in.
But I do have pop-ups blocked and I have installed flashblock(great plugin), which stops all annoying flash from playing, and I have shut down animated gifs. So my screen doesn't look like the all singing all dancing crap of the universe.
After the above settings I do use adblock plugin, to block something crappy that does sneak through. I have about 3 lines in my adblock file. One of them is *newegg* after some hideous unkillable flash they had annoyed me. Newegg doesn't sell to Canada anyway.
Lately I see more Ads flowed in the middle of text I am trying to read. These I generally just use nuke anything to get out of my way. Bother me enough and I will adblock the server.
Simple Rule guys: keep your ads from ruining my experience or I will. If you want me to even see your adverts, you better play nice.
but you have to seriously be more specific. there's probably dumb-ass firefox users, and there's *plenty* of PhD weilding people who, for whatever reason have to use explorer. But if you take the median explorer user, and the median firefox user, you will find that the firefox user is more technical, and the advertising companies do not cater to them, whatsoever, since they only cater to the "lowest common denominator", or, middle-of-the-market-consumer. Speaking of which, If you have advertisements on your site, beyond a bare minnimum (static or low-delta adbar and a few static ads, no more than an 2 inch^2's in area ), I will give your site a thumbs-down for polluting my mindshare.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I thought for sure this was going to be an article comparing the physical appearance of the average IE user versus the average firefox user.
Google ads aren't missed on Firefox seems to be a clever move . . . which might eventually result in all ads becoming "embedded" Google style
There was a thing that came with K++ (I believe) called the "SuperTrick", and it worked by replacing your hosts file with one which blocked all the adservers. AdBlock, by default, comes empty, and the user has to block ads themself, so if s/he liked a site and wanted to support it, s/he could just view/click the ads for that site. Supertrick, however, blocks many sites without the users interaction, and works for all browsers.
Besides, who is to say that these "clicking IE users" arent really covert clickbots sending out a IE UA?
For context, click Parent.
Banner Ads were ok by me...
But lately every MacroMedia Flash graduate
is turning simple advertisements into
full motion video - audio sagas with
interactive gaming features.
When the ad takes longer to load than the page it is connected to, that ad is just too much.
Web Advertisers need to follow the tried and true
principle - KISS Keep it Sweet and Simple!
If the issue is that Firefox users as a group have different tastes than IE users, then it's an opportunity rather than a problem: Detect Firefox and display ads for products we might actually appreciate learning more about.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Signifying Nothing. The early adopters of any technology tend to be tech-savvy. A side effect of tech-savvy, in this case, is being less likely to click on ads. It's not as though a Firefox user would visit a friends house, use IE, and start mindlessly buying crap just because his friend had IE. As Firefox (hopefully) expands to more joe six-pack type users, the ad-click rates will go up.
It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
So nothing wrong with us thinking they are deluded and thereby reacting.
The worst are those ads that create links in the body of a sites text and basically trick you into clicking the ad, since you think its a normal reference within an article.
Some advertising's ok (text ads that are clearly seperated from the article) especially if relevant to the site. But advertisers DESERVE much of what they are getting.
If they don't want to set some sort of conservative standards of how they spread their word (AND take responsability for abusers), we don't have to accept their wares.
The best sites don't need to screw around their customers: they know what the users will accept, and generally agree with it (they are actually interested in what their own site). Most of the (small) sites i go to ASK their users what would be best.
And the users generally are reasonable.
...bitter as it may sound.
I've learnt to skip the colored google ads because those are the ones who want to leech money from me. I always go for the first non-colored result, except for the rare I'm looking for some product that's going to actually cost me money. Best of both worlds, but I guess most people don't get it.
> Speculation on reasons for the difference in
> click rates range from Firefox's integrated
> pop-up blocking to seeing the average Firefox
> user as more tech-savvy the average Internet
> Explorer user.
But did it include the possibility that most of the intelligent ones have switched to Firefox?
Of course, the really smart ones never used IE to begin with.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
However...
Nearly all of my pay comes from clicks on my article about legal music downloading. The ads are almost always for p2p apps, and I'm dismayed they often claim what they do is legal. But there is a clickthrough rate of over 20%, which is quite unheard of in web advertising.
Most of the site has more technical articles. My article on C++ style is my second most popular (after the music downloading article), and gets ads for obviously useful and legitimate things like software development tools and training courses, but it has a clickthrough rate of just 0.1%. Rates for other technical articles are similar. In the three months I've published adsense ads, I've made only $10 from the ads in the C++ style article.
My experience running ads on other sites is that a typical response rate is 0.5% - 1%, so it seems technically-inclined readers click ads far below the average.
In between are some articles on marketing, web design and such, that get about a 1% response rate.
Although the ads on my music article pay well, I don't like what they're advertising, and feel they call my credibility into question. I've started approaching the manufacturers of mp3 players directly, to offer them ad space on the page, but have had no takers yet.
I don't think I could come up with another high-response article very easily, so my plan is actually to write more technical articles, with the hope that by posting new content regularly, I can encourage repeat visitors. It is very hard to get someone totally new to visit a website, but I don't think it's so hard to get a visitor to come back for a second time.
Also I'm going to completely change the page design to use a very nice CSS/XHTML design my wife Bonita made for me. Right now my pages look very homemade, and I expect some visitors hit the back button because my pages look so poor. Here's a peek at the new design, I think once I have it up all over my site I will get more repeat visitors.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
People travelling in the left lane 1 MPH faster than the car in the lane to their right are usually (ex-) Volvo drivers- though now to be found in Audis or Rover 75s..
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
I also don't go ballistic in turning off ads. Annoying flash ads are gone. I will not swat the fly and I will not try to shoot the duck and if it has any annoying epileptic inducing strobe it's gone. Click on the 'adblock' tab. Quiet static ads don't bother me so that little 'adblock' tab doesn't get pressed. Any popup that dares to find it's way on my screen get anything from that ad site banned from my computer. I mean you tribalfusion. Thank you Firefox.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Speculation on reasons for the difference in click rates range from Firefox's integrated pop-up blocking to seeing the average Firefox user as more tech-savvy the average Internet Explorer user.
I see a lot of posters here talking about the first, but I think the phenonenon is entirely explicable from the second.
Firefox users are not drawn from a random segment of the population. I suspect they're largely still the early-adopter crowd of geeks and would-be geeks.
It would not surprise me to learn that the ad-clicking habits of this crowd differ substantially from Internet browsers at large. This difference has probably existed for years, even while most of them used IE, but was then invisible to the data-mining folks.
However, I think it will be largely the ad blocking which will get space in the minds of Internet advertisers. I hope that we can avoid a situation wherein sites deny access to Firefox users on the presumption that they would be blocking ads. (I guess one can always reset User-Agent to look like IE, but I don't think this is very easy in Firefox at present.)
1) By using MSIE you support the evil of the Microsoft empire and make it more widespread.
2) By clicking on annoying ads you support them and make them more widespread.
Those who switched to Firefox know the first - and are quite more likely to know the second as well, than those who didn't.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Wasn't there a story on Slashdot not to long ago about how most people cliked on pop-ups by mistake while trying to close them. I wonder how many of these clicks were not intentional, but were an attempt to get rid of something anoying.
How many of you when using IE accidentally!!!!! clicked a damn popup ad. or a banner, this was an unfair survey. I will onlu trust a survey on directed customers who buy something. and as i have a minor medical dislike for FLASHING ADS and i refused to visit such sites. and avoided the companies resorting to such things. (but noe have the adblok power.)
Are 40x more likely to click on ads, especially those jiggly dialog boxes which say "YOUR COMPUTER IS BROADCASTING ITS IP ADDRESS!!!"
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I look on these as mosquitos.
Do you like to be pestered by mosquitos buzzing around your face?
Do you hold out your arm for them to have a suck?
Or do you swat the little pests!
Any company that thinks people are impressed by flashy internet ads these days is operating on an outdated business model. Infernal Exploiter didn't block pop-ups out of the box, and we just put up with them and the ads, until we could use blockers like Google Toolbar. Now Firefox is giving us the mosquito net to keep these little bloodsuckers out of our faces. If this drives some companies out of business, well, sorry, but you should stop treating people like an easy lunch.
First, he was "the new guy downstairs."
Then, he was "John in IT".
Now he's the guy who blocks your patronising ads.
Could it be time to start selling stuff more intelligently?
Firefox's built-in and extension based ad blocking aren't the only method.
For a while I used Norton Internet Security (2002, IIRC), and it had a popup blocking feature. There's also a program out there along te lines of "noadhosts" (wish I could remember the link), and it adds the URLs of most of the ad websites to your "block list", effectively, and removes quite a number of them.
Again, I think this comes from being more tech-savvy than average.
Join the Empire! http://www.empirereborn.net/
Last time I checked, people who had more money than I do weren't any better than me. Usually they're worse, much worse. Money makes them deranged.
.
/hoping I don't get flamed for taking money from content providers, but I have a well-crafted /etc/hosts file and it ain't going anywhere
Know what that is? It's a reeeeeeally tiny violin, and it's playing a reeeeeeeeally sad song for the advertisers!
Your Flash/animated ads are annoying, Mr Advertiser. Why would I buy something from annoying advertisers, let alone want to LOOK at such intrusions? As advertising becomes more and more an unavoidable, almost oppressive part of daily life, the amount of advertising one can stand decreases severely.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
when reading Slashdot.
If the add compagnies can't earn money when one use Firefox, will they do lobbying against Firefox and try to join Microsoft to premote IE in place ?
Will this lead to more "You must use Internet Explorer to view this page" ?
After all, adds companies own the cash to do this (much more than the Mozilla Fundation). You may expect them to fight to maintain their current broken business model, instead of changing their own way.
Léa Gris
Google AdWords. Unobtrusive, targeted, and easy for anyone to implement. I mean, it's not perfect, but it's better than banners by many times. And (I assume) it's not too hard for webmasters to set up. What more do people want? Humane for everyone.
If I recall, one has to install AdBlock (it doesn't come bundled with FF). With that in mind, it's not much different than the Ad Shield plug in that's available for IE (although AdBlock works much better, IMO).
I would say that it's not the browser, it's the user. When IE bundles an ad blocking tool with their browser (uh-huh) then you'll see the ad ignore rates go up.
I doesn't have a Slashdot subscription because I don't think that it
is a big enough advantage to be able to view the article a little in advance e.t.c.
What I would like subscribers be able to is:
1) Post comments before the article goes live.
2) Get a jabber or psyc notification the exact moment that a new article is viewable.
The attitude of big business today seems to be that every human must be forced to stare at billboards, glossy pages in magazines, TV ads and Internet banners displaying product after product after product - even to the point where the 3" diameter circle on the top of a petrol pump at a petrol station has to display an ad for a bar of chocolate...
So, just as much as big business seems to be given the right to try to force-feed me endless advertising, I reserve the right to read a book on a tube train so I never have to stare up at the ads over the windows, the right to use my remote control to switch to another channel during the ad breaks and the right to use any goddamn browser and asblock program I want to keep this constant assault of visual garbage away from my eyes.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
While I understand that some people actually prefer IE and would even go and get it if they had to, many IE users simply take whatever comes with the machine. So far the latter has not been true of Netscape/Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox.
I suspect that people who choose their browsers are simply less swayed by advertising, especially the least-common-denominator sort that swirls continually around the virtual ankles of the WWW user. Maybe if the ad.s were less annoying, more informative, and promoting something that choosy people find worth having, the numbers would be different.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20041206.html
And I quote:
"Summary:
Studies of how people react to online advertisements have identified several design techniques that impact the user experience very negatively.
Advertising is an integral part of the Web user experience: people repeatedly encounter ads as they surf the Web, whether they're visiting the biggest portals, established newspapers, or tiny personal sites. Most online advertising studies have focused on how successful ads are at driving traffic to the advertiser, using simple metrics such as clickthrough rates.
Unfortunately, most studies sorely neglect the user experience of online ads. As a result, sites that accept ads know little about how the ads affect their users and the degree to which problematic advertising tricks can undermine a site's credibility. Likewise, advertisers don't know if their reputations are degraded among the vast majority of users who don't click their ads, but might well be annoyed by them.
Now, however, we have data to start addressing these questions. At my recent User Experience 2004 conference, John Boyd from Yahoo! and Christian Rohrer from eBay presented a large body of research on how users perceive online advertising. Here, I offer a few highlights from their presentation (my comments on their findings are solely my responsibility)."
Change the way you advertise (I prefer text ads myself, I'm 100% more likely to click on one of them then any sort of graphical ad) and you'll see more people clicking on ads.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
I installed Mental Adblock (tm). Now, whenever I walk down the street, flip on the TV or go see a movie, all advertising is immediately purged from my mind and memory as it arrives.
This has the advantage that I'm not wasting storage space on jingles, hideous color schemes, or blandly staring models. On the minus side, I still have to download the ads before I can block them.
I'm thinking of trying out Mental Adblock 2 (beta), which downloads the first few bytes of an ad, and if it matches a known signature, immediately diverts your senses away from the advertising.
Admittedly, the beta still has a side-effect/bug whereby if you live in a heavily advertisement-saturated environment, you end up not being able to remember anything interesting about your day at all.
Mental Systems advises some beta users have reported success by turning off the TV and reading a book.
It is simple CSS. Create a layer, give it a position:absolute, z-level higher than any other (ie. on top), and have a javascript link to hide it. The actual page would just have a
<div class=ad>
<img src=".../banner.jpg">
</div>
Even if you disable JS, the only thing you disable is the close button. I've seen pages with this, but not the ads. The ads are still caught by the image filter, but I have to close the empty css layer.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
As much as the end users like it, isn't this sorta like a TV that blocks advertising and blurs out product placement intelligently? Seems like if such a TV existed, content producers who earn their revenue from advertising would try to find ways to break such a device, or at the very least make their content incompatible enough so that end users would be forced to use a device that could receive the adverts in order to receive the other content. I know as end-users we don't like it, but this is an equation of economics. If Firefix can block all advertising as we wish, and our usage of the sites that generate revenue off of said advertsing continues, what incentives to content producers on the web have to make sure that their sites remain Firefox compatible?
But, I would be willing to block firefox users.
Browsing someone's website and blocking their ads is theft.
And it should be treated as such.
If you want content for free, gather it yourself, or make it yourself.
Free Web based FTP
I LIKE using Mozilla/FireFox.
I've been spared so much shit and popup and popunders (which my school is in M$ tightly cuirled fist so they ONLY use IE,) that most every damn site I go to when I am using the schools' computers leaves me closing windows I didn't want.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Something changed with the coming of the internet age, but not JUST involving the internet. Advertisers got a big head and started believing that they have some God-given right to force you to see their ads. The mindset that you are stealing something if you don't look at the ads has even crept into their evil little heads.
Advertising always was, and should go back to being a gamble on the advertisers part. When an advertiser buys an ad in the local newspaper, there is no guarantee that you will see it or if you do, pay it any attention.
I wouldn't mind seeing an ad or two myself, but they are ALL currently disabled because of this mindset that they have. They don't need to know if I looked at an ad. They don't need to know where I came from when I get to their site. My browser is set to not give any referrer information also.
Marketing people are pure unadulterated evil. If marketers were all banished to Canada, software would get better. Let us geeks decide about features. Don't artificially limit anything.
Oh well.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
IE users 437% more likely to try to punch the monkey. Also were 637% more likely to be amazed by banner ads that caused nausea in the rest of the population.
Ads? How can you click on them if you don't see them? Adding /banners/, /ads/, fastclick, and doubleclick to your AdBlock filters will take a lion's share of that garbage.
forest
... in the same way that "Antibiotics are bad for bacteria" is correct.
nuff said.
[L]
or point me in the direction of where one might find out how to craft such a hosts file. Please?
-An Aspiring Linux Meganerd
Please stop stalking me, bro.
I am surprized that the difference is so small. Why do some FF users click on Ads at all?
Oh well, what the hell...
During the period 0.5 percent of IE users clicked on ads compared to 0.11 percent of Firefox users
Usually most people switch to firefox because they are sick of popup adds and beeing overran with advertisments. By the time they switch to firefox they know of the tricks that advertisers do to get people to click on the links such as making graphics look like widgets to enter text in but you need to click it to get focus. Or look like a warning window then click to to try to close it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
seriously. I don't 'subscribe' to slashdot. and to be homnest the ads here aren't too bad. but the main reason I don't is the cost. i don't even KNOW the cost, but im guessing its at least $10 a year?
To be honest if I could pay $1 a year to make slashdot ad free I'd do it, but we still don't have micropayment services that are ubiquitous. And it would also have to be a roaming service so it block s at home and work.
Im not sure what the eocnomics of this all are, but if the subscription cost is VERY low, there are maybe 3 or 4 sites I'd happily pay to be ad free (bluesnews is another).
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Interesting. People thoughtful enough to select a browser rather than having a browser chosen for them also seem disinclined to click on anything that blinks.
The solution is obvious. Ban thinking now. Our economy depends on it.
When all you have is an axe, everything looks like a grindstone.
If only IE sites get Ad Revenue soon there will only be IE sites.
That most FireFox users are online to get things done and don't want the distractions.
Or could it be that FireFox users are just smarter?
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
I wonder how many click thieves set their bots to pretend to be IE, as opposed to firefox.
The real question is not how many clicks but the value of the clicks. If 0.5 % of IE users click on the link and only 0.5% of those users buy product from them then that is that is .0025% of all users buying products. .11% of firefox users click the link and 3% buy the product they click (Because they were interested in what they are selling) then the firefox users are more profitible.
While
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
this just in... people who don't look at advertisements are bad for advertisers.
No site that goes belly up because they no longer receive money from their advertisers will receive any pity from me if they:
Used horrible, intrusive, animated advertisements that absolutely -ruin- my enjoyment of their site.
Had advertisements for fake products from fake companies
Had advertisements that have absolutely no bearing on their audience (I don't want to hear about car insurance on a tech site, ok?)
Forced me to click through an advertisement to reach their page.
The simple fact is, advertisement on the internet tends to be so incredibly obnoxious that I instinctively avoid brands advertised in such a manner. They dug their own graves, I don't think many users minded the simple advertisement banner at the top or bottom of a page. When they became popups, we all started hating them, flash overlays, we hated them more etc. etc.
I can't understand that a company could possibly believe they can ANNOY us into buying their product.
But maybe that's just me.
Machine9dotNet
I want to have a word with those 0.11%.
than worrying about IE vs Firefox users. Have you noticed that while they say 4x as many IE users are clicking ads than Firefox users, they're still only talking about 0.5 PERCENT?!?! If they really means that 99.89% of all Firefox users are not clicking, vs 99.5% of IE users, then their problems are much bigger than who is using what browser. The bust showed that internet ads were not a viable revenue stream, but this crazy.
on TV (at least over here in the Netherlands) there are rules on how many ad-breaks there can be, and how long they are allowed to be. on the net, ads are not regulated, so without blocking, I am involuntarily exposed to annoying ads constantly. were someone to do the equivalent in real life (constantly shouting in your ear, holding signs in the way of your views, etc.) there would be a whole lot less advertisers, because it could get you killed. people will get violent. on the internet, advertisers yell constantly, but we can block them out. so we do, and that is a good thing. blocking advertising is the free market at work, but now it works in favour of the consumer rather than that of the company.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
just as long as advertisers are being smart and changing there rules around keeping the user modifying there adblock rules it may help them. Because where before someone my just ignore the add all togeter they actually look at the add and probably read it because it has their attention then they go to adblock and modify there filter. So with Addblock the user gets less adds but the ones they do get gets more attention to.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
People who block the ads are people who aren't going to click on them anyway!
Sure, I understand that just seeing that ads may create some form of product recognition, but either way, their measurments are in click throughs, so it shouldn't make a difference.
Or at least thats how Ted Turner would view it..
We all know how he views people with VCR's that fast forward past commercials...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"People click on (pop-up) ads because they think the system's trying to tell them something," Hallowell said. "The average Firefox user is more aware that they're ads, not system dialogs."
That says it all for me. I have no sympathy for any ad company when they are using these tactics. Disguising an ad as a system dialog box is wrong and dangerous.
IE is a good stabiliser if nothing else, because they (or at least they used to) have a pretty much total share of the browser market, they controlled the basic default browser configuration. They kept the entire net advertising industry stable for years because most people are too lazy to install ad-blockers or change their settings. But a mass migration to firefox will change all that, Mozilla will then control the default configuration and pretty much have the power to shut down the entire net advertising industry overnight. Of course an industry like that wont go down easily: they will adapt and find new ways to push adverts, you would probably have to answer a specific question about an advert to get into a site or maybe something even more obtrusive than even the worst pop ups. Which is why we should probably bite the bullet and keep the market stable - obviously we don't have to look at adverts, but for the sake of making some advertisers happy, we might have to make sure everyone else does?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Which is what a lot of ads are doing when you use IE.
All arse-end drive cars are driven by lunatics. Used to be just Volvos, now it's BMWs and all. Course it stands to reason really; if they can't figure out which is the best end to be applying power to then they're hardly likely to be the world's best driver. {CLUE: if you pull something it can only come towards you, if you push something it can choose from 180 degrees of directions to go in.}
A more interesting statisic would be how many users actually bought stuff after clicking through. Could be most users only click through because the were fooled into it by fake dialog boxes and pop-ups and because IE users are less tech savvy they are more likely fooled.
The relationship between the advertiser, the producer and the consumer has become so hopelessly damaged and the internet is only making it worse. as soon as some tool that enables a consumer to control the flow of advertising, someone else freaks out about how this is bad for business. We have the asshats in the television industry bemoaning TiVO and other devices that allow you to skip commercials. They even go so far as to claim that you agreed to a contract when you bought your TV that you WILL watch commercials. Then of course at the very extreme end of the asshat spectrum, you have spammers. Anything that is anti-spam is unfairly killing their "business model". Here's a clue, GET ANOTHER FUCKING BUSINESS MODEL. And soon we are sure to have some people who want to break or weaken any software that allows a user to control online ads. I really wish I had access to that gaint /etc/hosts file in the sky so I could redirect ALL ad hosts to 127.0.0.1 permanently.
Getting back on track here... it's simple Mr. Advertiser. If I want to buy a product, I will. You don't need to MAKE me buy it with your ad, you just need to get it into my head that it might do what I want. If I don't choose to buy it, TOO BAD!! Stop trying to justify your existence by pouring money into advertising and marketing and put that money into research and development to make a better product. Remember, the real hierarchy of the consumer/advertiser/producer relationship is this:
1. The producer only exists to serve the consumer
2. The advertiser is simply a notification agent (hmmm... could be replaced with a small shell script)
3. The consumer is the monarch in this relationship and should have little to do other than make a decision about where to spend their money.
4. The stockholders are the least important as they should be happy to even get a cent from this deal.
But it's all screwed up today and people are slowly being zombified by the current corrupted version of capitalism. Resist folks. Resist. You'll be better off for it.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
The big question is how many click throughs turn into sales. More than once I clicked on an advert by mistake and ended up just closing the ad. I did not buy anything. What we will need is more directed ads for stuff we want.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Saw this days ago on http://technocrat.net/article.pl?sid=04/12/06/0042 32&mode=thread
I wouldn't mind banner ads if they weren't annoying and targeted at broadband users.
At home I have a dialup (there is nothing but satellite available and its not worth it). At work, we are monitored, so I normally NX to my home machine to surf the web. Considering that I am now both surfing the web, and then transferring the images to work over the same 24K connection, I don't like annoying flashing ads. They waste my bandwidth, and more importantly my time. Google ads, other text ads, and non-flashy things are fine, everything else gets the right-click / Adblock treatment.
You can add the relevant ad servers to your hosts file:
127.0.0.1 adservices.google.com
127.0.0.1 googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 pagead.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 pagead1.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 pagead3.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 www.googleadservices.com
Advertisers should concentrate on what they are doing that only gets 0.5% of the most used broswer out there to click on their ads. Make the ads better (from the point of view of the *consumer*) and more people will click, regardless of the browser.
Do not touch -Willie
There was a /. story on this recently http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/03/145 0243&tid=217&tid=98&tid=218
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Simple Rule guys: keep your ads from ruining my experience or I will.
That's some interesting English there. I believe Bush said something similar to declare war on the American people.
That'll really mess up the heads of all the survey people and marketing types...
"Try to pigeon-hole we Slashdotters, huh?"
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
There are a lot people saying that extensions like AdBlock will destroy the revenue stream of sites that we visit...Why don't they complain about those of us that use Lynx??? With a site like slashdot, Lynx is not that bad...the other option is to turn off images all together. That is also a viable option for sites like slashdot...
As far as ads go, I wouldn't mind looking at an alt tag or even a google ad if it was something besides the "[Click Me]" that most use...
If these advertisers would give me an option to select the types of ads I'ld like to see then maybe I wouldn't mind seeing them...
What I would really like to see incorporated into the adblock extension is some sort of html rewriting engine...something like privoxy...
I agree.
The average Joe doesn't use tabs, nor he knows how to block ads or perhaps block images from the server. He will not use Firefox unless someone replaces its cool Firefox logo with the blue e.
The average Joe knows how to point-and-click and that's about it. How do you think Microsoft got where it is today? Why do you think marketeers everywhere still invest in internet ads despite so few returns? Because all you need to get people to visit your site is a flashing banner and the point-and-click action to happen...
I don't feel like it...
Is it possible that more IE users click on ads because they A) still pop up, and B) Look like actual Windows messages to the [ahem] average user? Just a thought...
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
I also refuse to install Flash, it is a tool that has been abused by marketers. Transparent animation over page text was the last straw, that went WAY over the line for intrusion. Whenever I visit a Flash-only website, I complain to the webmaster for a non-Flash page. It usually gets results.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Not once. Ever. I hate advertising. If I find that I need something, I go out and research my options at that time, and I don't like to get all this spurious, unwanted crap shoved down my throat untill such time... Whoever thought up this business model should be hanged, drawn and quartered, IMHO. I hope it will go away soon (I think there's a chance that it will, since it is getting easier and easier for people to avoid having to see ads). I wouldn't mind paying a modest fee for services that are useful or fun as an alternative to having to suffer through advertisements, for example as with American cable TV channels.
During the period 0.5 percent of IE users clicked on ads compared to 0.11 percent of Firefox users.
Since Firefox 0.10 > 0.9, 0.11 percent > 0.5.
Thus, Firefox users click on more ads than IE users.
QED.
You're assuming the point of advertising is to make you click. Strangely, many "new economy" ad execs sold their wares the same way. "Yeah, the users will CLICK and GO to your WEBSITE and BUY THINGS!!!11 ON THE SPOT!!!!111"
Bzzzt! Wrong, Slick.
The point of advertising is (say it with me) brand recognition. You aren't going to buy a Coke* on line when you get thirsty, but if all the sites you visit regularly have a Coke banner, the next time you're in the MiniMart, you might just say, "Hmmm, if I get a Coke then some hottie will hang off me, and there will be dancing and music and lots of sweat!" Then you fork over your dollars for one.
Why do you think there are billboards, and they are successful (in terms of getting companies to pay Viacomm and ClearChannel)? Because they build that brand recognition, not because you are going to run out that minute and buy a Hummer. Why are there ads in magazines? You gonna "click" on one of those, hah? Why does your 1 hour TeeVee show have 40 minutes of "content" (to be very generous) and 20 minutes of ads? You can't buy anything on the spot, so why are they trying to hawk "Hot Pockets"?
Now, it is possible for advertising to adapt to the web, but that won't happen until the ad execs actually figure out why and how the web works. I've sat in enough advert planning meetings (the "token" tech guy) to permanently lose all feeling below my neck due to lack of oxygen, and I can tell you that they don't get it yet. Maybe the current generation needs to die. I dunno.
*Yes, we're all aware that you can buy your dork-related goods on-line by clicking on the ads. We're talking about the average person here, who isn't interested in a new case, binary clock, or t-shirt that says, "Got Root? [please get me a girlfriend]".
Yeah, right.
> Volvos also handle nicely
Man, that's a good one. Maybe because I've only driven their 'wagens and the newest volvo was built 4 years ago, but, everytime I get behind the wheel of one, I'm consistantly reminded of a {ford ranger|mazda b-series} from a comperable era.....
Seriously, they handle and are built like a truck (which really should be no surprise to anyone paying attention to trucks on the interstate).
Here, we see a lot of blacks eating at KFC, so I guess it confirms what we heard about fried chicken and watermelon?
You want to use stereotypes?
Italian: mafia, pasta eaters.
jews:money,racist
etc
interesting how stereotypes are ok for things we agree with but not with things we dont.
Consider Ads the Spyware of websites. You accept ads much as those people that have given up on spyware accept that "free software carries spyware". Bullshit^2.
-Andres.
Well, that would make sense. That's because advertisers are bad for Firefox users and for any Internet user, for that matter. :)
e.g.: Take a page at url mysite.com/index.html . This page just consists of a bunch of iframes, which contain the page content, and the ads. The source of those iframes are from apparently random URLs that all look like mysite.com/?2pg904a82n84 . These content/ad URLs also change with each page reload. How do block the ads next time?
The only reason that a small 'elite' percentage of net users are able to surf Ad-free is that they're not yet a statistically significant group. Whey they become signficant, things will change. Enjoy the Ad-free content while you can!
Worst BBC News Stories
Why is clickthrough seen as such an important measure of the effective of an ad? TV advertisers don't expect me to immediatly run out to buy a coke. Why do web advertisers expect me to immediatly stop what I'm doing to jump over to ThinkGeek (to go by the ad currently on my screen)? In any other medium ads are about getting you to recognize brands so that when you want a drink or to buy some nerdy stuff you think of their product instead of a competitor.
I'll beta significant proportion of those "IE" users were running Firefox spoofed to look like IE.(Remember, on this scale, .01% is significant)
I hate grammar Nazi's.
Still running some ancient mozilla beta build, but the "Block images from this server" right click option is what keeps me preferring mozilla over konqueror for more than a year. My internet surfing experience since then is mostly advertising-less.
k lick.nett e click.comb y.advertising.com
Because of load balancing, many high traffic sites use specialised ads servers, so it is easy to block advertising traffic without disturbing actual content page.
Guess what, in the long lists of blocked advertising servers, the very first one is "ads.osdn.com". Makes Slashdot more friendly to me.
Some tips from my blocklist. Be creative to find other balancers in your local area, but THESE have huge global coverage:
ads.osdn.com
ad.doubleclick.net
ad.uk.doublec
m2.doublecklick.net
m3.doublecklick.ne
a.as-us.falkag.net
falk.speedera.net
cdn.valu
z1.adserver.com
ar.atwola.com
served
There you are, staring at me again.
If given these statistics, they would conclude Firefox users are twice as likely to click advertisements.
The people doing releases don't realize that 1.1 and 1.10 are the same number.
Mod points are pointless when you browse at -1.
"Maybe if the advertisers actually offered something I wanted, they would see more success."
While I think most would agree, the only models I know of that do this are "context sensitive" ads and those based on user habits--hello, spy/adware.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
My ny new rad c00l Firefox plugin will change that for sure. I stole the idea from AOL. :)
Isn't 0.11 higher than 0.5??
Oh, that's right, that's only if you're talking about version numbers of software that open source developers write...
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
If I enjoy the web page I will click the banners just out of principal..have a browse through the web page even if I have no intention of buying the product. Its worth supporting good quality resources like slashdot that make the internet more interesting and dynamic.
Got a question about UNIX ask it here : Unix/xBSD Forum
It's not the magical elf business model, it's the underpants gnomes model!
1) Take down ads
2) ????
3) Profit!
In other news, Outlook Express users are more likely than Thunderbird users to buy products from spam.
Well, if they wanted to see if it's a case of popup blocking Vs user savvy, why not compare the change in popup ads CS the change in in-page ads.
I'm very happy with the lack of popups, but I've no problem with the inline (a-la-slashdot-and-google) ads provided they're not intrusive (big Flash or worse Java Applets).
Even with the flash they're not too annoying, but I'd prefer to devote my CPU cycles to something more useful.
I could install an 'ad-blocker' that would give me comprehensive popup/flash/banner/everything blocking, but I choose to let Firefoxes built in blocking of the worst of it ( the popups ) suffice. If I run into some flash I DON'T want to see, then oh well, there's always text based browsers.
Only google's ad model works for text based browsers. Maybe slashdot should add text labels to their ads for those of us that browse that way anyway if they want our revenue.
The Internet (specifically WWW) in its current form did not exist before advertising. To think that the Internet today can continue without ads based on some magical elf business model is simply absurd. Everyone says "Well they'll just have to find a new business model," but no one has any suggestions.
From its inception in 1969 to about 1992, and in particular through the mid/late '80s, the Internet's reason for being was almost exclusively a military and research vehicle. The US funded the thing and they used the "power of the purse" to impose rules on those who connected. Companies weren't "on the net" except maybe email unless they had some tie-in to the research community or technology industry.
To connect, you had to "play by the rules." One of those government-imposed rules was no blatantly commercial use. Sure, USENET garage-sale-type ads were tolerated, but only in specific newsgroups (USENET was carried on UUCP-dialup as well as the Internet, btw, giving it a much wider audience).
By 1992, commercial use was legal on the net, although advertising other than on your own ftp or web site was rare.
The web started in Europe in 1990, and it wasn't until NCSA Mosaic (a predecessor to NetScape and IE) in '92/'93 that it took off. It wasn't until '94 or '95 that you started seeing third-party ads on the net in large numbers. AOL jumping on the net probably helped this trend - it's millions of users were already used to ads.
To say the Internet and the web post-dated advertising is like saying radio post-dated advertising - true, advertizing existed in other forms such as newsprint before the invention of these media, but during the formative years of each, advertising was not customarily used, and the people who used those services - radio, the 'net, the web - expected ad ad-free environment.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The answer to that is simple. Should you continue to meddle in the way people choose to view data that you freely give them for the sole purpose of forcing them to do something they do not want to do, they will stop visiting your site.
The arms race will end when content providers understand they have no control how a user chooses to interpret the html they are given (this is how it was intended to work, and how it DOES work). There is no "ad blocking", just a user who chooses not to burden their net connection and computer resources by not requesting additional support files referenced in the html that they do not want.
It really amazes me that there are some people running websites that are misquided and technically illiterate enough to imagine they are in control of how a user interprets the html they are given. Browsers can change stylesheets, fonts, colors, backgrounds, or choose to ignore all of these things. In fact they have to for for many special need browsers.
The only reason that a small 'elite' percentage of net users are able to surf Ad-free is that they're not yet a statistically significant group.
They are becoming statistically significant, I think that is the point of the article.
Enjoy the Ad-free content while you can!
Enjoy the ad revenue while you can. I think you will find that treating your users like criminals who must be punished for requesting your freely available html files but choosing not to request additional images will significantly lower your eyeball count. It sounds to me like web publishing is not what you really want, since you insist on trying to make it do things it was never intended to do and that your users do not want.
Finkployd
just block the advertising iframes, whatever they may contain...
[insert seizure-inducing cartoon animation here]
Buy a Mac, blah blah blah
I haven't seen pop-up in a couple of years blah blah blah
Pop-up blockers have been in Safari since day one blah blah blah
I've stopped reading all of these things. Owning a Mac means that I don't have to even think about all of the crap that Windoze users have to. Virus, pop-ups, adware, malware, etc...
You can have it...
Today:
r row:
Web hosts uses doubleclick ads.
Tomorrow:
They lose revenue because of blocking.
Net week:
They route all doubleclick ads through their own web server. Sure, it costs the bandwidth but it helps defeat the blockers.
Today:
<img src="http://www.doubleclick.com/ad123.jpg">
Tomo
<img src="http://www.myserver.com/ads/ad123.jpg">
where the latter is simply a proxied version of the former.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
People who dislike online adverts don't click on them.
People who dislike online adverts try to block them.
Expressing surprise at the correlation between users who dislike adverts and use software that blocks them isn't the world's greatest leap.
What you're describing is pretty much the difference between sales and marketing.
Sales is getting out (by whatever means) and getting people to open their wallet for you in response to your ads/pleas/whatever.
Marketing is creating an awareness, and hopefully "need" for whatever you're selling, but not trying to close the sale right there, or even in the near future. This is especially true for high dollar items like cars.
Tracking clicks is in a sense trying to track sales (usually the seller probably only gets some time from the clicker, not money, though) even though a lot of ads are clearly intended to create a marketing presence. You don't have to click on them for them to be effective-- you just have to see them (over and over) out of the corner of your eye while reading something else. Tracking views is what happens in the rest of advertising (how many people watch that show x how many times the ad appears). Eventually internet advertising will use a hybrid of clicks and views to track.
there's an implicit agreement between the provider and user. The provider will not charge you for content, but the content will include some ads.
I have an implicit agreement with Firefox: I will use their browser, and they will block ads for me.
e.g.: Take a page at url mysite.com/index.html . This page just consists of a bunch of iframes, which contain the page content, and the ads. The source of those iframes are from apparently random URLs that all look like mysite.com/?2pg904a82n84 . These content/ad URLs also change with each page reload. How do block the ads next time?
Simple. I stop going to the site because of over-zealous use of iFrames and find a site less desperate for revenue to get my content from.
...and that's all there is to it.
Many adverts aren't rendering correctly on firefox, including some flash/dhtml combos and some dhtml ads.
If the ads that don't work are standards-compliant, please submit a bug report to either Mozilla.org or if the problem is with the Flash, to the plug-in supplier. Firefox and Mozilla SHOULD correctly render any and all valid web pages, and plug-ins SHOULD properly render any properly-coded plug-in data.
If the ads are NOT standards-compliant, fix them and try again. Your customers should be demanding this already.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The title doesn't say: "Firefox bad for advertisers", but rather: "Firefox USERS bad for advertisers".
;)
The grand majority of Firefox users are one or more of the following:
* HaxX0rz who like to deface SPAM-advertised websites
* programmers who don't give a **** about a Microsoft Certification course or "microsoft products CHEAPER!!! than everywhere" because they use G++, not VC++.
* Loners who watch pr0n and don't give a **** about viagra because they don't need it right now. Heck if they needed it, they'd rather be with their g/fs and not reading their mail, either
(Oh but if they saw SPAM promoting "nerd personals in your own city! Find a geek date just like you!!", I bet, they'd _SURELY_ click!)
* people who already used Proxomitron to block pop-up ads and find firefox to be just the next step.
* webmasters who got used to receiving SPAM years before the average joe user did, and already implemented filters in their websites/mail clients/etc.
* Poor guys who use YAHOO! Mail with integrated SPAM blocking
* Intelligent consumers who prefer to click on targetted google ads on the websites they visit, than your average "kick the monkey!"
* Or the newbie who just found out he CAN block ads, and asked his firefox tech-savvy friend to install him all the blockers he can.
* And last, but not least: The WINDOWS-based open source users who have always liked alternative non-microsoft stuff (Irfanview, Pixia, PHP, etc), but still find Linux too complicated... they used IE6 (with all the patches, of course) but were expecting anxiously the day Firefox 1 arrived.
So, what's the big deal? Spammers are *JUST* noticing that there's a percentage of population that doesn't click. They just had no chance to find out they existed earlier.
Mozilla would do WONDERS if they added the Ad Block feature by default :)
;)
Imagine all the fuss then... and the reply: "Cry me a goddamn river."
Nothing advertisers could do about it
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Worst BBC News Stories
On new XP installs, the default location is c:\windows, not c:\winnt.
Of course, this can be virtually anywhere, so
START-> RUN-> %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
and tell the user to open it up in "notepad" and add
0.0.0.0 adserver.example.com
to the bottom
is probably the easiest thing to do.
that the websites who make money off of ads will not if nobody clicks on the advert. Websites with adverts only make money on a perclick basis, unlike movies and magazines who make money by the mere existance of the ad itself.
click me
Not only do Firefox users NOT click on as many ads as Microsoft IE users( +80% without pop-up blocking ), Microsoft made sure to NOT add the pop-up blocking to the majority of it's users browser. They only provide pop-up blocking in the MS-Winxp SP2. The likely reason, because MSN, MSNBC, MSxyz get $$$ from selling ad clicks.
People must realize that Microsoft IS A MARKETING COMPANY first and foremost and a solution provider second. I wouldn't doubt that Microsoft will one day release a "patch" for IE which requires the user to click and ad before shutting down the OS. Or something like this... It's in their blood.
But who knows, maybe it's just because the typical Windows user can't tell what Window is a browser window and what window is an ad window. After all, tab browser also makes it obvious what's a pop-up and what's not....
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Will this news mark a return to the Old Days and all those messages on Websites that say "This Site best viewed at 800x600 in Our Favourite Browser"?
--
E
I tend never to click on ads anyway - ignoring them for the most part. But I was thinking: some content providers get money for impressions, not just click-throughs. So, would it be possible to write a verison of AdBlock that downloads the ads (thus an "impression" but does not actually show them to the end user?
On other news, it was found that IE users are 6 times more likely to push on doors that clearly say "pull" on them and also more likely to microwave their cats.
It's interesting that people who want free music might be willing to pay for a product to help them get free music.
Then again, maybe they are just doing research and there next stop will be a warez board.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Everyone says "Well they'll just have to find a new business model," but no one has any suggestions.
:)
OK, here are some.
a) Localized ads. The user will see banner ads (maybe non-clickable) promotioning local products. i.e. newspapers, or sodas, or everyday-use products... that the user is *LIKELY* to buy. In this case, the advertiser won't pay PER CLICK, but PER PAGE VIEW.
They already do this on TV. The model works, what else do you want? i.e. If i'm reading a webpage and in the middle I saw this upcoming movie ad, It'll draw my interest. NOT RIGHT NOW, but later. That's what advertising is for, after all. Frankly, if advertisers deceive the users with "warning! Your computer is in danger!", why the heck are they complaining about click-fraud? DOH!
b) Pay-per-mail ads. Figure out some way to find out if a user mails the website owner to get more info of a product. I've seen this model suggested elsewhere.
c) Targetted ads - already this is working fine
d) Poll-modifiable targetted ads. i.e. "[ ] No, i'm not interested in this kind of offers". Tell the advertiser what you DON'T want to buy, and let their stats do the rest.
e) Free webpage ads *WHERE THE PUBLISHER WANTS THEM*. But no, they prefer to be in ALL WEBPAGES, AT THE TOP where nobody reads them. Take fortunecity, netfirms and *ack!* geocities... they enforce their non-working business model upon their users... do they really work? DO THEY? This is why i'm looking for banner-ad hacks where i can swallow the topmost banner and turn it into a tower banner in my webpages, so I can place it WHERE I WANT so my website will look much more professional, and the user will be *MORE LIKELY* to click on the google ads.
My 2 cents.
I'm guessing that 'ergonomic' is the correct term. I find most animation very distracting, to the point that I just can't read a site with multiple flash animations and animated gif's. It gives me a headache in no time. It was so bad that I used to have to un-install flash on some Linux distro's (before click-to-play). If I can't block the animation on a site, I usually just go somewhere else. I usually don't block any non-animated ads. Sometimes I'd move a window over a particularly annoying ad if I had to use the site. I used to use privoxy but with the combination of adblock and click to play, the Internet is ussable again for me.
I wish advertising people would realise that they are totally alienating some potential customers.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Back before the early '90s, the US Government paid for the Internet infrastructure.
"Them with the gold makes the rules."
Now IPSs pay for it, which means ISP customers pay for it, which means companies that want to MAKE MONEY OFF OF THEIR CONNECTION pay for it, which means advertisements pay for it.
Ads, and p0rn. Oh wait, same thing.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
+1, informative
It's worse than that. I'd estimate that about half the time when I click on an ad, it doesn't actually take me anywhere. Either I get a 404 page, or some totally unrelated site, or in some cases the click doesn't do anything.
I think it's because the advertisers have become so obsessed with adding dancing monkeys and stuff to their ads and making them "interactive" that they've forgotten the importance of making them actually clickable. I really think that a straightforward static image with plain a href link would be a better way of attracting actual paying customers than most of the broken Flash ads out there, assuming your product is something people might actually want and not a scam or a faux 'contest'.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
It's strange that nobody has proposed the best solution of all. Get all those IE users who click on ads to switch to FF. Then a much higher number of FF users will click on advertisements. :-)
I personally use Firefox, and use Adblock on sites that I visit regularly. I don't click on Ads anyway, so Adblock saves me having to filter out the Ads visually. Either way, I'll filter them out.
Worst BBC News Stories
Seriously, these percentages mean nothing out of context. What are the actual numbers of each browser's users? What if the .11% of Firefox clicks is equivilent to 1 million clicks, while the IE percentage clicks is equal to 1 million clicks, or maybe less?
What I am trying to get accross is that the total number of users of each type of browser makes all the difference. Without this information, it is only FUD and should be redirected to /dev/null.
We've seen Reeces Pieces and Coca Cola in the movies.
Can you imagine this subtle ad on an advertiser-based news site (look closely or you'll miss it):
Karzai sworn in as Afghan leader
An Afghan security guard and a German peacekeeper in front of a poster of Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai's election victory has handed him extra legitimacy
Hamid Karzai has been sworn in as Afghanistan's first directly-elected president amid tight security at the former royal palace in Kabul.
Visit AfghanMall.com, for fine quality Afghans at affordable prices.
Mr Karzai, who has led the country since the Taleban were ousted in 2001, won landmark elections in October.
With apologies to the BBC News.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This wouldn't have to be an Apache Module, it could be custom done in php/cgi/whatever I'm sure. You could even stop sending the page and send errors if the ads didnt get requested.
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
Best part of your comment, is you decided what you were willing to put up with.
It sounds like you shouldn't be going to these sites, then.
Sorry, wasn't targeting you specifically, just being hypothetical.
in 2004 lots of people out there are throwing lots of money at trying to make it do things it was never intended to do.
And I feel sorry for them. Because not only are they doing what you said, they are spending lots of money trying to get their users to do things they do not want to do, and technically (and legally) do not have to do. Morals can play into this but given the fact that companies are by definition amoralistic fake entities with the sole purpose of making money at any cost, I don't know too many people who feel moral obligations toward them.
Finkployd
may i add this one :http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20041206.html
Design Element Users Answering "Very egatively" or "Negatively"
Pops-up in front of your window 95%
Loads slowly 94%
Tries to trick you into clicking on it 94%
Does not have a "Close" button 93%
Covers what you are trying to see 93%
Doesn't say what it is for 92%
Moves content around 92%
Occupies most of the page 90%
So if you use these kind of elements then people will dislike your ads.
This just proves that click factories in India are using IE. So who really cares?
That's indeed how adaware works. But there are other method (other programs) use. Such as the size of the image. Or you could use a white list, rather than a black list. Or look for those random characters strings. Or take all these factors together and automatically make an intelligent determination.
Yes, like you said in your title, it might because a "arm race", but it's a race there is no point for a website/advertiser to try to win. Because let's face it, if someone is determined to race you, they are annoyed enough about it that you're not going to profit (through a clickthrough) from you displaying that ad.
> Speculation on reasons for the difference in click rates range from Firefox's integrated pop-up blocking to seeing the average Firefox user as more tech-savvy the average Internet Explorer user.
So quit whining and target the demographic. Duh.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
I run privoxy (junkbuster) and have been for several years. But it makes no difference -- before I ran anything to suppress ads I just ignored them. If the payment model requires click-through there will never be any revenue from me.
Change the payment model to match the press, some number of mils per impression delivered and I'll selectively enable ads for sites I want to support. After all, do you visit every store with an advertisement in the newspaper? And, in general, I'm not interested in (and wouldn't click on) cars; travel; lodging; food; software; clothing; music; or anything sports-related.
There was a recent AlertBox article in which Nielsen described the most hated forms of Web advertising and how much they hurt users and, in turn, the aggressive advertisers and the sites that use them. It's a small article and quite worth a read.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
While your list only has 2-3 items now...this isnt the best way to do things...
Every single image and iframe is compared against every single adblock filter line.
So if you just block individual servers long enuf to get a big list..it can really slow the shit out of your browsing.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
"In some cases, Web surfers would be well-advised to stay clear of banner ads. Last month, ZDNet UK reported that hackers have attacked ad servers and have modified the banner ads so that they redirect users to Web sites that download malicious code."
Perhaps users should stay away from Internet Explorer rather than the banners ads!
Advertisers know from experience that no matter how much the public tries to get out of viewing their Ads, if they can force the ads through and get them seen then they will have some effect. We are all affected by advertising at some level, even if it's just the subliminal effects such as brand recognition.
Worst BBC News Stories
Even while I used to surf with IE, I had no ads. Introducing Proxomitron, the überaddkiller. Combined with Switchproxy, a FF extension that allows me to quickly disable Proxomitron when I need to let go some popup, they're a must. No need to painfully set a block list, like adblock needs. Proxomitron has smart regexps that to the job from the box.
It helps keep the internet free (beer). No, I don't like to _use_ IE. Without all the idiots in the world, what would we stand on?
This is a retarded assumption. Look, I'm a lawyer and I can tell you straight out, the contract is between the website and the advertisers. The advertisers pay money for the CHANCE of snagging eyeballs. That's it.
Now go back to doing whatever you get paid for a living.
You're assuming version numbers are floats. They're not, they're strings, containing a major version, minor version and optionally a patch-level, separated by periods.
"Version x.y.z" is not intended to represent x + y*10^-1 + z*10^-2.
Would it make you happier if they were x-y-z release numbers? I think it's ugly, but maybe that's just me...
TTFN,
Tim.
Add these lines to your userContent.css file:
" ] td[valign="bottom"][height="30"] { display: none !important }
t "] { display: none !important }
" ] { display: none !important }
/* general: search tip */
body[onload="document.gs.reset()"] table[cellspacing="0"][cellpadding="0"][border="0
/* general: sponsored links: right */
body[onload="document.gs.reset()"] table[width="25%"][bgcolor="#ffffff"][align="righ
/* general: sponsored links: top */
body[onload="document.gs.reset()"] p.e table[width="100%"][height="40"][cellpadding="3"] { display: none !important }
/* search: product search (store linkage) */
body[onload="document.gs.reset()"] p.e table[cellspacing="0"][cellpadding="1"][border="0
/* groups: sponsored links: top (everything but header) */
body[onload="document.gs.reset()"] td[id^="taw"].ch { display: none !important }
/* groups: sponsored links: right */
body[onload="document.gs.reset()"] table[width="100%"][cellpadding="3"] tr[valign="top"] td[valign="top"][rowspan="26"] { display: none !important }
/* gmail: text ads */
div.c.xs#ad { display: none !important }
#rh table[class=”metatable”]{display : none !important;}
#rh div[class=”c”] {display: none !important;}
#ad {display:none !important;}
Concerning AdBlock... AFAICT, AdBlock removes ads from the websites you visit by matching parts of them with regular expressions and then replacing them.
Is there an extension that allows arbitrary regexp matching/replacing of text? On my Linux box I have Wine running The Proxomitron, but I'd much prefer "native" Firefox support for regexp-based page/header modification.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
"seeing the average Firefox user as more tech-savvy the average Internet Explorer user."
This assumes that neither IE nor Firefox users actually want to click on ads, and the only reason ads get clicked on any more is that the unwitting get duped into clicking on "system messages."
I'm not disagreeing, I'm just wondering if anybody else noticed.
I've read most of this thread, and I've seen plenty of people mention Adblock, but the best solution to blocking stupid ads is Privoxy.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
I am Jack's disposable income.
I am what's left over after Jack spends money on things like food, shelter, taxes, and broadband.
You get to see me when you make Jack happy by giving him things like computer games, whisky, and lap dances.
When Jack gets pissed off, he hides me and you don't get to see me.
The (DHTML/CSS?) pops that flow over text perplex me. Do advertisers think that we're blocking popups accidentally?
As Tyler might say: "We've created generation of web users annoyed by popups. I'm wondering if another popup is the answer we really need."
What every wise man and half the fools already know: Advertisers are bad for advertisers.
You'd think advertisers would get take a hint from the amount of time, energy and money people spend avoiding their annoying "messages." It has gotten so bad that anything advertised with traditional advertising methods is immediately suspect of being either a con or a cover for shoddy garbage.
The only "messages" trustworthy these days are word-of-mouth testimonials from informed humans you personally know or can talk with, anything else is suspect.
Manipulating truth via sleazy language usage can cost a great deal of hard-earned, easily lost credibility: Marketers, advertisers and politicians take heed.
Cheers!
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
IOW, an "implicit contract" is only worth the paper on which it's printed! That's the same answer I have for tv whiners when I skip their ads.
Yes, I am running an ad blocker right now. I've been using this internet thing since before it had ads, and I'll still be here after the ads are gone.
A good ad blocker can cut your browser's bandwidth consumption in half. At least.
isn't this easier to remember, for US dudes? weather.gov
It's alright. I enjoy hourly forecasts from weather.com.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Advertisers bad for IE users.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
I wonder how long it will take for pop-up spam advertizers to call for legislation to make pop-up blocking illegal. Law is the worst enemy of mankind and progress :-(
Does advertising have to be clicked on to be effective? What is the purpose of advertising?
If there was a way I could block these and choose to receive only non-annoying ads for things I was interested in (hint: not Ponzi schemes) then I would do so. Unfortunately, there is no way to do that so I block them all.
I'm not one to call for gov't-anything, but if the FTC could seriously cut down on this the ad market as a whole would be better off for it.
The 1337 use a hosts file.
Browser and OS independent.
I run www.distortionfile.com. Of the people that visit my site 8.2 % use, fire fox, 3.1 % use, mozilla, 87 % use IE, and 0.1 % use Netscape. If FireFox is bad for advertisers, they might not have too much to worry about. But interenet explorer is cracking down of pop-up ads like nobides buisness. I haven't seen a single one since I installed SP2, when it came out. Advertisers will just have to find more legitamate ways to promote their sites than to bombard their visitors with pop-up ads that cover your actual content. The right ads should blend in with a sites theme. Match the page's color, background, and so on. I find that makes ad's much more appealing to me. ~Distortion.
Why can't FireFox be made to auto-clickthrough, and even go through the motions (from the server's pov) of downloading and "displaying" the ad?
Then advertisers would love FireFox as much as users do.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
"...this isnt the best way to do things..."
Well then tell us the best way to do things.
My list is small and likely to stay small so it works for me. I don't want to block ads.
Seldom does stuff get through my pop/flash/anim blocking.
It may come true
I think there a two main reason's for this, first is Ad Block extension, I don't even see the ads to click... the second I would say is that Firefox users are a little more switched on to the ways of the web. How many of those IE users even knew what they were clicking on?
Let's suppose the average Firefox user spends twice the time browsing the web than the average IE user (which is probably an underestimation). Let's also suppose that they spend the same amount of clicks in a day (which means they are equal from a marketing point of view). Then, the FF user would be half as likely to click on a given ad (since his clicks are distributed over twice as many ads) than the IE user, and so a survey based on a small random sample of websites would show IE users twice as likely to click on ads.
It's impossible to tell how much the report is skewed by differences in surfing habits (which dont necessarily translate to differences in customer behavior).
All the ad blockers work because the ads are coming from external sources. Generally frames, iframes, images, included javascript, or images.
A page author could just code the ad into the page, or do a *gasp* server side include. The ad would still be displayed, even using alt text for users who turn off images.
Of course, this whould mean that web masters would have to *take responsibility* for the content on their site.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
But your original post, then, was worded in a way that was confusing (and made it seem like you were saying something else entirely). I myself think click-through adverts are a terrible idea, and no respectable website should deal with it. It should be pay for it or not pay for it, no click-counting.
click me
Are you kidding? I don't even see their ads. Yay for Adblock.
Given the fact that Firefox users are more discerning in their browsing habits, and less likely to allow obstructions to their browsing experience (popups, ads, blink etc.), this should mean that when a firefox user click a link, it was because they meant to. In contrast, IE users are far more likely to have misclicked as they go around playing whack-a-mole. If I wanted to buy your product, serve an ad to me in context, not by attempting to ambush me. When I do click a link, those advertisers should get paid more. Paying for ads on impressions is just another futile attempt by marketing whizzes at quantifying the effectiveness of their work. It is hardly an effective way of doing it though.
If it is really the integrated pop-up blocker making the difference, then advertisers are in for a world of hurt, as the much-maligned WinXP SP2 finally gets hammered into production environments.
I hadn't noticed any mention of it in between the angry rants, but one of the *good* things XP SP2 does is give IE an integrated, on-by-default pop-up blocker. (It also finally blocks ActiveX controls by default, has the software firewall on by default, and several other things that should have been done ages ago!)
Of course, advertisers being what they are, once the main market is immune to them, they'll move one step ahead.
... to get infected. I mean, this is news? Anyway, what are those 0.11% of Firefox users doing clicking ads? Personally, I am disappointed that this number is not yet less than 0.01% of Firefox users clicking ads.
Our site is being travelled almost exclusively by Firefox users and we are getting a consistent 0.9% clickthrough rate, which is double the average rate the article quotes for IE.
Maybe it's just that the average site doesn't offer the people anything as compelling as an egg timer that integrates with their web browser. ;-)
Metamuscle.com - News in the Iro
Perhaps FireFox users are more savvy and know better than to click on ads. I think the problem is more systemic and the explanation can be found in why Windows is so damn popular despite all the viruses, bugs, and spam. People do not want to be bothered with the details of using their computer any more than they want to be bothered with the way a car engine works. You put gas in, turn the key and drive somewhere. The devil's in the details.
Computer users are no different; after all, the same people using computers are the ones who have been driving cars all along. Their thought patterns and ways of doing things are no different. They'll no sooner read an EULA than open the glove box and read the owner's manual for their Honda.
But, the way Windows has been designed puts the details into an automated self-fixing paradigm that the user is unaware of. ActiveX controls automatically download new components for IE and the user just clicks the certificate because that's what they always do. Not reading it first, of course, since that's not in their nature.
These same automated functions in Windows also provide advertisers with automatic ad imprints because the browser software clicks the ad for them via pop-ups, ActiveX and/or client-side VBScript-designed web-sites. The user is just a passive bystander while the browser does all the "clicking" for them.
FireFox users may very well be the same end-user, but there is no ActiveX, pop-ups, or client VBScript; the person has to take action for anything to happen.
It's not the person, it's the browser. It's probably a good thing that end-users will have to be more proactive in their use of the Web; just the same as people have to be proactive when they turn their car left. It may not be a good thing for the advertisers, but I don't think advertising in the form we currently experience it is of any value, anyway. I do quite fine without viagra.
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
I, too, realize that ads are important revenue streams. So I block them, and let the rest of the sheep (92% of population) see the crap.
BTW, I just tested, and it seems that pressing [ESC] works to stop GIF animations in Mozilla under Windows also (at least, with 1.8a5--I don't have other versions installed). I suspect the same is true under Linux.
I think I'll go back to "image.animation_mode normal", now since it's no big deal for me to hit [ESC] on pages with annoying looping GIFs.
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
maybe because firefox doesn't have the ability to "click" AD's for you like IE does. what a great innovative feature IE has over FireFox, M$ better patent it.
Advertisers have nothing to worry about. ;p
Firefox users will make up the difference by taking out ads for themselves.
If it does get to the point where some or all online ads are shown to be ineffective, the advertisers will have to think of a better way of getting their message across.
Popups didn't work and with the advent of popup blockers, advertisers have been forced to find a less annoying method of advertising. Now people are blocking Flash ads, Javascript ads, any kind of ad that comes across as too intrusive, the advertisers will be forced to think again about what kind of advertising is considered acceptable to the average web surfer.
Almost the only adverts I don't object to are Google's text-only adverts, because they are unintrusive and just let you get on with browsing. You can scan over them quickly without getting a headache from the 2-frame epileptic-fit causing animated insanity of CasinoOnNet et al.
If sites can't support themselves without the ad revenue, then I say "big deal, get over it". Perhaps we'll return to the state where sites will actually have to provide something of quality for their visitors and support themselves by other means.
I'm a musician with a site set up to promote my MP3s and have been paying for it myself for years. People need to stop expecting to run a website for free, and realise that if you're serious about your online presence, you need to pay for it yourself. Either that, or make it saleable enough that people will want to pay for it - perhaps by subscription, or perhaps by running it as a company with shareholders, depending on the size of the operation.
If you can't do it, someone else will, so ultimately as web surfers, we aren't going to lose out - we're going to end up with better competition online that forces sites to try and be better than each other in terms of value, user experience and possibly a sprinkling of low-key advertising. Either that, or we simply find a better site to go to.
Whatever, the outcome can only be positive, because the less ads there are online, the less crappy ad-supported sites there will be.
I'm more than happy to pay for my own online exposure, as should any serious website owner. If a site gets so big that I can no longer afford to pay for it's bandwidth consumption myself, then I'll be in a position to generate money from it by alternative means.
The only problem here is that some marketroids will be required to rethink their flawed business model - boo f#cking hoo for them!
Organic free-range music... yum!
Between killing Shockwave/Flash, blocking pop-ups, and blocking images from ad servers it's hard to even SEE ad in Firefox.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
I'm not sure, but I think Firefox blocks many ads. There are often times where I see a space where a banner ad *would* be in Firefox, and do see the ad in IE.
That might have something to do with it. But then I'm not much very familiar with Firefoxes features, beyond its speed, tabbed browsing and pop-up blocker.
... thinking. How else do you explain a Bush re-election?
Sean
"Internet Explorer users were more than four times as likely to click on ads than Firefox users were."
Even without adblock, Internet-explorer-users are just more likely to click on anything.
Don't bother actually clicking this right now, it's probably maxed out its quota for the day. But anyhow:
I was looking up the rules for 1000 Blank White Cards, and found that Geocities now gives a little not-quite-popup in the upper right corner.
(There was a tiny 'X' close button, but the whole not-quite window is just off the right-hand side of the browser, so you can't see the 'X' unless you side-scroll. Fuckers.)
I already run Privoxy, and it rocks, and it serves multiple computers here. And it will let me rewrite Javascript, if I knew what I was looking for. (I am not a web developer.) So I'm not really interested in changing filtering/blocking software entirely, I'm just looking for what I need to strip in Privoxy.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Just because a "arms race" may be brewing, don't jump the gun and assume the content providers will win. Already there have been many skirmishes in the coming battle. As popup blockers have grown to become a significant threat, some sites starting putting anti-popup blocker software on their websites. In response, I modified my proxomitron filters to get around the anti-popup blocker. Now currently am I still part of the "elite minority", but I have no doubt similar skirmishes will happen as add blockers and ant-add blockers go mainstream.
The NukeAnything extension is great at removing floating divs. It collapses whatever element recieves a click event from it.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Except in a slide (which is rather hard to initiate on dry pavement with recent AWD models), they handle beautifully. On snow, they're a dream. Perhaps this is part of what gives more confidence to Volvo drivers... The traction control and weight distribution are incomparable to a truck. I mean, it's no Porsche, but it's got great handling, especially for a stationwagon.
All modern Volvos (I think, but at least most of them) are front-wheel drive. I think the last model to have rear-wheel drive was the 740, and it still handled beautifully, especially on dirt and snow. With the AWD (front-wheel most of the time, and power to the rear when front loses traction) and traction control in some newer models, the handling is very good, even on slippery surfaces. Somehow, I doubt BMWs are rear-wheel drive as well, but I'm not sure about those.
What would be the difference between that and companies in third world countries hiring people to click on ads?
Or do you think such hiring is a good idea too?
I use Nuke Anything and Flashblock to deal with annoying ads.
I think that most ads are nice to have, simply because they lend color or something more to look at in a webpage, and, of course, because they benefit the site I am patronizing. Sometimes, they even make you laugh. I've stopped using AdBlock because a lot of pages just look boring after its treatment. I can use Nuke Anything to remove anything I don't want to see in a page, and Flashblock to prevent those annoying flash ads from rendering, so I can nuke them as well.
Like many Slashdotters, I'm sure, I resent the feeling of being limited. With these extensions, I am given the choice to get everything, then pick out what I don't want.
You are also perfectly within your rights to take small pieces of white paper and glue them over the ads in your magazines before you read them. Just because it's reasonably convenient to actually do this with websites, people get their panties in a bunch. No one has the right to make you read/see/experience anything.[1]
What's really sad to me is that people are beginning to swallow the idea that IP holders are somehow gods and can dictate to you how you should hear/read/view their works. "Prohibited from viewing upside down/through a blue filter/using a magnifying glass/whatever? Great! I'll remember and be good from now on, Mr. Rights Holder!" Little by little, the RIAA/MPAA/etc. are convincing everyone that it's a sin to do as otherwise directed by our new copyright overlords (whom we should welcome, of course). Not only that, but I just used the term IP, meaning Intellectual Property, and I bet none of you so much as blinked. Hint: It's not property. Physical goods are property.
[1] Yet.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Do ya think there's something to be learned here?
Hooray for Adblock 0.5.2! I haven't seen an ad in days! RSS is nice, too...
THE best reason a person would switch to firefox would be to avoid ad's. So if a person took the trouble to make that switch, it's pretty certain they dont want to look at ad's, and, by extension, wouldn't click on them either. No mystery there.
I regard most advertising as a form of pollution. So I use firefox.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
They should do a study to see who is more likely to purchase.
The fact is the damn advertisers trick stupid users into clicking the ads. This may increase the hit count, but it doesn't turn into sales at the same rate as people who actually wanted to follow the ad.
When a person follows an ad intentionally he is much more likely to purchase the thing being sold.
Thus, I think this is a matter of quality vs. quantity.
If someone rejects FF users because of this they're gonna miss out on sales.
of course, the website that would do it won't care, as they get paid by the hit.
Of course, we can always tell them we're IE with the user/agent string, so nothing to worry about.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
I haven't seen anyone yet pointing out the obvious problem with these statistics of IE 0.5, Firefox 0.11. Somebody seems to be assuming that just because a user switches from IE to Firefox, it actually changes the likelihood of that person clicking on ads. What's more likely is that all those Firefox users never clicked on ads even when they were using IE or Netscape or Mozilla.
These statistics are meaningless unless you can demonstrate that Firefox changes the behavior of the user. Yeah, so I can block ads now, so what? They're the same ads that I NEVER clicked on back when I could see them flashing in my face! Therefore, nothing has changed! Firefox isn't bad for advertisers. Users who never click on ads are bad for advertisers. It doesn't matter what browser they're using. Comparing the browsers like this is a total red herring.
Look at this screenie I snapped while booting a customer's computer with Slax: Linux Registry.png.
Add to your block list, save yourself the mem.
Internet Explorer is a browser too, ya know. ; )
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Blocking web ads is just like blocking TV ads with VCRs and TiVo. Free TV is still around. The Internet is still going to be around.
.... you were doing so well until the hottie, sweat stuff.
Brand recognition is exactly that. Somebody says Fluff! and you know what fluff is. You don;t care about the anorexic models portrayed on the ad (if you do, you may have some serious problems to sort out).
I have never met anybody that truly believed a cheap item would make them look cool. That may only apply to luxury or leisure items (like cigarettes), but pretty much that is that.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
you mean slashdot has adds, all i get are a couple of empty boxes at the top and side of the main page