Slashdot Mirror


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."

19 of 900 comments (clear)

  1. AdBlock by ack154 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Having something like AdBlock probably doesn't help their click % for Firefox either.

    Hooray for extensions!

    1. Re:AdBlock by plover · · Score: 4, Informative
      Weather.com is soo last millenium. Assuming you live in America, try www.noaa.gov. They offer point forecasts (within a 5km area), no ads, and you've already paid for them via your tax dollars.

      While I love the thought of using the weather underground for weather reporting (it seems like Open Source Weather Forecasting,) I haven't yet mustered up the energy required to figure a proxomitron filter to block the dozens of ads that litter their site. Until I do, the NOAA is still my first choice.

      --
      John
    2. Re:AdBlock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Sorry, this time with proper formatting.

      Just cut and paste the following into a text file and then import it into adblock.

      [Adblock]
      /\D\d{2,3}x\d{2,3}\D/
      goog lesyndication
      us.yimg.com/a/
      /\/buy_assets\//
      / [\W\d_](top|bottom|left|right|)?banner(s|id=|\d|_) [\W\d]/
      /[\W\d](double|fast)click[\W\d]/
      /[\W\d] click(stream|thrutraffic|thru|xchange)[\W\d]/
      /[\ W\d]value(stream|xchange|click)[\W\d]/
      /[\W\d]dim e(xchange|click)[\W\d]/
      /[\W\d](onlineads?|ad(ban ner|click|-?flow|frame|ima?g(es?)?|_id|js|log|serv (er|e)?|stream|_string|s|trix|type|vertisements?|v |vert|xchange)?)[\W\d]/
      /(hot|spy)log/
      /[\W_](b( an|nr)s?|jump|redir(ect|s)?|stat)[\W_]/
      /\W(cy|r) ?c(ou)?nt(er|ed)?\W/
      /p(artner|ing\.cgi|romotion) /
      reklama
      /sp(onsor|ymagic)/
      /top(100|cto)/

    3. Re:AdBlock by the+unbeliever · · Score: 2, Informative

      Ad revenue comes from both "impressions" (displaying the ad on your page, paid by unique host) and "clickthrough" (unique hosts who actually click the link)

    4. Re:AdBlock by vrtladept · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think the poster is on to something. BTW, adblock with filterset G http://www.geocities.com/pierceive/adblock/ doesn't block the google ads on the right, but does take care of all the rest. It greatly enhances my Internet experience!

    5. Re:AdBlock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Woosh!

      'Twas the sound of the joke passing you by.

    6. Re:AdBlock by Ishin · · Score: 4, Informative
      I use flashblock as well as adblock. I'm not big on having talking flash advertisements sneaking up on me and when I want to view a flash I'll click on the flashplay button.

      They make a great team.

    7. Re:AdBlock by teedog · · Score: 2, Informative

      For those of us not savvy enough to write our own Adblock filters, try these filters out. They are updated almost daily!

      http://geocities.com/pierceive/adblock/

      Detailed instructions for those who need it:
      http://geocities.com/pierceive/adblock/-instructio ns.txt

  2. Re:What next? by Karrde712 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, if you look at the breakdown for insurance companies and their policies, you'll see that they give very different rates based on the car you drive, for two reasons: rate of theft, and rate of accidents statistically for those cars.

    --
    You may treat all information submitted above as wild speculation.
  3. Re:most sites i go to by jlar · · Score: 3, Informative
  4. Re:Next battlefield: Rise of inline popups? by coolcold · · Score: 1, Informative

    install adblock in firefox
    click on adblock on bottom right
    find suspicious address (usually iframe or js)
    choose and click ok
    bravo, say bye bye to your friend

    --
    I am harvesting funny/good quotes. Please help by putting them in your sigs :)
  5. Re:Many adverts don't display correctly on firefox by daveewart · · Score: 4, Informative
    Many adverts aren't rendering correctly on firefox [...]

    In that case you aren't writing compliant code, end of discussion.

    --
    "If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it." --- Arthur Kasspe
  6. They Should Read Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox by DarkKnightRadick · · Score: 2, Informative

    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)
  7. They're very simple to create. by Kjella · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  8. Re:A different way of advertising... by hawkeyeMI · · Score: 2, Informative

    If the sites hosting them use iFrames you can block the iFrames with Adblock.

    --
    Error 404 - Sig Not Found
  9. Re:Next battlefield: Rise of inline popups? by slide-rule · · Score: 2, Informative

    I caught a pop-up layer/frame thing yesterday while looking for inflation data. (Sorry I don't have the site address now; The popup iframe was served directly to advert site registration.) Having ad-block already installed, I blocked the iframe and reloaded... I still wound up with an empty pseudo-window thing (had border, title, and "X", but no content) popping up in front of the content I was interested in, so in my mind FF1.0/Ad-block still currently fails here.

  10. Fraudlent Ad Clicking on /. by TFGeditor · · Score: 4, Informative
    --
    Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
  11. Re:A different way of advertising... by Overzeetop · · Score: 2, Informative

    Damn, google ads are usually the only advertising worth checking out, as they're usually targetted.

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
  12. Ads for sales vs. marketing by bitingduck · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.