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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."
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...
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.
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
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)
I block google ads.
if someone goes to the effort of ignoring ads, working around their measures is more likely to piss them off than get their business.
Also if I don't like the site I'm on, I will typically block as many ads as I can (like weather.com), but I don't bother with most ads on slashdot.
I just hate really intrusive ads. Unfortunately, the intrusive ads are the ones that get the attention, and thus the clicks, of the users. Maybe if the advertisers actually offered something I wanted, they would see more success.
Turn off Adblock, Adblock will only kill the source of money for most sites. I believe that pop-ups and large overlays and messy flash ads should all die a slow and painfull ad death, but you have to allow some ads through to support the sites that you visit, that and buy their stuff and subscribe. Runnning servers is not cheap/free, and not everyone is nice enough to do it for free/ especially if the bandwidth bills start to mount up. Without ads, google wouldn't exist, and i can think of a few:) other sites that would die if everyone started blocking ads. So dont be so selfish and shortsighted and switch Ablock off and click on a few ads from time to time and buy stuff.
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
The internet existed before advertising. I'm sure business models can adapt to consumers who wish to be treated with respect.
This is modded funny, it is but is it such a bad idea ?
An extra button or shortcut labeled "help this site" wich opens all ads in background tabs ? I would use it.
The internet wasn't as big as it is, and was mainly funded by universities and research teams.
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Brings to mind something else - there have been stories of click-through scams in India and China, where people are hired to, well, click the ads and make money.
;-)
I remember reading somewhere that most of them were people like housewives and retired folks, looking to make a quick buck. In which case, it's far more likely that those folks will use IE than Firefox.
Perhaps you could have a ratio of sorts - 50 clicks of IE is worth 1 click of Firefox
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'm against having people forced to view ads, it's their right to block them should they wish, but I think people should still be more considerate as to the consequences of doing so.
Take slashdot (as an example), if everyone blocks ads, how would they "adapt"? My guess would be A) they won't, or B) they'll be reduced to making paid subscriptions mandatory, and perhaps increasing the number of advertisements masqueraded as genuine stories (such as the recent Cannon printer promotion). Is that really a better alternative?
It wouldn't even need to display them. Just issue the right http GET commands, and not even listen for the result.
those will drive down the prices people are willing to pay for advertising. sites will notice that their ratio of paying customers to people who click on ads is lower
-mkb
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.
The Internet (specifically WWW) in its current form did not exist before advertising.
:)
True, the s/n ratio was much more reasonable
Commercial sites that sell stuff will continue to exist. Research sites will continue to exist. I'll bet most ad supported sites will continue to find a way to exist also. Let's face it the good ones started out with no ads then decided "well hell, this got popular so let's see if I can't make a little bit of money". If they go away, oh well.
If most people want to block ads and that destroys a business model who are we to say that is wrong? There is certainly nothing illegal about and no realistic way to stop them.
Finkployd
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?
However, 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. By removing the ads, you're not holding up your end of the bargain.
There is no such agreement, as much as some content providers would like to believe so. Furthermore there is no agreement that my browser will accept cookies, or display images, or interpret javascript, or even render as the author intended.
And if you want to get technical, shouldn't the "agreement" be that the user will click on ads? Simply looking at them does not help the provider one bit.
And again, even if you destroy the business model, what are you left with? There doesn't currently appear to be a business model that can replace ad-supported websites.
No, there doesn't. But realiscally they have nobody to blame but themselves. Most people are not offended by text ads or even non intrusive graphical ads (read: no animated gif, no flash, no monkey punching, etc). By flooding the market with annoying, intrusive, and increasing misleading ads, they have drummed up quite a bit of hatred for the whole concept. Witness the results of this. There is nothing anyone can do about it if the population decides that enough is enough.
Go ahead and block ads if you want, but I don't want to see you crying when more and more sites move to subscription or simply shut down.
I won't. Subscription only sites will only survive if people consider the site to be worth it. For example why would I ever subscribe to NYT when I can get the same news from news.google.com and get multiple sources to boot? Google doesn't seem to be in any trouble these days, and they found a clever and agreeable way to handle ads (text based). So either content providers will innovate like this (funny that a text ad can be considered innovation these days, but it is), of they will die. Just like every other industry when change comes their way. Well, either that or they will try to get ad viewing/clicking enforced by legislation I suppose.
Finkployd
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.
But this may not good to the web, the web user and the advertisement business.
The web has been filled with a wrong idea, which is if I put whatever through the web, at large quantity, some people will click/reply it. The first case of this idea is spam, the second one is banner ad. In most case, those ads are't related with the contain of the pages showing them. Also those ads aren't visually compatible with the pages showing them. More and more of them are become annoying, they are hurting the viewers' eyes and wasting their time and bandwidth. They are diseases of the web and dark side of the advertisement business.
Advertisement should be useful and enjoyable to the viewers. Otherwise, it will harm the advertiser. Also, harm the advertisement business.
Thus for the good of web, web user and advertiser, those irrelevant banner advertisement should be stop.
New smart and useful advertisement will adapt the existance firefox and adBlock.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
There's a more binding implicit contract.
Repeat after me: THE STANDARD DOES NOT SPECIFY HOW CLIENTS RENDER
The problem is if ads keep getting more misleading, annoying, and invasive, more and more people will take steps to block them. I'm not saying this is good or bad, I'm just saying that is how it is. You or I cannot change that.
Finkployd
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.
There is no easy way to verify where and when someone decided to buy your product. Of course before the web, it was always that way. Suddenly somewhere and someone determined that you could now directly measure how effective and ad was with all this digital technology and tracking. Well guess what. It is NOT much more accurate then measuring effectiveness of non internet ads. That is the root of the problem. I saw an ad for the car maker Saturn on Lycos last month, I did not run out and by a Saturn because of that ad. I doubt anyone did, was the ad effective? I have no idea but this ad was no different then the same ad placed in a magazine. How many people would have saw that? How many people bought a Saturn because of the that? The same thing advertisers are complaining about with advertising on the internet are the same exact issues advertisers before them have been dealing with for at least a century. How to measure effectiveness of an ad campaign.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
When the advertisers look at their ROI and see that all of the traffic from site x is crap, they will pull the ads and the site you were trying to help will need to find another method to support itself.
I'm not talking about legal agreements here. I'm talking about not being a dick. You don't own the content. If you don't like how the content is presented (including ads), don't use it. It's that simple!
How sad is it that this is the misguided view people have?
Let me fill you in on how the web works. You put a process on a machine that responds to requests on port 80 (or 443, whatever). A client sends one such request and if you respond with a document, than the transaction is finished. No more obligations, nobody is being a dick, and nothing else has to happen.
I am under no obligation to request images referenced in the returned document, or swf files, or even view the entire document. You gave it to me freely as outlined in the various RFCs that document this process.
Just because one day someone decided that they could make money by putting ads on a site does change the fundamental architecture and process flow of an http transaction. The understanding was always that the end user controlled what and how they interpret this data.
Nowhere did the contract (implied or otherwise) change to dictate that the user WILL view the site with IE and have all possible plugins installed, furthermore they will view all images. Text based browsers still exist, special need browsers exist (for the blind for example), browsers that let you turn off images, browsers that download just the html for offline viewing. This is all perfectly acceptable but it does not support the (poorly thought out) business model that involved ads. There is no "ad blocking" going on here, all that happens is a client chooses not to burden their net connection and computer resources by not requesting additional files that they do not want.
And you are right, the client does not own the content, but nobody ever said they did. Conversely if you are giving me data just because I ask for it, you do not have any control or say in how I use the data. Within legal boundaries, obviously I cannot violate your copyright.
How the content is presented is completely irrelevant, since I control that, not the webserver. This is ALWAYS how it has been. Browsers can change stylesheets, background colors, fonts, choose not to display images, etc. This is how the web works. Trying to pretend it is a print media and that the layout and presentation is decided by the provider is just an exercise in self delusion.
Finkployd
Why not take all the ads and display them as a flyer, overlayed across the web page for a few seconds - enough time for anyone sufficiently interested in a product or service to investigate it further by really clicking?
Because people who have an extreme pet peeve for web sites that have the nerve to block all of the content with ads for a few seconds will never come back
...and that's all there is to it.
To save bandwidth, you could do an HTTP HEAD request and find out the length of the file (say 32514 bytes) then issue a GET request asking to resume from 32510, thus saving the advertisers. This would not only register as a completed image view or page view, but would save the advertisers bandwidth as well.