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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."
... 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
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.
But I've been thinking lately -- is this going to change the Internet dramatically? How many web sites rely on advertising revenue, and won't get it anymore when everybody is filtering banners?
For instance, I now read Slashdot with no ads, and I'm not a subscriber. Adblock decreases the value proposition of a Slashdot subscription.
I think what this really should do is tell advertisers that if they get a click-through from a Firefox user, then it's a lot more meaningful in terms of potential sale than a click-through from an IE user. A Firefox user is far more likely to "mean it" if they click on an ad. An IE user's click is probably statistically close to indistinguishable from a random click :-)
John
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
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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)
Your guess holds true with me, at least. When I see an ad, I only click on it if I think it's something that interests me and that I stand a good (50%) chance of buying. Tech stuff appeals to me, as do some t-shirts. So ThinkGeek ads tend to get clickthroughs from me.
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.
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.
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.
>To think that the Internet today can continue without ads based on some magical elf business model is simply absurd.
Its not a for-profit business model you need to consider. Its the model where a bunch of people want to communicate with each other.
There is a lot of good information/advice in the slashdot comments and no one is paying posters anything.
There are gigs and gigs of stuff on p2p and binary newsgroups and, again, no commerical benefit to those that post them.
The Internet will change, but it doens't have to be a for-profit model.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
What if I can't pay attention to the content because the ads are screaming for my attention? I get easily distracted by stuff moving in my peripheral vision, such that I can't concentrate on an article or whatever. It's not like magazines, where the ads just sit there, waiting patiently for your attention.
I personally like the Firefox/Mozilla extention "Click to Play" for Flash movies (though I'd like it to have a whitelist option). Also, the semi-hidden "image.animation_mode once" configuration tweak's useful. Actually, it appears [ESC] will also stop animations (at least under Firefox on my Mac), which is also very useful. I need to try it under Moz, and on my Linux and Windows boxen.
I personally nearly never click on ads, because I'm just plain not interested in what they offer. I have, however, clicked on Google's text ads several times--they were actually relevant! Anyone who feels their product or service is more important than the reason I visited the site doesn't deserve my attention.
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
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
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!
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Too bad brand recognition is becoming less and less important. To be sure, there are many people who will make choices based on brand names but research has shown that this is changing. People are willing to give no-name brands a shot. The more the economy keels, the more people are willing to try less expensive alternatives. Anyway, there was a large article about this in last month's issue. I believe it was called, "The Death of Brands".
If brands do become completely irrelevant, then what?
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
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
"The purpose of marketing is to create confusion. The purpose of sales is to convince the costomer that spending money will end the confusion."
:-)
Don't know where I heard that, or if I'm quoting it correctly, but that's the gist of it.
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