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."

Comments

The users...

[leonmergen]

... 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 ?

Re:AdBlock

[Proaxiom]

I use Adblock also, and I love it.

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.

Re:What next?

[plover]

I think the same argument can be made for Volvo drivers. Volvos are marketed as "safe" cars, which means they're more likely to be sold to "careful" drivers. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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 :-)

There are a number of factors...

[kaleco]

...to consider. On Slashdot, I definitely click on ads on more than 0.5 percent of page loads. I do it moreso in Firefox since I can load the advertised page in another tab, but the most important reason for me making that click is that the adverts are relevant to me

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 :)

Next battlefield: Rise of inline popups?

[John_Booty]

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.

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 .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.

Don't block ads, block popups , Flash, Anims, etc

[guidryp]

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.

Good! Time to decommercialise the Internet...

[pandrijeczko]

Okay, call me an old duffer but wasn't there a time prior to the commercialisation (Ugh! I hate that word, too much like "commercials"!) of the Internet when military/academic people just used the ARPAnet for the communication of important information? I don't ever recall any business being given the right to make money on the Internet...

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.

Re:AdBlock

[GoofyBoy]

>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.

Comparing Percantages

[White Roses]

This is probably redundant, but 0.5% of 90% of the browser share so far outwieghs 0.11% of 5% of the browser share that advertisers, who ought to interested in the actual absolute numbers of people who click on the ads, probably don't give a crap whether or not Firefox users click on anything. I'm using Firefox now, and have done for a while. I know I am in the minority. It's nice. I click on ads once in a while. But I also block pop-ups.

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.

Re:AdBlock - will cause evolutionary 'Arms Race'

[goatpunch]

There is certainly nothing illegal about and no realistic way to stop them.

No way to stop them? AdBlock currently uses a very simple wildcard to filter out Ads. If it's use becomes widespread, you can be sure that sites will become smarter about strucuring their pages so that it is difficult or impossible to block Ads without blocking text and/or image content.

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!

Re:Ads for sales vs. marketing

[sootman]

"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. :-)