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The Return Of The Pop-Up Ad
SYFer writes "Shortly after upgrading my Macs to OS X 10.3.8, I noticed that I was getting pop-up ads on Safari. It had been so long since I'd seen a pop-up, I completely forgotten how annoying they can be. I went over to Apple's Support site to see if there was a relationship, but learned that the timing is just a coincidence (even though there's a lot of the usual FUD and flailing of arms in the discussion forums). In fact, it turns out that the pop-up advertisers (what's the proper denigrating term here?) have finally defeated the pop-up blocking functionality found in many browsers. MacFixIt is running a front page article on the topic and says 'Contrary to initial reports, this problem isn't limited to Safari; subsequent reports have noted pop-under ads victimizing a number of browsers that provide pop-up-blocking features, including the latest versions of Safari, FireFox, Mozilla, OmniWeb, and Camino.'"
I've been coming across popup ads in firefox even with popup blocking on for a couple of months now, though luckily not too many.
The Farewell Tour II
Why do advertisers/companies think that annoying the hell out of people is a good way to make money?????
the macfixit article mentions that these are pop-under ads. i definitely have noticed a few of these in the past week, using firefox on windows...
it really confused me, since like the submitter, i havent really seen anything like it for over a year...
It's sorta like this:
"SCREW YOU, POPUP-BLOCKING BASTARD!! Now buy our cheap cameras.
Hmm...
Drudgereport seems to pop for me on Firefox all of a sudden. It just started happening w/in the last week.
-- jimmycarter
Having long been a loyal Firefox fan, I thought i'd seen the end of pop-ups after I left IE...that bitch. Turns out not only have they defeated the pop-up blockers, but they have moved on from even java-based ads to weird ones. Check out the example at www.drudgereport.com (that site is notorious for pop-ups). It's another one of those cat & mouse games. Once they programmers plug a pop-up hole, the advertisers will work harder (afterall, their wallet depends on it) to develop a new means of displayer their content. This leads me to one conclusion: Advertisers will become more selective of where to put their ads. On the one hand, it could be profitable to have your ads everywhere if you appeal to every audience... I think several advertisers realized long ago that placing a penis enlargement ad on the weightlifting section of www.sportsauthority.com or on www.gnc.com would prove more profitable than Hello Kitty ads on Slashdot. Ad space will not become more valuable if there is an arms race between programmers and advertisers. The great and horrible thing about something like Windows is that it's limited in its possibilities. It is what it is, so advertisers have to work with what they have. If the exploits are all gone, there are even fewer possibilities for advertising. In other words, advertising must be legit: no more registry hacks and spyware. Given this environment of ad-resistant browsers, there's a huge problem: sites like NYTIMES.COM, Yahoo, etc. that have huge amounts of traffic but few forms of revenue other than ads will have to make a choice: do they stop advertising altogether and abandon that model or do they ask all visiting users to respect their ad policy and disable ad-blocking features. This would be monumental because it would depend on the willingness of the consumer to be advertised to. What I suspect would happen after that is NYTIMES (just an example) would offer premium services that they have not yet developed now (image-laden news feeds to next generation cell phones, perhaps). Once again, competition does force companies to respect the lowest bidder in a way. If google chose to give its new operating system away in 2006, MS would be forced to think about giving a version of Windows away for free. So if a major news outlet chose to do away with the ad-based model, all others would be forced to follow suit to keep their readership. Pretty amazing. I wonder where it will take us. Your thoughts?
Martini Glasses
How does defeating a measure designed to block your ads make good business sense? Does forcing your ads upon someone known to hate your approach produce good results? Does irritation equal a higher rate of return because people who hate your ads see them and have a change of heart? Do they say, "Hey, I had no idea those hateful ads were so interesting and useful to me. I think I'll buy their product."
Cuz my instinct is that when a person takes active efforts to banish you from their lives, forcing your way into their living rooms isn't a cost-effective approach. But hey, I don't work in advertising, as anyone who reads my About page on the headlines site knows. I like advertising in its place, but c'mon, if I kick you out of my house, stay there, please.
I ended up disabling my Javascript and the pop-ups don't bother me anymore.
For the love of dog, please don't spread this brain damage any further!
Compare and contrast:
One of them works with Javascript switched off. One of them is utterly broken with Javascript switched off.
One of them is readable by search engines. One of them is invisible to search engines.
One of them can be read by automated link checkers. One of them will make them bail out.
Stop spreading href="javascript:..." brain damage!
Here's my (educated*) guess - These sites provide metrics to media buyers. Media buyers have no clue about the 'popup ad arms race' - all they know is they have effective response rates from popups and site XYZ can show that they show popups to N visitors. N is just the amount joe ad buyer is looking for. He doesn't know that the only reason this number is so high is due to circumvention of popup blockers and a royally annoyed audience.
So my guess is that it really is the sites that host the ads which aren't being totally honest.
* I was an advertising major in college and have a little experience with media buying - I would suspect that this is what is happening.
Say, what are you paying these websites you're visiting? I don't see a * next to your name, so I take it you're not a subscriber to slashdot. I guess they should just be grateful for your presence, huh?
Contrary to what you may think, the websites don't make any money by just "showing" the ads. So when you don't click on the text ones, you give advertisers an incentive to make ads more and more intrusive.
I thought that was Geraldo Rivera. Also, how will they know how to fix it unless they know how it's broken?
Just turn off javascript in the browser you use. If a site requires javascript then don't go there.
That is not a viable option. 95% of the sites I (and almost every other web user) visit use javascript in some way, shape, or form. I don't want to take the mindset of "Flash is evil, images are a waste of bandwidth, java is pathetic (even though it is, but that's beside the point). The Internet is full of crap so I should just use Lynx." I like to see things other than plain text and images. I can deal with a couple of pop-up ads here and there until the next version of Firefox comes out.
--guru
They may use javascript, but that doesn't mean it's necessary. I've been surfing without javascript (or java, or flash) for many, many years now, and there are only a select few sites that even have reduced functionality because of it.
Netflix, for instance, requires javascript only to allow you to rate films, and works perfectly without javascript other than that.
The only place where javascript is usually needed is with drop-down lists, which is rather stupid, as a single button next to the drop-down would eliminate the need for javascript for them.
If you find a site that needs javascript, complain loudly to the webmaster, and you will see it change, most of the time.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
"I develop website based apps and my site uses pop-ups"
Well don't ! Let that be a lesson to you young man. Pop ups are hated. If a site NEEDS pop ups to work a lot of people just won't use it.
Yeah, I bet you are also one of those people who makes sure that noone can email you unless they already happen to be in your address book.
Seriously, we're trying to fix the problem correctly, as opposed to using some ugly kludgy hack.
Isn't it easier just to use POST instead of coming up with elaborate javascript workarounds to hide the address bar?
Why not fork?
They do not care. The people putting up those ads are not the same people sellling you the piece of crap. The marketers, be it a division within, or a separate company, sells your eyeballs to the retailer/manufacturer. They don't care if you personally want the piece of junk or not. What matters is that you saw it. And they can sell that to someone.
One day, we will all realize that for a large segment of the industry, we are not the consumer. We are the product. The are selling your eyes/ears/minds/personal info. Every day, all day.
What I don't understand is why window.open() is in the api at all. Or rather why there isn't a checkbox in the prefs:
window.open is no-op, except for these specifically white-listed sites:...
Thats an interesting idea, but I doubt that theory works for the majority of people who hate ads. Most people are probably just sick of seeing stupid ads all the time, they don't worry that they might click them.
printf("Goodbye cruel world!\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b");
I hate hearing this term because it makes it sound like a webbrowser is inherintely designed to show pop-up windows. It is simply a JavaScript command. If your web browser chooses not to implement it, then it doesn't show up. There is nothing to "block" you simply "ignore" the command to show the pop-up window.
Wouldn't that also block user-initiated javascript popups? Many sites use these legitamately (though they are annoying).
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
> people using pop-up blockers do not want to see their ads
Advertisers don't give a damn about that.
They know that some of those people -- admittedly a minute percentage, but in a game of millions a 0.1% click-and-buy rate can make you rich -- do not maintain the minimal essential commitment of an online citizen and refuse to ever buy something as a result of invasive, unsolicited advertising.
This is also the reason the telemarketing associations oppose the "Do Not Call" lists. They know that a portion of the people on these lists can still be persuaded to buy things from them.
Not always, plus it isn't elaborate window.open() location=no.
Sometimes you use querystrings that pass values and you validate any input. Plus if someone really knows how to hack at all post won't stop a damn thing (I can write an example in about 30 seconds to demonstrate). In web apps like C programs you always assume the data you are processing is trying to do something it shouldn't, and as a consequence you validate everything. I don't fuck around when it comes to HIPAA. Going to jail for not properly securing PHI is not an option.
Plus click reply and look at the location bar on slashdot.
IE7 wish checkbox: ignore onLoad / onUnload
This simple option in the upcoming IE7 (or any other browser) will KILL ALL UNSOLICITED POPUPS FOR GOOD! No more 3rd party popup blockers will be needed anymore!
As a stopgap measure, HTTP proxies can be 'recoded' to 'rename' onLoad / onUnload on the HTML that passes through them so the Javascript interpreter won't see them. However, this tatic will likely be construed as some sort of copyright violation by the media bigwigs and will be fiercely opposed....
The only unblockable advertising left will be that of webmasters PERSONALLY hosting ads alongside their content on their domains....
Why do we want to surrender functionality? Don't give up the web to those that abuse it. Kick them off it by boycotting. Google has almost singlehandedly re-launched the dotcom boom by getting the eyeballs of people who choose to reward good sites and ignore bad tactics such as pop-ups, excessive banners, animations, and blurring between content and advertizement. You have the power to determine content. Don't bow out by surrending both the content and the functionality.
This is my point though. If you don't trust any input from the query string, or POST or what have you, why are you going to make your users go through the extra song and dance of enabling popups?
Why not fork?
It would seem that the problem which exists is as follows:
Since you really can't dissuade the middlemen in a material way, you need to dissuade the businesses from continuing in employing such practices.
The best way to do this would be to create a list of businesses which employ such techniques and enter them into a boycott database. Ala RBL.
Another method might be to employ a plugin which, when it encounters a site which attempts a pop-up, pop-under, or pop-revenge and the site is not a pop-approved site, the plugin will continue to suck a variety of files from the site. Be it the advertisement media or something else "heavy" on the page.
With enough people with the plugin and continually sucking bandwidth from the business's site, this will incur a bad-behaviour-curbing financial cost to the companies which insist on making money at the expense of web-surfers.
If enough people have the plugin, then the business' ill-behaved website will get a "time out". Businesses, after a while, would potentially get the hint and stop employing such techniques... or take the MPAA/RIAA route and start suing their own potential customers.
Either avenue hurts their business or their business image.
If businesses claim to be looking out for their customers, they should act like it. They should conduct business legally AND ethically. To employ means to circumvent a protective function on a web browser is basically, breaking into someone's house to post banners and advertisements. It is, in my mind, just a stone's throw away from malware/adware/spyware.
Winged Power Photography
As (almost) everything in the IT field, people will always figure out a new way to overcome the blockings.
:(
So, if those are "official" pop-ups, the ideal would be to boycott the advertisers... Start a campaign against them... etc... Ok, it is naive and idealistic, but it is the only way they would feel for sure the pain on their side, too.
Unfortunately unrealistic. Oh well.
Yes, I've used gmail, and though gmail uses javascript, it doesn't NEED to for any reason. About the only functionality you would lose is keyboard shortcuts if they made a normal HTML version of it.
Yahoo mail is the same. It was updated with a much better interface, but in the process, they made buttons like DELETE depend on javascript. There's no rational reason for this.
No, there are perfectly good alternate sites 99% of the time... News sites are a good example, some of them are starting to make their links javascript code (for no reason), so I just avoid a few of those news sites... there are plenty of others.
Yes. Now ask me if I care. The small speed-up you get from one site can't possibly be worth all the problems that come along with javascript.
But besides that, you seem to be someone that believes that web-pages should be desktop applications, not just documents... I couldn't disagree more. Just imagine where we'd be today, if the DNS system was just a form on a web-page, and not it's own protocol.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That will work, a little, in the short term, but not much.
You can't restrict yourself to a handful of websites your entire life. Sooner or later, you are going to visit a new site, and they are going to have thousands of pop-ups. Maybe it'll be a site you just visit once, or perhaps a site by someone who doesn't care how much they annoy you... Trying to convince everyone to restrain themselves from using the tools you've given them, is not a permanent solution to any problem.
You might as well try complaining to spammers who purposefully try to get around your spam filters...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I believe you weren't formally introduced to Gmail.
Javascript can be a good thing.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
That's nice, but completely not germane.
We are discussing techniques that can overcome the popup blockers currently in use.
Of course adding sites one by one to your block list, either using adblock or hosts will work, but the point of popup blockers is that they are supposed to allow you to view sites which otherwise would display popups.
Sites who serve their own ads could use this technique and if your popup blocker doesn't work you'd have to block the whole site.
Which would kind of miss the point if that site has some content that you were going there for in the first place.
Actually the CSS popups are beginning to be the most popular AND they are the most difficult to block!
Me here...
Actually thats too strong a word.
Now that I think about it, I dont know how I perfer it. Two basic ways come to mind:
1. Setup the site with raw images. This means the default context menu works - Save As, Open in Tab, Open In New Window.
2. Sites with an image browser. Once a thumbnail is clicked, then you can use next and prev to step between images. In which case I tend to open the image browser in a tab.
Point being that a site that opens in a new window tends to break my tabbed browsing, and also breaks the context menu functionality.
As someone who is regularly annoyed by windows smaller than the screen-size (or moving themselves for that matter) I would strongly suggest you leave the decision wether a new window should be opened to the user and let them resize the window as appropriate.
Linux is not Windows