Floaters are the New Pop-Ups

windowpain writes "A prior Slashdot article discussed the ever-increasing ability of pop-up ads to break through adblocking software. Now the New York Times (registration required) is reporting that pop-ups are pooped out, replaced by those annoying "floaters" that are even more resistant to conventional pop-up blocking software. From the article: 'Not to be confused with pop-up ads, which open new windows and clutter virtual desktops, these floaters, or overlays, or popovers (no one can agree on a name), can evade the pop-up blockers that many Web browsers have incorporated. In the last year, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, which collects and analyzes data on Web advertising, the frequency of these ads has risen markedly, by almost 32 percent from December 2003 to December 2004, while pop-ups in that period declined by 41 percent.'"

Comments

Not a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

With Mozilla/Firefox these new ads are actually not a problem. Just use a userContent.css file to block them.

For example, I found some that use divs with IDs, so I just added something like:

div#GF__p_0,
div#floatpop { display: none !important;}

And, poof, they're gone. Sometimes it can be difficult to figure out what to block, but the Webdeveloper extension can help quite a bit.

Re:Not a problem

[danormsby]

Also not a problem with lynx.

Re:Not a problem

[ackthpt]

That's helpful, I've been resorting to disabling javascript for some of them, but it screws with some sites i need javascript enabled for.

There's alwasy some pricks trying to ruin the web for everyone else.

Re:Not a problem

[DrEldarion]

With any browser they're not a problem.

http://www.proxomitron.info

Re:Not a problem

[suso]

Heh, isn't that the way it goes with almost all technology. New technologies cause new problems that would not be a problem on old technologies. Its as if we are moving in reverse rather than forward.

Re:Not a problem

[R.D.Olivaw]

There's alwasy some pricks trying to ruin the web for everyone else.

I hate pop-ups and floaters as much as the next guy but c'mon, you're on their website! It's not like they're sticking their ads on every website you visit withotut he site's approval. If you don't like their business model, do not visit the sites. simple.

Re:Not a problem

[shird]

Yeah, until they start using random names for the floats.

The solution is to not allow layered content like that to cover up the page in the actual browser core.

This is similar to blocking popups using a *popup.html* filter instead of actual logic in the browser to prevent windows from appearing unless the user has clicked the mouse and requested them.

Re:Not a problem

[buro9]

Not all adverts do have div ID's though, but thankfully we're still well within the realm of being able to use Adblock to nuke them.

The adverts are usually served up by third party advert servers and thus looking at the adblock list of blockable elements... just block all items that are not on the domain for the site you're looking at.

That takes care of 99% of floaters, popups, etc.

The real problem is the next stage of advert evolution, which will be when content providers still use third parties to sell and supply adverts, but start to act as proxies for the adverts.

When content providers are acting as proxies and adverts appear to come from the same domain and content management system as the content... then adverts will be VERY hard to block.

The prevalence of adblock is going to increasingly push companies towards such solutions.

They'll still need to monetise their sites, and whilst it used to be that they didn't care for a minority of people blocking adverts, when that is a fast growing minority and it's affecting their revenues... they will find ways around it.

Just as the DRM rules state that if you can see and hear it you can bypass DRM and copy it... maybe a rule should be created for adverts: If you can see or hear the content, then advertisers CAN find a way to make you see or hear advertisements.

Re:Not a problem

[arkanes]

It's a hard concept for advertisers to grasp, but annoying people doesn't work when they have the power to easily turn you off. A few years ago, pop up blocking was a pretty technical thing and you needed to be a geek to have it. Then it moved into the mainstream. Same will happen here. People don't bother to block adds which are unobtrusive and non-annoying. Use those, and all will be well.

Re:Not a problem

[JSBiff]

While I agree that it is kind of a band-aid approach, your approach doesn't work either. If you disallow divs to overlap any other content, then you have just disabled a lot of non-offending uses of dhtml. For example, drop down menus that don't use flash (really, I'd rather have dhtml menus than flash menus). Lots of different types of animation effects (like, for example, maybe a web-app would use a 'slide-out' notifier to alert you when you have new messages, like when using a web-forum with private messaging built in).

Some people use this in a highly annoying way, it's true. But the solution is NOT "to not allow layered content like that to cover up the page in the actual browser core." If you are going to do that, you might as well just turn off javascript, which most browsers will let you do, already.

Re:Not a problem

[Seahawk]

The real problem is the next stage of advert evolution, which will be when content providers still use third parties to sell and supply adverts, but start to act as proxies for the adverts.

I have a simple solution - don't use their site :)

I dont think i know any site that i couldnt live without that use ads to get their revenue.

So if thats what it comes to - fine, i wont be using such a site at all.

Re:Not a problem

[tehshen]

I have never found obvious names useful, such as 'popup.html' as you say - they either don't block enough or too much. I remember Adblock blocked the Hitchhiker's trailer a while back - its URL included /banners/ for some reason.

The best way, I have found, is to block the companies that provide the ads. Searching for *doubleclick* blocks all doubleclick ads; *googlesyndication* similarly. This is effective as only rarely does the site host the ads themselves - and when they do, they are likely to be interesting to you.

Re:Not a problem

[spun]

Enough people don't want to turn off ads, or don't know how, to make this profitable. I've noticed that many ads on TV seem deliberately designed to irritate through stupidity and repetition. Obviously irritation as an advertising strategy actually works with enough people to make it profitable. Consider that many of the people who read slashdot are (or like to think they are) more intelligent than the average person. I don't think the attitude expressed here is indicative of the attitude of the average web-surfer. A poster further down says his users would happily double click on a land-mine just to see what happens. I think that is more indicative of the general attitude of the average web-surfer. As long as there are stupid people, advertisers will cater to them.

Obviously, what we need to do is get rid of all the stupid people. I suggest telling them there is a giant space goat coming to eat the planet and putting them all on some kind of space ark.

Re:Not a problem

[shird]

Yes thats most definately true. However many sites previously used popups to display such content and yet the world hasnt come to an end with the introduction of popup blockers.

Menus and dialogs etc are tricky though, as the browser cant detect when the user has requested it or not, and in some cases you may want it even when you don't manually request it.

Perhaps instead would be a way where you could hold ctrl and click a layer and it would disappear. Too many times Ive seen ads with the little 'x' to close button hidden away, one of these days the ads will start not bothering to even have close buttons. Or the close buttons will count as a click.

I think theres an extension for Firefox that lets you dismiss elements like this already actually.

Re:Not a problem

[JSBiff]

Perhaps instead would be a way where you could hold ctrl and click a layer and it would disappear.

That is definitely a better solution. You still have to see the ad initially, but it at least returns control to the user. I'm all about user-control when it comes to the web. Control of your browser and your computer should rest with *you*, not some random, untrusted site on the public internet.

Re:Not a problem

[josh3736]

For Windows users, it's not a problem at all. The Proxomitron solves every anti-Web annoyance need. It acts as a rewriting HTTP proxy based on regexps that runs on your own machine. If you see an ad that makes it through, just whip up a quick regexp and poof, it's gone, no matter what domain it comes from.

Advertisers might be able to come up with new ways to make me see or hear their ads, but it will only happen once. It takes me only 2 minutes to ensure I never see their ad again. Honestly, when will Internet advertisers understand that when I've gone out of my way to block your ads, I really don't want to see them? I'm not going to say, "ooh! This guy figured out a way to get around my ad filters, he must make good products!" Get real. I'll never buy anything from X10 just because they were one of the biggest purveyors of popups back in the day.

Annoying people is not a good way to convince them to buy your product.

Re:Not a problem

[JSBiff]

Oh, thought of one more response heh.

However many sites previously used popups to display such content and yet the world hasnt come to an end with the introduction of popup blockers.

That is partly because, in the case of popups, you can distinguish between a popup that the user wants (e.g. they clicked a link which opens content in a new window), and automatic popups. Popup blockers still allow new windows when you click a link, typically. They just kill automatic popups.

Unfortunately, in the case of dhtml layers, it *is* harder, as you said, to distinguish. Maybe someone could think up a solution though, that doesn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were.

Re:Not a problem

[datadriven]

You mean like slashdot?

Re:Not a problem

[KontinMonet]

And what site is that? Oh! It's a US site trying to sell me a truck I don't want or a bank I can't use 'cos I'm in Europe accessing a .COM or .NET site...

Re:Not a problem

[cybergrue]

When content providers are acting as proxies and adverts appear to come from the same domain and content management system as the content... then adverts will be VERY hard to block.

Actually, this depends on how they do it. I've seen lots of sites that host the advertising used on their site, and not the advertisers proxy. Sites that do this, usually have the ads stored in their own directory, something like /ads or /advertisment, or even /sponsors. The adblock plug-in for firefox allows wildcards, so you just have to put in a wild card in the ad dir, and presto, all the ads stored in that dir are gone. This even works for proxy servers that are numbered, like 2.annoying.advertising.proxy.com. just replace the 2 with a *, and it, and any advertising from any of the annoying.advertising.proxy.com domain no longer appear.

However, adversisers, and some ad driven web sites are getting wist to these tricks, and are hiding the ads in the same directory they use for their content, something like /images. Now, putting a wild card into this directory means that none of the images are loaded for this site, not just the ads. These sites are also advoiding keywords that can be filtered out. Like having the word advertisement appear in the image name as it is possible to filter them out too easily.

I have seen these floating DHTML ads for a few years now, and they are quite annoying. Fortunately, they were few and far between, however this situation has to be fixed now before it becomes problematic. First of all, turning off Flash does not work, as Firefox puts an opaque placeholder graphic in its place, which covers up the content. One solution is to make that box semi-transparent, so you can see whats underneath it. I had to launch flash a couple of times, just to be able to launch the animation so I could an embedded butten to close it. Also, Firefox should never allow the right click mouse menu to be overridden (I have no problem with stuff being added to it). This would allow you to right click on flash or DHTML floating images, and Adblock them. Firefox currently allows you to neither. To ad block flash, you have to click on the Adblock icon on the lower right hand corner of the browser, and search for embeded objects. For DHTML, its even worse.

Fortunately, the Open source nature of Firefox will allow this issue to be resolved well before it becomes mainstream, and several years before anyone over at Microsoft event thinks about doing something about it.

Re:Not a problem

[jo_ham]

Of course, you run the risk of being sent to prison under terrorism charges if you use Lynx, since the clueless web admin doesn't recognise the user agent and assumes you are hacking their site.

Adverts of Prison....

hmm, I'll take the risk, I can't stand web adverts.

Re:Not a problem

[CoderBob]

One thing bothers me about your argument:

If you disallow divs to overlap any other content, then you have just disabled a lot of non-offending uses of dhtml. For example, drop down menus that don't use flash (really, I'd rather have dhtml menus than flash menus). Lots of different types of animation effects (like, for example, maybe a web-app would use a 'slide-out' notifier to alert you when you have new messages, like when using a web-forum with private messaging built in).

Why do we even need drop-down menus on websites? Whatever happened to decently laid out sites that didn't contact the server every 10 seconds to see if there was an update? Web-forums with private messages? Let them notify me of a new message when I request a new page. Real-time dynamic content does not belong in a browser window.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned here, but I don't see "the web" as something I want to turn into application software. Not over HTTP. Leave my HTTP alone, let me browse through information, maybe hit some server-side app here and there for quasi-dynamic content. Enough with the client-side stuff. The only thing I can even see running client side is a validation script that just checks to see values are entered into a form. Not that they are right (other than format, like ###-###-#### for a US phone #). Other than that, keep it on your damn server.

Re:Not a problem

[Sparr0]

I would like to counter this with a link to http://www.admuncher.com which is transparent and more featureful, imho.

Re:Not a problem

[AmoHongos]

It is just a symptom of the disease (monopolism in EVERY market sector)
I'm just as much of a hippie as the next guy, but I'm not sure that "monopolism" is the word you're looking for. A true monopoly has no competitors, which means it has no reason to advertise.

Re:Not a problem

[SIGPUNKT]

Hey, dude -- it's 2005 calling. Why don't you drop by and see us sometime?

Re:Not a problem

[KaiserSoze]

Why do we even need drop-down menus on websites? Whatever happened to decently laid out sites that didn't contact the server every 10 seconds to see if there was an update? Web-forums with private messages? Let them notify me of a new message when I request a new page. Real-time dynamic content does not belong in a browser window.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned here...

Yes, you are old-fashioned. Put yourself out to pasture. Drop-down menus on a web site replicate the common user interface of the menu in a desktop application. The user has implicit understanding of how they work. For example, ALA has an article up in their Usability section on how to fashion clean, cross-browser horizontal drop-downs. So find something else to rail about, like how those damn neighbor's kids are up to no good.

Re:Not a problem

[marcello_dl]

In the UK, the usual tactics are the sounds of household accidents (plates falling onto the floor, fork/knives falling onto plates, children screaming, the TV blinking out into silence or white noise). I guess the advertisers are targetting those parents who are likely to be in the kitchen while their offspring are in the living room watching TV. Any "bad sound" is going to make them run into the living room to see what is happening...

... until somebody ignores a bad sound thinking it's a TV ad, has a genuine household accident, and sues the TV network and the advertised product makers for damages?

Re:Not a problem

[snorklewacker]

Irratation on TV works because it grabs your attention, and there isn't much you can do ab--***30-SECOND-SKIP***. Well, ok, but the PVR is not yet completely ubiquitous.

However, I find myself keeping ad banners unblocked on a site ... _until_ they start flashing, shaking, and being generally obnoxious. If I can't conveniently scroll it off the screen or it appears on every page, out comes adblock, and that banner spot is gone FOREVER. It doesn't pay to cross the line on the web.

You want to show me "brought to you by", or reserve even half the space on the page for ads, go for it. Just keep it calm. You get in my face like a used car salesman though, I'm gone from your site for the day, and your advertiser is gone from my browser for good.

Re:Not a problem

[spun]

Perhaps you are right about that. One thing I've noticed though: creative, amusing or artful ads don't work on me. Oh, I admire the ad agency who made the ad, but it still won't make me buy the product or like the company placing the ad.

I like to think I'm a lot like many other people here. When making purchasing decisions, I decide what I want based on rational criteria such as price, features, customer service and so forth. I tell myself that none of the millions of ads I've seen in my life are shaping my decisions.

I remember reading a short SF story about consumerisation in the future. People are working ten hour days, six and seven days a week to buy all this useless crap that is specifically designed to break down in three months. Car tires, for instance, must match groove patterns in the roads (which are changed every few months) or the vibrations will destroy the tire and car. People spend all their free time figuring out deals in buying clubs. Finally, ad companies come up with these subliminal mind control antennas. The main character ends up stopping at the store for a carton of cigarettes (which he doesn't smoke) and putting them absentmindedly in the glove compartment with all the other unsmoked cartons of cigarettes.

Honestly, how do we know we aren't being influenced?

Re:Not a problem

[snorklewacker]

> I think theres an extension for Firefox that lets you dismiss elements like this already actually.

It's called "Nuke Anything". It's a dead-simple DOM hack, and it's not persistent though, so AdBlock provides a more long-term solution.

Re:Not a problem

[CoderBob]

I guess I should have been more clear.

Files should go over FTP. Hands down. That's what FTP is there for. Images in a web page? I can see a legitimate use there. Static content. Animated GIFs are annoying, yes, but I can get around them. Images are easy to disable.

DHTML, to me, is more than just text. I would almost call it a virus. (This is not intended to point fingers at those of you who use DHTML. I'm sure you write decent code that isn't causing me problems. I still don't like it.) It quit being "text" when it became code. Its still in text format, sure. It also is code that is being executed on my system that I didn't authorize to run. I didn't install it. I didn't sign an agreement. And I sure as hell don't want to run most of it, because it serves no purpose other than to make the page slower.

I realize /. uses Javascript. I can't say I approve, but I still come here because I enjoy the /. experience. Was my experience enhanced by the Javascript? No. Could this page work just as well as static HTML that backends form submissions off a server-side app? Yes. Would I prefer that? Hells yeah.

I just don't see a legitimate reason to need client-side scripting. At all. Advertising? A linked image or text works just fine. Blocking my right-click access? Bullshit. Menus? What's wrong with the menu on the left side of /.? It's easy to naviage. Most people I know who are basic PC users find menus in apps confusing. "Why is this here? Shouldn't it be over there?" I'm not against casual users, I just don't see what the point is of having this. It is unnecessary.

Of course, at this point I've realized that trying to explain my reasoning/position has become difficult, probably due to my poor response earlier in the thread. So I'm going to let this die after this post.

Re:Not a problem

[iabervon]

You have a very different idea of "non-offending" than I do. I personally find dhtml menus worse that floaters, because the ads at least provide revenue for the site, while the menus do nothing but obscure the content. I'd much rather sites use flash, because I don't have flash support, so I don't have to deal with them.

Also, turning off javascript is not necessarily sufficient, because the site can just use CSS to place the ad in your way and javascript to remove it, and javascript also has uses which don't involve messing up the page.

Re:Not a problem

[sacrilicious]

Honestly, how do we know we aren't being influenced?

My previous post's thesis is really more along the lines that pointedly irritating ads represent a slide in aesthetic quality of ads (the craftsmanship that goes into them, and - I'd be willing to speculate - their effectiveness) and a precipitating slide of the standards used to scrutinize them by their commissioners. I think there's little doubt that ads influence people, though there's much doubt about the degree to which they influence people.

I'm probably more hostile to ads than most people. If I see an ad with a smiling person in it, I immediately imagine that the smile is to put me at ease while that person (or the entity they front) picks my pocket. And on the rare ocassion I accidentally let an ad onto my tivo and into my kid's line of sight, it's startling how negatively the ads affect my kid's sense of being content with what we have.

Re:Not a problem

[Feanturi]

I hate pop-ups and floaters as much as the next guy but c'mon, you're on their website!

It might be nice to just not go there, but because of the interlinked nature of the web, you are drawn to a site from another site by a link that appears to interest you, such as a story on Slashdot. You go to the page, ready to read up on it, and now have this big annoying floaty-thing hovering right over the article you're trying to read. You came here to read something of interest to you, do you just leave now in disgust, or wait for the thing to go away and carry on? Either way you've just had your chain yanked. It really blows.

Re:Not a problem

[coopaq]

If you don't like their business model, do not visit the sites. simple.

This is a tired response. Nothing you can do about new sites you've never been to. You get annoyed when a popover shows up.

When you've been reading a site for years with interesting content and some new PHB ads popovers to the site you are going to have to find a way to block the popover less you be annoyed.

I'm sorry, but unplugging the interent and shutting it all down and walking away is a weak response to a new problem that needs to get licked.

The issue deserves attention.

Re:Not a problem

[LMariachi]

Imploded. CRTs are vacuum tubes.

Re:Not a problem

[TheWizardOfCheese]

One thing I've noticed though: creative, amusing or artful ads don't work on me.

That's what you think.

Honestly, how do we know we aren't being influenced?

Now you are on the right track. However, there is no spooky, subliminal hypnosis involved. It's just that we are far more susceptible to advertising than we think. Companies advertise for only one reason: it works. New products have uncertain demand, but in established industries it is fairly easy to predict how sales will respond to advertising. Yet nobody thinks they are influenced by ads. Likewise, it is easy to prove that physically attractive political candidates have a material advantage over uglier ones, but while we may be willing to to believe that other voters could be so superficial, we all know that we ourselves are wiser ... don't we?

Re:Not a problem

[Kehvarl]

I like to think I'm a lot like many other people here. When making purchasing decisions, I decide what I want based on rational criteria such as price, features, customer service and so forth. I tell myself that none of the millions of ads I've seen in my life are shaping my decisions.

However, that turns out not to be the case. (Sorry, I just have been looking for an excuse to use that line.) In my Technical Writing course, I've noticed that the examples that the majority of the class will fixate on, and consider the best examples tend to be the colorful, flashy, uninformative ones. They've been conditioned to accept advertising as aprimary source of information and will make decisions based on it. I find it disheartening when I'm the only individual in class who actually reads the content of an example to find the one I like best.

Re:Not a problem

[spun]

Says nothing about stupidity though. Have you ever seen a mentally challenged person working at, say, McDonalds? Do they not work damn hard compared to average worker there?

I think the brain dead masses would surprise you if we automated everything that could be automated, gave them the option of living in an enclave/commune with $DRUG_OF_CHOICE or bettering themselves and contributing something to the community at large. Personally, I think most people would try to contribute. If contributing to the community weren't a natural drive of most humans, we would never have gotten where we are. I think it's a much more powerful drive than any purely selfish greed-based drive. In most people.

Again, this is just my opinion, but I think that far more dangerous than the people with no ambition/work ethic are the people with too much ambition and no empathy/community spirit. They are the real blood-suckers, not the passively lazy.

Solution

[dsginter]

Solution Here.

Brand new, from what I hear.

Floaters are not evil.

[FTL]

There's no problem with floaters, they are no more evil than with blinking text, bad colour schemes or any other number of ugly special effects. They are simply an attribute of the website. If you don't like them (I hate them), click the back button and go somewhere else.

The problem with popups is that clicking the back button was not enough, one had to clean up the mess -- sometimes a mess that would keep respawning itself. Floaters look superficially similar to popups, but floaters are completely contained within the window. That makes them just another (usually bad) design feature.

Re:Floaters are not evil.

[sploo22]

Alternatively, you can think of them as popups that stay contained within your browser window. Just think, the tabbed browsing revolution has finally arrived in the world of popups! Thank you Mozilla!

Re:Floaters are not evil.

[pete6677]

I'm not saying that these ads are evil, but I question the wisdom of forcing ads on people who have taken steps to block them. What does the advertiser expect to accomplish? If their site is struggling so much that the only way they can keep it online is by forcing obnoxious ads on people, the internet would be a better place without them. Make your ads relevant and not super annoying, and maybe people will actually be interested in them.

Re:Floaters are not evil.

[j0e_average]

No, they are not evil.

Actually, they indicate that you're getting enough fiber in your diet!

My own stool, sir, are perfect. They are gigantic, and have no more odour than a hot biscuit" Dr John Kellogg (Anthony Hopkins)

Re:Floaters are not evil.

[Happosai]

That's not true.

With pop-ups/unders, you can get rid of them by closing the browser window that contains them -- this is something that is under the control of the browser application/OS, not the web page.

Floaters are integrated into the page content, so there are no standard browser controls available to remove them -- you have to rely on any provision that has been made within the floater/containing web page to remove it.

I would not trust that clicking on part of a floater will remove it and not just link to an advert page, or even worse, exploit a browser vunerability -- afterall, plenty of pop-ups use underhand techniques (e.g. mimicing OS dialogue boxes) to try and get people to click on them.

[Happosai]

Re:Floaters are not evil.

[shird]

I do agree with you in most part, and am unsure why you would get modded down. However.. many of those 'floaters' originate from external sites through banner ads placed on the site, which then 'breaks' out of the banner space and interrupts your browsing of the original site.

This tends to happen because ads are 'inlined' rather than iframed, to prevent adblockers and such, and therefore can happily slap layers all over the whole browser window.

If there were an option to turn those layers off, Id certainly use it, I havent seen it used for anything other than ads, and popping up dialogs in hotmail perhaps?.

Im sure there are a few sites which use layers for laying out content legitametly, but Id rather they choose a different design or require to be put on a white list than put up with content flashing about my screen over what Im trying to read.

windows

[fideli]

I saw one of those on my OS X screen the other day. It actually looked like a Windows window. Kinda funny, really. Nostalgic for me anyway.

No Reg Link

[KaSkA101]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/technology/circu its/24popp.html?ex=1266987600&en=22bde7cc89dd70a5& ei=5090&partner=rssuserland No Registration Link

Rate of change correlation

[stecoop]

I bet the rate of change for pup-up decline was correlated to the rate of change to Mozilla users until Microsoft SP2 was forced to offer pop up blocking. The floaters can have their day and again Mozy users have a slight advantage. If IE users get tired of it then I imagine the only company in an real danger would be Macromedia from people simply refusing to install advertisement generating software on their own machine.

Re:Rate of change correlation

[robogun]

I haven't installed Flash in a long time. There is nothing Flash can do that html cannot, except make the page cutesy and ten times longer to load. It also makes it impossible to navigate.

But the big bonus is just by not installing Flash, at least half of ads don't load -- in particular, the most obnoxious ones.

"Remove this object"

[sl8r]

There's a nice lil extension to firefox called "Remove this object" that gets rid of those stupid "floaters" (i call 'em div layers, only cos that's what they are).

Re:"Remove this object"

[slavemowgli]

Here's a convenient link for those too lazy to Google for it: NukeAnything. Note, however, that this is a one-time nuke only; the object will be back the next time you view the page.

Re:"Remove this object"

[erykjj]

Sorry, the link above should be this.

Re:"Remove this object"

[GlassUser]

Here's a convenient link for those too lazy to Google for it: NukeAnything. Note, however, that this is a one-time nuke only; the object will be back the next time you view the page.

Something similar has been a part of my IE Stuff pack for a while now. I consider it invaluable.

http://www.jordanmills.com/odds.asp

AdBlock

[martingunnarsson]

I guess the question is if something like AdBlock can filter out these without getting a lot of false positives, making the browser render of a lot of pages incorrectly.

One advantage

[gowen]

The legitimate, non-advertising uses of these things are so limited (at least, compared to pop up windows), that the ad-blocking software will catch up with them in no time, and most people will lose nothing by deactivating the appropriate bits of javascript.

Obviously...

[larsoncc]

I think that at this point, it's obvious we need a "block javascript from this domain" extension or a "block javascript from this web folder" extension.

Same with iFrames (which is already implemented well in AdBlock)...

It's so obvious I'd be surprised if the functionality doesn't already exist.

Re:Obviously...

[davez0r]

dude, it's in adblock!

you can block scripts as well as iframes for the page from the little adblock menu in the lower right.

I wish...

[Quasar1999]

I wish that the pop-over ads would only pop-over when I hovered over them... a bunch of ads from Dell I've seen seem to do that... and I appreciate that... it sits there like a banner, and when I hover over it, it expands and does it's nice flash ad... but the ones that do it 5 seconds after the sight loads (car adverts on CNN anyone?) I really hate... it's annoying and ensures that I will never consider watching it...

A bit of courtesy from the advertisers and I am willing to watch it if it catches my fancy, but if they throw it in my face, they ain't getting anything but rage from me.

Raise your hands

[bigtallmofo]

How many internet marketers would, if the technology were available, opt to have a physical hand come out of someone's monitor and slap them in the face until they read your ad?

I just wonder where some marketers draw the line.

Re:Raise your hands

[Tackhead]

> How many internet marketers would, if the technology were available, opt to have a physical hand come out of someone's monitor and slap them in the face until they read your ad?
>
>I just wonder where some marketers draw the line.

"There's a line?"
- Some marketoon

I can only say this: Given that marketroids tend to surf with IE, Flash enabled, and Javascript enabled, and I tend to surf with Mozilla, Flash disabled, and Javascript disabled (through the use of the PrefBar extension), and have never seen a "floater" anywhere other than my toilet bowl, I'd very much like to see an over-the-Internet face-slapping technology developed.

Re:Raise your hands

[Anonymous Coward]

I just wonder where some marketers draw the line.
--
they don't. they do what it takes to sell sell sell. They do it because it puts money in their pocket, and pays for the stuff you are trying to read. As long as the media owners allow them to do it, and the technology is there to exploit, they will exploit all of it. The best possible way for everyone to fight this stuff is to *never* click on it.

Then, as in 1999-2001 advertisers will realize that internet marketing is crap, and the bubble will burst again, which incidentally will cause the media owners to not be able to make money, and have to shut down, or cut back on the content they provide.

If you want the good, you have to take the bad. Content costs money, a lot of it. If you can't pay people to write it, where do you think it will come from?

Those annoying ads, pay for the content behind them. If you don't like the ads, live without the content.

They annoy me as much as the next guy, but they are there because they have to be and I understand that. Unfortunately money makes the world go round, not idealism.

Re:Raise your hands

[Threni]

> I think a lot of USERS would like to slap DEVELOPERS (including some users who
> are developers), for making truly stupid design/coding decisions.

But I'm a developer - I'm not interested in what users would like! ;)

Floaters

[MyLongNickName]

... should be flushed.

Even more annoying ...

[cablepokerface]

... are the 'in-between' pages with advertising. You are reading an article, want to go from page 2 to 3 and boom, you end up on a completely different page.

Re:Even more annoying ...

[hazee]

And I think that will ultimately become the most prevalent ad type because I can't see any way of getting around it at all.

Unlike all these pop-ups and pop-unders and "floaters" and the like, if you click on the link to a page and are served a different page instead, then it's completely out of your control, and there's nothing at all that your browser can do about it. Disabling javascript or whatever won't help - you asked for a page, you got served a page, and the fact that the content isn't what you were expecting is impossible to detect, short of AI in the browser, or some sort of distributed checksum or Bayesian filter, like with spam.

Essentially it becomes like TV, where you have no control over when the ad breaks are inserted. With TV the solution is to record it, and then fast forward or skip the ads, but recording TV is a lot easier than fetching all the pages for a web article - a tv "stream" is linear, whereas with a website, each page can link to multiple other pages, so you'd have to crawl the whole site or something.

Article Text

[th1ckasabr1ck]

If you happened upon nj.com in the last month, you might have noticed a clucking penguin waddling across the computer screen, stumbling over text as it promoted a local utility company.

On a cricket league chat board in New Zealand, exasperated users have been deluged with floating squares that try to interest them in mattresses, dating services and officially licensed trinkets from the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy.

Not to be confused with pop-up ads, which open new windows and clutter virtual desktops, these floaters, or overlays, or popovers (no one can agree on a name), can evade the pop-up blockers that many Web browsers have incorporated.

In the last year, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, which collects and analyzes data on Web advertising, the frequency of these ads has risen markedly, by almost 32 percent from December 2003 to December 2004, while pop-ups in that period declined by 41 percent.

The floater ads, often using a computer's Macromedia Flash Player to run, overlay the content of the page rather than spawning new windows. They have been around since 2001, but their rise has been abetted by the growing use of high-speed Internet connections, allowing them to play with greater ease.

Floaters are one example of a variety of online ads known in the industry as rich media. Some variants include banner ads that expand to show graphics and streaming video when the cursor is waved over them; a tamer version packs the video and graphics into a static, or polite, banner. All have a common characteristic: they cannot be categorically blocked by existing technology.

To many, they are just as irritating as pop-up ads, if not more so. On the New Zealand cricket chat board, one user declared, "This form of advertising is without a doubt the most ridiculous and offensive form I have ever come across."

But as with pop-ups (before pop-up blockers), their appeal to advertisers is simple: they get people to click, usually transporting them to the advertiser's site. While static Web ads typically have "click through" rates of 0.5 percent of viewers, according to numerous industry studies, the rate for pop-ups and floaters is 3 percent to 5 percent, though some studies suggest that many of those clicks are attempts to get rid of the ad.

According to Nielsen/NetRatings, the sites on which such ads were most common in the year ended in December were three Microsoft sites - www.msn.com, www.msnbc.com and Hotmail - followed by espn.com and www.yahoo.com.

Although most advertisers and the sites where the ads appear seem happy with the use of the floater ads, recent research suggests problems. A study of 2,500 British Internet users released last month by OMD UK found that just as many Web users (44 percent) were annoyed with floaters as they were with pop-ups. Many major sites, like nytimes.com and www.msn.com, limit the number of times a person is shown such an ad. (At nytimes.com, the limit is once per visit to the site.)

"We want to do something that's informative and entertaining as opposed to being annoying," said Joanne Bradford, vice president and chief media revenue officer for msn.com. "That's our guiding principle." To that end, the company introduced on Feb. 1 a design that limited the number of ads on the main page. (Ms. Bradford would not say by how much.) The action, she noted, did prompt "a little bit of squawking" from advertisers.

Some are trying to figure out other ways to stop the onslaught. Mozilla, designer of the popular (and free) Web browser Firefox, which offers a pop-up blocker, is trying to block floater ads as well, but has so far been unsuccessful, said Chris Hofmann, director of engineering for the Mozilla Foundation. "It really is an arms race," he said.

Jarvis Coffin, chief executive of Burst Media, a company that sells advertising for more than 2,000 Web sites, said that even though he is a fan of the "rich media" ads, he warns that advertisers should understand that they cannot deluge people with the technology without consequence. "Just because you can do it doesn't make it a smart thing to do," he said.

Who Clicks On These?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I believe I speak for many when I say
"Who the Hell actually clicks on all the popups,popovers,floaters,ads and logos anyway?"

I can safely say the only time I click on an ad when online, is when my mouse slips?
I suppose it must be like spam. The percentage of suckers is incredibly low, but if ads are 10% of internet content, then you'll get a few hits.
Still though, I mean, what kind of person goes around saying "Oh! I do want a cheaper morgage!!" *CLICK*. Do any slashdotters have some amusing tales of such perpetually clueless lusers in their domains?

Re:Who Clicks On These?

[slavemowgli]

You are making a big mistake if you think that click-through rates are the only important factor when it comes to ads, though.

Think about ads on TV - obviously, noone ever clicks those. People are just (passively) subjected to them while they wait for their favourite shows/movies/... to start/resume, and many will in fact use the break to do other things, or turn of the sound so they don't have to listen to the ads (I do that), or switch to another channel (my parents do that), or other such things.

Nevertheless, ads on TV are a big market, and more or less every major company uses them. So... why? The answer is that click-through rates, or, more generally, the "omgcool-I-need-to-have-this-right-now" response isn't neither realistic to expect nor important. What *is* important is exposure to the product, which *will* un/sub/pre-consciously influence you. Have you ever thought just *why* you buy a particular brand of pizza at the supermarket? Sure, you may say "I like this brand" etc., and that certainly plays a big role, too, but I think it's safe to say that advertising also does (not just for pizzas, of course, but for any product you buy). More often than not, the point of advertising is to make sure the people subjected to it know that the product or service even *exists*.

Re:Who Clicks On These?

[Talsin]

I support a group of almost 100 20 something women that work in the advertising business doing spot radio buys. I can honestly say any of them would happily double click a landmine just to see what happens.

There is no sig

Re:Who Clicks On These?

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

Yeah, right.

Your perception of "minimum quality you'll accept" has been influenced by marketing. That "5 star test" result is marketing. Honda having plants in the US is partly marketing... I could continue, but maybe that's unnecessary...

Of course some people are less influenced by ads and other marketing than others, but saying you're absolutely sure you're immune is living in denial.

Re:Who Clicks On These?

[JimDabell]

I can safely say the only time I click on an ad when online, is when my mouse slips?

I've clicked on an advert and bought something.

It was a small, text-only advert that simply gave the relevent product details: root on a FreeBSD virtual server for $65/mo, no set-up fee. I saw it, I thought it sounded like a good deal, clicked through, their website was simple and clear, so I signed up. They've given excellent service with the best technical support I've ever found in a hosting company, and I've been using them for years now.

I realise this sounds like an advert, but I'm not paid to say this or anything; I think it's a good example of effective advertising - a targeted ad that gives the relevent facts without being obtrusive, followed up with an excellent product. Compared with the "throw yourself at as many eyeballs as you can" approach, I know which I'm willing to tolerate and even give business to, and which I am going to block permanently.

Re:Who Clicks On These?

[Talsin]

Neither really, that is just the user base I have to base my experience on. Most of them have four year degrees of one sort or another so I don't believe it is a lack of ability to learn but more a problem of apathy. In my opinion they just dont care. They know that if their machine starts to act wierd that someone will come make it better.

There is no sig

CSS + Javascript

[rdc_uk]

Ultimately, what is required is for the browser (whichever one) to control what elements of CSS and Javascript sites are allowed to use.

Ergo; the user can simply dissallow CSS allowing flying elements ("float"-ing is a different thing, you see).

There needs to be a definite shift from the web-site having "control" unless the browser is patched to snatch it back, towards the web-page being permitted to do its thing within certain boundaries (boundaries that the user is in control of).

The rush to provide "web applications" runs contary to this; web pages are DATA, not programs and the further we go from that state, the more invasive mal-intentioned pages can be (example; ActiveX)

Re:CSS + Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

The rush to provide "web applications" runs contary to this; web pages are DATA, not programs and the further we go from that state, the more invasive mal-intentioned pages can be (example; ActiveX)

Nice neo-Luddite philosophy. Throughout the history of computing and technology in general, there have been arguments like this. "X is made to do y and only y" and so forth. Well, like it or not, we are finally getting the infrastructure to build cross-platform applications using the web browser and people are using it. I agree that the user should be able to assert a level of control over this technology, but we shouldn't hold the technology back until that happens. The problems imposed by technology typically get worse before they get better, but they do get better.

Flashblock

[alnjmshntr]

Many of those floaters are created using flash, so use Flashblock to prevent them from showing.
Flashblock and AdBlock == good surfing experience.

Slashdot links to NY Times

[Jugalator]

I like how New York Times has adapted to /.'ers and their care for reading through long articles.
This time, the non-membership Slashdot version seeems to be:

Floater Ads, the Cousins to Pop-Ups, Evade the Blockers

By JONATHAN MILLER
Published: February 24, 2005

Floater ads, which open new windows and clutter virtual desktops, can evade the pop-up blockers that many Web browsers have incorporated.

Brilliant!

Re:Hey!

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

Those that provide you with that interesting content need to feed their kids too.

Would you prefer to have everything like NYTimes.com instead? There's only so much BugMeNot can handle.

I don't mind them...

[Rendus]

I don't mind in-page ads of any sort nearly as much as I mind the new windows. The in-window ads aren't any more effort to work around, unless they block the content of the page (which is becoming more common, unfortunately).

The problem with popups wasn't the one new window.. It's playing Whack-A-Mole with the 32 pops spawned by that one.

Re:Flash suppression

[RenatoRam]

Get this extension and be happy:
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/

Flash animations show as buttons until you click on them.

Not effective anyway

[DrinkingIllini]

Don't these people look at any research, or are these just web developers with no actual marketing skills? Simple text based ads have been proven to be more effective than any form of internet advertisement, why do you think Google uses them?

Re:Hey!

[Silver Sloth]

What kind of person thinks its OK to force others to see things they are not interested in
Advertisers and, more importantly, the people who want a return on the investment they have made on their web site. If you don't like popovers vote with your mouse and don't visit those sites.

Fax/printer spam

[WickedClean]

I'm surprised nobody has come up with someting to hijack my printer and print out color ads for crappy vacations and stock purchase news. We get the faxes every day here at work

Re:It is a good day for

[theparanoidcynic]

But I thought you could get arrested for using Lynx! Slashdot told me so!

Sollution.

[Tetsugaku-San]

Turn off Flash - I've never found a convincing argument to have it other than the odd well made animation - and these are few and far between, turning flash on and off should be a lot easier but aprt from that -it works.

Re:Sollution.

[DustMagnet]

I spent years looking for a way to turn off flash. Macromedia doesn't allow you to do it. If you don't install it, you get bugged constantly to install it. Then came Homestar Runner, so I need flash. Recently someone on Slashdot pointed out a Firefox extension called Flashblock. It's perfect. Replaces all flash with a clickable icon and you can easily whitelist a site from a right-click menu.

Re:Sollution.

[theancient2]

It's possible to turn off the nag in IE, although it's not as easy as flashblock...

Flash-Disable.reg

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ActiveX Compatibility\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-44455354000 0}]
"Compatibility Flags"=dword:00000400

Flash-Enable.reg

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ActiveX Compatibility\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-44455354000 0}]
"Compatibility Flags"=dword:00000400

Re:Flash suppression

[cswiii]

I haven't had it installed lately because my adblock does a pretty good job of blocking flash that I don't want to see, but
flashblock is what I used to use... it blocks out flash until you click on it to view.

Floaters?

[NardofDoom]

I hate floaters. You flush and flush and they never go down.

This will get worse

[Turn-X Alphonse]

People keep saying "Firefox cures ads! Adblock and such!". Well the more popular firefox gets (I've used it since the Phoniex days and have noticed this as it's got more popular), the more people will try and break it. This is also the downside to being open source, while everyone can view the source code, it also means everyone can see the holes in it.

The more people that use firefox the more things like this will pop up, so we'll end up playing catch up over and over (and lets face it, the release yesterday proved how bad the update system is right now) untill people get sick of it and use a new browser which fixs this.

Now watch the post get 12 million replies saying "Yea like Usenet and Windows! Firefox is going to die hahahaha".

Re:This will get worse

[bersl2]

(and lets face it, the release yesterday proved how bad the update system is right now)

They haven't even activated the update service yet. They are waiting for a few days until the manual downloaders are done swamping the servers.

Source:

We'll be turning on the application update mechanism starting next week. Given the daunting task of updating all the people who have downloaded and are using Firefox today, we've elected to stagger the update over several days.

Chris [Beard, Mozilla Foundation]

Re:Hey!

[BWJones]

Those that provide you with that interesting content need to feed their kids too. Would you prefer to have everything like NYTimes.com instead? There's only so much BugMeNot can handle.

One word: Subscriptions. I have subscriptions for the news outlets I rely on for my information (including Slashdot).

Who does this? Why do they do it?

[Mirk]

I just don't get it. What kind of moronic company would pay money to "advertise" its product by irritating the heck out of everyone who sees it? If there is a more cast-iron way of making me hate a product so much that I will never buy it, it's by having it get in my face when I am trying to read something.

These "floaters" remind me of that childish thing where someone leaps around thrusting their hands in front of your face going, "Not touching! Can't get mad!" Oh, yeah. That behaviour is really going to make me want to buy your product.

Since "floater" is (in England, anyway) slang for a turd that can't be flushed away, the name is at least appropriate.

With Opera it's not a problem

[MrCam]

To fix popover ad's, stupid colors or layers they overlap so I can't read a page, I just click the the little user mode button. The background turns to white, all the text becomes black with the standard font and all the bad CSS crap gets turned off. And if I need it back I just click to turn Author mode back on.
I don't know if Fire Fox has this option but for those of you more involved with the project it would be a nice added feature.

how do they work?

[circletimessquare]

dhtml z-index?

Re:how do they work?

[trick-knee]

> dhtml z-index?

yeah, that's what I was thinking, too. it's gotta be on top, so it'll have the highest z-index in the page. maybe the browser could look at all the layers, take the top one (highest z-index) and either display it as the lowest. or somehow indicate to the user that the top layer's been removed.

again, however, doing this in a blanket fashion could hork up sites that (a) use z-index, and (b) do not use floaters.

Re:how do they work?

[ralmeida]

It woulndt be hard to do a bookmarklet/favelet that checks for all elements with the z-index set and changes the highest one to a minimum value.

du'h

[t_allardyce]

The problem is that many sites use this method legitimately - as a web designer its frustrating to see this getting abused. Yes the web shouldn't need flashy designs and and all this crap that allows advertisers to push their content but the fact is it does and designers are under allot of pressure by their bosses to do it. Even if everyone decided one day that enough was enough and turned off all css/javascript/flash and style and just read straight text, the advertisers would still find a way to get their noses in - article text would be full of random references to viagra and hosting solutions!

there are various extensions you can use to remove page elements with a single click but automatic filtering is going to need a bit more work, advertisers are going to have to learn that if they screw with the user then only the stupid and easily persuaded masses are going to buy their products.... oh wait.

I miss those animated GIF ads

[trintron]

Please don't make annoying ads, and force us to block them. I don't hate ads if they aren't jumping to my face.

Re:Hey!

[FunWithHeadlines]

"Would you watch a TV station that played its ads over the show, cutting in at random moments so you miss key dialogue? Me neither. There are ways to host ads on Web sites that don't annoy the hell out of the user."

It already happens. You're watching a TV show and suddenly a swirling logo appears in a corner and then an ad for another show on that network appears. And then during the closing credits, the network will break in with obnoxious promos that block out anything you can see or hear on screen.

For cripes sakes people, make a HOSTS file.

[Yekrats]

After using Dan Pollock's hosts file for a few months, virtually all of that monkey business has disappeared. That, Firefox, and Adblock have made the web bearable for me.

Re:Hey!

[Neph]

Would you prefer to have everything like NYTimes.com instead?

Damn it all to hell, TEXT ADS! In a space on the side of the screen! Google figured this out years ago, how long is it going to take for the penny to drop with the rest of these bozos? How hard is it to understand that maximizing annoyances your potential customer base is not good for business?

Seriously. Why does this have to be so difficult? The fact that people are developping countermeasures to your advertising should be lighting a bulb, however dim, somewhere in your mind. What could it mean? Whatever could it mean?

Easy fix for all ads

[Jagasian]

1. Install Firefox.
2. Enable popup blocking
3. Install Adblock
4. Install filter rule set for Adblock.

Every now and then, Adblock lets an ad through, but you can just right-click it and select "block ad", which augments your filter rule set. Now a real killer feature for Adblock would be for it to somehow filter ad indirection pages, i.e. you go to a page but are indirected through a page with a giant ad. Currently that page will look mostly empty because Adblock blocks the giant banner, but maybe Adblock could be improved to auto-skip to the next page... which should be easy to find because it is the redirect URL.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Appropriate name

[entrager]

...these floaters, or overlays, or popovers (no one can agree on a name)...

I think "floaters" is a completely appropriate name.

Complain

[krgallagher]

Here is an email I sent Foxnews.com:

"I believe it would be in your companies best interest to institute a policy that your banner advertisments cannot make sounds unless a user is interacting with them.
You are currently running a banner add on your web site that is extremely anoying. It says "Swat the fly and get a free $250 gift certificate," and has a fly flying around and your mouse turns into a fly swatter when you mouse over it. The anoying thing is that it makes a buzzing sound even if you do not do anything.
Your web site auto refreshes at regular intervals. I usually leave my browser open on your site durig the day while I work and periodically check the headlines and read the articles. Imagine my surprise when, while I am working with my browser minimized, my computer suddenly begins to buzz. I use firefox for a browser, and usually have at least seven news sites open in tabs at once. It took me quite some time to find which site had an add that was playing the anoying buzzing sound.
Since I cannot prevent your site from auto refreshing, eventually that banner add will come back up. As a result, I am not going to be able to leave your site open today. That is a real shame because I relly enjoy your web site and read it daily. Unfortunately that annoying sound will drive me nuts and prevent me from getting my work accomplished.
Thank you for your time. I hope you will take my advice and change your advertising policy."

This was their response:

"Thanks for writing. We've been deluged with complaints about this ad. It was served by a third party advertiser, and we're working to track it down and remove it. If it does crop up again in the future, please don't hesitate to email us right away."

I was really surprised at the response. I guess since they are a legitimate news site (gonna get flamed for that), they cannot afford to have their advertisers driving their readers away from the site. Still I sent a similar email to abcnews.com for a similar ad a couple of months ago and the response was the exact oposite. I did not save the email but they basically told me to screw myself.

Re:Complain

[barzok]

The biggest annoyance isn't even the ad - it's Flash Player. Flash player will NOT let you disable *any* flash animation that is embedded in a webpage. *Some* flash animations seem to allow you to stop them (by right-clicking, and toggling the 'Play' menu option), but it appears to be something that webpages can disable. This is something that has always made me royally angry with Macromedia. It's *my* computer, I should have the final control over it, not the person embedding flash content on the page. I should *always* have the option of stopping the flash animation.

I would just get rid of flash, but unfortunately, too many sites use it for critical parts of their webpages. *sigh*.

Get the Flashblock extension for FireFox/Mozilla. It'll let you choose which Flash animations to play, and which sit there idle.

Re:Complain

[aug24]

I sent mail to the advertisers of 28 Days Later saying that their ad (which sort of vibrated) was incredibly annoying, and that therefore I was blocking their server (I prefer to let them know you see) for the time being.

The response (not auto, an actual person): Yes, it's out on DVD in the UK *now*!

My response was along the lines of 'I am /trying/ to point out that your ad is annoying, not enquire about the film'.

Theirs: What are you talking about? It's already released! Go buy it!

Total fuckwittery. They really couldn't understand at all that I was complaining about an advert. Tells you everything you need to know about marketeers. They are morons.

Justin.

AdBlock = easier

[CdBee]

Adblock can also kill the floater by preventing it loading. (I prefer "floater" as its alternative meaning in British is that of a turd in water)

Re:AdBlock = easier

[Dachannien]

Fortunately, Austin Powers ensured that the term "floater" is permanently ensconced in the American psyche as well - even though Beavis and Butt-Head introduced it many years previous.

games too

[norkakn]

I wonder what it would be like if we worked on stories instead of flashy graphics in games. Would it be better to have a text based game where all the characters had personalities and could hold a conversation? Or is it better having lots of dumb things that don't talk to shoot at?

Re:games too

[magefile]

Graphics & story are not mutually exclusive. Look at Starship Titanic for an example of an incredibly interactive game (natural text conversations) that still had pretty decent graphics.

Re:games too

[tonsofpcs]

Are you trying to say that Wolfenstein 3D didn't have a story line????

Re:games too

[TFGeditor]

How about the original Colossal Cave Adventure? http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/e_downloads.htm l

Effective marketting through pain

[erroneus]

I believe it would be a natural extension of today's marketting techniques to use forms of pain and torture as a means of convincing people to buy your products and services. Clearly, being nice and friendly doesn't work any longer.

Let's just glance at the trends to see where they are going. With TV, they started with commercial spots which were actually convenient because if gave you the opportunity to get up and get a drink, make a sandwich or go use the bathroom. But lately, with the excessive amounts of commercials you have time to do all three of those things. Now they are corrupting our entertainment with product placement within the entertainment itself. Annoying...but livable since they have only the ability to make sounds and video so it kind of limits what they can do. (Though I make predictions that they will begin adding ear-drum-peircing tones to the beginning and end of each commercial to take advantage of the new pain marketting techniques.)

The same generally applies to radio where the commercial air time obviously swarfs the amount of entertainment air time. But again, ear-drum shattering tones, not unlike the Emergency Broacast System tests, will mark the beginnings and ends of advertisments on the radio.

With computers and internet, we have suffered greatly from the creative genius of marketters who clearly illustrate they have no moral boundaries. They spam us, we block them, they find ways around the blocks and keep spamming. Now what marketting genius thinks it is a good idea to skirt what amounts to security measures in order to get your advertisment through? In some places it's a criminal offense to ignore a "No Soliciting" sign. How about climing over a security fence in order to place a handbill on your door? Is it okay? Or what about picking the lock of your back door (a clear invitation since you have a back door, it must mean you want someone to come in through it right?) in order to stick something on your refridgerator (and then count all the items in your food storage to see what you've been eating and buying)? Would this be acceptable? No, guess not. Marketters would think it's equally ridiculous...or would they..? (Do you think I just gave them a bad idea? D'oh!)

I have proposed this idea in the past and I believe I got some support for the idea at the time but now I'm almost ready to start the push myself. Let's make a "mark" in the minds of the consumers out there.

I think we should hire some people to go around and beat up random strangers on the street. The advertising comes in when you script the ass-kickin' with commercial messages. Timing is crucial. For example, if I were advertising Viagra, a kick in the crotch should happen at exactly the moment the product name is mentioned. This works directly as the word "Viagra" will be stuck in the mind of the recipient for a LONG LONG time. And indirectly, as you see people holding their damaged "goods" and you ask them what happened, they can simply answer "Viagra" and the message will be clear.

I have considered many ways in which pain would be an effective marketting tool and the scenario above is just one example.

Popups are for wimps.

Re:Effective marketting through pain

[erroneus]

Saturated? HAHAHAHA No, not yet... we still have laws preventing saturation but other places do not.

When I went to visit Japan, I learned QUICKLY what our zoning and sign laws are for. How would you like to be awakend each weekend morning to the sound of people screaming in the streets using amplified speakers strapped to their vehicles? It was surreal.

I disable javascript...

[holiggan]

Well, normaly I use Opera, wich has the wonderfull "disable javascript" option, just 2 keypresses away from the normal browsing. Click F12, then "j" and you can toogle javascript on and off. Usualy I browse with javascript OFF, avoiding prety much all of that add crapt (floaters or no floaters). When I need to use a javascript enabled site (a legitimate one, not some site that tells me that they "really, really, really need it" so I can read text from their site) I use Firefox, wich is much better than IE blocking adds in the "javascript enabled" side of the web.

I'm no developer and I don't usually peeked into webpages code, but I guess that the "nexgen" of add blockers should "sniff" all the javascript passed to the browser(s) and sort it out if its an popup/floater/whatever piece of garbage or if it's something actualy usefull for the browsing.

To sum it up: Opera (javascript off), then Firefox, then (gasp!) IE.

Re:Hey!

[Chris Burke]

They get it. The advertisers are at war with us over posession of our eyeballs. We will see advertisements and we will be forced to look at them because they'll obscure something we want to see. The browser is both how they attack us and our defense. Popup blocking, the FlashBlock NukeAnything extension are just steps in the escalating arms race.

Man, I hate advertising. I'm with Bill Hicks on this: If you're in marketing, just kill yourself. Please.

Mod me down if you want but...

[javatips]

If you do not like "floaters" or ad on a web site, just don't visit it.

I agree that popups are bad because they grab your screen real estate, they go outside the content provider space into your personal space.

But floaters do not use any of your personal space. When you visit a website, you are giving the content provider some space on your screen. In return it provides you with content of interest. If in addition, in the same space you are allowing him to use, it provides ads, just live with it.

And if you don't like the way he serve ads, then just leave the site.

If a web site become too anoying, I either complain to the site operator or just leave the site and not return to it anymore.

We don't need to escalade the arm race against ads... We already have way to disable ads images ans popups. We also have a way of saying to content provider that the way they display ads annoys us. I believe that's more than enough!

Poisoning the well

[tgibbs]

The companies that create these intrusive ads are undermining the interests of their clients, both the advertisers and the web sites that run advertisements. As this continues, more and more users will start to turn off Flash, Java, and Javascript, and block ads entirely with products such as Privoxy. The net effect will be reduced advertising revenue for everybody and more good web sites going under.

I anticipate that the next generation of web browsers will include whitelist capabilities that allow users to enable these features only for "well behaved" web sites that refuse to allow intrusive advertising.

Re:Hey!

[SQLz]

Problem is that your taught in school that you have to grab the consumers attention, that pretained mostly to TV ads because people are sitting there vegetating on the couch, you need to shake them out of their stupor.

The new ESTP protocol!

[cpghost]

[...] I'd very much like to see an over-the-Internet face-slapping technology developed.

Easy, if you replace face-slapping with electro-shocking.

• Sell new keyboards and mice that deliver electric shocks of varying intensity (ever seen Never Say Never Again?).
• Have the W3C implement the new ESTP protocol (Electric Shock Transport Protocol) specification and associated (XML-like?) tags.
• Marketers can now "shock" users that don't click on the ads.
• ...
• Profit!

If you thought that you could get away with using rubber gloves, you are dead wrong: this is a circumvention, and you'll be hit by the DMCA!

Just avoid these sites

[Toy G]

Ads too annoying? Change your information sources. This has already happened: remember that we used to love Altavista, then everybody switched over to Google because it was ad-free... We used to love portals, then they went ad-crazy, and we switched to a number of different tools (aggregators, google, etc). Sometimes down the line, one has to think "Is the information on this site worth all the hassle?". The more they push ads down our throat, the more we will look for (or build) alternatives... just think about RIAA's "success" against p2p.

Re:Not a problem - use RegExp

[CdBee]

Fortunately, AdBlock and Proxomitron (sorry - can't always spell that word) support filters based on REGEXP (Regular Expression)

For instance, a filter in AdBlock which is simply /banner/ , /includes/ , /adverts/ will kill locally-hosted third-party content fairly easily. Once you have a good lexicon of terms used by ad-servers you'll kill nearly all ads automatically, then you can just add any others manually.

Whats also great is that REGEXP can't be circumvented by the advertiser moving to a new domain unless thay also change the entire structure of their system.

As a system builder I support Firefox as it keeps my customers PCs secure. AdBlock's ability to remove annoying content encourages them to use Firefox over IE and consequently helps me out a great deal.

Why are ads served from central hosts?

[newend]

I've added a hosts file in windows to keep from having to deal with many ads. I also use firefox with flashblocker. I haven't really noticed very many ads, but then I do most of my surfing at sites that have ads at work where I can't run anything that has to be installed. (I use Maxthon which uses the IE engine)

What I want to know is why ads are served from a central host? Does it have to do with keeping the web sites honest? Could a website say that it's getting 5x the number of hits and fake the ad server into sending it extra banners, thus driving up their ad revenue? Also, my sister worked for double-click for a while (I almost disowned her, but she did hate it), and she told me that they do all sorts of logic and tracking on the ads, which ads benefit for them to serve directly. I guess it would also allow them to determine what kinds of pages a person is going to and send relevant ads no matter what the current host is... any ideas?

Annoying ads

[Craig Ringer]

Some marketoids actually view annoying ads as the best, on the theory that they stand out. I really hope they're not right.

I know I've refused to deal with companies before because of their advertising, but I'm not sure the majority of folks will.

Not As Annoying as Pop-Up Windows

[Lexicon]

These types of ads are never as annoying as pop-up windows. You can always get rid of these floaters just by closing the tab or window the web site is in, or just hitting the back button. Pop-up windows sometimes appeared under your browser to haunt you later, opened many windows that needed to be closed separately, etc.

By forcing advertisers to use this type of in-window advertising, I believe pop-up blockers have accomplished their mission and put the control over the browsing experience back in the user's hands. You can now just hit back and forget about visiting the site if you decide the content isn't worth dealing with the forest of floaters.

I believe that web site designers have a legitimate right to control the look and feel of their page, as long as they stay within the expected bounds given to them by the user. The use of floaters keeps them within this expected window. If a site decides to use these floaters and it annoys the users enough not to look at their content, then it is up to the users to go to alternate sources and the designers to realize their site is horrible when their visitors never bother wading through the floaters to see the content. This is an open internet after all, if you don't want to go through the floaters it is now easy to hit back and get your data from another source by selecting another search result, an alternate link, etc.

Re:Flash suppression

[zijus]

Avoiding flash. If you ue FireFox. For example edit C:\Documents and Settings\user.name\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.nsy\chrome\u serContent.css

object[codebase*="macromedia"],
embed[type="appli cation/x-shockwave-flash"],
iframe
{
display: none !important;
}

Translation: zero flash - zero iframe - no exception. May be a little too drastic.

Personaly I don't beleive in viability of adding a little rule from time to time for such and such add which makes it's way through. I am lazy: no feature = no problem.

On a more general aspect It is quite concerning to see abuse of "floating" stuff because this one, we won't be able to filter... Yes, I believe it's a question of day advertising site will proxy to advertisers, so we won't be able to filter urls, or ip's. Supposing divs are named, we could filter on names ? Arg: the advertising site will mangle it's own legtimate div's name just to let adv divs goes through.

I am afraid there won't be solution but to turn off JavaScript completely... Once again we'll have the conclusion no feature = good feature. The lynx evengelist may have the ultimate answer. Aaarg!

For advertisers. Please just have nice text adv on the side of the page. ( no blink, flash, move, ...). Just 5 words bold + 10 words descr. I don't care of this one. But there is more: because I don't find them annoying I read them ( some of them). But wait there is more: I even clicked recently on one.

Z.

BAD choice of name....

[arpoodle]

I always thought a floater was caused by inadequate flushing?

Maxthon can stamp out most of these ads.

[MtViewGuy]

These new "floater" ads can be stamped out if you have the right functionality in the web browser itself.

I'm currently running MySoft Technology's Maxthon (formerly MyIE2) shell program for Internet Explorer 5.x and later, which has a very powerful function called AD Hunter. AD Hunter not only blocks mostly pop-up windows, but also the vast majority of "floating" ads, Flash animated ads, a large number of online static ads and even allows you to block ActiveX objects! :-) I wonder why Mozilla 1.7.x and Firefox 1.x doesn't offer this level of blocking control without having to do a lot of manual configuration with third-party add-ons.

Article text

[DroopyStonx]

I don't know why these people submit reg-free links to nytimes... guess some people never learn.

Anyway, here's the article text:

IF you happened upon nj.com in the last month, you might have noticed a clucking penguin waddling across the computer screen, stumbling over text as it promoted a local utility company.

On a cricket league chat board in New Zealand, exasperated users have been deluged with floating squares that try to interest them in mattresses, dating services and officially licensed trinkets from the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy.

On the Web, the floater's time has come.

Not to be confused with pop-up ads, which open new windows and clutter virtual desktops, these floaters, or overlays, or popovers (no one can agree on a name), can evade the pop-up blockers that many Web browsers have incorporated.

In the last year, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, which collects and analyzes data on Web advertising, the frequency of these ads has risen markedly, by almost 32 percent from December 2003 to December 2004, while pop-ups in that period declined by 41 percent.

The floater ads, often using a computer's Macromedia Flash Player to run, overlay the content of the page rather than spawning new windows. They have been around since 2001, but their rise has been abetted by the growing use of high-speed Internet connections, allowing them to play with greater ease.

Floaters are one example of a variety of online ads known in the industry as rich media. Some variants include banner ads that expand to show graphics and streaming video when the cursor is waved over them; a tamer version packs the video and graphics into a static, or polite, banner. All have a common characteristic: they cannot be categorically blocked by existing technology.

To many, they are just as irritating as pop-up ads, if not more so. On the New Zealand cricket chat board, one user declared, "This form of advertising is without a doubt the most ridiculous and offensive form I have ever come across."

But as with pop-ups (before pop-up blockers), their appeal to advertisers is simple: they get people to click, usually transporting them to the advertiser's site. While static Web ads typically have "click through" rates of 0.5 percent of viewers, according to numerous industry studies, the rate for pop-ups and floaters is 3 percent to 5 percent, though some studies suggest that many of those clicks are attempts to get rid of the ad.

According to Nielsen/NetRatings, the sites on which such ads were most common in the year ended in December were three Microsoft sites - www.msn.com, www.msnbc.com and Hotmail - followed by espn.com and www.yahoo.com.

Although most advertisers and the sites where the ads appear seem happy with the use of the floater ads, recent research suggests problems. A study of 2,500 British Internet users released last month by OMD UK found that just as many Web users (44 percent) were annoyed with floaters as they were with pop-ups. Many major sites, like nytimes.com and www.msn.com, limit the number of times a person is shown such an ad. (At nytimes.com, the limit is once per visit to the site.)

"We want to do something that's informative and entertaining as opposed to being annoying," said Joanne Bradford, vice president and chief media revenue officer for msn.com. "That's our guiding principle." To that end, the company introduced on Feb. 1 a design that limited the number of ads on the main page. (Ms. Bradford would not say by how much.) The action, she noted, did prompt "a little bit of squawking" from advertisers.

Some are trying to figure out other ways to stop the onslaught. Mozilla, designer of the popular (and free) Web browser Firefox, which offers a pop-up blocker, is trying to block floater ads as well, but has so far been unsuccessful, said Chris Hofmann, director of engineering for the Mozilla Foundation. "It really is an arms race," he said.

Jarvis Coffin, chief executive of Burst Media, a company t

Re:Yawn.... Firefox + Adblock = Ads? What ads?

[nagora]

You could block *.swf, but there's a lot of valid uses of it, including site navigation.

Site navigation is not a valid use. Links are a valid navigation method, plugins and other shit are not.

Blocking *.swf would render some sites completely unusable.

This is true, but by definition those sites weren't worth visiting in the first place.

TWW

The real solution....

[gr8_phk]

Just don't go to those sites that annoy you. For example, slashdot doesn't have these things. Nor does google news, the times, any of the other sites I visit regularly. The fact that so many people are annoyed by these things seems to point to the fact that they can't stop searching for [celebrity] porn. No one ever points out that the problems are with the dodgy sites.

Another possibility is that people are not good at finding the more legitimate stuff they want and end up clicking links to dodgy sites. That's just user error. You'd think with errors being so annoying people would learn.

How do you know your buddy surfs porn? Ask him if popups or floaters are a big problem for him.

The next level of blocking

[Animats]

Browsers need some work to deal with this. Firefox has some real opportunities here.

First, we need to get Flash under user control. This may require implementing an open-source Flash player, or beating hard on Macromedia. Flash animations need to respond to a "block all images from this site" right-click. All animations should come up static, dimmed, and silent, requiring user action to activate them. This keeps the annoyance level down.

Then we need to make page ownership hierarchical. If a page opens another window, the new window is considered a child of the parent window. When the parent window closes, so must the child.

Further, child windows should be restricted to the area of the parent window. They must be in front of the parent, and they must have some minimal overlap. (Restricting them to the parent window frame is probably too restrictive, but requiring some overlap means they can't move freely around the screen.)

simple?

[sacrilicious]

If you don't like their business model, do not visit the sites. simple.

Not always simple. My bank began these annoying ads recently. So my "simple" choice here is to either cease doing online banking (not a zero-cost proposition), switch banks (not a zero cost proposition), or put up with the ads. IMO this amounts to a unilateral and material change of relationship by my bank, which I have a problem with because I was never consulted. Yes, I have a choice, but it's not so easy that I'm whistling "don't worry be happy" while I'm mulling over my next move.

opera

[snakecoder]

I've been using opera forever because of the quickness with which I can resolve the problem.
If I hit a site with one of these pop ups I hit the following keys. F12 -> u -> F5. Done.

When I get time I'll look into writing macros that do the same thing for firefox.

how many times

[hawk]

One of our head tech guys related his buddy's experience from the corporate world.

After spending half a day disinfecting the Anna Kourknova (?) virus from a department, he was called back in a couple oh hours.

Same user.

When asked why, he explained, "I didn't get to see the picture"

hawk

It's a neverending battle

[pclminion]

So suppose we find a way to block these floaters.

Then, a couple years from now when (please please please) SVG actually starts to be a standard in browsers, we'll see SVG advertisements that not only move around but ANIMATE.

Then we'll be forced to implement crap like "Only allow SVG from the sites I authorize" etc etc... It's an arms race. I prefer to deal with the issue by not browsing to sites which choose to run ads that pollute my browsing experience.

Kill 'em all and let http:null sort 'em out.

[gordguide]

Go to http://www.lashampoo.net/unix/stopADVbanners.css.t xt and copy and paste the entire page into a text editor. Save and install (instructions are in the file, commented out with the usual #). This version I have is much older than this link but I've added a few urls to it so it's still working for me fine.

Kills most ads dead, including flash and other "popovers". You can edit it to your liking to include more blocked hosts anytime. Works with most browsers and most OS's.

If you use OSX/Safari, go to Window: Activity to view the urls of every item on any page, including the ones this CSS blocks and of course the ones that might get past from time to time. Add them as required by editing the text file.

Other OS's/browsers may have a similar ability (not just view source, although it does help sometimes to do that) but you will have to check that out yourself or perhaps if someone knows they could reply to this post and let us all in on it.

I have noticed a few sneak by once every few weeks, but for the most part it's working good for me and has for years. Add new offenders as they are discovered and it's pretty simple and painless.

Occasionally you will find a page where you need to view a button that is blocked (eg the "Download" button for Shockwave 10 won't show up with this enabled) so just disable temporarily and use as if you were John Q Public. Most of the time it doesn't affect "normal" content at all, or put another way I don't miss whatever I'm not seeing in the least.

Re:According to this Ad Executive, YOU're a THIEF!

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually e-mailed him concerning this article, and got a reponse from him equally as condescending.

POST IT!
POST IT!
POST IT!
POST IT!
POST IT!

Re:According to this Ad Executive, YOU're a THIEF!

[Damvan]

Of course we are! So, now I have been called a thief by the cable industry for using a Tivo, by the Ad industry for using a popup blocker, by the RIAA for ripping my own CD's, by the MPAA for backing up my DVD's.

I am surprised I am not in jail yet! Of course, they are accusing me of being of thief while I am engaging in perfectly legal activities.

Block anything and everything

[sxmjmae]

On an older computer (really old) I altered the HOST file to block all ads (known at the time). The Host file was about 1 meg in size.

I filled my HOST file with entries like this:
127.0.0.1 01.sharedsource.org
127.0.0.1 0190-dialer.com
127.0.0.1 03.sharedsource.org
127.0.0.1 05.sharedsource.org
127.0.0.1 09.sharedsource.org
127.0.0.1 0websearch.com
127.0.0.1 10.xxor.biz
127.0.0.1 10016.searchmiracle.com
127.0.0.1 123count.com
127.0.0.1 123greetings.com
127.0.0.1 123greettings.com
127.0.0.1 123invention.com ... ... ...
127.0.0.1 xrenoder.com
127.0.0.1 xxor.biz
127.0.0.1 xxxod.net
127.0.0.1 xxxwwwjjjhd.20forfree.com
127.0.0.1 yeah.com
127.0.0.1 yo.netster.com
127.0.0.1 your.com
127.0.0.1 your.wishbone.com

This way when even a floater or popup add was called it was directed back to my computer to look for the file to load.

Worked extermly well. Blocked all Ad related cookies as well.

The one issue is that it took some extra time to load and process the 1 meg HOST file. After the intial load MS Internet Explorer worked normally. I would not mind testing it out on a really fast computer and see how it works. A site that would automaticly update a new HOST file with the known ads would be a perfect aid.

Re:My cousin's example -- doorbells

[Anonymous Coward]

"Click YES to download our spyware!"
or "click NO and you'll still download our spyware and you won't know about it!"

The Human Front

[suwain_2]

We completely blocked popups. For a while. I've gotten several today in Firefox. I think it's now going to be an arms race between pop-up makers and pop-up closers.

We've written spam filters that block spam. This fueled an even bigger arms race between spam senders and spam deleters.

Are we going to do the same with 'floaters'? I'm not sure they're going to be as easy to block, since they are essentially a part of the page content.

I think it's time we started moving away from technological approaches that lead to arms races, where we just end up with even more irritating spam (misspelled, randomly spaced) and still have popups (they just use nasty tricks in JavaScript).

How about we move to a new approach? I've just naturally done this for a while. When I go to your site, and can't see it because some huge thing starts floating across the screen, I go to another site. I'm not going to try to figure out how to close the thing. I'm not going to wait for it to go away. I'm going to leave your site. And if it happens enough, I'm eventually going to stop going to your site, since I can't ever see it.

If more people simply refused to put up with this crap, maybe we wouldn't have problems. They might be making more money off these irritating ads, but the increased cost per ad, times the 0 visitors they'd get, wouldn't equal what they got with less annoying ads.

Technology might buy us some time. But I think it's time we looked to something other than technological hacks to solve this sort of problem.

Re:According to this Ad Executive, YOU're a THIEF!

[ergo98]

The potential long term effect of ad companies advertising less

No, they'll advertise more. They'll just offer less compensation to those who carry it to offset the "ad shrinkage" (presuming they don't already only advertise based on performance click-through).

This is already happening with AdWords - Adwords were a pretty fine way for small, one man shops to earn a bit of income with some barely intrusive ads. Now with clickbots inevitably either the small guy will be cut out, or the payment per click will be dramatically reduced as a "fraud surcharge".