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How Text Ads Tamed Ads on the Wild, Wild Web
securitas writes "In Sunday's New York Times, Randall Stross writes about How Google Tamed Ads on the Wild, Wild Web and how it is largely responsible for the demise of the odious pop-under ad. From the article: "Without intending to do so, the company set in motion multilateral disarmament by telling its first advertisers in 2000: text only, please. No banner ads, no images, no animation.... Google introduced these ads at the very moment when X10 ads were strewn like chewed gum on every square of sidewalk. X10's pop-unders were accepted at mainstream sites run by companies including Microsoft, Yahoo and The New York Times." Remember that "in mid-2001, X10's company Web site was the fourth-most visited" on the Web. Thank you, Google." I'd actually argue that while the text ads had something to do with it, the massive growth in pop-up/under blockers made as much of a difference, if not even more.
I see... so Google saved us all from ourselves did they? I seem to remember that even though Google was much talked about in 2000, it had yet to become the preminent search engine it is today.
Perhaps this has more to do with it: Results 1 - 10 of about 7,590,000 for Pop-up blocker software. (0.20 seconds). Taken from Google itself. Pop-ups weren't simply replaced, they were stamped out. They still exist, but not at the staggering, nauseating level they were once.
Does anyone know anyone who ever bought one of those X10 cameras?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
...but what a stretch. Even Hemos notes it:
I'd actually that while the text ads had something to do with it, the massive growth in pop-up/under blockers made a large difference as well.
( ignoring missing words and all. I have no room to talk in that dept )
Can we please attribute things to where they belong? google may be the second coming of Christ, who knows, but let's try to keep their achievements realistic.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Let's not forget why text ads and pop-up blockers became popular in the first place... People demanded it! I don't know a single person that likes intrusive advertising like the pop-unders and the flash animations that come on top of everything else. What the google ads show is what everyone should have known before... The internet is a place where people come looking for you, and when that's the case, you don't need loud, fancy graphics, you only need enough information for them to identify your product (text).
Maybe Google had some effect, but I think they were just part of the more general backlash against such ads.
Nobody but the parasuits liked them. Everyone savvy enough to know how to turn them off did so. I'd wager some people even quit web browsing over them.
Google didn't want them because 1) they slurp bandwidth and B) they can't be tracked for content and $) because they don't fit the Google "no evil" culture.
Those reasons pretty much coincide with how the rest of us saw them, too. Except for the pervs, that is. (Camera to spy on wife in shower? Ooh, baby!)
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
I wouldn't say internet ads have been tamed. Sure there are less popups and popunders. But whatabout all the new ones which cover the page (Fox is a major offender here), or noisy ads (I don't know if America got subjected to the jamster ads much).
Are there adverts on the internet then? WTF...
True enough though, for a while I couldn't be bothered to filter Google's ads. Nowadays I find RIP and CustomizeGoogle keep the interface nice and clean.
Useful links for those that like to make their own mind up:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
http://www.customizegoogle.com/
http://rip.mozdev.org/index.html
http://adblock.mozdev.org/
http://www.pierceive.com/
And for those that might bleat "without advertising, many sites would fail" I say Good. Let those sites fail. Give me micropayments and an honest relationship.
Why? the Netscape browser was dying, IE Version whatever was the buggy, proprietary, virus-target of the day only other thing out there, and because MS is also in the advertising game via MSN, etc., they weren't about to give users the ability to turn off a specific class of advertisements without making it odious.
Then Firefox declares war via pop-up blocker, and within a short time the early adopters (who are really the most important predictor of future technological trends, methinks) were moving in droves away from IE, and I don't think I was more than a few days behind them.
Same time, Google's model saves me bandwidth and eye strain, and --ka- boom!!-- between the two the 'Net returned to being a useful tool with one tenth the amount of pain.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...