The State of Online Advertising

conq writes "BusinessWeek has an article looking at how internet advertising has changed and is changing. From the article: 'The race is on to find new ways to track customer behavior. Advertisers and agencies are progressing far beyond the standard arithmetic of counting clicks and page views. They're tracking the to-and-froing of the mouse on Web pages, and they're finding new ways to group shoppers by age, Zip Code, and reading habits. CEO David S. Rosenblatt of DoubleClick Inc., which serves up some 200 billion ads a month for customers, says that every campaign now allows for 50 different types of metrics'"

Comments

Metrics

[Kadin2048]

How much do you want to bet that one of DoubleClick's "50 metrics" isn't 'number of customers driven to using AdBlock because of our ads?'

Personally I just don't use any browsers without blockers anymore. Safari has PithHelmet, Firefox has AdBlock, and Konqueror has ... whatever it is they call its ad-blocking feature.

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[Sqwubbsy]

Say...you don't have the name of the IE ad-blocking tool handy, do you?
Anyone?
Bueller?

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[leonmergen]

Personally I just don't use any browsers without blockers anymore.

Then what do you propose as a way the companies that deliver the websites you visit and block ads from should cover the costs they have for serving their content to you, plus a little profit ?

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[Anonymous Coward]

Then what do you propose as a way the companies that deliver the websites you visit and block ads from should cover the costs they have for serving their content to you, plus a little profit ?

I think it would be fair for said sites to block users with adblock on. Many users would probably whine about this, but it's quid pro quo - you have the choice on both sides.

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[spencerogden]

How do you propose that websites detect the use of an adblocker? (Without seriously degrading the user experience)

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[OverflowingBitBucket]

Say...you don't have the name of the IE ad-blocking tool handy, do you?

Um.... let me think... I think it's called Firefox, or Mozilla, or something like that.

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[GungaDan]

That's hardly the parent poster's concern, now is it? Sucks for the ad biz when us "eyeballs" outsmart them.

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[Guppy06]

Using non-annoying advertising that doesn't drive users to block?

I don't block until the ads get annoying, personally. But once they're blocked, they're blocked.

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[networkBoy]

My problem is not with ads, but with the ton of scripts and *annoying* ads that many sites use. Sometimes the page simply wont because an adserver somewhere is bogged down. That earns an adblock.
-nB

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[Anonymous Coward]

They can use profits from sales of their products.

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[finnif]

Then what do you propose as a way the companies that deliver the websites you visit and block ads from should cover the costs they have for serving their content to you, plus a little profit ?

Either continue doing what they're doing or offer content we'd pay for. I vote for the former. Obviously plenty of suckers don't know about ad blockers, or somehow end up clicking on ads, if crappy dating sites are earning $10K a day on ads alone.

Oh, and do you use a Tivo? Why do you rip off the television broadcasters? How on earth will they stay in business with you doing that?

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[EzInKy]

Then what do you propose as a way the companies that deliver the websites you visit and block ads from should cover the costs they have for serving their content to you, plus a little profit ?


I don't know about others but I was never really bothered by static banners and occasionally even purchased a relevant advertised product. As a matter of fact I never even considered blocking ads until "Spank the Monkey" appeared.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh, ooh, I know, host all content as images with randomized names based on the domain of their advertising provider!

Dirty pirates will never read my website!

Downside, of course, is that every page weighs 200kb+ to load.

Still, you keep the freeloaders out!

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[Sylver Dragon]

Then what do you propose as a way the companies that deliver the websites you visit and block ads from should cover the costs they have for serving their content to you, plus a little profit ?

Not my problem. If companies want to make money, they will find a way. People are simply using ad-blockers and the like to tell companies that the current method is not acceptable.

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[level_headed_midwest]

Konqueror (v. 3.5.0 and later) has AdBlock, same as Firefox does. But it is automatically built into the browser and not a separate extension :D

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[plover]

I personally rely on the stupidity of the web-surfing public to not install ad blockers on their machines.

Remember, no web site ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of the American public.

Even if every geek out there installed Firefox and AdBlock, that leaves 80+% of the machines belonging to the great unwashed masses who can punch all the monkeys they want. As long as Joe Sixpack is out there generating eyeballs for these sites, I'm going to free ride the whole trip.

Besides, I figure I'm just saving Doubleclick the bandwidth. It's not like I've ever purchased anything at all from an on-line ad, targeted or not. All my purchases have been driven by me, through Google/Froogle searches, pricewatch, Amazon, ebay, etc. I do not follow ad links.

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[bigpat]

I don't block until the ads get annoying, personally. But once they're blocked, they're blocked.

Sorry Slashdot, your ads just got blocked. They were screwing up the layout of the page and making it unreadable.

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[plover]

A first-party cookie in a frame hosted by a third-party advertiser. Let's say that hungry4revenue.com has an ad supported page. They include a reference to a frame hosted by ads-r-us.com. The URL to the ads-r-us.com frame would have a tag that ads-r-us would decode to host a link to a special "cookie image" on the hungry4revenue's site.

Now, another link on the main page from hungry4revenue.com can query that cookie. Technically, it's still a first party cookie, because it was placed there by hungry4revenue.com's server. If it's rejected, they redirect you to a "Sorry, you are rejecting cookies from us and/or ads from ads-r-us.com, and that's how we pay for this site. If you really want to view our cool stuff, please reenable them."

At this point, of course, I'd personally say "no thanks, your stuff isn't that cool" and move on.

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[bWareiWare.co.uk]

As I have absolutly zero chance of ever buying anything form any online advert I am actually doing both the advertiser and the content site a service by saving them the bandwidth. Everyone who downloads an Ad without buying the crap actuall reduces the value of the ad, and so the amount the advitiser is likly to pay the content site in the long run.

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[LordSnooty]

Then what do you propose as a way the companies that deliver the websites you visit and block ads from should cover the costs they have for serving their content to you, plus a little profit ?

I'm afraid that's irrelevant - before I used an ad-blocker I never paid attention to the ads anyway. I've been freeloading on websites since 1994.

Incidentally, I suppose you'd also assert that I'm taking revenue away from TV companies when I press 'fast farward'? You sound like a marketing shrill.

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[Maxo-Texas]

Or get the new smarter adblocker that detects those queries and gives the appropriate response.

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[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

How do you propose that websites detect the use of an adblocker? (Without seriously degrading the user experience)

That's a concern now?!

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[chromatic]

You'd do the content site an even better service by not downloading the content, too.

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[bWareiWare.co.uk]

Becouse /. would be so much better without all the comments.

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[Firehed]

Insentive to whitelist their site. On sites where I like their content, I whitelist their pages (which is necessary with the filterset.g updater). I've got one, maybe two sites on the list. For me, however, I never click on any ad any time, and as most sites pay by the standard CPM (shouldn't it be CPT or CPK?) method, my view that leads to neither a click nor a sale shows the site they're advertising on as being less profitable. If I don't even view the ad, they're not wasting a showing on me.

Seriously, though, I only buy from Newegg. If it's not computer-related (which is rare), I have a list of sites I go to in a certain order. Why a certain order? Customer service. Newegg treats me like royalty, so they're my first choice. Always. They almost always have the best price as well, but if I'm feeling really stingy on a specialty item, then I'll just froogle/pricegrabber it and occasionally compromise with price and service.

What it comes to is that stores need to do more than have creative adverts. If their service sucks, I avoid them, and if it's great then I'm always coming back. Same with brands. Good products and I buy again, bad and I avoid another purchase. The only truly effective advertising forms are now word-of-mouth and repeat buyers. In fact, I'll avoid some stores based on their advertising habits - popups are a definate no-no (man, how long as it been since I had to deal with those? Firefox really does make the internet good again), as are those seisure-inducing flashes and those moving floaters, wait ten seconds to be redireted, and anything particularly intrusive. Even TV ads - I'll definately never buy a Mazda because I can't stand that f'ing "zoom zoom" thing (granted it does give them name recognition, but not in a positive sense).

And the fact that most sites aren't getting advertising money as a result of me really doesn't bother me. I'm a prejudiced person. Prove to me, through your content, that I should whitelist your site. Ads are always annoying, so you've gotta make it worthwhile for me to see them.

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[Tuxedo Jack]

Use Proxomitron. It's ShonenWare (if you like it, buy a Shonen Knife CD), and it's damned effective. Sadly, the developer passed away a while back, but the software is still damn good.

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[mzwaterski]

Sucks for the poster when his content disappears or is no longer free...

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[Guppy06]

More like "Just because I read Slashdot doesn't mean I make purchasing decisions for anybody's IT department." They are so inapplicable to me they may as well be "Punch the monkey!" ads. The algorithm I use when I decide whether or not to block are:

1. Do the ads actually apply to me?
2. Do the ads actually apply to the content of the website?

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[thrillseeker]

Sucks for the poster when his content disappears or is no longer free...

99% of the internet could disappear and it would much nicer.

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[HolyCrapSCOsux]

and to defeat the ad autoresponer prevention routine,you need the New(tm)

Ad-blocker-autorespondo-preventer-curcumvent-o-tro n(tm) !

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[thrillseeker]

The algorithm I use when I decide whether or not to block are:

If it flashes, wiggles, blinks, moves, stutters, makes sound, takes up too much space, or changes its content in any way , it gets blocked - forever. Static ads I leave.

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[mzwaterski]

As long as the 1% remaining is your desired portion...

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[noidentity]

"Even if every geek out there installed Firefox and AdBlock, that leaves 80+% of the machines belonging to the great unwashed masses who can punch all the monkeys they want. As long as Joe Sixpack is out there generating eyeballs for these sites, I'm going to free ride the whole trip."

What site that's worth viewing fits this criterion?

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[i.r.id10t]

Do what I do - use the userContent.css file to not *display* ads. I still download 'em - DSL or massive pipe at work, so they don't bother me - I just don't *see* 'em.

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[crabpeople]

Perhaps the lack of ads will drive people to consume less and there will be less useless websites out there. I dont recall ever seeing an ad on wikipedia for instance, and alot of pages just rip that content out and put it on their own page. How many redundant websites exsist? how many blogs that say the same exact things, or do like pipiquail and linkjack others content?

perhaps there are too many pages for the market to bare. of course when you tell advertising people that, they would just look for ways to enlarge the market. This is flawed thinking. We should be moving to less products and redundancy and not more. Why are there 50 brands of shampoo in the grocery store? its waste and i will not subsidise it.

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[networkBoy]

Many sites that run doubleclick stuff, thus *.doubleclick.* is blocked in adblock. Also I block intellitext because it interferes with the readibility of the page.
-nB

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[sessamoid]

My problem is not with ads, but with the ton of scripts and *annoying* ads that many sites use. Sometimes the page simply wont because an adserver somewhere is bogged down. That earns an adblock.

What you need is Firefox with the NoScript extension. Its default is to disallow all javascript, and you can selectively whitelist sites allowed to execute Javascript, without allowing the advertisers on that site to run their scripts. All the annoying pop-ups and pop-under ads are now gone.

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[pipingguy]

My problem is not with ads, but with the ton of scripts and *annoying* ads that many sites use. Sometimes the page simply wont because an adserver somewhere is bogged down.

Very good observation; I've noticed even Slashdot suffering from this lately (at least from my experience).

Another really annoying thing is sites immediately wanting to set a cookie just for the "privilege" of viewing their pages. This is somewhat analogous to a store's salesman demanding to have your phone number before you even enter the store. The worst sites even deny access if you decide to reject their cookie.

The only time a website should place a cookie is if/when the user wants to interact with the site.

I don't do much adblocking (I use Firefox) but I do manage cookies on my machine.

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[vertinox]

How do you propose that websites detect the use of an adblocker? (Without seriously degrading the user experience)

Easy, turn your content into flat image files and host them http://doubleclick.net/ so that *.doublick.net/* ad block wild cards will block out the desired content. Err... Well... As long as you don't think that having to read pages of jpegs to be a dragrading experience.

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[Kadin2048]

I don't know of any adblocker -- certainly not the ones that I use -- that block text based ads. In fact, if I had the option to block Google-style ads, I probably wouldn't turn it on, since I find the ones on the search results page and on GMail to be occasionally useful. (Or at least amusing -- the ones that it shows next to emailed logs from cron jobs are a bit schizophrenic.)

My objection isn't to ads per se, but against the ones that are intrusive or irrelevant. If a company wants my attention, they can put some thought into designing something that actually gets it via some method besides the 'abrupt onset' reflex to look at anything that flashes.

Frankly, I think an "arms race" between consumers and advertisers might not be a bad thing; the advertisers (in general, not just internet ones) have become far too complacent in just assuming that people will look at their tripe because they can insert it in between two halves of a mildly interesting TV program or web article.

If some new online advertiser came out, and only ran really subtle and/or interesting, funny ads, I probably wouldn't block them. I'm not blacklisting everything by default, every ad-serving company has one chance to make an impression before they get blocked. I probably add one or two new things to the block list a day, and so far nothing has come through that has convinced me I'm missing a thing.

Your argument strikes me as the same one that people make against using TiVo to skip ads, and I respond similarly. If the ads didn't suck so much, people wouldn't block or skip them. And if in the end, if so many people end up blocking or skipping ads that the entire ad-supported business model that drives commercial television and web content collapses, then the public will have spoken. The technical infrastructure and the public demand for quality content will still be there, and I have faith that someone will come up with a better compromise solution, in that situation.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Then what do you propose as a way the companies that deliver the websites you visit and block ads from should cover the costs they have for serving their content to you, plus a little profit ?

Adblock has functionality for loading ads from websites you want to support.

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[misleb]

Insentive to whitelist their site. On sites where I like their content, I whitelist their pages (which is necessary with the filterset.g updater). I've got one, maybe two sites on the list. For me, however, I never click on any ad any time, and as most sites pay by the standard CPM (shouldn't it be CPT or CPK?) method, my view that leads to neither a click nor a sale shows the site they're advertising on as being less profitable. If I don't even view the ad, they're not wasting a showing on me.

I may be mistaken, but with adblock don't you still download the ad? Doesn't it just get pulled from the DOM tree?

-matthew

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[Anonymous Coward]

If you weren't aware, Doubleclick doesn't actually MAKE ads or anything like that. They are simply a middleman between the publishers (sites) and marketers(advertisers). The publisher/site can decide to have as many or as few advertisments as they want. Doubleclick has no decision in that. Once the publisher/site has decided how to fill up their web page, even with all ads, that's where Doubleclick comes in. Doubleclick doesn't go around calling sites: 'Hey, you guys could use some more pop-ups!'

Doubleclick provides reporting for the across otherwise desparate advertising networks. So you could call up yahoo and google directly and place ads if you wanted to, getting 2 separate reports. Or you could call doubleclick and get one report with the data merged. They provide image hosting and targetting for their advertisers if they need it. They have the capability to not shown the same ad to the same user over and over. They might be able to show an ad to someone based on their estimated location.

Who cares? Did create the sites where the ads are placed? No. Do they censor or otherwise decide who is a worthy advertiser? No. Did they create pop-ups? No. Do they have or use spyware/adware? No. Can you easily disable their services? Yes. 'OMG! I don't like advertising and can't understand why there would be support companies based on it! They must be to blame!'

Wow, you are the only one to struggle through the tough process of getting off the doubleclick 'grid'. Glad you took the hours needed to opt-out or install adblock. I'm sure you needed a soak after that workout, mental midget lol.

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[enjahova]

Sucks for the company when there are no more users.

These back-and-forths don't make any sense, its a market. Advertising is NOT a right, its a business model!

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[centipetalforce]

Never clicked an Adwords ad? Sometimes those really are better results than the natural rankings.

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[NoMaster]

Then what do you propose as a way the companies that deliver the websites you visit and block ads from should cover the costs they have for serving their content to you, plus a little profit ?

I propose that, if they really want to deliver their content, they just suck it up and absorb the cost themselves.

If you really want to deliver something on the web, then do it. Notice "making somebody else pay for it" is not part of the equation.

Where in your constitution does it say "A free market, being necessary to the making of money, the right of companies to advertise shall not be infringed"?

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[Maxo-Texas]

And then to defeat New! Ad-blocker-autorespondo-preventer-curcumvent-o-tro n(tm) ! ...

Ah.. computers...

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[geminidomino]

Static ads I leave.

So do I, unless the server is too slow and I have to wait for them. Then they go bye-bye

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[geminidomino]

I may be mistaken, but with adblock don't you still download the ad? Doesn't it just get pulled from the DOM tree?

If you select "Hide ads" then it's still downloaded, just not displayed. I beleive "remove ads" parses out the offending img tag before the page is rendered. ICBW.

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[c0d3m4n]

Most ads don't bother me at all. Doubleclick's domain, however, is blocked by adblock, due to some particularly tasteless use of flash in certain ads that they serve.

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[plover]

That's why I subscribe to Slashdot. I like the site (usually) and I want them to stay in business, but their ads got blocked just as much as anyone else's. I'd been running the Proxomitron for many years, and just recently switched to AdBlock for my full-time blocking needs (right-clicking is quicker than editing a text file.)

Even if the /. ads were more muted or more relevant than most, at least some of them were flashy-blinky things, so out they all went.

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[aevan]

*nods*

Your ad is a static image?
....Is the image less then 30% of the page?
You can stay.

Is your ad animated?
....Is it not bright and looping?
You can stay.

Huge ads or ones that distract too much to read content get added to Adblock.

I recognise your desire to advertise to make money, now please recognise that it is your content why i visit your page, not to subject myself to annoying 'Tagworld faux chat dialogues' etc.

Maybe they will rethink their business model once they realise of 1000 visits, only 10 ads were successfully uploaded to the visitor.

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[jZnat]

You could do it the old-school way and just add an assload of ad server hosts to your hosts file; works with all networked programs.

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[Firehed]

Not with AdBlock plus. I have no idea for 'classic' AdBlock, as it doesn't have the whitelist support last I checked.

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[plover]

I found noscript to be a pain in the ass. It killed a lot of sites' menuing systems, and pretty much got in my face too often. It became as bad as the nuisances I was trying to block. AdBlock is much nicer -- if an ugly flashy site makes me want to kill stuff, then I do it. If they leave me alone, I pretty much reciprocate.

I have taken to AdBlocking virtually every site that delivers third party scripts. I started out blocking just the annoying ad scripts, but I'm now blocking falkag, google-analytics, interclick, scripps, sageanalyst, adsonar, statcounter, sitemeter, feedburner, tribalfusion, linksynergy, atwola, imr-worldwide -- virtually any third party site script I encouter, and specifically sites that are trying to track eyeballs.

Sure, I have to go look at AdBlock to see if there's a script to kill, but it usually works out that sites that have an in-your-face advertisement also have a set of scripts. So in the bin they all go, with the bonus that blocking the tracking scripts from the ugly sites blocks them from the good sites, too.

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[Anonymous Coward]

>>Personally I just don't use any browsers without blockers anymore.

>Then what do you propose as a way the companies that deliver the websites
>you visit and block ads from should cover the costs they have for serving
>their content to you, plus a little profit ?

Silly, I don't have to propose ANYTHING. Paying for costs is not my responsibility.

Your brain must be very small not to realize that, and smaller still for thinking that is the only way to cover costs.

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[innocent_white_lamb]

I don't know of any adblocker -- certainly not the ones that I use -- that block text based ads. In fact, if I had the option to block Google-style ads, I probably wouldn't turn it on
 
  This does just exactly that. So now you've seen one....

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[Tim C]

Text ads or other non-flashing, non-animated ads. Anything that's designed to grab my attention from out of the corner of my eye (or worse, to leap out in front of the content) is very likely to annoy me; anything that annoys me gets blocked. If it means that the website is eventually no longer available to me, well, that sucks, but I think I'll live.

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[mrmeval]

Anyone who has used anonymouser knows what annoying unblockable ads are. Their service is worthwhile site. But that method will soon need to be blocked. It's way too annoying not to be killed like the vampiric soul sucking spawn of evil it is.

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[Afty0r]

Actually it *is* his concern, because should ad revenues drop many sites which have significant bandwidth or editorial costs must stop publishing because they are incurring a loss. Furthermore, if the ad (or other) revenues were to *rise* in a particular sector of online publishing this would raise the competition in that sector and, hopefully, the quality and quantity of content available to the great grand parent poster.

Therefore, while we do have a "tragedy of the commons" type situation, you cannot claim it is "not his concern" - because the quality of the material he reads is influenced by his behaviour and by the same behaviour of other people. The grand parent poster was asking a constructive question : exactly *how* should publishers of "free" content be compensated by their users. Currently this happens to be mostly advertising revenue, but when this drys up or is no longer viable, possibly due to ad blockers, should these sites simply stop publishing?

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[Anonymous Coward]

craigslist, bittorrent, wikipedia, okcupid, slashdot, something awful.

no myspace though.

ads aren't necessarily evil. just intrusive ones are. want to track my browsing habits with cookies? fine. just dont install random software on my computer that slows it down. DoubleClick Inc. is notorious for adware btw.

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[Yer Mom]

Using ad-serving companies with non-annoying (no animation, popups and the like) models, like Google's?

Although, that said, Google's ads can be annoying enough to block, if they're placed in the middle of the article (see shinyshiny.tv for an example) - but at least you can use the client ID to just block the ads on the sites that do that, while letting everyone else run their ads unmolested.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I totally agree. Google has the most unobtrusive ads around and they're building a billion dollar enterprise out of them, so the market is obviously still there. All that the "in your face" ads achieve long term is drive users to disable them. Besides, how many of us flick over the TV when annoying ads come on? It's been happening since remotes hit the market, yet there is obviously enough revenue generated by the less annoying ads to still support the practice.

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[The Snowman]

Sorry Slashdot, your ads just got blocked. They were screwing up the layout of the page and making it unreadable.

At least Slashdot gives you the option of not having ads -- you just have to pay out of your own pocket. That's what I do. I get value from the site, and they get value from my wallet. No ads. Both parties are happy.

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[ajs318]

A server-side script seeds the advert server and main page server with some random numbers which are used to generate a pair of encryption and decryption keys. Each advert on the page sets a cookie. The main page is mostly encrypted and hidden in s with display:none set. On the main page is a client-side script which waits for all the adverts to load; and uses their supplied cookie data to generate a decryption key, unscramble the page content and make it visible. If the user has not loaded all the advertisements on the page, they won't have the decryption key; only the encrypted content. The keys can be changed many times, as long as the advert and page servers are kept in sync.

If the above constitutes a patent application, I hereby claim it.

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[ajs318]

Then what do you propose as a way the companies that deliver the websites you visit and block ads from should cover the costs they have for serving their content to you, plus a little profit ?

Sorry, I don't buy that argument. Are you saying that someone, somewhere actually loses money if I don't see an advert? Well, fuck them then!

I do not buy products based on advertisements. Therefore I have no need of advertisements. I leave the room when the adverts are on the TV. I block adverts on the internet wherever possible, at the proxy server level. I have no compunction about any of this. I am the person who decides what I see, nobody else. Show me one advertisement, and you have thrown away your chance of ever receiving a penny from me.

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[Gulthek]

Oh no. You had to click on the noscript icon and click "Allow somesite"? That is a pain. Noscript is the best thing that's happened to web browsing in a long time. I am constantly astounded by the sheer number of unrelated to site content javascript is out there. Right now slashdot wants to run javascript from: slashdot.org, google-analytics.com, and falkag.net. All blocked, slashdot works fine.

If I use a site that depends on Javascript (flickr, etc.) all I have to do is whitelist it with two clicks o' yon mouse. That's a pain in the ass? The internet runs faster and works better. Most sites run fine without javascript, those that don't are either great exceptions or not worth my precious time.

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[Proteus]

>Say...you don't have the name of the IE ad-blocking tool handy, do you?

I'm not aware of an IE ad-blocking plugin, but you can use a proxy for this purpose, and it will work with all the browsers configured to use it. JunkBusters maintains a page that offers two products, both free: Guidescope ("easy"), and the Internet JunkBuster.

If you're interested in an even more powerful solution, you could leverage the free Squid Caching Proxy to block offenders.

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[leonmergen]

Besides, I figure I'm just saving Doubleclick the bandwidth. It's not like I've ever purchased anything at all from an on-line ad, targeted or not.

So I guess you've never heard of branding? Take slashdot for example... I've never even once clicked on a Verizon ad, but since they're advertising here pretty well I do know what kind of business they in and will probably chose them over some Joe Schmoe when having to choose between them...

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[leonmergen]

How do you propose that websites detect the use of an adblocker? (Without seriously degrading the user experience)

That's easy: server gets ad request, server delivers HTML for ad, if image doesn't get loaded by user 3 times in a row he's definately using an ad blocker...

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[leonmergen]

That's hardly the parent poster's concern, now is it? Sucks for the ad biz when us "eyeballs" outsmart them.

But the parent poster said he always blocks ads, but he doesn't pay for slashdot... who do you think loses the most out of it - the ad biz which doesn't pay the publisher (slashdot) for undelivered ads (advertisers nowadays demand that they do not have to pay for undelivered ads, and that gets calculated to the publisher), or slashdot?

If enough people block ads on slashdot, chances are they're going to a subscription-only model or take other drastic approaches...

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[leonmergen]

Maybe they will rethink their business model once they realise of 1000 visits, only 10 ads were successfully uploaded to the visitor.

Yeah, like, requiring everyone to pay for a subscription... predictable costs, predictable profits, no slashdot effects anymore, looks like a very good solution!

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[aevan]

Some sites already do that.
Result? Sites that give you a pass/login to bypass it.

Or you get competition sites that use a more reasonable advertising approach...netting them their own and their competitor's customers, while still getting revenue from the advertisments.

Locking your site and forcing people to pay will only work if you devote money to policing those accounts (to see which are leaked) and if you have a monopoly on the product (i.e. contents of the site).

...otherwise people will just go to the mirroring site that is free. I do it all the time when reading Google News: if the link says (subscription) I just move along to the next one on the list.

Re:Metrics

[Anonymous Coward]

Then just avoid the sites that have ads. You don't have a god-given right to someone else's content. In other words, "fuck you and the browser you rode in on."

Spastic leeches. It must be wonderful to be a parasite on society.

Re:Metrics

[ajs318]

How do you figure I am being a parasite? I am never, ever going to buy the products being advertised anyway; so, if anything, I am saving the advertiser the cost of a wasted advertisement!

Re:Metrics

[Anonymous Coward]

It has nothing to do with saving the advertiser anything. You're still consuming a content provider's work and bypassing his or her possibly only means of generating revenue by blocking ads.

A ad served is still an ad served. You're taking without giving anything back. Parasitic.

Re:Metrics

[ajs318]

They put their content up, with adverts. I read the content, but not the adverts. That is my right; they are my eyes, and I get to choose what I see with them. And if I can use some kind of tool somehow to determine in advance which bits I want to read and which bits I don't, and simply not bother fetching the "unwanted" bits from the server, so much the better.

If someone expects to get paid money just because I saw an advertisement, they're the one with the problem {unrealistic expectations}. Not me.

No doubleclick.net with DNS blackholing / Adblock

[BACbKA]

At the places where I am the root, doubleclick.net and the likes are DNS-null-routed (to a localnet IP 127.0.0.127). At other places, I
use Firefox, JS selective blocking, and Adblock to disable them forever (occasionally after getting a single hit). Spyware/adware sucks, I am not supporting them, and willing to invest my time to make my point and educate my co-users.

50 different types of metrics...

[cabinetsoft]

... and one Google to rule them all

DoubleClick who?

[KiloByte]

DoubleClick? Aren't those the guys who have just for any URL within their domain?

Oh, wait...

Online advertising had crossed the line of tolerance more than ten years ago. I'm afraid that with more and more sysadmins protecting their users against ads and trackers, most future analyses will show that most users are IE-using uneducated home folks...

Re:DoubleClick who?

[jafiwam]

I put doubleclick.net as an empty zone on my DNS server (among other domains).

None of my users ever get any of their stuff anymore.

Know what else? NOBODY NOTICED. Users don't care if there is a 404 in that box or an ad, all they know is the site runs a little faster.

My HOSTS file on my own machines is something like 16k of data (found the list somewhere).

If I weren't really lazy, I would add a whole bunch more by finding them myself... so far I have just used lists others generated.

Re:DoubleClick who?

[AndroidCat]

I think their black and red "Blocked by Netgear" logo looks pretty classy!

Shopping is changing in general

[From A Far Away Land]

With the dawn of RFID in stores, there may be a day when just putting an item in a shopping cart will ring it up on your credit card. Online is moving that way too, your toaster will order bread, your fridge more milk, and your oven will order a ready made roast. Then we'll wonder why everyone has too much sodium in their diet, but that's another story.

The advent of Adblock will likely have an affect on how ads are delivered online. How that will be is anyone's guess by my personal one is that companies will hire helper monkeys to deliver online junk mail to your door using IPv6 to locate your home, which will work because the tiny hands will be able to use mail slots most efficiently without being blocked. Expect a spike in "anti-spam gaurd dog" stocks.

I for one...

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

...block doubleclick.net at my router, do they track that?

Re:I for one...

[gbobeck]

I have gone a few steps further to stop ads... I use text based web browsers exclusively. Hell, I use telnet to visit some websites, and I never have to worry about spyware or ads. I wonder if they track that too...

google ads versus others

[Douglas Simmons]

I'd like to use Google advertisements on my website but apparently the ass on my site is too hot to handle and I could only use small brokers like adsense.com which I am guessing don't pay as much. So I said screw it and took off all the ads on my site. Is it worth toning down the ass heat to get google ads?

Re:google ads versus others

[Sqwubbsy]

At the risk of sounding obvious...why don't you advertise other pr0n sites? Wouldn't that pay better and you wouldn't have to worry about 'objectionable' material?

BTW, is 'ass heat' a measurable phenomena?

Re:google ads versus others

[Dachannien]

As the Ass Ambassador, can you tell me whether your nation is regularly in the practice of employing Ass Assassins for the purpose of eliminating skank ass?

(Obviously, their website would be assassassin.com.)

Re:google ads versus others

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you call yourself the Ass Ambassador when your site has no data on Jenna Von Oy??? I demand answers!!
(PFFFF HAHAHA!!! The "confirm you're not a script" word is GRABBER, go figure)

Re:google ads versus others

[geminidomino]

Having seen the site, I have to say "Hell no."

Keyword Exchange Markets needs to appear soon

[nektra]

We think the future of advertising is on keyword exchange markets, but sadly we didn't find resources on Internet about it, beyond our concept description at: KEM Blog post.

a part of my hosts file:

[Anonymous Coward]

127.0.0.1 doubleclick.net #[McAfee.Cookie-Doubleclick]
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net #[MVPS.Criteria]
127.0.0.1 ad2.doubleclick.net #[Panda.Spyware:Cookie/Doubleclick]
127.0.0.1 ad.3ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.3au.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.ar.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.au.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.be.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.br.doubleclick.net #[SunBelt.DoubleClick]
127.0.0.1 ad.ca.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.ch.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.cl.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.cn.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.de.doubleclick.net #[Tenebril.Tracking Cookie]
127.0.0.1 ad.dk.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.es.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.fi.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.fr.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.hu.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.jp.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.kr.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.it.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.nl.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.no.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.nz.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.pl.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.pt.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.ru.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.se.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.sg.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.terra.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.tw.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.uk.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.us.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.za.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.n2434.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 creatives.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 dfp.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ir.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 iv.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ln.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 m.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 m2.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 m3.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 mi.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 m.us.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 n3285ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 n3349ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 n479ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 n609ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 optout.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 optimize.3optimization.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 rd.intl.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 se1.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 doubleclick.ne.jp
127.0.0.1 www3.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 www.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 doubleclick.com
127.0.0.1 www2.doubleclick.com
127.0.0.1 www3.doubleclick.com
127.0.0.1 www.doubleclick.com

ref: http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

you're welcome

Re:a part of my hosts file:

[donutz]

I have found this host file from someonewhocares.org to be pretty good.

Re:a part of my hosts file:

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod Parent Up!
Thanks for sharing :)

Re:a part of my hosts file:

[Anonymous Coward]

wow... that's a long list... for doubleclick.net I just have:
*.doubleclick.net/*

Some of my other filters are:
*/RealMedia/ads/*
*.2o7.net/*
*.fastclick.net/*
*.valueclick.com/*
rad.msn.com/ADSAdClient31.dll?*

Re:a part of my hosts file:

[crabpeople]

Your gonna want to change all those 127.0.0.1 's to 0.0.0.0 as it doesnt even try and go to the localhost and just drops the request if you put 0's in.

works alot faster, also if you have a webserver on your local machine it doesnt throw up errors.

Re:a part of my hosts file:

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Adblock (and/or filter.ini) is so much more convenient than a Hosts file.

oh boy

[SydBarrett]

Now we can use detailed tracking to figure out EXACTY how and where people punch the monkey for a free XBOX, or if they would rather enjoy shooting the ninja for a free Ipod.

DoubleClick Inc will kill the web if we let them

[bushboy]

DoubleClick Inc really are the enemies of the internet that we enjoy today, yet they will argue ad naseum about revenue stream keeping the internet alive.

Thier marketing practice is little more than virtual fish trawling - destroying vast tracts of future growth in order to reap thier rewards.

If they manage to piss off 1000 users to get one click through, they have achieved an objective. How sad.

It's the most disgusting form of advertisting, as subtle as unsolicited junk mail and just as annoying. But hey, they make money from it?

So how about a revolution against these dire marketing tactics, that would turn the web into one big advertising board - I'd say that it's entirely possible to thwart these corporate assholes at thier own game, track thier methods and just jerk them around until they start to lose revenue.

Unleash a mess of spiders onto the web to emulate the traits they are looking for in users - a huge zombie net of "fake users" who fry any attempt to gain "meaningful" information - just complete random noise at massive level.

How I would love that - possible? - perhaps?

do they put ads on adult sites?

[kn0tw0rk]

and for those that dont browse with protection, would the advertiser have a metric to be able to tell that there is no v1agr@ required? :)

Re:No doubleclick.net with DNS blackholing / Adblo

[sfeinstein]

That would be a great way to block the previous generation or two of web analytics providers like DC. These days though, many solutions in that space rely on a first party domain for their data collection, which they use DNS to send to the vendors data collection server. This is easy to set up and requires nothing to be hosted via the website being tracked...they just have to set up their DNS appropriately.

ACHTUNG! GOATSE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent's link leads to hello.jpg...

The state of online advertising must not be good..

[audioinfektion]

If there is a stinking AOL Banner Ad on top of this very screen I'm typing this on...

Online advertising?

[halivar]

They still have that on the web? For some strange reason, the entire internet shed its ad clutter the day dowloaded Firefox + AdBlock + Filterset.G.

Tracking mouse movements

[TubeSteak]

They're tracking the to-and-froing of the mouse on Web pages

Two things:
1. How do they do this? (JavaScript?)
2. They're going to find my mouse movements utterly baffling. I like to wave my mouse around in circles, highlight random chunks of text & various other pointless, yet occupying hand motions.

I'm going to start practicing how to spell out "Suck It" in mouse movements, just for these guys.

Re:Tracking mouse movements

[Petrushka]

I'd like to hear an answer to this, too. ActiveX, maybe? In which case most of us are safe ...

Re:Tracking mouse movements

[eddy the lip]

1. How do they do this? (JavaScript?)

Yep, that's the stuff. You know those annoyingly cute mouse-trailers that were all the rage a couple years ago? Same idea. Capturing the data is pretty easy. Making something meaningful out of all that data is something else.

Re:Tracking mouse movements

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quite simple: Attach a handler function for the "mousemove" event to the document object. Browsers should probably provide an option to keep events from handler functions which have been loaded from an external server.

Re:Tracking mouse movements

[Anonymous Coward]

How about another option to send about
7 gigs of mouse movement data instead of
the real stuff? For the really naughty
sites, of course.

Re: I came here to post that

[Ars Dilbert]

I've blocked every known doubleclick IP range at every network I have access to.

Is it acceptable for someone to follow me around town with a little notebook and write down every place I go to, every store I shop in, everything I buy? No. That would be considered stalking. Then why are those same activities allowed on the Internet? Just because it isn't immediately obvious that the stalking is taking place? Out of sight out of mind? Or is it because the politicians "don't get" the Internet?

Effective CPM is all you need

[Serveert]

Effective CPM tells you everything you need to know, the little bit of data like where the mouse is is all gravy. Nothing in this article shows innovation or anything remotely new/interesting. In fact, online advertising hasnt evolved much from the 90's with the exception of adsense.

Re:No doubleclick.net with DNS blackholing / Adblo

[firl]

Can always go further, and constantly have a list of growing ips and names for dns entry's to deny via transparent squid server. Thats what I usually do as root for the one place I work. Hate flash advertisements, and the likes.

Re: I came here to post that

[jacksonj04]

Because the Internet is not a public space. Walking down the street is. Once you walk into a shop, they are well within their rights to track you and write down what you buy.

The Selectivity of Internet Marketing

[Gizah]

This is Slashdot, right? And I'm seeing adverts with fit birds for a something called a cacique (didn't check) eDiets and a lane bryant essential[s]. We appear to have been done-over by marketing types...

Re:The Selectivity of Internet Marketing

[Gizah]

Big bollocking f*ck poo

New ads = market research tools

[Red Flayer]

Selling advertising space online isn't what it used to be. Sometimes, the goal isn't even to get people to buy your products -- the goal is to learn more about what products consumers want.

The article describes a banner ad campaign that was used to determine demand for different food products in the preholiday run-up. This kind of market research is taking the place of (or augmenting, in some cases) traditional market research like telesurveys, focus groups, etc.

The problem as I see it is that we're getting even more LCD goods as a result. All the people who want the same products I want are blocking the research tools. Not to sound elitist, but when only morons are hit up by the market research, more products for morons are released.

This is one reason why we get crap films, crap television, crap music, etc rammed down our throats.

Re:New ads = market research tools

[Anonymous Coward]

Dang, thats insightful. Mod parent up!

Re:New ads = market research tools

[pandrijeczko]

This is an excellent observation & I can give a real-life example of where precisely this effect has happened. In the UK, the clothing chain French Connection is currently suffering quite badly through poor sales. Probably about 3 years ago (I'm no expert so someone correct me on the timescale if I'm wrong), the chain decided to market itself through the logo "FCUK" (French Connection UK) with the obvious connotations of the "shock" factor of a logo that is *almost* a rude word. This atracted the morons in their droves and you couldn't go anywhere down a UK high street without seeing the FCUK logo emblazoned somewhere on someone's clothing. However, since then, FC have discovered that the same campaign drove a lot of customers away also and now the FCUK campaign has lost its shock value, their sales are down. What I find even more insiduous is that FC now seem to be using a different type of "shock tactic" in their advertising campaign (as I witnessed when I went to the cinema last weekend). Now we're treated to two female models catfighting in a dirty dungeon dressed in FC clothes and then kissing each other at the end of the ad. Okay, not unpleasant images for any red-blooded male to view, I agree, but am I supposed to be shocked by this ad? If the intention was to get me to buy FC clothes, then I'm at a loss to understand how they achieved that with that advert...

Re:New ads = market research tools

[mgblst]

Agreed. The same goes for telephone polls and street surveys. Who ever bothers taking any of these? Not normal people, we are all to busy. So it makes you wonder who does take these surveys - old people and soccer moms looking for someone to talk to. No wonder the world is so messed up!

Re:New ads = market research tools

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone enlighten me as to why heterosexual males get off on the sight of two lesbians having sex? Surely, lesbians represent competition over a resource you desire; and are therefore to be eliminated, not encouraged?

In the same way, gay men represent no competition for the desired resource -- every gay man is one man who is not chasing women. So why do you all seem to hate them so much?

Unless you are really gay yourselves, and therefore like the fact that lesbians are not chasing after men while regarding other gay men as competition. That would explain a few things .....

State of Internet Advertising = Unrest

[jerryodom]

The state of Internet advertising isn't great because now people are worried about fraud from Google & Yahoo. Especially with Google having to make that settlement for click fraud recently. Even before that there has been increasing chatter about cost per action advertising as opposed to cost per click/views. People want something new, they're looking for it and that research is showing in more and more news articles coming out about tracking, etc. Tracing people through a webpage isn't new. I can't remember the exact name of the software but a piece of live help software I've seen allowed you to track people's movements through your site in real time. People have been using these metrics for years. I haven't heard or used the name Doubleclick in years?

Re: I came here to post that

[DrSkwid]

Yay, more laws, that'll sort it all out!

Is this the place...

[cube farmer]

Is this the appropriate topic to vent about how the Internet's promise of customized ads -- ads tailored to the audience, ads that we'll want to look at, ads that are relevant to our lifestyles -- is a crock?

By way of example, I have three tabs open in Mozilla right now, each with a Slashdot story displayed.

And each with an ad for Lane Bryant.

Now, tell me, how are those ads tailored (ahem) to a 37-year-old white male geek with no unusual tastes in clothing, beyond the occasional geeky t-shirt?

Re:Is this the place...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's telling us that the women that live a more "fuller" lifestyle enjoy geeks and that we should be spending our money on gifts for them.

I hear the Limited calling with my commission check.

Re:Is this the place...

[DrEldarion]

Is this the appropriate topic to vent about how the Internet's promise of customized ads -- ads tailored to the audience, ads that we'll want to look at, ads that are relevant to our lifestyles -- is a crock?

Well, you have a choice. Be tracked, and have potential "privacy violations", but get relevant ads, or don't be tracked, and get nothing relevant. You can have one or the other, not both. If you don't want to be tracked, ads based on site content are the closest you're going to get to relevant.

Although that still doesn't explain why Lane Bryant is advertising on Slashdot...

Re:Is this the place...

[jroysdon]

Geeks have girlfriends and eventually geek-wives too.

Re:Is this the place...

[hyfe]

I can see several things I want at Lane Bryant.

Sadly, I don't think any of them are for sale .. either way, seems well-tailored enough for me. I mean, if you're 37, there's a good chance you've started your mid-life crisis, and you seriously can't go wrong with beatifull women then :)

Re:Is this the place...

[Anonymous Coward]

If they are advertising Lane Bryant, they must assume geeks have fat girlfriends and fat wives.

It's okay, really.

[MrNougat]

Yes, many web sites require ad revenue to continue to exist. Yes, many people have been driven to use various forms of adblocking because of the intrusiveness or annoyance factor of online advertising.

One could infer, then, that the people who are not using adblocking fall into one of two categories: those who enjoy the advertising, and those who do not, but are too novice to set up adblocking. Both of those classes of people are the kinds that online advertisers want to target, because each of those classes is more easily separated from their money than the class of people who do not like online advertising and are savvy enough to block it.

This is why you don't hear online advertisers really making much noise about adblocking. Those who are blocking ads are much less likely to buy were they to see the ads anyway, and the fact that they're blocking reduces load on the technology supplying the ads.

It's a win-win. Those who don't want to see ads -- don't. Those who want to target ads to the consumers who are most likely to respond and buy -- do.

Re:It's okay, really.

[pipingguy]

those who enjoy the advertising

I think you meant "tolerate". The only ads that are enjoyed are the funny ones.

Prostitute Schedule for Mar. 20 at the MBOT in SF

[Anonymous Coward]

Folks, check out the updated prostitute schedule for March 20 at the Mitchell Brother's O'Farrell Theater (MBOT), located at 895 O'Farrell Street, San Francisco, California. The MBOT is the most convenient way for you to buy a blow job, a hand job, and full service (i.e. vaginal sexual intercourse).

I kid you not.

Please establish a hypertext link to this message. Spread the word!

Ads for bras on /. ??

[gm0e]

Speaking of the state of online advertising... I have now seen two ads for CACIQUE Bras exclusively at Lane Bryant. Last time I checked I was male and I certainly don't need anything from the 36C-48DDD,F,G,&H cupsize range they advertise. If I had to take a guess, whoever or whatever decided /. users are subject to impulse online bra purchases was dead wrong...

Either that or ad bots are so adept that they can anticipate a sex change/boob job I don't even know about based on some of my online habits.

When adverts of all varieties aren't annoying the snot out of me, I amuse myself by painting mental pictures of the person that fits the demographics targeted in a series of consecutive ads. For example when I read the science section of the NYT and see an ad for a free* online IQ test and another for an investment agency I think of someone with the ability to earn enough money to "invest" and not enough brains to realize what a scam free* online IQ tests are.

What sites will need to do

[bigpat]

Web Sites will have to start hosting their own ads again, or else somehow detect that the browser is no longer letting ads through and cut off content. Actually, from a coding perspective the app server could proxy those ads for delivery without a problem, but there needs to be a whole new level of intimacy between the ad server and the content provider, otherwise their metrics are going to get screwed up or be untrustworthy.

Re:What sites will need to do

[jp10558]

Ok, but how would that really help? The AdBlocking I'm familiar with - proxomitron - wouldn't be deterred by who's hosting the ad, it doesn't care, it bases it on the div ID or the size of the banner, or some identifier in the path or really anything. I'm assuming that AdMuncher, AdBlock and the upcoming Opera Content Block will be likewise.

Re:What sites will need to do

[geminidomino]

there needs to be a whole new level of intimacy between the ad server and the content provider, otherwise their metrics are going to get screwed up or be untrustworthy.

That's why I don't think we're going to have to worry about that approach. As the online game world has shown us, you simply cannot trust the client. Since these are advertisers, who make a living screwing over as many people as they can, they're going to expect others to do the same.

Re:What sites will need to do

[bigpat]

Ok, but how would that really help? The AdBlocking I'm familiar with - proxomitron - wouldn't be deterred by who's hosting the ad, it doesn't care, it bases it on the div ID or the size of the banner, or some identifier in the path or really anything. I'm assuming that AdMuncher, AdBlock and the upcoming Opera Content Block will be likewise.

Yes, the ads would have to be made a lot less distinguishable from the content. Sure banner ads, and such would still be blockable, as well as anything that was purposefully tagged as an "ad", but text based google style ads and non banner style images and such would probably get through until the filter started filtering out content.

Re:DoubleClick Inc will kill the web if we let the

[Anonymous Coward]

I have done what I can: I run a large DNS server and *.doubleclick.net gets returned as 127.0.0.1

It has been this way for at least a year, and I have not had one person complain. I have had a few folks contact me and say that they noticed a drop in banner ads.

Mike Skallas' HOSTS

[arrrrg]

I've found this ad blocker to be exceptionally good: http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html. Just install and you're good in any browser.

Re:Mike Skallas' HOSTS

[Anonymous Coward]

it doesn't even add www.googleanalytics.com (or whetever the url is) which was seriously slowing down some sites I visit :\

Re:pay me

[MrNougat]

I will give them all my buying habits for $10 per month.

It might be worth that to some company, but not if you're anonymous.

Re:No doubleclick.net with DNS blackholing / Adblo

[houghi]

At the places where I am the root, doubleclick.net and the likes are DNS-null-routed (to a localnet IP 127.0.0.127)

A combination of several hosts files available online:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~marschip/hosts

You need to ADD it to your current hosts file (not replace it)

Re:pay me

[Anonymous Coward]

Or why not get them to pay charities and Open Source? Which is what we are trying to do at www.ippimail.com...

Simon

One Interesting Point from TFA

[blooba]

The one thing in TFA that surprised me:

The ads placed on pages unrelated to the advertisements' message actually attracted 17% more looks.

This means that contextual advertising, whether by topic or keyword, actually has the reverse affect that it is intended to have. Contextual advertising is supposed to attract attention and therefore clicks, but according to TFA, contextual advertising is doing the exact opposite.

Re:One Interesting Point from TFA

[Todd Knarr]

That depends. Number of looks isn't nearly as important as number of conversions. As an advertiser, given a choice between an advertisement that'll bring 1000 people into your store but only 1 will likely buy or an advertisement that'll only bring in 100 people but 10 of them are likely to buy, which one is a better advertisement?

A high number of views may mean that you're getting your ad out in front of a lot of the kind of people who click through an ad solely to cost the advertiser money or to give the site the ad's on money without any intention of actually buying what's advertised.

Re:One Interesting Point from TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Inverse Contextual advertising is the reason there's people mentioning a bra advertisement on slashdot.

Mod up just for the site

[Onymous Hero]

Nice one!

Make it difficult for them - don't be pigeonholed!

[pandrijeczko]

they're finding new ways to group shoppers by age, Zip Code, and reading habits

You know something? I'll be really happy about being a member of the human race when we all turn into free-thinking individuals who appreciate uniqueness in ourselves and in others. The fact that too many people revel in mediocrity & lack of change in their lives means that the marketing vultures can use their insiduous "pigeon-holing" techniques to sucker yet more money out of us.

PLEASE don't make it easy for these people - don't just buy one type of music, don't just read political novels, have the GUTS to try something new and different occasionally.

As people, we are the sum of our experiences & if all we've ever experienced is mediocrity, then we are mediocre as people.

Re:DoubleClick Inc will kill the web if we let the

[noidentity]

"So how about a revolution against these dire marketing tactics, that would turn the web into one big advertising board - I'd say that it's entirely possible to thwart these corporate assholes at thier own game, track thier methods and just jerk them around until they start to lose revenue."

How about a revolution against those who put the ads in their page in the first place? I don't know who to blame (if anyone), but for every Double Click ad you see there are two parties involved (well, three if you could those who use Double Click to advertise).

Re:No doubleclick.net with DNS blackholing / Adblo

[utlemming]

If I were a system administrator I would do it as a security measure. If ad companies are going to start using more metrics than a simple click, I would consider that a potential breach of security. Who knows what information they might be gathering. But if they are gathering any information which might be personally identifiable. The last thing that a company would need is to have an advertisment database that included the company's domain name with what the people at the company look at on the internet. Call me paranoid.

In the more practical area, it will save a little bandwidth by blocking those sites. It might not be much, but if you have a large organization it can add up.

Metrics

[daigu]

Let me be the first to say it. If you have 50 different ways to measure something, you do not have any measurements that matter.

When advertisers are looking at buying media, they want to use a standard metric so that they can do a rough apples to apples comparison. The question advertisers want to know is how much it costs and how many people that might buy their product will see it. In the world of three network TV channels, you could talk about cost per million and you basically have a homogenous mass, so it was pretty easy.

Nowadays, you have media fragmentation and advertisers do not know what to buy. Should you buy commercial time during the NCAA tournament? How about the Simpsons? How about on MTV? Since people are using DVR, maybe it is better to do a product placement and put that Coke can on American Idol. Maybe you should just buy search advertising on Google.

You get the point. While it may be interesting for advertisers to track purchase habits with loyalty cards at grocery stores, through capturing personal information via Google or targeted search results ads, the bottom line is that you can measure it 50 ways till Sunday and it doesn't much help with the central problem - what media do you buy and how much do you buy? Advertisers want an algoritm that breaks it all down and gives them the best bang for their buck.

There is an old saying in advertising, "I know I'm wasting half my money on advertising, I just don't know which half." The reality is that despite all the scary privacy issues that are starting to come into play - advertisers generally have no clue about what they are doing. And you know what? It's only going to get harder. People can talk about getting into the content tail, but it doesn't make the advertiser's job any easier.

Re:Ads for bras on /. ??

[ZachPruckowski]

Speaking of the state of online advertising... I have now seen two ads for CACIQUE Bras exclusively at Lane Bryant. Last time I checked I was male and I certainly don't need anything from the 36C-48DDD,F,G,&H cupsize range they advertise.

Obviously it's for your girlfri....oh, wait, nevermind.

Re:Sunday Newspaper Ads

[vertinox]

Then what do you propose as a way the companies that deliver the websites you visit and block ads from should cover the costs they have for serving their content to you, plus a little profit ?

You know that big lump of color advertising in the middle of the Sunday newspaper?

Well... I throw that out too without looking at it.

Do you know what I do when a crappy commercial comes on the tube?

Yeah... I change the channel.

Do you know I do when a commerical comes on the radio?

I... err... Well there doesn't seem to be any ads on my iPod. I guess I could put them there, but maybe that is why I stopped listening to the radio on the drive to work.

Truth of the matter is I am an advertisers worst nightmare and I don't really go that far in refusing to view ads.

Its not because I don't like the idea of advertisments, but if the advert interupts my stream of entertainment or causes annoyance... I tend to find a way to stop it or I find another mehtods of entertainment.

Billboards, related ads to entertainment, and entertaining ads will get my eyes and ears.

Obtrusive, non-related ads, and annoying ads will get my immediate disintrest.

Entertainment and information with the ads is just as important as the content... Otherwise if I can't shut out the ads, I'm going to shutout the content.

Creating false positives

[tepples]

it bases it on the div ID or the size of the banner, or some identifier in the path or really anything.

The div ID can be rewritten, some identifier in the path can be randomized to an extent with mod_rewrite, and navigation controls can be made the same size as banners so that the proxy blocks too much ham.

Re:Ads for bras on /. ??

[raoul666]

/.ers have wives and girlfriends, who do wear bras. They're going after the "hmm, I think I'll buy my wife some sexy underwear" market.

The State Of Online Advertising...

[Lazbien]

Dying, hopefully.

Re:The State Of Online Advertising...

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD confirms it.

Their problem

[misleb]

Then what do you propose as a way the companies that deliver the websites you visit and block ads from should cover the costs they have for serving their content to you, plus a little profit ?

That's their problem, not ours. The consuming is not responsible for ensuring that a particular business model is viable.

-matthew

Re:Their problem

[timmyf2371]

That's hardly the point; in fact, I'd call it purposely avoiding the point.

Humour the debate... what happens if/when a large enough majority of people are using ad-blockers? Will you be happy that no-one's viewing those nasty adverts anymore even though the new alternative is to pay $5 per month to each and every website whose content you'd like to view?

Re:Their problem

[geminidomino]

Will you be happy that no-one's viewing those nasty adverts anymore even though the new alternative is to pay $5 per month to each and every website whose content you'd like to view?

I don't see the problem with that, because that just means that there's content worth $5/mo to view.

Re:Their problem

[Anonymous Coward]

This may surprise a lot of people, but there was an internet before there were ads on it.

And it was BETTER.

The S/N ratio was just far, far higher than it is today.

Advertisers *ruined* the net, in my opinion - well, them and AOL. And if they all were to fall off the planet tomorrow, I would not mind one iota. We could go back to the 1980's net where most people were not idiots, and there was no spam, malware, spyware, and jacked up nefarious javascript.

Let 'em all go broke, I say.

Re:Their problem

[misleb]

That's hardly the point; in fact, I'd call it purposely avoiding the point.

It is exactly the point. It isn't my problem. I have the right to filter, manipulate, and censor any and all of the content that I legally download. And that is all there is to it.

Humour the debate... what happens if/when a large enough majority of people are using ad-blockers?

They'll find a new way to make money or they'll close down. The internet got along just fine before ads became the norm, albeit with less content.

Will you be happy that no-one's viewing those nasty adverts anymore

Wouldn't make much difference to me one way or another because I'm hardly seeing ads as it is.

even though the new alternative is to pay $5 per month to each and every website whose content you'd like to view?

Heh, I hardly think that my eyeballs are worth $5 per month to any particular site. I'm not up on how much a site makes from advertising, but lets say they get $.05 per click-through. Lets say the average user clicks through 10 ads a month on a particular site (0 for me personally. I never click on ads). That's $.50 per user, per month. If it is a good site, I might pay that much. Maybe through some kind of micropayment system.

Who knows, maybe such a payment done on a large scale would actually have the benefit of encouraging richer, more original content. Right now, lots of sites can get away with putting up mostly worthless trash because there is no hurdle to getting visitors and ad revenue. If people had a vested interest in a site, they would demand better content or simply never come back again (because they stopped paying).

Do a Google search for any topic that interests you. You'll probably get hundreds of relevent results. So what if that is pared down to 20? Or 10? I imagine those remaining 20 or 10 would be pretty good. All the trash sites which couldn't get people to pay for the content would have closed up shop.

Also, have you ever noticed that the sites which have the most advertising tend to be the crappiest?

-matthew

I did *not* punch that monkey

[BillX]

I don't care, as long as it doesn't BLINK.

Interrupting my page-read to put an adserver on my block list (I use Proxomitron) is in itself a distraction for me, so many adservers are not blocked. But if an ad is flickering loudly to get my attention, dancing around the page or floating over the content I'm trying to read, such that I find that step less of an interruption, that ad company loses its place on my screen permanently. If so many people block the ads that piss them off, I think web companies will start to figure it out eventually and shy away from filling their sites with ads that piss people off.

Wow, I'll say online advertising has changed

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got a Lane Bryant ad for bras here on /. ;)

Cookies

[PingXao]

I manage cookies too. I set Firefox to ask me every time a site wants to set a cookie. It's a pain in the neck at first, but I'm used to it now. Whenever I go to a new site I will usually let it set up to 3 cookies, as long as the words "media", "ads" or "marketing" aren't in the site URL or cookie name. Regardless, after 3 I usually select "No" and then "Remember this setting for this site".

I wish Firefox had a cookie function where I could right-click on a page and enable/disable/remove cookies for the underlying site. That would rock.

Re:Cookies

[plover]

Then this extension is for you. Cookie Button adds a widget you can place in your toolbar (I placed mine next to the reload button) and it features a drop-down menu with four choices: default, reject, accept session and accept always. I already have "third party" cookies disabled, so it only has to control cookies delivered by the main page.

I run with "prompt always" too. I differ from you in that for the most part I reject all cookies by default, unless it's a forum or some place I'm interested in creating or maintaining a longer-term relationship. Occasionally I'll be too quick to say no, and Cookie Button makes it darned easy to go back and reenable them. Firefox's cookie manager is horrible to navigate -- it's virtually unusable after you've built up a list of a thousand different sites that you've rejected or accepted at some time in the past.

Re:Cookies

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could just set Firefox to only keep cookies until you close Firefox (you can whitelist sites like forums if you actually want to keep the cookie).

Most ad cookies being perpetual (never expiring) is why people like me hate cookies.

Re:Cookies

[plover]

I tried your solution long ago, but it's unworkable in practice.

Firefox's cookie manager is close to useless once the list has more than a handful of cookies in it. It's sorted alphabetically by then name of the host that issued the cookie, which is often unrelated to the name of the site you're at. Let's say you wanted to whitelist your cookie from xfire. Would you look for that cookie under "x", for xfire.com? Or "w", for www.xfire.com? Would you believe "d" for dcs.xfire.com? Yeah, that's intuitive.

Cookie Button (and there are other similar extensions, I seem to recall playing with Add'n'Edit Cookies, too) makes it easy. That's the whole idea behind extensions -- if someone doesn't like something, they're free to write a replacement that they think is better.

Re:Ads for bras on /. ??

[geminidomino]

The gift that keeps on giving. :)

Hint:
Giving her sexy underthings for her birthday = BAD
Giving her sexy underthings for YOUR birthday = GOOD

'Nuff Bout The Lane Bryant bras already

[slyborg]

Sheeeeeeeeeesh! No denizen here has ever seen one - we get it!

Re:No doubleclick.net with DNS blackholing / Adblo

[value_added]

A combination of several hosts files available online:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~marschip/hosts

Add those entries to a Windows system (c:/WINDOWS/system32/drivers/etc), and you can watch your browsing experience slow to a painful crawl.

The approach may work or work better if the DNS client service is disabled (which, incidentally, can be typically turned off without issue), though I haven't bother to check. Maybe someone else can comment.

Will they...

[Undefined Parameter]

Will they keep track of how fast I close the pop-up window on my work PC, where I'm not allowed to use Firefox or Google's toolbar? Will they keep track of the companies I have stopped using because of their intrusive advertisements on the web?

~UP

Draw The Line

[TheMacZealot]

You Really have to just find somewhere to draw the line. On one hand, advertisements can be obnoxious and irritating, on the other hand, These websites need Ads to exist and pay costs. Morally, if you hate Ads so much you should just go to a different site. On the other hand, I use a Pop-Up Blocker, so I'm not taking sides.

Re:Sunday Newspaper Ads

[Thing 1]

Billboards, related ads to entertainment, and entertaining ads will get my eyes and ears.

The billboards are starting to get flashier. There are those "triangle" rotating billboards with three ads that switch every 10 seconds or so; I've also seen some billboards with flashing lights, or even worse the kind in NYC that are animated.

It would be interesting to see government statistics of accidents correlated with the locations of these flashier billboards.

Stop DoubleClick from identifying you

[rant-mode-on]

Opt out from DoubleClick's cookie (well, the one that identifies you anyway)

Of course, this assumes that you actually trust DoubleClick in the first place...

Re:Stop DoubleClick from identifying you

[DoubleRing]

Just do what I do, set firefox to delete all cookies after the end of each session (aka when you close your browser) Then you can go and set exceptions for a few sites, and never have to worry about tracking again.

OT: your sig

[plover]

'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'

But if a naked woman were to pop up in front of me, I assure you my woman would be there to block her. :-/

Re:Make it difficult for them - don't be pigeonhol

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too!

Re:No doubleclick.net with DNS blackholing / Adblo

[cciRRus]

I strongly recommend the Adblock Plus extension for Mozilla Firefox, together with the Adblock Filterset.G Updater extension. The dynamic duo has kept my web browsing experience fast and clean ever since I discovered them.

With the advent of these powerful and extensive adblockers (supports regular expressions!), and the ease of installation and usage, it makes me wonder how online advertisers could survive...

Re:Ads for bras on /. ??

[raoul666]

See, that's what I thought, until I got complaints from the girlfriend for not getting her sexy underthings for HER birthday. Colour me confused but pleased.

Re:DoubleClick Inc will kill the web (yeah right!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Disclaimer: I work for DoubleClick. These opinions are (quite obviously) mine.

That said, I have a greater distaste for marketing in most any form than your average person. What DoubleClick can do for internet advertisers is rather limited. They only deliver the content advertisers ask of them to websites that want them; no more, no less. Their privacy practices and their email practices are actually quite good (though both took a little work). The saving grace is that DoubleClick management is relatively clueless, so your really are quite safe. And they are an easy focal point for blocking unwanted ads with your favourite ad-blocking tool.

What the data miners do with your meatspace information (the stuff with a name, address and telephone number attached) is far more interesting than what DoubleClick does with anonymous internet user data. And, yes, it is anonymous for the most part.

Re:Sunday Newspaper Ads

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Truth of the matter is I am an advertisers worst nightmare

And yet you bought an ipod.

Re:DoubleClick Inc will kill the web if we let the

[Anonymous Coward]

There are good administrative reasons to do that anyway. Doubleclick use some atrocious in-house junk to serve DNS, and it disobeys so many MUSTs and SHOULDs from the RFCs that it could only count as a DNS server according to the most lenient of definitions. 127.0.0.1 is compliant and much faster.

Re:Ads for bras on /. ??

[geminidomino]

See, it's reverse psychology. They love to throw us curve balls like that, but there's no way they can possibly get mad about us thinking they are sexy, so instead, they go that way!

That's what's so genious about it. It's Win-Win!

Advert blocking

[ajs318]

I think an effective advert blocker might require about a dozen lines of perl, if you get your list of sites from a hash tied to an external database {initialised elsewhere} and launch it from inetd. Then just be a simple proxyserver; if the request does not m// any of the hash keys, open a socket, forward it to the rest of the world and return the response. Otherwise, last and exit with a locally-generated 404.

I might try this for my lunchtime programming challenge .....

Re:Sunday Newspaper Ads

[RetroGeek]

And I boycott any program advertised during another show. You know, those ads which appear OVER the content of the current show. Annoying blinking flashing ads which don't allow me to see the show.

Marketers have a special reserved place in hell.

Re:Sunday Newspaper Ads

[Animats]

Me too. I also used the Direct Marketing Association's "opt out" feature to get rid of most paper junk mail. For the rest of it, the "mixed paper recycling" bin lives next to the mailbox. And I'm looking into having the people who throw free "newspapers" on my lawn prosecuted for littering. (It's really annoying. I live on a corner, and I have to pick up their crap from both entrances.)

Re:Sunday Newspaper Ads

[vertinox]

And yet you bought an ipod.

I got it because I liked my friends iPod. Not because of an ad.

MOD PARENT UP!

[smiffy1976]

Have to agree there. It's an amazing little tool once you can get the hang of it.

It's amazing how much crap you can filter out. Plus you can create custom rules for specific sites, so you can 'repair' broken or badly-behaved sites. As parent points out, the creator of The Proxomitron has since died, so alas the source code is closed AFAIK. Not that it needed improving as it has always been rock-solid.

I've tried the open source Privoxy which is very similar and unlike The Proxomitron available in non-Windows versiions, but IMHO it is not as flexible or powerful.

That reminds me - since it is Shonenware I really ought to get a Shonen Knife CD someday...

Re:Metrics - Admittedly Off-Topic Question

[Delight-Delirium]

Have you done some work in advertising? I'm sorry to bother you, but I am scrambling trying to do some research showing that internet customers are actually more knowlegable/responsive than other nedia. Or maybe the reverse. Hoping perrhaps I've found someone who can point me in the right direction.... (Please?)