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The Morality of Web Advertisement Blocking
An anonymous reader writes "There has been some recent coverage of the over-hyped boycott of Firefox, in response to the rising popularity of the Adblock Plus Firefox extension. A recent editorial on CNET looks into the issue, and explores the moral and legal issues involved in client-side web advertisement blocking. Whereas TiVo users freeload on the relatively fixed broadcasting costs paid by TV networks, users of web ad-blocking technology are actively denying website owners revenue that would otherwise go to pay for the bandwidth costs of serving up those web pages. If the website designer has to pay for bits each time you view their website without viewing their banner ads, are you engaged in theft? Is this right? "
But is there a moral difference between not downloading the ad vs. not seeing the ad? For example, I use my userContent.css file to not display advertisements in older versions of Mozilla (I like the full suite of apps darn it!). *My* bandwidth is still used to get the file, *their* webserver still logs a request for /advert.php?foo.... but I never see the ad. As long as the request for the advert is made and it is sent, does it matter if someone sees it? Of course, if they don't see it they can't click it, but still...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
If the website owner feels it is necessary to use ads to support the cost of being on the internet, then the least they can do is avoid the flash "Bonk the _____ and get a ______" ads. If they aren't willing to do that then whether they like it or not I'm blocking their ads.
I go to websites primarily for content, and if thats disrupted by advertisement then I'm not getting what I went there for.
I'm using their bits, eh? Well, they're using my CPU with all their annoying flash ads.
As soon as people learn that annoying (and often intrusive) Flash ads aren't appreciated, then there won't be a major reason for adblock.
If the website designer has to pay for bits each time you view their website without viewing their banner ads, are you engaged in theft?
In order for me to view their banner ads, my browser must actively request the data for that banner in a separate transaction from the one used to get the rest of the contents of the page. I see no reason for me, as the computer's owner and operator, not to forbid the browser from doing so.
As a good citizen of the internet, I think it a good thing that I don't clog the tubes with advertising bandwidth which I do not care to see.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
Seconding that: "Theft?" While you never pay attention to the ads and if you ever did, you never click on them anyway, blocking should not make a difference on the website owners(not designers really) expected revenue. The owners could similarly argue that, if the users don't care about the ads, they don't have to care about blocking them either. I guess this argument goes both ways, making the whole discussion "overhyped".
If you want me to view your advertisement it better not.
1. Have sound. If it does your so forever block from my browser and wallet its not even funny
2. Overlay what I am reading. Having to click your ad away from the article text means I know exactly who I am never buying from.
3. Pop a window, over or under, its the same, your gone.
4. Any ad which causes my HD to spin up to load the damn support required for it, aka Flash and JAVA. If it pauses my experience it ends your chances.
5. Heaven forbid you dare ask me to download something.
You want might business. Then target those pages with simple and to the point banners and block ads. Do not animate my webpage. Put in bold letters why I should even pay attention to you. If you animate, make noise, or otherwise disturb my surfing you are intruding into my life and don't have that right
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
When I transfer a + c bytes, that's OK. When I transfer only c bytes, I'm stealing. So in this case, it's stealing when I take less than normal?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
There is no such thing as a guaranteed business model. Just because it would be convenient for the world to work a certain way, or because it has worked that way in the past, does not mean that it will continue to work that way.
These businesses (and many others) have been built on the assumption that in return for content, consumers are willing to be exposed to advertising. If that assumption proves to be false, then they are going to either have to find a new business model, or else convince the consumers that they should watch the adds. If the business is build on people looking at advertisements, and the consumers are refusing to look at advertisements, there is a basic disconnect there that does not bode well.
The other side is that if consumers as a whole refuse to support add supported business, we are going to have to pay in some other way. Figuring out the balance of this struggle isn't just important for websites. It is the same disconnect that we are seeing right now in television.
Yes, it's exactly right to block ads if you like.
No one has to read someone else's ads.
It's obvious that some television ads are being made much more interesting and clever to combat the tivos. They have to MAKE you WANT TO WATCH THE ADS.
They have been succesfull. I watch more ads now than I did 2 years ago.
Largely gone are the brief playlets and illustrated lectures on the purchase of consumer goods.
If web ads were more interesting and less obnoxious perhaps they would be more successful.
The worst:
Intellitext popup ads.
Catch the monkey animated ads
Those ridiculous floating ads that sit in front of the site and scroll with you.
I put those in adblock right away!
.
With pop-ups and annoying flash ads that talk at you or play sound when I'm listening to music, I don't see a giant problem with blocking these. I also hate the stupid ads that use javascript to float over the content I'm trying to read. Lastly the hyperlink-every-other-word has to go too. I don't mind banner ads, text ads, ads between "the jump," or ads along the sides a la fark.
I hope they don't forget about bona-fide modem users, when banning Firefox and similar technology just to suit the marketers.
Working for a company who does exactly this, I have to agree with you. The worst thing is the new-ish wave of "rich media" ads - videos that load and waste your bandwidth (perfect for mobile connections), banners and skyscrapers that pop out to occupy the page when you roll over, horrific flash things that float in the middle of the page and just won't go away. To be honest the tracking aspect doesn't bother me that much, but then maybe that's because I've seen what these companies actually store about you and what they do with that data (not a lot).
I would, however, have to agree that if I put up a website and I depended on advertising revenue, I'd be a bit pissed off if all of my visitors started using adblock, especially if I chose non-intrusive adverts like google ads. It may not apply to a lot of mainstream sites, at least not at the moment, but it definitely applies to tech sites like vimeo or Slashdot - I'd be interested to hear how much their ad income has dropped as use of adblock has increased.
As a publisher of a variety of blogs and a hoster of dozens of forums, javascript-based advertising accounts for nearly 30% of our income. Another 30% is based on direct advertising or link-sales along with paid-for-articles (which we fully disclose), and the rest is made up by subscriptions.
We openly advertise that our ads are blockable, and that users who are not interested in ads SHOULD block them. For us, users who are not interested in the advertisers products should block the ads so that our click-through rate is actually higher. When one of our users blocks ads they won't click, our CTR goes up. When our CTR goes up, our direct customers pay MORE for the outreach than if we forced ads on everyone, even those who don't want ads.
We've been slowly updating our sites to actively disable ads for anyone who logs in and sets their ads to "none" (even if they aren't subscribers). Again, this is no concern to us.
The clicks we do provide to our advertisers are generally good clicks, with users interested in the site or product. This makes our site even more valuable, as we have had more than a few dozen advertisers submit bids for our sites specifically, rather than just random appearances because of the site being "on topic" for the ads. Directly bid ads get us a LOT more CPC or CPM (sometimes in the $1-$2+ range), so again it is good that non-interested readers would disable ads, making our click-through even higher for those direct ads.
Considering that we're making a decent 5 figures annually, more than 1/2 of that from direct advertisers rather than random AdSense ads, I think it's a win-win situation. Users who like what we write will either pay, or accept ads. Users who don't want ads don't display them, but they still give us a profit by being responsive to things written via e-mail or combox responses. I'd rather get 5 minutes of a person's time to respond than $0.15 for some random ad click.
When you run an ad-sponsored site, you have two choices: get a lot of crappy traffic and get low CPM (barely covering your hosting cost), or get GOOD limited traffic and get a high CPM from those accepting ads (or getting a profit through a subscription or an intellectual profit from a reply or an e-mail).
Send their kids to college... Come on... That's the most irritating justification I can think of for your position. Why not just go ahead and make it people want to pay for their dying mothers cancer treatment. If you want to live in a market free from regulations, as you apparently do, then you have to accept people blocking ads as part of that. Not allowing it would be giving one side an unfair advantage. The owners of web sites have every right to stop posting new content to spite the ad blocking consumers.
Your comment was ridiculous and also nonsensical. Not sure if you were trying to troll or not, but I just thought I'd point that out. Your digitally signed web browser/HTML protocol idea was especially laughable. Why don't we start prosecuting everyone who's fast-forwarded through the ads on VHS while we're at it. No wait, let's make it a topic of discussion and expect it to be taken seriously AND then prosecute.
/. forgets how many people are still internet newbies, it doesn't mean that this majority of the web browsing population doesn't exist. Look at how many people still use IE over Firefox. Look at all the spam that still gets sent out advertising free products or money or stock tips. Just because it's 2007 it doesn't make it any different than 1997 for a lot of people who go online, fuck their computers up, blame Dell or HP or their children and then get someone to reinstall Microsoft ME for them so they can redownload they're stupid screensaver of kitten photographs. That's what most internet users are like. I used to volunteer at a computer refurbishment warehouse where we took donated computers, refurbished them and re-sold or donated them in a small computer thrift store. We would take repairs only from our own customers and they would always have some sort of problem. Usually, they had installed AOL or weren't sure what they did except that suddenly "one day the computer stopped working." This doesn't generally happen, as we all know, to computers. I also once volunteered with elderly people, teaching them the basics of going online and checking mail and things like that a few years ago. A lot of them were excited about the banner ads that kept popping up because they really thought they won something. And a lot of these people were only 50 or 60 or so.
So yeah, people can push ads. And yeah, people can block those ads client side. Short of hacking into the ad servers and destroying them from the inside out, there is nothing illegal about blocking ads on your computer. Finally, the web was never designed to serve ads, it was designed to serve web sites and content, and ads were a byproduct of that. Increase in web usage and browser technology has simply given more users power over what they see and don't see on the web without directly affecting anyone else. If the whole web advertising model goes to hell because of people blocking the ads on websites, then so be it, that's simply how it turned out. It's called capitalism. Firefox and Adblock are a free way to block content that the enduser does not wish to see, but the content provider wishes to push in order to provide revenue. If the revenue stops flowing, then the model is defunct. Find a new way to make money. The web isn't supposed to cater to advertisers, or anyone.
Anyway, I seriously doubt this will happen any time soon as long as people still use IE to click on "You just won a free vacation!" flashing banner ads and trust me, they do. Just because
I wouldn't be blocking ads if:
1. The ad servers didn't overload all the time and slow the page load to a crawl. I can't count the number of times I've had to block an ad server just to get a page to LOAD.
2. The ads weren't so obnoxious. Sound is an absolute no-no. Animation is almost as bad, but at least doesn't startle you half to death at 3am when you aren't expecting it. It does however tend to slow the page down, especially if there are multiple animated ads all dancing around and asking you to punch the monkey.
If they toned down the ads a couple of notches, and made sure their infrastructure could handle the number of ads they are serving I think a lot of people would be more than happy to put up with the ads in exchange for the free content. But it seems like no matter how much you say this the advertisers don't want to listen. They're stuck in the old TV mentality where they try to push as much dazzling crap at you as they can. The problem is Internet users aren't TV viewers; we don't want things shoved in our faces constantly. If we did, we'd watch TV. Instead of getting "mind share" they're just pissing everyone off.
(and speaking of TV will someone please bitchslap the people who compress the audio of TV commercials to make it sound obnoxiously loud?)
You make a good point. I, like you, have no intention, and I never change my mind, of clicking on the ads. Even if it was a product I was interested in, I do not trust sites that use Flash advertisements. In all likelihood, they have paid top dollar for marketing bobble heads and thus, very anemic when it comes to their actual business.
Most of the websites that I actually buy from focus on good prices and service and have one, probably underpaid, web geek that keeps their site limping along. They don't need all of the fancy Flash ads because they actually deliver a good product and people know it.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
I find it tremendously amusing that when big media companies try to defend their right to their business model, and put a stop to all these websites that are subverting it, everyone jumps to stick up for the web, but when users materially express their dissatisfaction with the "publish stuff I want bundled with crap I hate and get paid by the creators of the crap" business model, suddenly the shoe is on the other foot.
Find another business model.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Times like these I wish I had mod points :-| well said!
/.? Maybe. Or maybe I'd just get more work done."
Although
"Would I miss a free
Maybe you'd just go somewhere else? I was more than happy with the interweb before the last dotbomb, I don't understand why people seem to think it should become another content media platform, if I wanted to watch shite I'd turn the TV on.
Actually I do... but I wont go into the American rhetoric of make a fast buck out of everything you can get your hands on and then some.
It may be your computer, but guess whose web server it is?
With that in mind, the web page is on a private server which is open to the public. However, the owner of the machine has every right to block users who do not allow for advertisements.
See, with big sites such as CNN, I feel that their service is an auxiliary mode of delivering information in addition to their other services. However, with smaller sites such as communities, etc., I allow their advertising to pass through because I realize that for most of them, the advertising is the only thing keeping their servers up.
That's my logic. Feel free to disagree, but I feel it's probably more accurate than the parent post.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
I'm sure I'm not the only person who uses an ad blocker ONLY to block ads on sites with annoying ads. Like those stupid bits of flashtastrophe that ask for user interaction to do something dumb, or the banners with SOUND. Because, yeah. Everyone wants to occasionally blast some moron saying "congratulations, you've won an X" from their speakers.
Any site that runs shit like that, is not allowed to complain. Plain and simple. I don't think it's really necessary or called for to block ads everywhere. If there was some sort of advertising standard saying what is okay and what isn't, this wouldn't be a problem. (Of course, there'd have to be some way to enforce such a thing with fines or whatever) Popup ads? Gone. Browser-jacking bullshittery? Gone. Ads that look like dialog boxes or tell the user they've won something? Gone.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
When you site warns me that it's going to resize my browser, install software and watch everything I do I'll stop blocking it.
Actually that is when I block the entire site, not just the advertisements.
It is when the advertisements covered up the site so you could not access the content (X-10 cams?) is when I got serious about blocking advertisements. Yahoo news was almost unreadable due to all the junk floating over the page. It was as welcome as reading a used newspaper after someone used it to mop up a spilled bottle of catchup. The flash floaties were so bad, I went to the extreme to fully remove flash from my machine so I could read the articles. Later other tools came out to deal with the problem, the best being flashblock. That gave me the best of both worlds. I could view flash content and control the ugly spills on the articles.
It was obtrusive advertising that started this mess.
Once flashblock was working it was a small step to find discussions regarding the problem and solutions. The solutions would not have had a market if there were not a serious problem to deal with. The advertising hasn't improved, except Google came along and showed the world that a page full of banner advertisements isn't required to have effective advertising. Search engines have for the most part have cleaned up their act, but most news sites haven't caught on and are playing games with flash advertising for those who haven't blocked it yet, article keyword advertisements, and the old standby banner advertisements.
A hint for advertisers is to be there in the search results. Provide lots of great sponsored content. When I need soething, I'll come looking for you. That is the best kind of consumer, ones that want your product. As an example I was looking for information on a failing lamp in my laptop. Do I replace the laptop? Can I replace the lamp? Is it expensive? Is it hard to replace?
A Google search gave me the answers and a vendor with reasonable prices. The vendor didn't need to buy a bunch of banner or flash advertisements to get my business. They just needed to provide the info I needed and a good catalog of the proper parts.
Here is the tutorial that got me to the vendor's site;
http://www.ccfldirect.com/lcdtutorial.html
Here is the table that told me what lamp I needed;
http://www.ccfldirect.com/lcdrepair.html
And from the table, here is the lamp I need and the price;
http://www.ccfldirect.com/2x29fuspccla.html
I found my bulk inkjet supplier and fuser supplier for my old laserjet the same way. I looked into how to refill cartridges, how to reset the ink level indicator, and such. The supplier with the info got my order. I found them from a Google search. I did not respond to a flash or banner advertisement. Those advertisements simply don't contain the info needed. Most click-through advertisements simply put you into a data mine site. They gather information on the hot new lead instead of providing the information you seek. Bad move. I'm not signing up to everyone's email list just to get questions answered. Visit the above example for the laptop lamps. Notice the total lack of data mining. They don't ask your age, income, e-mail, profession, etc. They simply provide an open door. From there I placed my order and supplied the information needed for the order. Notice who got the sale and who didn't.
Ad blocking isn't evil. It's just an efficient way to toss the electronic 3rd class mail in bulk that you never open or respond to anyway. The free samples of catchup not spilled on your web page is a bonus. You shouldn't let advertisers spill gooey messy stuff all over your pretty web page.
The truth shall set you free!
I ran two websited that used contextual ads (from the likes of vibrant media and kontera) as well as banner-based stuff (google, yahoo, etc) and I can tell you that the worst person to piss off is the one that doesn't want to see the ad. They were never going to click on it anyway, so why should you care? Most of our deals were cost-per-click revenue anyway so I didn't care to serve an ad to a person who wasn't going to click it and have to deal with pissing them off. A few months before I sold both sites (and am glad to be out of that business, though I miss the revenue), I made it so that folks could disable contextual ads through a profile setting, and added the ability for them to pay a paltry sum ($10 per year) to remove all ads site-wide. Folks were thrilled to pay a cheap price, I made some good cash, and everyone was happy.
I knew of folks using ad blocking software (hell, I use adblock plus myself!) and would never have done anything to that group for the sole reason that I wasn't going to make money on them anyway and might as well make em happy instead of mad.
Oh - and I determined that most of my ad-clicks were unregistered folks who visited my site for the first time - one of those dirty little industry secrets.
On top of that, my computer is my computer and no one else's. I can do whatever I wish with my own property, and that includes changing how it displays sites I wish to view, or what software I run on it, or whether or not I install optional components to software, whether through bundled optional addons at install or addons added later.
... there MIGHT be a reason why we don't want that shit?
You may run your Web site however you wish, but you cross a line when you complain about how I use my own property. Who are you, as a webmaster, to dictate what I can and cannot do?
If you ride in on your high horse and start complaining at me because you don't like the fact that I don't click on all your banner ads, maybe you shouldn't use bouncing, flashing, text-covering, sound-blaring crap. D'ya think that JUST MAYBE
You had your chance and you blew it.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Small Correction: Repeat after me: "IT IS MY NETWORK. It is my computer. It is my browser. If the web site operator doesn't want me to view the content for free, then they should not place it on the web in a public location."
What do they propose to do about ad blocking on a network level? I have several thousand users, and like it or not, they are all filtered. There is so much junk out there, I cannot afford to not filter this kind of crap.
Go ahead and block my FF , I'll use IE and still not see your flash/js ads.
j
Granted, as the owner of a webserver you have every right to block any visitors you want, but then you have to ask yourself: is it more effective to annoy 15% of your web traffic (more for certain segments), many of which are *not* blocking ads? Or is it more effective reformat your ads to defeat most kinds of ad blocking? Or is it more effective to do nothing?
Most ad-blocking software is easy to defeat: it just filters out content from certain URLs. Other software relies on standard banner sizes and element ids. If you hosted the ads on your site and sent users to the advertisers via redirects, you could easily fool the former technique. And if you make important content on your site use banner sizes or element ids, you can annoy users to turn off their blocking software. (And if the ads on your site turn out to be non-annoying, maybe they won't turn it back on...)
But I don't see advertisers doing this. Why not? For one thing, it's extra effort. The current model of hosting advertising material on ad servers is too convenient; hosting it on the content server makes it harder to change ads, keep track of ad view counts (even when paying per-click), track users via cookies, etc.
Another reason that advertisers aren't doing much about the ad blockers is that there aren't too many of them. It's not standard in the browser (yet), unlike popup blocking. Most people expend minimal effort when browsing, using the default browser with default extensions, just as most people are willing to sit through TV ads with the sound on. And, so far, ad blocking is only done by people who really care about not seeing ads. They are the least likely to click on an ad, even if it did go through, so the effort expended to force them to see ads is largely wasted.
If this blogger wants to piss off some of his readers by blocking them, it's his call, but I think he is making an ill-considered marketing decision.
The only reason there are CPM ads out there, is for sites that spread malware - viruses, trojans, and other spammer tools. All those who claim that ad blocking is immoral, or even theft, are criminal spammers, who want to infect your computer and add it to their botnet.
The parent post ties in rather nicely with a short piece I wrote about two years ago (but never published) in defense of my work on Filterset.G. It may be a bit outdated, but I think it's finally appropriate.
The Economics of Blocking Ads
Preface:
I have nothing against advertisers or advertising. I have no interest in eliminating advertisements from the internet as a whole. Filterset.G is a tool, and is not tied to an ideology; there is no ulterior motive. Many people believe that Adblock, Filterset.G, and similar projects will be "the death of the free internet", and attack people developing tools to block ads (including myself). I have no desire to "destroy" the internet or advertising.
Reducing Costs to Suppliers and Consumers
Advertisements are unwanted distractions to many people (i.e. those who don't buy from ads), and ad-blockers provide an easy way to remove them. Transferring advertisements to people who ignore or don't buy from them is costly to both advertiser and advertisee. Bandwidth isn't free, and the bits often travel thousands of miles through dozens of machines to reach consumers. For those who have no intention of buying advertised products in response to ads, it is a waste, and can become very expensive. The host of the ad pays to transfer it, and many ISPs charge users by the amount of data transferred, so they pay to see it. Advertisers rarely pay sites for ads based on impressions (views, not clicks/sales) anymore, due to the difficulty in gauging its success, so passive ad-viewers (who look, but don't click), needn't be considered.
Increasing Profit Margins
People who don't buy from ads are negative in the expense/profit ratio for advertisers. Eliminating the cost of advertising to non-purchasers increases profits given a constant userbase. The risk, of course, is that people who buy occasionally might also block ads and thereby decrease profits. For this reason, I strongly urge people not to install ad-blocking software on other people's computers unless they express a desire for it. The greatest threat from ad-blocking is from people pushing it on those who do buy from ads.
Demand Keeps Suppliers in Business
Let's hypothetically say that all internet advertising was eliminated overnight (which is not going to happen). That would cut a major source of funding for web sites, which would force many to close, decreasing supply. Demand, however, would still exist. As supply decreases, demand would bring capital to the "best" remaining suppliers. Subscriptions, donations, grants, and sales keep many ad-free sites alive today, and can easily continue to do so in the future. Hosting a small web site is fairly cheap, and the increasing userbase that drives up costs also increases the number of potential donors, subscribers, and purchasers. A worst-case scenario would be a drastic reduction of economically unsustainable sites, which definitionally provide too little benefit to users to warrant their covering the costs of operating it. Many people would call this a "best-case" scenario, separating the wheat from the chaff, though I take no stance.
Making Ads Less Obtrusive
If public perception of ads becomes increasingly negative, they will become decreasingly effective. Advertising strategies will necessarily shift to less offensive and distracting forms. Many users vocally support the replacement of banners and other obtrusive advertising methods by text ads in areas distinct from page content. Unobtrusive, low-bandwidth ads may not be as eye-catching, but they are well tolerated by all but the most aggressive anti-ad folks.
Forcing Ads
Many advertisers and site owners are researching methods of bypassing ad-blocking software. If ad-blocking is only done by those who do not buy from ads, the outcome will become increasingly negative as their efforts increase. Many people are becoming more and more fed-up with in-your-face ads, and are starting to boycott co
G
If websites would follow through on their promise of sending me a free DSLR for subscribing to Ebay and Video Professor, I might not block their ads.
I can't help but contrast that bullshit with this:
Advertisement is Theft.
You see, it's
* my bandwidth
* my computer
* my screen
* my eyeballs
* my time and attention
Ads take a part of each of those away from me for a short time.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It's an easy problem to solve. Have the ad-blocker "ping" every URL that is on your blocked list. This will cause the site you are on to receive credit and get paid.
Better explaination. I surf xyz.com which has links to ad4crap.com and urdata.com. If you send the correct url with the forward from (what is the name of the tag?) tag in the header, xyz.com will get credit for a referal. The ad blocker can just throw away any results from the URL.
As someone else here has already stated: It's my computer, it's my paid-for connection to the internet, it's my right to see or not see whatever I do or do not want, unless I choose to surrender my ability to choose (e.g., the way Netzero used to be). Personally, I'll rip the damned cable out of the wall myself the day that happens and go back to writing code for entertainment (and yes, I'm aware my rant is starting to reach "Stay off my lawn you damned kids" proportions; I'm taking a step back from the edge now).
If they're grousing about Adblock Plus, I'm sure next they'll be whining about the Flashblock plugin. Not like the over-use of Flash animations on websites has become SPAM 2.0 or anything like that. :p
Right, since people who use adblock are unlikely to click on those annoying adverts, their bandwidth usage is wasted anyway.
If a site owner is still so dumb he wants to block me, i probably won't want to see their site anyway.
If i want, i could always use a different agent string.
This firefox blocking crap is just another advertising of firefox's ad blocking capabilities.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Advertisers count the click through rates, but they are also interested in establishing brand impressions such that you may never click on an advert, but your mind still registers & remembers that impact. So later when you are at the store you might pass by a display and think to yourself that piece of hardware looks cool(will get you laid), is being sold for a reasonable price, the company makes quality products, or whatever bullshit. This is why retailers pipe in elevator music to try to distract shoppers so they linger & make impulse purchases when all you really want to do is buy the one thing you actually need and get the fuck out of there.
Researchers have found that slow tempo muzak can increase sales as much as 38 percent in retail stores because it encourages leisurely shopping.
- marketing
Pervasive commercial advertising, by constantly reinforcing a bogus association between consumption and happiness and by focusing on individual immediate needs, leads to a squandering of resources and stands in the way of a discussion of fundamental societal and long-term needs.
- Sut Jhally
We have the best government that money can buy.
It is like TV.
When they had 8 minutes of commercials per hour it was no big deal.
For one of the recent alias special episodes they had 24 minutes of commercials for 38 minutes of programming. They actually started it a minute early and ran it a minute late to do this.
And they wonder why we are blocking/zipping through commercials?
An 1" x 5" ad for 1000 words of text would not be a big deal.
Dividing the same article into 4 pages (as a recent mythbusters did), each of which had 5 to 7 ads and only about 800 words in the entire article (so 200 words per page maybe) is just asinine and begging for ad blocking.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
These type of negative articles written by nervous advertisers are self defeating in their nature. The bloggers (almost always working for ad-supported sites) try to spread FUD about "the doom of the internet as we currently know it" because they see ABP becoming a threat to THEIR current business model. Well, I say that "the doom of the internet as we currently know it" may be the best thing to ever happen to the web. Most of us were using the internet to escape the bombardment of advertisement in almost every aspect of our daily lives. It was very nice. Then someone, somewhere found that if he put up an ad, he could hope to make a little money when bandwidth and hosting a site was fairly expensive. Well, those things cost next to nothing now but greedy people want to use the web MAINLY to make money from their sites advertising. What started out to be a simple ad on a site turned into pure greed as many webmasters have loaded their sites with as many ads as they can find onto their sites. I find it interesting (but not surprising) is that the people who are actually writing most of the negative articles about ABP are bloggers. That is like someone walking into the middle of a public place and demanding that everyone there pay him one dollar apiece to listen to his opinions on things. This is not to say that I don't enjoy reading some blogger's opinions (I do), I just don't think that they have the right to set any terms for listening to their opinions of things. The users' "comments" to a web article are as much a part of that site's content as the guy who wrote an opinion .... what do those people get in return? They get no part of that income and have to put up with the ads even though they contribute to the site as much as the article's author has with their OWN opinions. Complaining that contributers to your site are thieves because they aren't viewing your ads is absolutely insane. Do you find a site with an article with no replies very good? It just looks like another "lost" opinion in a sea of personal opinions. Opinions are like azzholes, folks .. everyone has one. Some are entertaining, but I certainly don't think someone has the right to be paid BECAUSE of one(like mine here)!
On another note, advertisers have have been ramming advertisements down users' throats for a while now ... not to mention trying to find out everything about a user possible and to track their every move along the way. People have just decided that they do NOT like advertising's business model anymore and now have the technology to do something about it. The web has actually become worse than television is some ways. As least with TV, you only have to see one ad at a time. It's not advertising that is the problem ... it's OVER-advertising, OVER-pushing it, and simply OVER-doing everything that is possible to do on the web from that point of a business perspective. "Annoy them, trick them, pound them until they click on something .. either by accident or on purpose".
I also find it puzzling that these stories are afraid of a plugin that is used in about 1% of the world's computers. All of these articles, good or bad, only increases awareness of ABP and download numbers get bigger. Large companies do not even discuss ABP openly because they are only 2 conclusions that can be drawn:
1. ABP works great!
2. ABP is bad because it works great! ... and most users really hate ads (and that's a fact!). ..... rick 752 (author of the EasyList for Adblock Plus)
He used it for a month. We noticed in the logs that the traffic actually dropped. Only a handful of IPs actually sent a request for anything but the main page, a couple of which were myself and the site owner.
An interesting detail about the version of apache we used at the time.. Sometimes, when a user hits stop in the browser and the connection is reset is a specific but common way, the entry goes to errorlog instead of accesslog.
The 'less page hits' was compared to html (not all hits like images etc) on the old site, to both access and error entrys together for the new.
Anyways, needless to say, afterward he replaced that mess with his old website, however a few more ads to makeup for lost visitors. The traffic level dropped due to using html instead of one jpg, then rose slowly, but never came close to what it was before all the changes.
Just thought i'd share that experence.