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Google Unveils Flash Ads
Gailin writes "Google has announced and given some examples of their new Flash based ads. They seem to vary from average size to full screen-width Flash advertisements, with some interactive abilities. 'Gadget ads can incorporate real-time data feeds, images, video and much more in a single creative unit and can be developed using Flash, HTML or a combination of both. Designed to act more like content than a typical ad, they run on the Google(TM) content network, competing alongside text, image and video ads for placement. They support both cost-per-click and cost-per-impression pricing models, and offer a variety of contextual, site, geographic and demographic targeting options to ensure the ads reach relevant users with precision and scale.'"
And all that's apparently missing is ensuring the surfer has Flash installed.
Personally I detest Flash ads and for this reason keep renaming the NPSWF32.dll file as NPSWF32.dllfsdfsd (while I don't have an instance of Firefox open, lest it track the bastid) when I have no intention of viewing Flash content. Too many pages are so whizzy with Flash I position the browser so the Flash bit is offscreen or simply don't visit the sites at all. I don't see many company/commercial sites since they apparently all now believe their best way to reach the customer is with some bloated object 500K or bigger (i'm still on dial-up) and all whizzy. So all this means is I'll see some more puzzle pieces, unless they detect no-flash and throw animated (ugh) gifs at me.
I'll just have to wrassle with The Morality of Web Advertisement Blocking for a while.
Lucky for Google, I'm the exception and shouldn't make much of a dent in their stock value.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Does this mean I get to keep "Punching the Monkey?" I just can't find enough ways to win free ringtones.
Get Flashblock here
So tell me, when I'm trying to use MySpace to reply to a distant friend & my browser slows to a crawl because there's five flash video advertisements of a lonely girl on a webcam waiting to talk to me--that's the kind of experience you want to proliferate through to every site using Google Ads?
How will this affect people on slow connections like out in the boonies operating on a 56k phone line connection? I'm kind of afraid those users are just going to be squished & that Google will leave it to the sites themselves to figure that out while the sites themselves will expect Google to take care of it.
Wait, did you hear that? I believe that was the sound of every single router and switch crying out in anguish.
Ads that are designed to appeal to my eye & take up obnoxious amounts of bandwidth? It must be
In all seriousness, this is all very bad news to me. A bloated delivery system (by definition it must be since it provides 'content rich' functionality) being forced to a large percent of the internet in the name of delivery unsolicited advertisement. And it's all legal and--get this--is unveiled like it's a new great feature.
The simple concept of character based content delivery system is dead.
My work here is dung.
Google's /clearly/ given up on "Don't Be Evil".
Adblock+ & NoScript for the win.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
now all i need is a version of flash that works consistantly on 64 bit hardware.
then again, maybe not
These are the same busy, annoying ads that other sites have plastered all over...putting them next to a paragraph where the ad's designers justify their use of "artistic" flashing/blinking colors makes them no better than the aforementioned "Punch the monkey, win a ringtone" ads found elsewhere.
My hope is that Google bigshots will see what an ugly, terrible effect these have on what their former, critically-acclaimed, clean, simple interface, and will do an about-face.
I do realize how slim the odds of that happening actually are...I guess when one's pupils/irises turn into dollar signs like in the cartoons, one's vision tends to become a bit impaired.
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
That's good (ok, if you find it bad, use your flashblock/content blocker) because the widgets (aka Google Gadgets) are interactive, and they add some 'colours' to pages and make them cooler. Those are like the widgets one uses in wordpress for e.g, just in advert form.
Plus, it's optional - one can still go for the usual word tag based adverts
What's really interesting - Google went for Flash ads. MS. which had been touting its Silverlight since long, has not yet started giving the silverlight adverts. I don't want to flame anyone but it's really a slap right in MS. face, metaphorically speaking. An increase in SWF on the web is not that good for MS. That's the tough competitive world. Oh well, geeks don't click ads (unless it's for generating money lol. We block'em :P
Do I require the c-sig package to have a signature?
I don't know about the rest of you, but I think this goes against Google's unofficial "Do no evil" mission statement.
Thank god for Adblock...
...and blocked.
Google, you probably have, sorry, had, one of the only set of ad servers I never blocked. Until now.
Sorry, but anything that moves without my propmpting it is a distraction and will be blocked.
At the same time Google has the highest barrier for entry (employee-wise), they buy DoubleCrap (stupid) and take everybody (or, at least, most) inside (DoubleStupid).
And then people at DoubleCrap start having funny ideas, management at G accepts it and now we have DoubleCrap ads as GAds.
Remember, people at Google, what GAds was all about and why it was so successful.
how long until
A large, clear, well-defined target is always appreciated.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
C'mon, I want to see you all trip over yourselves to apologize for Google. Because I'm sure that somehow, this is okay. There has to be some small technicality that redeems this company because the halo effect is not something that just goes away.
Anyway, life is good with Adblock and Filterset-G. They can use full-screen Flash ads for all I care.
Google has forgotten its roots. Sure it might look good in the short term..a new product for more revenue.. But Google will lose in the long term as others offer a clean alternative to Google.
People want uncluttered.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
How does this violate the do no evil credo? Google is in the advertising business. They have an obligation to offer a product that is competitive to other company's offerings. Otherwise they will lose marketshare. There is a big flash ad for splunk at the top of this page. I guess Slashdot is evil too.
How often did I wake up at night, my pillow soaked in bitter tears, cursing google for not offering flash ads. Finally, we shall be rid of the boring text ads we've been shackled with for so long, finally, we will experience web 3.0, an infinite land of beautiful colored, animated flash ads that shall bring us happiness and hope for a new bolder, brighter, blinkier future. On behalf of slashdotters everywhere, I want to thank you google! Thank you! Let the flash goodness begin!
For those using Safari, SafariPlus is a brilliant way to block Flash (and control unwanted cookies). It shows the rectangle for the Flash content, but you must click inside it to actually start up that Flash dropping. So you can use Flash when you want to, but nobody can make you use it. In these days of those damned embedded YouTube videos stopping Flash is a godsend. Good luck with your new X10-type annoying ads, Google.
I make good use of the FlashSwitch application. FlashSwitch is a utility to instantly turn MacromediaFlash playback on and off.
http://www.flashswitch.com//
Sites heavily dependent on flash are faster with it off, and of course flash only sites will not work when you have flash turned off.
I didn't see anything mentioning that Google was going to use these ads on their search results page. Obviously they could, but you have to remember that most of the revenue generated by Google comes from ads served up on the pages of others. If a webmaster has the decency to use text ads instead of flash ads, it's still an option. This just allows Google to break into a market where they had no product to offer previously. Though it should be mentioned that some webmasters will want to switch to flash ads offered by Google now that they are available. End result, Google can keep their uncluttered search results, Webmasters that want flash ads can have them like they always could (but now get them with the benefit of Google's system) and the ones that want text ads can keep the status quo.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
Google: Do no evil.
is now changed to, "We want to be like the U.S. government."
Google: Do evil if it pays more.
In my opinion, this is the beginning of the end for Google, as the founders lose touch with reality and fly around in their huge corporate jets. If you want responsibility, don't depend on a billionaire to do the work.
Eventually, there will be a new search engine with no Flash ads, and everyone will use that. Eventually, people will say, "Google? What's that?"
The new profit-making Mozilla will probably try to get the U.S. government to ban NoScript and AdBlock Plus and FlashBlock.
The problem with ads is not that I don't like advertising. The problem with ads is that they are nearly always stupid in some way. Some of the ads IBM ran on Slashdot were more than stupid, they were embarassing.
Mostly, ads are written by people with absolutely NO interest in the product they are selling. I'm guessing that more than 50% of ads include at least some dishonesty. It is the ad makers that have given advertising a bad name.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, your usefulness to the world is coming to an end. Please find someone to carry on your original vision, and retire.
...will load plugins on demand anyway (if you select that option). It can also block plugins for certain domains.
Palm trees and 8
I installed Noscript on my new computer, and it seems to do everything FlashBlock did for me on my old computer. That is, replace any flash-animation with a button to start it.
Google's served me very well over the years and I've preferred it because of the non-intrusive ads (that can be blocked with AdBlock and CustomizeGoogle). If, for some reason, I cannot block or opt-out of these Flash ads, then that will mark my permanent departure from Google.
I just read over the guidelines that an above poster linked ( http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=66136 ), and I don't think this will be as bad as everyone is saying...
First off, it looks like these will be ads on other peoples' sites, not on your search results. It can be used in addition to that "AdWords" thing, or "AdSense", whichever one it is... You decide to advertise on YOUR site, and you get banners from Google, the same way you would get embedded keyword links.
In addition, they're making some nice, strict rules. Here are some of their restrictions:
* No more than 50k in size unless the user interacts with it (Then it can load more)
* No more than 15 seconds of animation
* No popups or javascript alerts
* No cookie usage (Not even Flash's version of local storage)
* Must clearly show the company/product being advertised, not just some random crap
* No sound or fancy cursors unless the user interacts with it
(Hopefully that entails clicking on it, and not just accidentally moving your cursor over it on the way to the link you want)
I would hope they're enforcing these rules by requiring the source file instead of just the compiled SWF, or at least have some kind of checks for stuff like this... But I don't see how this is any worse than the banners we have now. Granted, I'd prefer less banners and more text ads, but if the market has determined that animated banners are necessary, then at least Google is keeping a close eye on theirs.
"The amount of intelligence on this planet is a constant. The population is growing." -Cole's Axiom
I can't be the only one who thought that Konfabulator (now something Yahoo) widgets and their ilk were a terrible waste of system resources, and I certainly can't be the only one who rolls their eyes when a Facebook acquaintance turns out to be a vampire, zombie, ninja or viral marketer who wants to bite/fuck/sell you something so that you can bite/fuck/sell things to all of your other friends. This is just taking shit to an all new, cynical level of manipulation.
While I'm here, what the fuck is this: 'Truly useful applications incorporating data feeds, maps, images, audio, video, Flash, HTML or JavaScript in a single creative.' A single creative. A single creative what?
I'm just using the Google founder's definition of evil. They used that insight to make their search engine by far the most popular.
I can't remember the name of the search engine I used before Google, but it was terrible with ad abuse.
This is not FUD. This is something that _may_ be done. I only wonder if they will start doing that. I hope not, but I'm not spreading FUD. This is a pure technical capability available _now_. They _can_ use it if they _want_.
My feeling on ads is nicely summed up by banksy: Any advertisement in public space that give you no choice
whether you see it or not is yours. It belongs to you.
It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use.
Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. (emphasis mine)
My grandmother used anecdotal evidence all the time, and she lived to be 120 years old.