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Yahoo, Adobe To Serve Ads In PDFs
Placid writes to alert us to a new channel opening up between advertisers and our eyeballs: PDFs with context-sensitive text ads. The service is called "Ads for Adobe PDF Powered by Yahoo" and it goes into public beta today. The "ad-enabled" PDFs are served off of Adobe's servers. The article mentions viewing them in Acrobat or Reader but doesn't mention what happens when a non-Adobe PDF reader is used. The ads don't appear if the PDF is printed.
Funny use of the word "enabled".
Yeah. Soon to be "Ad Disabled" once my proxy is updated.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
How long until the first page of TI's latest chip spec gets inserted with an ad while downloading?
Wait 5-10 seconds for my PDF reader to crank up just to display an ad.
What genius came up with this stellar idea?
Why do I suddenly feel an urgent need to rush to the store to buy some Lightspeed Briefs?
Obviously Yahoo and Adobe are doing this because the constumer asked to have ads served to them. Clearly they had customers calling them daily "Where are my ads? I want ADS!!!"
I wish some of these tech companies would take a hint from craigslist. You can make money and have happy customers.
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
So if PDF is supposed to be a publishing format, how can the view on the computer be different than the printed view? Why don't they just skip all this craziness and just ad-enable monitors.
Displaying ads in the excel file that you sent via yahoo mail?
I run a computer lab on a large university, and we already have more problems getting PDFs to print than any other format...so now they're going to muck up the spec even more?! Thanks soooooooooooooooooo much guys.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
does anybody else experience a huge slowdown (and sometimes freezing) of IE when that Dice ad with all the stupid looking Avatars is on the screen?
Also, I think ads in PDF's are a bad idea. PDF's load too slowly as it is.
What the hell? Not only do I have to now download a fucking >2mb pdf just to read the news, but I have to do this on every fucking page of every fucking story? Not to mention having to wait five fucking minutes for each pdf to fucking load? What total fucking retard thought this was a good idea???
Thanks, yahell -you've finally pushed me into not only permanently surfing with adblock plus, but pushing adblock onto my friends too.
install Foxit if they start pumping out Ads to PDF files.
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
... one more rule for the firewall, anyone?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
dynamic ads require a source of data to work and that means they can probably be disabled by blacklisting the source servers, either that or they will actually start embedding ads into the PDFs themselves as "static content" that nothing short of aditing the PDF manually will solve.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Why don't they just skip all this craziness and just ad-enable monitors.
You sir, are a genius!
Now excuse me while I steal your idea, rush out and patent it for myself and then sell it to Microsoft.
PDF format please....
Google realizes that it cannot make money through advertising indefinately... so what does it do, it researches new ides to an extreme previously unheard of. Their ads are lightwight and unobtrusive. Essentially they are ad funded, but overall they are good to their users/customers.
Yahoo, who doesn't seem to get it, simply finds ways to put ads where they haven't been before. Great for the ad revenue, bad for their users.
Is there really anyone who hasn't figured out why Google is such a majority favorite? If not for google, I suspect that flash based ads would still be the standard, and everyone would be experiementing with streaming video ads or some crap like that. Thank god google came along and showed their competition that the business model doesn't require large, annoying ads, but instead a huge volume of well placed ads that appeal instead of repel the user!
If yahoo wan't ad's in PDF's, so be it... all the more reason for me to stick with google.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
I read that as "Where are my aids? I want AIDS!!!" Maybe I've just seen too much advertising lately.
first time I saw jscript in acroread, I barfed.
it was also the last time I ran and installed acroread, too.
you listening adobe?
xpdf does the job just fine for me, now. are you happy, adobe? (I am!)
what is this going to do to corp america that often does NOT want anyone outside the company knowing that person A opened doc B? much less having outbound and inbound packets eat up your corp network b/w.
bright idea (not!).
then again, people DO seem to be running acroread (win or other version) and so maybe they just don't CARE that scripting and 'active things' happen just because they opened a doc.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Or better yet, how bout I use Open Office and get ad-free documents?
Somehow I don't see a professional document being very professional if adverts are included.
'So you see the fiscal outlook for this quarter were much larger than previous quarters this can be -what the?! Oh uhh, sorry folks, you'll have to bear with me. I clicked 'larger' and I'm being re-directed to a penis enlargement website. If everybody would please avert their eyes from the screen and maybe look at the non ad-laced budget forecast printout provided while I try to close these pop ups'
I have nothing compelling to say
I have a sneaking suspicion that this won't work in Preview in OS X. At least for a while 'til Apple can get revenue from it. Preview, for those not familiar with it, basically renders Adobe Reader pointless on a Mac, especially because it is about ten times faster than Reader. So for stuff that doesn't require Acrobat Pro, Preview rules.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. This can't end well.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Awesome! I was wondering how Adobe was going to make Acrobat Reader even more of a bloated monstrosity than it already is. What a better way to expand its memory footprint than to integrate some kind of ad management function. I hope they use Flash ads for this. I can smell the sweet aroma of burning RAM already!
ads, ads, ads, ads, ads! Does everyone have to put ads everywhere and on everything? Not long ago Geico was flying ads in our neighborhood using planes! I'm at the point now that the more obnoxious the ads, the more likely I will NOT use their products. It's already happening where too many ads cause people to glare over them and not even recognize them anymore. ADS are a nuisance and I for one never read them. I'm tired of them and if things dont slow down, we're going to have wallpaper ads in our offices. Stop the madness!!!!!
Anyway, now they want to add ads to these things? I really don't know what to say. I already consider PDFs to be on the verge of being totally unusable. This should push them right over the edge.
"Didn't you have ad's in the 20th century?"
"Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. [And PDF files.] And at ball games and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No siree!"
Keep up the fight for open standards and this becomes less of a problem.
I've never found ads to be context sensitive in slightest. If I search for "Racists", all I get is, "Get your Racists from Walmart! All the "Racists" you'll ever need, all for the lowest prices!". Completely useless.
I used to feel that way. Then I started using Foxit PDF reader.
The problem isn't with PDF in itself. PDF is perceived as a problem for two reasons:
1) Adobe Acrobat. Get rid of it, for goodness sake. Use something else. PDF isn't slow, Adobe's crappy reader is slow.
2) Web developers cannot resist putting TPPs on websites. What's a TPP, you ask? A Totally Pointless PDF. People: if you have a website, there's one way to get me to NEVER read your content. How? By putting it in PDF. The ONE exception is this: if you have a book or reference manual, then that is an appropriate use of PDF. But tell me that I am downloading a PDF. Don't disguise your PDF as another web page by just putting it behind a normal link. When I click a link, unless I am warned that it's a PDF, I expect an HTML page. PDF just interrupts the flow of the web. Don't believe me? The just google usability and PDF. You'll get lots of stuff like this: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030714.html.
PDF is like other overused "web" technologies like flash: useful when used properly, and annoying as hell when overused.
blah blah blah
Try this:
How to speed up PDF loading with Adobe Acrobat
The sooner people figure out that PDF is a bloated and shitty format, the better.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
How long until the first page of TI's latest chip spec gets inserted with an ad while downloading?
If they're gonna imbed advertising in the Virtual Machine [like the PDF* reader, or, God forbid, the Java/CLR/VMware VM's], then how long before some wiseass says, "Hey, let's embed the advertising stream in the silicon?"
[*I read somewhere that - while PostScript is Turing-complete - PDF is not Turing-complete.]
I just want to get an inkling for what people think of the whole notion of advertising. I'll say what I think, and you let me know if that's how you think / don't think.
Advertising is great for letting me know there is new stuff out there, or for allowing me the occasional 'Eureka' moment (when I see something in meatspace that confuses me because I don't know what it's good for, then I see it being used on an ad so now at least I know its purpose).
But there are plenty of superfluous commercials. Advertising the electric company, for example. It's not as though I was going to NOT use electricity in my computer to post this reply. They're not the only ones. It's not as though I see adverts for a petrol company and I think "I'll use that instead of orange juice in my car."
If I'm in the market for something, I'll shop around. Look for opinions online, check out websites and magazines from independent test sources. Weigh up my options. I certainly don't base my 'desires' on catchphrases and logos. And because of this, I'm an advertiser's worst nightmare. I don't think I can ever be corerced into buying anything I didn't already want or don't need. No matter how many credit card offers I receive, I still refuse to run up a debt because the card has a picture of a polar bear on it, or I can get Reward Points (tm) that are worth less than the amount I'd be paying in interest if I did fall for the sales pitch.
So adverts in my PDFs? About as much use on me as pop-up adverts on the web. And my browser blocks those. If it becomes an annoyance, I'll look for software that stops the ads. Or read the PDFs offline. The worst it will be for me is a waste of screen area.
Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT , X ._.-' X / X /_ X
/ O O\ }} \ ,'---'\___\ X
/ \ X
T T
X I Like Ponies!!!111! X
X
X })`-=--. X
X }/
X _.-=-...-'
X {{| , | X
______ X {{\ | \
/ _ \ \ LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
I\____\ \ TT
I I I I\__/ II
\I_I_I/_ _II
\ _ _ _ i IIo
\----- i_IIO
\ LL
Please control the human population, have sex with ponies!
01001000 01100101 01101100 01110000 01100011 01101111 01101110 01110100 01110010 01101111 01101100 01110100 01101000 01100101 01101000 01110101 01101101 01100001 01101110 01110000 01101111 01110000 01110101 01101100 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00101100 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 01110011 01100101 01111000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110000 01101111 01101110 01111001 00100001
Please stop raping the PDF format.
Thanks!
- The Internet.
P.S. Foxit.
If this becomes standard, I'm not using PDFs anymore. Plain and simple. This whole "ahh we got you hooked on a format, ADVERTISEMENT TIME! MUAHAHAHA" attitude by software vendors is...retarded.
What a bunch of morons, way to kill off a document format...Adobe Tards (tm)
Anatomy-Targeted porn ads!
anytime you mouse over the racy parts of the stripper,
a targeted popup ad displays
"Oh my, look at the --- on her!... Oh, maybe I do need some anti-itch cream"
Another customer satisfied!
Inspired by the friendly ad gurus at Yahoo.com
However, Adobe has not been supported by ad revenue, at least not in a major way. They are now breaking into a new business model where they do have ad revenue, but that doesn't necessarily excuse any antagonization of the public just because "hey, now the public is the product, not the customer."
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself.
Just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root. I don't know. You try. You do what you can. Kill yourself.
Seriously, though. If you are, do. No, really. There's no rationalisation for what you do, and you are Satan's little helpers, okay? Kill yourself. Seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No, this is not a joke, if you're going: "There's going to be a joke coming." There's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked, and you are fucking us. Kill yourself, it's the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself. Planting seeds.
See http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Hicks for more...
That's why I uninstall the PDF plug-in, and just click/download the file like any other, then view it when I want in the viewer I want.
When you do this, your PDF browser and internet browser are different processes, which is good for many reasons: one app crash doesn't affect the other, and one app bottleneck doesn't affect the other, etc.
It's simple to do, and I highly recommend it.
You do not have to put up with Acrobat Reader. Take control of how your browser handles PDF files.
.pdf file, then fire up Foxit.
Use FireFox with the PDF Download add-on and Foxit Reader for display. In this configuration PDF files download without seizing the browser.
But do not under any circumstances load Acrobat reader. Acrobat reader will keep trying to override Foxit each time it runs.
This is not a perfect solution, as there are a web sites that link to PDF files without setting a mime type. Then Firefox tries to display the PDF as the web page. That is annoying, but just save the page source to a
engineers are all basically high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff
I think it is a pretty decent idea. From the context it is talking about only PDFs created with a certain version of the software rather than regular adobe pro, which means you wouldn't use it for creating professional office documents, but distributable publications. It also makes some mention of the publisher being able to profit from it, this would be a cool way for someone to make a career of writing and distributing content without charging for it or hosting it on a server. They just wrap the content up as PDF with the ads and then it can travel through email or be posted anywhere and can be profitable through the proliferation of its usage.
With the rising cost of published books and the diminishment of the publishing industry due to internet usage, this may be a new way to profit from writing without having to make people pay for it.
Now rip me a new one for being a corporate shrew.
I know this is /., so yeah, we all hate ads... There is a possible upside though.
I'm a grad student, I do a lot of research for my classes online, and 90% of the papers I read are in PDF format. For the benefit being able to download these papers, I pay an annual fee for membership in IEEE & ACM to access their digital libraries. If they (ACM/IEEE) could recover their fees through showing ads in the pdfs, maybe I could forgo paying their membership fees and opt instead to download the ad-laden version.
Then again, who knows, they might try to have their cake and eat it too - by charging me a membership fee to access ad-laden pdf versions.
Non, je ne veux pas coucher avec toi ce soir.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3199
I'm sure monitor manufacturer engineers hang on Slashdot too, and they could blurt out the idea to their PHBs over lunch, as an example of stupidity, but PHBs will actually think it's smartest idea they heard in a while and before you know it, the only monitor you can buy is the "Add-monitor".
Can you say "The Death of PDF" ???
As other people said: do not use Acrobat reader. Especially do not use Acrobat Reader on Windows (the Linux version is somewhat less bloated).
Also,do not open PDFs in the browser, open them in a PDF reader. One simple browser setting change and PDFs will be a LOT more usable.
The last time I saw the default PDF readers on Mac and Gnome systems, they were fast and had a good interface. I use KPDF (the default reader for KDE) and it is a lot better than reading a Word document - although not as good for reading on screen as HTML.
Does anyone here remember Prodigy??? You have a full screen GUI that had about 10% of the screen with usable content on it, and the other 90 was made up of interface control and lots of Ads. I couldn't stand that then, and I sure as hell can't stand that now. If I have to, I will bail for a OSS version of a reader so I don't have to be bothered with that crap. I see enough of that in the web browser and now those idiots want to invade everything else we do offline?? Forget it! Crap; I was printing to PDF a lot of documentation that I wanted to keep around so I wouldn't use up paper. I surely am not going to stand still and have some stupid porn ad, or some ad for that Viagra crap show up when I'm trying to look at a technical document I printed in PDF earlier in the year.
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
You're a goofy little dingbat, you know that?
Adobe is actually handing the market to Microsoft.
XPS and Silverlight will become the choice because they are lighter, more featured, and now no freaking ads.
A lot of people posted solutions to this. Thank you and I'll give them a try. Of course, this still leave me wondering what is wrong with Adobe that they could not make a decent reader.
Well, since my company bought the damn program for creating PDFs, I think if they are going to make ad revenue off of our drawings (CAD), I think we should be reimbursed for the software. (Fat chance, I know.)
They do work a lot better when you segregate them from the browser.
In firefox on windows, drill down through: Tools|options|content(tab)|manage...(button) Search (or scroll) for PDF and choose Change action. Then change it to open in acrobat reader (or whatever else you use) instead of the plugin.
It really annoys me that the default setting is to pretend it's a web page. Especially as the widgets don't map very well: you can't print from the browser's print, you have to print from the plugin, little things like that, but all over the place.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
So what will that mean for all the scientific journal article which are mostly served in PDF format by journal sites. Will we suddenly get topic related Ads in there as well? Great, I can already see those "Get your new Antibody or PCR tube offers" in every journal article you read!
Don't use any browser for viewing PDFs over ten pages. Save the PDF to the local drive, close the browser, and open the local copy.
Acrobat Reader as a browser plugin does not load the entire pdf, only the current page. As you scroll around, it has to reload the new page over the net. If you eschew the browser plugin and load a local copy into Acrobat Reader, it is a much more pleasant reading experience.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
If you run KDE, try also KPDF. It's really good and fast. Wish it were ported to win32 too for the benefit of those people who want to use windows.
I hate PDFs. Every time I wind up having to open one of these things in a browser it just sucks. They load up slow.
Are you opening the pdf in a standalone reader? Or is your browser opening the pdf using a plugin?
If you open a pdf in your browser with a plugin, it takes forever.
Open it as a standalone app - MUCH FASTER, with firefox and IE.
But MS' history is to follow.
Sometimes I wish we could go back to the gzipped PostScript.
Yet more companies i will just refuse to do business with. It only takes one annoying ad for me to never look at that company again.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Unknown file type : PDF
o Open with X
o Save to Disk
acroread on Linux routinely goes to 100% CPU usage. If I leave my machine on over night with acroread running it will slow down massively when I try to log in the next day.
The search box is so much better than the other readers, though, that I can't not use it.
Now that publishers have a financial incentive to do so, the TPP epidemic will only get worse.
Airplane Photos, Airline News, Planespotting Guides
Dear content providers,
From the F'ing Article: "People want content for free"...
I don't necessarily want content for free. I do want manuals for items I buy to be available from your website for free. I happen to also want these without have to hand over my life history. I am entirely okay with paying for your service, product, and content when the quality is worth the price you want to charge. Being smothered in ads and other marketing doesn't actually help you get my money when I have a choice in where it is spent.
Later,
-Slashdot Junky
.
Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
As long as they are static, newspaper-like ads and not a flashy bonzi buddy dancing in your face, I'm OK with it.
And why don't we slap a consumer chastidy belt on the credit cards of the stupid people everywhere who buy stuff because they saw an image of it somewhere with some unobtainable hottie / stud-muffin posed arrogantly in the background?
I was reading the Globe and Mail yesterday. Corner page ad for some expensive diamond encrusted watch. Danica Patrick's steely gaze in the background, softened with lip gloss and moisture cream just enough so as not to scream out "I'm going to bite your balls off". No fine print to explain to men) "Danica not included" or to women) "You still won't be able to parallel park your Honda Accord".
It sickens me how easy it is to dupe people by visual association. As long as the reflex exists to reach for the credit card, this kind of crap is going to continue invading every media that impinges upon the visual cortex, and then some.
For that matter, why don't we just invent olfactory nanobots so that the messages can be wafted directly into the brain's neural tissue and thus institutionalize the CC reflex arc once and for all? That would be nice. If we consign the emotionally manipulation to another sensory channel, I could at least get my screen back again for useful work.
No one is going to buy your crappy sh*t. It doesn't matter if you put it in a pop-up, or in a pdf, or in Jenna Jameson's poontang, NO ONE IS GOING TO BUY YOUR CRAPPY SH*T! (ok, I might examine it with tongs if it's in Jenna Jameson's poontang...but that's IT.)
It takes just a moment and an action to destroy. It takes some time and thought to create.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
My hosts file already blocks the public beta link and I last updated it over a month ago
It's bad enough that the "news" channels are nothing more than entertainment + advertisements. News sites still serve up the news, but not without surrounding the stories with ads (gladly removed by Adblock). When will they start inserting ads directly into the text? Could this be a future story as seen on Yahoo! News?
EL DORADO, Kan. - A body found in Kansas appears to be that of a missing college student who led a secret life as an Internet porn star, police said Thursday.
Authorities said the preliminary physical description of the body found about 50 miles east of El Dorado matches that of missing college student Emily Sander. Investigators refused to give details about the state of the body or how it was found, other than it was dressed in a fashionable fleece from Old Navy's new line of winter clothes. Toxicology reports show traces of the delicious new Diet Pepsi Max, with the same great taste as regular Diet Pepsi, though containing fewer calories.
For ****'s sake! Can't we just have a break from advertising being rammed down our throats every 2 secs? Come the glorious day Comrades, first against the wall will be the ad company execs, bop, bop, "cheers for the hard work, lads", BOP!
Windows guys please stop pissing on everyone and the Linux guys stop pissing in the wind, hoping to hit Windows guys!
I have fair amount of doubt how this PDF as gonna work. After all.. i don't think it is a good solution to run the PDF reader in the background whenever Web Browser is running. Come on.. current memory leaks in fire fox and other popular browser + acrobot reader is a deadly combination I guess.
Anyway.. alternative would be a plug-in for each browser. Still... I don't know how it gonna make things easy..
What about an thirt-party pdf reader to kill those ads?
[foxit? maybe?]
Nope, FoxIt pdf's started "advertising" it's pro version quite heavily in recent versions.
For a fast ad free pdf viewer try Sumatra:
http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/
PDFs are neither slow nor crappy. Acrobat Reader is slow, but there are free and faster alternatives (e.g. xpdf). Also, PDFs make for excellent portable presentations (PPTs by default only work on the same machine were they were created, since different MS Powerpoint versions are sometimes less than compatible - PDF works always and everywhere). And with the 'prosper' LaTeX package it's very easy to create PDF presentations on Linux.
The ads don't appear if the PDF is printed.
Looks like I'll be "printing" my PDFs to PDF995 from now on.
Stop bullshitting around with your statistics to make it seem like the ones who don't follow your vision of the world don't matter. Not only does it make you sound like a dumbass when you use the phrase incorrectly, you also discredit your argument when you say things like IE having the "vast majority" of the web browser "market". Seven years ago you would have been completely right, but nowadays IE barely makes up 3/4 of web browsers. Sure, Windows users may make up a huge amount of the market, but certainly not the "vast majority" you make it seem. You bring up the topic of alternatives and discredit them due to not being the most widely-used PDF readers out there which is a bit of a logical fallacy (probably a dicto simpliciter). Of course, you forget that the number of people using programs such as KPDF, Xpdf, Preview.app (Mac OS X default PDF viewer), Evince, Okular, Foxit (quite popular on Windows due to being a very lightweight alternative to Adobe Reader) etc., do indeed make up a large number of people, and I seriously doubt that corporate environments allow Adobe Reader to execute JavaScript in PDF documents for security reasons, so the overall amount of people who would be affected by the ads in TFA isn't nearly as large as you make it seem.
tl;dr: your statistics are way off, so stop saying "vast majority" when you just mean "I use $x, and since nobody else I know uses $x without me telling them about it, nearly nobody must use $x" or some other equally fallacious argument.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
I absolutely agree. Hence my use of "" around web; I meant that sarcastically.
It is most certainly not a web technology. Yet far too many people think PDF and html are interchangeable.
blah blah blah