Slashdot Mirror
Will Mainstream Media Embrace Adblockers?
Blarkon writes "Slashdotters are aware of and often use Adblock Plus," and notes that
"if newspapers wanted to hit the online content industry hard right now, they would be running non-stop information about how to obtain and use Adblock Plus.' That a scorched-earth approach to blocking Internet advertising through AdBlock Plus might collapse free online competitors by starving them of revenue. If more people are aware of Adblock plus, it will be more tempting for other browser manufacturers to include similar ad blocking functionality. Might Rupert Murdoch's apparent 'traffic killing' move to paywall content be a desperate gamble to avoid the impact of a future crash in the ad-supported online business model caused by everyone's browser including something like Adblock Plus?"
Users have shown that they will not pay for online content unless there is an actual value-add. News sites provide nothing that can't be eventually seen on TV or read elsewhere.
Newspapers are done. Trumpeting AdBlock isn't going to help them make a cent.
If/Once Ad-Block becomes mainstream, companies will further and further integrate advertisements into the content. A good example is to look at how YouTube has ads baked into the flash.
News and other ad-supported information sites would take steps such as inserting an ad jingle or statement in the middle of a paragraph.
Its only a matter of time before they figure out how to circumvent adblocking software. The more that use it, the more likely it will be that they'll find a way around it.
In general, the people who have an up-to-date browser and have an ad-blocker don't click on ads. And in general most ads are paid per click rather than per impression, meaning that they are losing no money when someone has ad-block plus installed because they wouldn't have clicked on the ads.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Look at paid cable service channels. Almost all those channels have ads. So would the paid news sites, I expect.
We should stop talking about ad blockers. If a majority of people start blocking ads, then a majority of websites will start finding ways around them.
The first rule of ad blockers is the same as the first rule of that other thing.
...had advertisers not become so obnoxious. There is no going back. They did this to themselves.
Do you mind non-obnoxious ads from sites you actually like? Me neither, they're just fine.
What to do:
1. Make your ads not a goddamn pain in the arse.
2. Gently ask adblock-using readers to add your site to their whitelist. DON'T MAKE THIS A POPUP, THAT'S DOING IT WRONG.
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...when you stop trying to hijack my autonomic nervous system by building ads that writhe, squirm and strobe insistently in my peripheral vision. That is, when they aren't flinging gobs of DHTML poop right on top of the content that I'm actually trying to read.
I feel that I have an unwritten contract with content providers: you provide me with content I want, and in exchange I'll tolerate the ads. That's the quid-pro-quo, and I'm very happy with it. It's better than paying money.
If the ads are so intrusive that they're intolerable, I'll go elsewhere. Effectively, I "can't afford" that content.
I reckon using an ad blocker is *directly* equivalent to circumventing a micropayment mechanism.
I'm sorry but 2 or 3 animated flash ads are not unobtrusive. They make the page load slowly and take huge resources to run all the flash player instances. Some websites bring low performance machines (like netbooks) to a halt if you don't use adblock.
Mada mada dane.
I stopped using AdBlock when I realised I don't mind ads in principle, I only mind:
* dodgy javascript (noscript)
* flash (flashblock)
* animated gifs (some setting in about:config)
with these 3, I almost never see ads anyway, and the ones I do are inobtrusive and I don't mind them.
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One thing people miss is that paid content often contains ads, and advertisers are likely to pay more for those ads.
The logic is, if you're paying for content, then you must be really engaged with it. Say I charge 10c to visit my page about SCUBA diving. I can tell advertisers - look, I don't get as many visits as those free SCUBA sites, but I can demonstrate that every visitor is (a) really into SCUBA and (b) prepared to spend money.
That's the kind of eyeballs an advertiser wants to reach. In theory, they'll pay more to advertise on such a site than they would on a competing free page.
This is actually the reason print magazines and newspapers charge a cover price. The marginal cost of printing and distributing them is negligible. But showing advertisers that the readership is commited, that's priceless.
A site owner has every right to put whatever they want on their site. The reader has no obligation to render it in any particular way.
(and for goodness sake, make sure FF doesn't include ad blocking by default)
For longest time, popup blocking was ad-blocking and it has long been default in Firefox.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
...move.
I don't mind ads on a page, I just wish they behaved more like prints ads and stayed still. As soon as anything on a webpage moves, unless I want it to be there (i.e. the moving item is the purpose of the page and what I am looking at), I get ride of it.
The way I view items on a page that moves, is the equivalent of someone beside me jumping up and down yelling 'Look at me!!!'. I don't know many people who would stand for this. Webpages that behave like this I either modify with FF add-ons, or don't visit.
The decent middle ground would be to block only annoying ads, thus giving sites a very strong motive to carry ads that are not annoying.
Unfortunately people either do not block at all, or the block all ads.
Why, if the mainstream never bothered to embrace ad-blocking technology, would one think it's possible for them to embrace Internet adblockers?
These days, TV ads are just as annoying and obnoxious as Internet ads, but guess what? Like Internet advertising these days, TV ads are obnoxious and interfere with the media you are trying to watch.
Especially the cable TV networks such as TNT, FX, and TBS. When they show movies, there is always a 15 minutes ad break every 15 minutes. They always show movies that have the best scenes of movies cut out to show more commercials. The actual film or TV show's sound is often lowered, and the commercials themselves always use high audio compression to make the ads much louder than the TV, resulting in an awkward transition from a low-volume dramatic scene of a TV show to a loud and obnoxious ad for Viagra. Oh, and let's not forget those drug companies who advertise their shitty erectile dysfunction drugs (Viagra, Cialis) during sports games when they KNOW kids would be watching, and use sexually suggestive and coercive language and visuals to illustrate what they CLAIM these drugs will do.
Although technology such as DVR has become more prevalent over the years, that's only because major cable companies started OFFERING DVR service... Therefore, the only way the mainstream would bother to embrace Interent Adblockers is if ISPs or browser developers actually made them built into the software.
Maybe, just maybe, companies should stop relying solely on advertising to get income. If the only reason you're still in business is because of something that pisses off most of your customers, maybe it's best if you weren't in that business any more.
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