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.
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.
why not put ad-block on the router itself, you could then enable it for a whole organization.
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.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
This sounds like a slashvertisement.
Firefox users should give NoScript a try, it does a lot more than just block ads.
IE users should give Firefox a try.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...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.
You block my ads, I sneak them past your adblocker. You adjust your adblocker, I adjust my ads.
It's not going to "solve" the "problem" of free internet information by making it unprofitable. Instead, we'll see more sophisticated means to get past blockers. It's always been that way, from spam and spamblockers to P2P and P2Pblocking. You filter spam, the spammer changes his approach to make it past your filter. Your ISP filters P2P, you create/download ways to get past that filter.
My solution was simply to "educate" advertisers. Your ads are obnoxious and in-your-face popups/popuners/flashcrap? You get blocked. Your ads are unobtrusive and targeted? I go out of my way and click it to generate revenue for you and show you (and the one advertising with your page) that this is a "working" way to get ads clicked.
The key here is that ads have to be seen, but they must not be disturbing. If I have to close 20 popups when I surf to your place, I might just take my "business" elsewhere. If you offer information with a few good, topical ads, I might just as well click it, either because I'm actually really interested in what you're offering or just to show you that yes, I do honor your way to advertise and I think you deserve your money for playing fair.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Get free bitcoins: http://freebitco.in
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.
http://salescircular.com/
Different people, different models.
When I use advertising I want to see nothing but ads. That is what Sales Circular http://salescircular.com/ does. It is nothing but ads and competitor's prices are shown side-by-side.
Personally I think everyone buys things on sale, wants to buy things on sale. However, for someone like myself I consume ads using a different model.
My desired advertising consumption is analogous to the classified ads section of newspapers, or Craig's List.
Online marketing needs to cover their customer consumption bases when it comes to consumer advertising. People like myself who perhaps use AdBlock Plus still want things on sale, we just would prefer to browse ads all-at-once when we are looking for sales, as opposed to seeing ads intermixed with content.
At the end of the day, though, I'm still looking for things on sale and I still buy advertised product.
I don't see AdBlock Plus as a threat, just an expression how different types of consumers like myself use different tactics to find what is on sale. This is no different in the past where Catalogs, Classifieds, Yellow Pages, Magazines, etc all had different audiences they were reaching.
The problem is that we already had a middle ground and then dumped it. The middle ground was that websites have non-invasive, relevant ads. I wouldn't go out of my way to block Google text ads, or even non-flashy image ads. But in the inevitable quest to maximize revenues, we got distracting ads, Flash ads, pop-ups, pop-unders, page-peels, random ads disguised as links that pop up when you mouse-over them, and other crazy stuff. We went from 2 ads on a page of content to 2 paragraphs on a page of ads.
People get AdBlock Plus because of the annoying ads, and then blocking the decent ads is no extra effort. The default block lists for ABP already block Google ads, just because it's an extra line on a page.
I don't mind an ad that's like "hey, you're on a computer hardware blog. Why don't you try this game?" in text, or even with a picture, over on the side. That's the middle ground. But I am gonna block a 1MB Flash ad that blocks all the content until I click it off and flashes boobies at me when I'm reading a news website (I'm looking at you, Evony).
(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.