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Google Says Ad Blockers Will Save Online Ads
azoblue writes "Google — the world's largest online ad broker — sees no reason to worry about the addition of ad-blocking extensions to its Chrome browser. Online advertisers will ensure their ads aren't too annoying, the company says, and netizens will ultimately realize that online advertising is a good thing."
I would be ok with the occasional banner ad or something along those lines, but we all know that for every advertiser that attempts to play nicely, a dozen others will come up with some new obnoxious ad. Lately on Wired I've noticed that I have to carefully move my mouse down the page, otherwise I trigger same extremely annoying pop-up/overlay Flash ad often containing sound or moving video which covers the page. I also recently started trying Chrome, so this could be something they've been doing for a while I'm not sure.
I think most people can understand how ads are good in keeping sites free, but I don't think we'll have the pleasure of non-intrusive ads ever. So we'll all be stuck using ad-blockers.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
And, presumably, if there are ad-blocking extensions to Chrome, they will send their information back to Google, and give Google information about precisely which ads are being blocked.
So, when company X comes to Google and says, "Your prices are far too high, most of our ads aren't making impressions anyhow, they're being blocked by clever browser extensions!", Google can come back and say, "Well, we've actually got some data on that, and..."
If you're as good at it as Google, if you, too, can delivery such customer-specific advertising in a peaceful, non-intrusive, text-only delivery system, then yes, you too will have no reason to worry about ad-blocking extensions.
So how will users who have installed ad blocking software at some point realize that the ads they are no longer seeing aren't really that annoying anymore? I suppose what they actually meant to say was "buy text ads, ad blocking software will ... perhaps ... not block them" (sure it does).
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
that I will never find online advertising to be a good thing.
Of course the core assumption here is that people block ads because the ad content is a problem.
What they don't realize (and what people in marketing can not realize, or they would have to admit that their whole professions is being a parasite and a PITA) is that it is the advertisement itself that is the problem.
I don't give a heck about what you're advertising for, nor what style, images, words, whatever you use. I don't want to see your crap. If I need "product information", I will find it - ironically - on Google. The difference is that I'll be looking for it, instead of getting it shoved down my throat, willingly or otherwise.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
While I don't use adblock per se, I do use a combination of Firefox's advanced option to disable animated gifs (actually, to have them animate only once) as well as flashblock so I don't have to see animated flash ads.
The reason I do this is because I'm used to reading books; books do not have anything that animates in them, and anything that animates or continuously moves is very distracting for me when I am reading something. I don't mind ads with bright, flashy colors; magazines have had those since the beginning of time [1], but I can't read a page when I see something animated; it's as annoying as having a fly.
As an aside, I remember in the early 2000s when Slashdot was very much against having animated flash ads. Now, they're very common here. I hope, now that the economy is picking up again, that Slashdot will go back to not having animated ads that I have to block. Also, it would be really nice if Adobe gave flash an option where a flash document would never animate until you clicked on it.
[1] The air conditioner was invented so color printing presses used by advertisers would not have the ink run.
MaraDNS is an open-source DNS server.
Don't worry, you aren't the intended target.
The idea seems to be - if the ads aren't too annoying, they are less likely to be blocked, and ad makes will be encouraged to make those less annoying adds.
Or more simply: Google is hoping that ad blockers will get rid of the more annoying ads that encourage people to get ad blockers. The idea is that everyone has a different point of "too much". I suspect google thinks that ad execs will end up targeting a middle ground. Probably little/no animation, no sound, and no more nudity/blood/violence than would be appropriate ofr the normal customers of the target site.
The most easily annoyed 25% are probably not going to be considered - nothing will satisfy them anyway. Most people, however, don't mind non-intrusive ads.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
The other 88% have NoScript too, which prevented their usage script from running and listing installed addons! :D
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I already pay my ISP for my browsing experience - I have a bunch of websites that I can maintain advert free because I work for a living. If others have to rely on their advertising models to stay afloat, that's not my problem. The internet will still be here adverts or not.
Says the guy on ad funded slashdot.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
will be my first. I have seen some entertaining ads (for example during the Super Bowl), but never one I considered useful.
Hey - Any time you visit a site and block their ads, you're stealing the Internet! Personally, I click on all banners and buy at least one item from each advertising vendor to support wherever I visit. Otherwise, I'm afraid that this whole "Internet" thing just won't stick.
Seriously, though, some places have it right. Google's ads are fairly unobtrusive and typically (although not always) relevant. Amazon's "People who viewed this item also viewed" or "...untimately bought" links are terrifically useful. And Slashdot's ads (IIRC) are certainly nerd-oriented and can be disabled if you give them money or contribute regularly - Seems like an OK system.
All that said, most places have it absolutely wrong which is why AdblockPlus and NoScript are my first two stops when installing FireFox.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
So, who do you think helps when family / friends / whoever has computer problems?
Yea, it's those geeks. What do you think they will install first when they try to find a solution in the Internet to some technical problem? AdBlocking. Mandatory 10 seconds.
And people like it. They talk about it and others follow.
General demographic is catching up to ad-blocking very fast.
Those ones are nowhere near as bad as the ones that pop up over the text you are trying to read. You know, the ones where when you click on the X button to close it it takes you to the advertiser's page? Creating those should be a capital offense...
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
I dunno. I think there's something to be said for looking at the problem in economic terms. Some people tune into the Superbowl to see the advertisements, after all, so that's a kind of exchange: entertainment for eyeballs. I don't mind the advertisements in Google's search results because when I don't want them they don't intrude, but they're often useful enough that I click through before doing a new search. That's win-win for the advertisers and me.
The problem I think is with crude advertising methods from the era of old media. The extreme difficulty of getting many high value impressions by old medial techniques means that if you want to scale your business, you've got to do it with a huge pile of low value impressions. At some scale, the old media advertising game becomes about racking up sheer volume. Since there is no way of distinguishing good impressions from bad, and you *need* impressions, the guiding principle is that there is no such thing as a bad impression. Think of the difference between carpet bombing an entire city and having an agent stick a ricin tipped umbrella into your target as he strolls to work. The assassin is more effective period -- not to mention cost effective. If the only weapons you have are unguided bombs, then no death in that city would be a "bad" one.
If the marginal benefit of the next thousand impressions is greater than their marginal cost, the advertiser will go for it. What Google has done is increase the opportunity costs of going for unwanted impressions. Why do that when you can find consumers who *want* your information? If the process of giving *unwanted* impressions is harder, so much the better for me (and Google, whose business is built on a competing strategy).
Google's search result adverts are a good deal for me: information that is often useful at the price of a few square inches of monitor space for a few seconds. That's the same strategy behind the advertising supported "free phone" idea. Done in an old-media any-impression-is-a-good-one manner, it would be hideous. Done in a way that is useful to me, I might not mind it so much.
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In case of Google it's quite justified - their ads are the only widespread ones which consistently don't seem to be annoying to vast majority of people.
When was the last time you've heard somebody being fed up with them? (vs. eye-raping GIFs or similar Flash ones? The latter often slow, loud or covering the webpage proper)
One that hath name thou can not otter
...of anyone who uses the word "netizen."
This is absolutely backward, though. When advertisers realize fewer people are responding to their ads, there reaction is to make them MORE annoying, MORE obnoxious, and hence more attention-getting. HEAD-ON!!! APPLY DIRECTLY TO YOUR IDIOT-DOME!!!
The way I see it, the only end-game is for advertisers to work closely with site owners so that ads are integrated with the content in such a way that software cannot distinguish the ads from the content.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Some of us non-subscribers can turn them off due to good karma. I'm not sure how long it lasts though. I prefer to leave them up to support the cause. Plus I'm a sucker for Tux items.
lol: You see no door there!
This seems like yet another situation that is subject to the tragedy of the commons. Even if a few advertisers choose to use unobtrusive ads there will be others who do not. Ad blocking software generally blocks all ads regardless of how annoying they are. Doing the right thing will not prevent you from being blocked and it will result in less ad impressions.
That depends on the answer to the following question:
Will the general public be fine with subscription fees to their favourite free online services?
If the answer is no, then the internet won't be be here without adverts. At least not in any meaningful, useful form.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Generally, an advertiser wants to accomplish a couple of things: (A) make the target demographic aware of its product or service offering, or (B) raise that existing awareness... remind people about the product or service. In both cases, they are ultimately attempting to influence people who would otherwise not spend their money, to do so.
Personally, I find that motive A, if demographically appropriate, doesn't bother me that much, and in fact, has been useful to me at times. After I've seen the motive A advertisement once, subsequent viewings fall into motive B. I usually find motive B extremely annoying. Back when I watched television, I would see the same exact advertisement multiple times a day. Before I started using Mozilla and Adblock, I would add sites to my hosts file constantly. One of the few motive B advertising methods that never got on my nerves are coupons and discount offers.
Once you've gone a while without seeing virtually any advertising, your perspective changes a bit. The times when you are exposed to an annoying advertisement (on another person's computer, somewhere with a TV playing, rent a car and turn on the radio) it's even more distasteful than you recall. I think the annoying methods are crumbling fast. As Clear Channel destroyed the value and variety of radio, MP3 players rose to fill the gap; people obtain their news from website articles, sometimes using adblockers, while newspapers lose subscribers. Between independent video content, DVD collections of shows, Tivos, and piracy, people can get their episodic video fix without seeing a single commercial.
Advertisement exposure is no longer all that mandatory. The other side of this, however, is that people still want to know about products and services that interest them. As such, a person like me, who hates annoying old-school advertising, willfully signs up for deal mailing lists from my preferred hardware vendors, actively seeks out reviews and product previews on sites that cover my interests, and constantly monitors feeds of local news / reviews concerning the sorts of local businesses I like to visit. I am empowered by features like RSS, which make that kind of monitoring possible. The companies who do their best to get their products reviewed far and wide, who publish press releases, etc... will receive my attention. If they make a good product or offer a good service, that attention may have positive results for them. If advertisers wish to stay ahead of the curve (or just plain afloat), they need to start looking at this a lot more. Potential consumers are sending a pretty clear message: Be useful, or shut up.
There's an old behavioral psychology experiment that seems to fit the situation:
To train a horse to lift one of its front legs whenever a bell rings, you start out with a piece floor that can be partially electrified to deliver a mild shock. You ring the bell, you deliver the shock. After a while the horse learns that to avoid discomfort it needs to raise its leg. It lifts the leg - no pain.
Now comes the tricky part: after a while you remove the shocking floor. Now the horse will still lift its leg whenever the bell sounds; and what's more, this behavior will even become stronger and stronger ingrained, since there is no more punishment and the "correct" behavior is re-inforced.
Now assume that instead of a horse there is a user, replace the electric shock with annoyance inflicted by ads and the act of lifting the front leg with using adblocking software. This means that in order to overcome the strong aversion of adblock users you have to offer a very, very high incentive and strong proof that reverting to the old browsing habits will not be punished by more annoying ads.
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
have always seemed intrusive [sic] and sometimes downright useful.
The whole point of an ad is to gain attention. Unless you take subliminal advertising seriously an unobtrusive ad is a non-functioning ad. It is a non-sustainable business model.
And useful? You have got to be kidding. Anybody who bases any purchasing decision at all based on unsolicited advertising is a fool.
---
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
Well, maybe it's just me, but I have been noticing less and less flash ads lately. Less annoying and intrusive ads as well...
I think it's just you. I turned off my ad-blocker one day to see what the wild was like and I nearly threw my computer out the window.
I would say that the worst form of advertising is putting a 10 paragraph story across ten pages to up ad exposure. Nothing annoys me more than that (and ad blocker can't do anything about those).
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
Well, if the character is going to put on shoes anyway, why not just let them be branded shoes? Would it have been better if the logo was blurred out? No. It has no affect at all on the story or how well it's told.
Developers: We can use your help.
This is such a weird, one-sided view of the Internet. I'm already paying for my connection. Why should I pay the costs of the sites I visit, too
This is such a stupid comment.
I already paid for my house, now I need pay for furniture?
I already paid for my car, now I need pay for parking?
I already paid for my phone, now I need pay for for every call I make?
With prices up 200-400% and wages up 50%, I have to be selective.
What country are you living in? Unless you are talking about a time span of decades it certainly isn't the USA. In fact in 2009 the CPI fell for the first time since 1955. Wages certainly aren't up 50% on a nominal or real basis unless you are talking about a decades long trend - and on a real basis they have arguably fallen.
Wrong. "Unobtrusiveness", used in this context, is not a binary trait like you're assuming it is; you're trying to make it a synonym for "invisible". In this context, we're using the term "obtrusive" (and "unobtrusive") to confer degree. So "unobtrusive" doesn't mean "invisible", it just means "not as obtrusive as really annoying and in-your-face".
Google ads are most certainly "unobtrusive", compared to any Flash ad, and even any banner ad.
And yes, basing a purchasing decision solely on advertising is stupid. But without advertising, you frequently will never learn about products and services that are available to you. For some things, you may already know of their existence, and a Google search will help you find places to buy that widget from. But for other things, unless you read some article or third-party testimonial or your friend tells you about it, you don't know that it exists unless you see an advertisement. Sure, word-of-mouth is a great way to learn about things without being unduly influenced, but unless your business is very mature and has all the customers it needs, relying on word-of-mouth for advertising is foolish.
Really? I always wonder about people who say this...you find ads annoying, and you don't actually engage them in the intended way (i.e., convert to an actual sale), but you feel some obligation to sit through a mini-pitch?
Have we forgotten that advertising is not an end unto itself? Advertisers are not trying to get appreciation for their beautiful work, and they don't really care about views that don't convert. So, if you're not interested in buying anything, don't beat yourself up.
I don't feel bad at all when I block ads. When I want to buy something, I go out and find it. I think that besides movie trailers, I've probably only bought like 3 things in my entire life that I wouldn't have otherwise bought if not for an ad. If all ads went away tomorrow, I would not miss them in the least, and I would definitely appreciate the lower cost of products that don't have to pay for huge marketing budgets. (Imagine it—soda companies could turn a handsome profit while cutting the cost of a can at the vending machine to, what, 7 cents? Maybe 10? Not that I drink soda, but it is the most apt example.)
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Easy solution: FlashBlock (now available for Chrome)
Blocks all the worst offenders, and leaves static images, plain text and the occasional GIF.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.