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."

Comments

And to them I say

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck with that.

Re:And to them I say

[ByOhTek]

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.

Re:And to them I say

[ircmaxell]

Well, maybe it's just me, but I have been noticing less and less flash ads lately. Less annoying and intrusive ads as well...

This begs the question of causality. Are ad-blockers causing advertisers to put up milder (and friendlier) ads? Or is that just the general trend of the industry (after they learned that the more annoying ads don't generate steady interest)? I tend to think the latter (since once someone blocks an ad, nothing the advertiser does to that ad with the exception of changing ad servers is going to make a difference)...

Still, I can't imagine the percentage of blocked ads is going to be that high to put a major dent in the industry (yet). On one of my sites (which gets around 60k unique visitors per day), I see about a 5% difference between http stats and adsense stats. That implies to me that about 5% of my visitors have an ad-blocker. Staggering? Nope. Enough to make me change my advertising practices? Nope. Then again, my ads aren't obtrusive and are simply image/text ads from Google...

Re:And to them I say

[truthsearch]

I'm in this boat. I have nothing against online ads if they're not intrusive, annoying, and excessive. I never go back to sites which excessive ads because they clearly care less about their own content. I'd rather see a few simple ads on a quality site than block ads on a crappy site.

It's similar to TV advertisements. People watch superbowl ads because they expect them to be entertaining. The rest of the year I flip to a different channel when the ads appear because I just find them annoying. But the occasional unobtrusive product placement within a program doesn't deter people from watching the show.

Re:And to them I say

[JavaBear]

Agreed, I only block the annoying ones, or the ones that slow down my browsing, like Adtech.de.

That I very rarely react to the rest is besides the point.

Re:And to them I say

[gnick]

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.

Re:And to them I say

[hey!]

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.

Re:And to them I say

[g0dsp33d]

I think you and the GP stumbled on the idea. Googles ads, IMHO at least, have always seemed intrusive and sometimes downright useful. They generally don't break web layout either.

That makes Google a winner either way. If people who don't like ads, refuse to use them and most important won't click them want to block ads, Google as the biggest web advertiser can get a higher click-through rate. Conversely, the people that actually interact with helpful ads will block some annoying ones, which will probably leave the remaining ones to be a higher percent of Google ads. Win - win.

Re:And to them I say

[Lord Ender]

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.

Re:And to them I say

[petermgreen]

The thing is once someone starts blocking adverts why wouldn't they just block all of them?

Re:And to them I say

[Ruede]

agreed

i have no issue with embedded ads that are not annoying in fact i am more likely to click an ad that does not annoy me :)

but those that open new windows or have something on top of the page... -> do not want. well usually those ads are on pages i wont visit anyway because of worthlessness ^^

there should be a html tag content this way i could allow adblocker to allow those ads...

too bad it would be abused the second it is on the market making it ad absurdum. :(

Re:And to them I say

[Dan Ost]

If that's true, then those advertisers will shrink their market until they go out of business.

The surviving advertisers will be the ones who learned how to make ads that aren't blocked.

Re:And to them I say

[Dan Ost]

I don't run an adblocker because I find that blocking flash via noscript is sufficient to remove the ads that I find unacceptable.

Non-flash ads are rendered just fine.

And they don't bother me one bit.

Re:And to them I say

[ImprovOmega]

That's the instinctual reaction - they're not paying attention, make it harder to ignore. However, as happens from time to time, the correct answer is the non-intuitive one. The best way to get people to pay attention is to make your ads non-obtrusive, but readily available. Google does a good job of this already. Their text ads are generally relevant, but so far from annoying that I wouldn't bother to try blocking them. Actually, with flashblock on I haven't been annoyed by an ad in ages.

I think they have it right, use of blockers to kill the more sophisticated and annoying ads will lead to a positive direction in the online ad industry.

Re:And to them I say

[bit01]

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".

Re:And to them I say

[pixelpusher220]

Ad-blockers work on URLs for the most part don't they? If a company starts using ads from a new URL they aren't blocked by default.

I've always allowed ads that come from the site I'm viewing. I block on principle ads that come from remote servers. If an online company wants to invest in ads they are willing to host, I'll deal with the ads.

Re:And to them I say

[WCguru42]

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).

Re:And to them I say

[trum4n]

print view. problem solved.

Re:And to them I say

[jafiwam]

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.

We have that already. It's called CNet.

Re:And to them I say

[jzuccaro]

But some Firefox extensions can:

• repagination
• FastPrevNext
• Open Sequence Tabs

Re:And to them I say

[Maxo-Texas]

I notice less and less flash adds since installing firefox with adblock and noscript.

The remaining ads, I have a psychological blindness to so my adblocker is really saving them bandwidth.

The only ads I "see" any more seem to be Geico ads on television. I'm not a Geico customer and I've never been one. I'm a 21st century customer so this is odd. Oh..and I do see ads on Boardgamegeek for a game that I'm already looking at. I look at the game, and i see an ad "buy for this price at blaah". But even then, I turn on all adds, quickly scan for price and enter test orders at the lowest three vendors (to flush out shipping differences).

Part of the my overall attitude is that the wealthy have squeezed me so hard on pay and shipped so many friends jobs overseas that I worry about my security , that I'm saving 40-50% of what I make and will do so until I have a fairly large pile of cash. Perhaps once I'm safe, I'll feel like buying again.

With prices up 200-400% and wages up 50%, I have to be selective.

Oh.. and I do see the ski email ads from steamboat in my inbox. But, do you really want to ski at the same resort over and over and over and over..

Re:And to them I say

[g0dsp33d]

I don't necessarily make purchase decisions based on the advertising. Sometimes its links to a charity or alerts me to the existence of products. Sometimes it just helps me find the correct search terms for something I can't find. Purchasing isn't the only use, but if I conversing with someone about shopping and a link for a product I want comes up (Gmail is a typical source for Google ads in my case), then yes, I would certainly consider checking it out.

The point is I like ads if they support websites I use and pertain to my interests. I'm not making purchase decisions because it is the first thing I see, but I'd be foolish to ignore extra sources of potentially competitive prices if I am looking for something.

Re:And to them I say

[cjb658]

I used to wonder how Slacker made money. Then one day, I got a new job, and went there using my virgin install of Firefox.

I don't know how anyone can use that site without Adblock.

Or Tylenol.

Re:And to them I say

[truthsearch]

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.

Re:And to them I say

[Tangentc]

Exactly right, that's why when I accidentally grazed the stove top with my hand, I learned that next time I should slam my face on it repeatedly. I think that the advertisers that are dumb enough to continue or increase business practices that led to the creation of adblockers in the first place will die out like the dodo and the ones that adapt successfully to the changing paradigm will thrive. Though the scenario you mentioned with integration of content with advertising on the internet seems almost inevitable, as it occurs in just about every other medium, the more obtrusive ones will turn off consumers just like egregious product placement does.

Re:And to them I say

[FlyingBishop]

Like most sites with obscene levels of advertising, Flashblock strips out half of it, and the rest is palatable.

Re:And to them I say

[pluther]

Are you kidding?

If it wasn't for advertising in banner ads, I would never have known of the existence of such things as my binary alarm clock, or my "Teach the Controversy" T-shirts. Both purchasing decisions based purely on advertising.

That's also the way I found at least half the web comics I read daily.

Re:And to them I say

[Lord Ender]

Wrong. The annoying advertisers will drive people to adblock, which puts ALL advertisers out of business.

Re:And to them I say

[aliquis]

Well, maybe it's just me

That must be it.

but I have been noticing less and less flash ads lately. Less annoying and intrusive ads as well...

No, just no.

Even Slashdot got flash ads which scrolls out on top of other content sometimes.

Re:And to them I say

[HermMunster]

This is a bogus comment. Most people absolutely do dislike, mind, hate, and are very annoyed by ads. No one is not.

What people want are fewer ads. For instance, you don't need ads on every page. You don't need multiple ads on every page.

One ad, ever couple of times you visit the page would cease annoying people. It would satisfy the majority (greater than 75% for sure). But most sites put multiple ads per page and put ads up every time you hit the page. How about cutting down on all ads.

And mind you, these same companies that are advertising are the same companies responsible for tons of spam that get into your inbox.

I don't need ads to tell me what I should buy. I know what I want and I've gotten there by reading and by trail and error. What good does an ad do for me when I never read them, ever.

Back in the day when computers were first gaining some modicum of popularity I read the magazines for the ads. Yes, I did. Because they did a better job of stating the specifications and pointing out the important information. Since, of course they've gone the same route as the one that sells you frying pan oil. Let's be real.

Re:And to them I say

[Grishnakh]

Oh.. and I do see the ski email ads from steamboat in my inbox. But, do you really want to ski at the same resort over and over and over and over..

That probably depends on the resort. If I had the time and money to take a ski trip to Whistler/Blackcomb every year, I probably would.

Re:And to them I say

[WCguru42]

print view. problem solved.

True. I've gotten to the point where if I can't find the print view link in 5 seconds then I'm not going to bother with the site.

Re:And to them I say

[h3llfish]

>>ad blocker can't do anything about those

They do though. By blocking the ads, they speed up the page load time, which helps you to get through all 17 pages (to read a 200 word article) in a shorter time. Plus, the lack of distracting flashing objects also reduces the total time required to read the article.

Re:And to them I say

[MikeFM]

I block most ads but I certainly wouldn't want to block the ads that show up in my Google search results. I wouldn't even think of Related Products as ads (and I use that feature in all my sites). I don't see how blocking ads hurts the sites I visit because I won't buy their products anyway. I advertise for my own sites and I seldom bother with ads in content sites because the click thru rate is low and the conversion rate is super low. Those ads are almost always a waste of money. It's ads in search results that have the highest conversion rate and are the least annoying so that's what I use and what I don't block.

Re:And to them I say

[Grishnakh]

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.

Re:And to them I say

[Ihmhi]

More than a few websites have buried or altogether removed print view as it was a common workaround. Best part, though, are the ones that removed the link but not the code, so all you'd have to do is add something like ?ref=print into the URL to bring it up again anyway.

Re:And to them I say

[JAZ]

This begs the question of causality.

No it doesn't. It raises the question.

"Begging the question" refers to the logical fallacy of assuming an initial point to be true when it isn't necessarily. /end of idiom nazi mode

Re:And to them I say

[dbc]

Its just you. My experience is exactly the opposite. I've been tolerating the ads most places lately, mainly out of being too lazy to install ad blockers. Yesterday I was finally pushed over the edge by some site with "float over the content" ads with obscene amounts of animation. I installed flashblock and life is now much better.

Flash is the cancer of the web.

Re:And to them I say

[ircmaxell]

I don't know. Maybe it's not the number of ads, but the amount of information that can be had either ad free or with unobtrusive ads that has gone up (Wikipedia etc)... To tell you the truth, now that I'm looking, I'm only seeing an abundance of ads on sites that I visit that aren't important (such as following a link in /.)... The sites that visit either out of habit (sites in my RSS reader and favorites) or for work have little to no ads at all. I guess it's not a matter of better ads on the net so much as less ads on the sites which I frequent (Do I frequent them because of the lack of ads? I don't know... Food for thought)...

Oh, and I agree 5000% about flash...

Re:And to them I say

[Scrameustache]

an unobtrusive ad is a non-functioning ad.

I don't buy things from people who are rude to me.

Re:And to them I say

[BryanL]

I use AutoPager add-on for Firefox. It strings multi-page stories together most of the time.

Re:And to them I say

[pluther]

Hm. I guess since I didn't include the link, I can't blame you for not following it:
http://controversy.wearscience.com/

However, even so, your statement is still ridiculously stupid.

Seriously, you're suggesting people do extensive market research to test manufacturers' claims before they buy a T-Shirt??

Re:And to them I say

[Faerunner]

I agree with the parent. On the sites that I visit with Google text ads, I don't feel the need to ignore the ad or block it the way I do with most other ads. I may even skim it to see if it has interesting content, because a text ad paradoxically calls more attention to itself than a flash ad which I will have to watch for a while to get all the info, or worse, have to block because it distracts from the site content. My browsing style is rather stream-of-consciousness, so I'm likely to click only on links relevant to the activity or text I'm currently viewing. Because Google can serve context-sensitive advertising, it's more likely to get a hit from me than an adsense-hosted flash ad that's been put up regardless of related site content.

I have even clicked on mostly ads from my gmail header adline, not because they were particularly flashy or advertised something cheap but because whatever they were linking to - doctors, movie reviews, etc was a good jumping point for quick research, and as parent stated they are sometimes linked to your email subject lines.

Re:And to them I say

[StripedCow]

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.

Some kind of collaborative filtering will get rid of those ads...

Re:And to them I say

[Jarik C-Bol]

no, worse is the flash ads that look like a normal banner ad, but when your page loads, it expands, animates, and takes up the whole page, with a close button in a non standard location (bottom left anyone) or non-existent. THOSE are the only ads that annoy me more than ads with sound.

Re:And to them I say

[yukk]

I hate vokens too. The uncloseable ones are really low.

Re:And to them I say

[akayani]

Google isn't concerned because if 70% of people are too stupid to kill IE then 70% are too stupid to kill advertising.

Re:And to them I say

[BillX]

My vote is for the advertisers who trap any click inside the browser window (to highlight poorly-colored text, focus the window, etc.) to spawn popups/redirects/other-nastiness, now that the entire free world is blocking onLoad/onUnload events out-of-the-box. And mouseovers. MOUSEOVERS! These dickheads are the reason I keep my speakers switched off at work (the same advertisers who think trapping mouseover events is cute also think yelling at their prospective customer is cute).

Re:And to them I say

[BillX]

And Slashdot's ads (IIRC) are certainly nerd-oriented and can be disabled if you give them money or contribute regularly

Could just be a quirk on my end, but as a somewhat infrequent contributor, I have the "disable advertising" option while logged in, but it has to be re-set from time to time... frankly, if the ads are staying put and not making noise / dancing around the screen / giving me a seizure, I don't care enough to withdraw what little monetary support my eyeballs provide. It would be interesting if /. correlated the use of this feature to which ad was playing at the time to see whose dancing monsters are pushing users over that threshold.

Re:And to them I say

[AmiMoJo]

It depends if they put in loads of ground level shots of him running on those shoes, cut with close ups of him choosing the latest in manufactured pop on his mobile phone. That would be changing the style of the show just to show off the product.

Re:And to them I say

[Geminii]

But without advertising, you frequently will never learn about products and services that are available to you.

And you know what? I'm OK with that.

Seriously. If I perceive that some aspect of my life isn't as great as it could be, then I'll go looking for a product or service to fix that. Otherwise, I get enough osmotic information on the state of the world and the products and services in it just by reading stuff (including stuff on the internet) and talking to people.

As an example, I know soft drinks are out there. I see them advertised on billboards, in the supermarket, on TV, in the local paper, occasionally mentioned on blogs in passing, and so forth. I don't need cola company representatives knocking on my door to deliver the Good Word, or waking me up by throwing cans at my window, or responding to every web page click with screaming, jumping pop bottles and jingles.

Sure, there are things which are aimed at very tiny specific markets, and which therefore don't advertise through general channels. But guess what - if I'm the kind of person they're aimed at, then I will ALREADY be reading the kinds of things and talking to the kinds of people which mention them. If I'm not, then I probably don't need them, no matter how desperately they want to get my attention.

I sometimes wonder how well-known rich people filter their daily experience to weed out the millions of attempted solicitations from products and companies aiming for a big sale or endorsement. Do Hollywood stars have to wade through a sea of "please read my script" encounters every time they walk down the street? Does Steve Jobs have a spam filter tweaked for people trying to sell to him personally everything from software to paperclips? Does everyone who controls significant amounts of money need legions of bodyguards, secretaries, and underlings to act as human firewalls?

Re:And to them I say

[Grishnakh]

Well, if you hate advertising so much, you're perfectly free to stay at home and never use Google. Most people obviously don't have such a big problem with it, and some of us actually like learning about really useful new things that make our lives easier or more fun once in a while. This doesn't mean I want to be bombarded with pop-ups, which is why I use ABP, but a few text-only ads sprinkled here and there don't bother me, and seem like a perfectly good way to "pay" for using an excellent search engine that's otherwise free.

For people who really hate all advertising, maybe you should try starting your own search engine that's only available to paying users, and is completely free of ads. I'll bet that'll really take off.

If wishes were pennies...

[Aequitarum Custos]

wait, Google is already rich.

Ads? What ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are *ads* on the web? I haven't seen one in years!

Re:Ads? What ads?

[ArcherB]

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.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[digitalchinky]

There are adverts on slashdot? You have a point, but really, I decide what browsing experience I have - it's advert free. My moral guidance unit tells me it's ok with this.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[ircmaxell]

I use advertisements on most of my sites not because I want to make money, but because I want to pay for the site. It's not cheap running a dedicated server (Not to mention the time I spend administrating and developing the site), typically a few hundred $$$ per month... If I can recoup that cost (which I do), than I am happy. Is that such a bad thing? I'm not talking about a lot of money here either, I average around $500 per year above my raw expenses. I think that $10 per hour for the admin duties that I do isn't bad to take...

With that said, I see such a low impact from ad-blockers (around 5% or so), that I really don't mind. I keep the ads unobtrusive, and haven't heard a single complaint (yet). It's the few bad apples that overload their sites with ads that spoil it for the rest of us who are just looking to have an expense neutral side project (or make a little bit of beer money for the time invested)...

Re:Ads? What ads?

[thisnamestoolong]

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...

Re:Ads? What ads?

[g0dsp33d]

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.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[IntlHarvester]

The official response seems to be "Who cares?"

The kind of person who goes onto ad-supported sites in order to endlessly bitch about ads and advocate blocking them is a tiny minority of internet users. As long as it is essentially noise traffic, it doesn't affect anyone's business model.

Even on Slashdot, I would guess the vast majority of visitors are running stock browser configs and never wade into these "below your threshold" discussion about how terrible ads are.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[bit01]

Even on Slashdot, I would guess the vast majority of visitors are running stock browser configs and never wade into these "below your threshold" discussion about how terrible ads are.

Adblock plus, one adblocker on one web browser, is used daily by about 11 million people. Doesn't negate your point but it's not in the noise either.

---

The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".

Re:Ads? What ads?

[steelfood]

It gets even better: he lacks the * next to his name.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

The internet will still be here adverts or not.

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.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[IntlHarvester]

The upshot it seems is that it's only a specific demographic blocking ads, and that doesn't really affect most sites.

If you're slashdot, you survive by selling "Windows Server 2008 R2" (my current ad) to IT guys checking the tech headlines on their lunch break. On the other hand, they're also trying to sell "ThinkGeek" t-shirts with Unix jokes on them, and the target market of college computer nerds might be ad-blocking them.

Also, where did you get the 11M figure for ABP? I've never seen any actual numbers.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[bit01]

Also, where did you get the 11M figure for ABP? I've never seen any actual numbers.

Click the link, it's a stats page.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[thepotoo]

OK, ABP has 11 million users. That's great. Can we compare to another open source project? VLC has a few more downloads than that. (I know I can't compare downloads to users, so I won't).

Let's try this instead: 1.7 billion people running web browsers, 47% running Firefox (815 million FF users), and only 11 million people choose to install ABP? That's 1.35%. Most of those are tech savvy people who are harder to brainwash with ads anyway. It's noise.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[aliquis]

Opera:
Has a builtin adblocker, if you want to be able to choose whatever flash anims will run or not you can to. Adsweep works on Opera as well if you don't want to set up your own rules.

Chrome:
For chrome you need to switch to the developer snapshot channel to be able to load addons such as adsweep.

Safari:
I don't remember what I ran, Pithelmet is used by many but I often find it outdated. If you want something which just block ads as in Firefox with Adblock plus you can use adblock.

To almost claim only firefox is able to block ads is kinda ignorant.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[DrBoumBoum]

You should give privoxy a try. Light and non-obtrusive, works beautifully on Linux and Windows alike, and by directing all traffic through it you get consistent results on all browsers.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[Random5]

Actually i'd say the answer is yes. Would I pay $2 a year to read slashdot? Sure, and that $2 per person per year would probably be higher than the add income they get through having one more unique IP address loading ads from them daily/weekly or however it's metered. It's got to be a lot more economical as I almost never click on an ad on purpose and buy even less than that from ads.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[krelian]

My moral guidance unit tells me it's ok with this

You are using the good old guidance also known as "I only care about me". No problem here. However, I would assume that in your normal day to day life you probably do not enjoy hanging out with with egoistic people. Hypocrisy?

Anyway, your system only works because your visits are "funded" by those who do not block ads. If everyone followed your moral guidance and advise ad supported sites will go bankrupt or change to a pay model. Since the average person usually follows the "I only care about me" philosophy I think it's a safe bet to assume that the only reason most people don't block ads is because of ignorance of the feature. So, people like you and the AC who enjoy posting juvenile comments like "ads, there are ads on the internet!?" (and I've seen these comments almost everywhere online ads are mentioned, never mind if ad blocking is discussed) are actively shortening this grace period where you can have your cake(visits sites) and eat it too(no ads or payments necessary)

So we have hypocrisy and stupidity. Oh well...

Re:Ads? What ads?

[jackal40]

I can't remember the last time I saw an online ad from my computer at home. Now if work would let me install Firefox I'd be able to say Ads? What ads?

Re:Ads? What ads?

[krelian]

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?

Re:Ads? What ads?

[aliquis]

I do the opposite.

Slashdot informs me that I can choose not to watch any ads if I want to as a thank for my contributions to the site. I don't bother click it since I like Slashdot and they deserve their ads income (if they really get any from me not clicking their ads ..)

Re:Ads? What ads?

[houghi]

I use advertisements on most of my sites not because I want to make money, but because I want to pay for the site.

Same difference. You place ads so you get money. The fact that you put that money back in the site is irrelevant. It does not matter what you use the money for.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[ChefInnocent]

If we could include the ones that try to move the contents you are reading for the ad, I'll sign your petition of making these ads a capital offense.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[coolsnowmen]

I use advertisements on most of my sites not because I want to make money, but because I want to pay for the site.

Same difference. You place ads so you get money. The fact that you put that money back in the site is irrelevant. It does not matter what you use the money for.

I think it does.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[mister_playboy]

All the options for Chrome/Chromium/Iron don't really block ads. They only prevent them from rendering after they are downloaded. The amount of time downloading the ads takes more than negates Chrome's speed advantage over Firefox. it's worth noting the "AdBlockPlus" for Chrome is not made by the guy who develops AdBlockPlus for FF.

I was eager for this feature, but it is extremely disappointing so far. I won't be moving off Firefox just yet.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[shutdown -p now]

I use advertisements on most of my sites not because I want to make money, but because I want to pay for the site. It's not cheap running a dedicated server (Not to mention the time I spend administrating and developing the site), typically a few hundred $$$ per month... If I can recoup that cost (which I do), than I am happy. Is that such a bad thing?

It's not at all a bad thing, so long as you keep in mind that your visitors aren't in any way obligated to view the ads that you've put there. Freedom is a wonderful thing, but it goes both ways.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[Grishnakh]

Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does it cost a few hundred dollars per month to run a site? You can get all kinds of hosting plans for as little as $3/month. Does your site have so much traffic that those won't suffice, and that you really need a dedicated server? I thought most hosting providers also provided dedicated server options that cost less than that (though quite a bit more than $3-5/month obviously).

Re:Ads? What ads?

[aliquis]

What about Opera then? I guess it's the same for adsweep there to but what about the builtin adblocker and the flashblock thingy?

When it comes to speed I think Opera is supposed to be slower than Firefox in the javascript department currently, right? Still in general while actually using the browser I think Opera feels faster for me when it comes to the whole experience.

I don't really like Safari, but 4 works, 3 was waaay better than 2 but that don't mean much.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[ircmaxell]

Well, to answer the first question, the site receives up to around 5 million unique page views per day. Something that budget hosts would insta-ban you for having on their servers (read the fine print on those $3-$5 per month hosts, they are not worth it). To answer the second one, decent hardware and a decent internet connection aren't cheap by any means. Find me a host for under $100 that will give you a 99.999% SLA with a decent chunk of hardware (dual processors, 4gb ram, dual scsi raid 1 hdd) and a decent connection to the internet (burstable to at least 100mbit)... Not to mention that most places charge through the nose for bandwidth (Typically $20 to $50 per mbit, and when you're dealing with a site that averages 10 to 20 mbit it adds up FAST)... Sure, I could get desktop grade hardware for $50 to $75 per month, but when you're dealing with bursts of 10000 simultaneous requests, the CPU will likely just melt...

Plus, as someone who's worked on the security team of a major open source project, I can tell you that most of those budget hosts are horrendous. I've seen too many mass defacements of hosts of that caliber (a hacker finds a vulnerability in one site and is able to get to every single other site on the server) to trust them. From my experience (and a lot of people flame me for this) I believe that no site should ever be run on a mass host. IMHO simply from a security standpoint, every "live" site of any importance (if you derive income from it, I consider it to be important) should be on its own server (that can mean a virtual server too)...

That's just my $0.02...

Re:Ads? What ads?

[ArcherB]

There are adverts on slashdot? You have a point, but really, I decide what browsing experience I have - it's advert free. My moral guidance unit tells me it's ok with this.

Sorry, I didn't mean to be snarky, but your ISP doesn't may for content. Some has to pay for it. Sometimes, it's just considered a cost of doing business, like company and retail websites (apple.com, hp.com, egghead.com, CNN.com and so on). Other times, it's people who pay for the site themselves and make it public. Other than that, most other websites have no way to pay for themselves without advertising or going to a subscription model. I would hate to have to subscribe and pay for every website I visit. This means we either need ads, charity or fraud ("your computer has been infected with a virus, click here to remove") to pay for these sites. I don't think charity will pay for sites like google.com or slashdot, and I don't want to see these sites try to fraud me out of my money, so, I like the ad based Internet as it is the least of the rest of the evils.

(Says the guy with adblock enabled)

Re:Ads? What ads?

[atomic777]

That is precisely the problem -- we've never really had a viable option to test that. If we did, i think the overwhelming answer would be to ditch the annoying ads. Of course an entire industry of ad 'professionals' doesn't want that to happen.

What we really need are micropayments that are low enough to reflect how much the sites actually make from all the ads.

To simplify things a bit: a top-tier site, for quality content, ideally, can command an equivalent of something like $20-30 CPM for a well-placed banner ad (i.e. $20 cost/revenue per thousand views.)

For a user-generated content site, that figure goes way down, $1 per thousand or less, down to pennies for something like facebook.

So let's assume, generously, Slashdot's effective CPM is $1 for American viewers.

This means if I open on average 5 pages per day, over the course of a month, they might make all of $0.15 off of me.

If Slashdot gave me the option of paying them fifty cents a month for unlimited views, i would not only gladly do it, they would make a ton more , and a whole lot of the online ad industry would disappear, sending the money where it belongs -- to the people generating the content and maintaining the sites we all love.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[BikeHelmet]

typically a few hundred $$$ per month... If I can recoup that cost (which I do), than I am happy. Is that such a bad thing? I'm not talking about a lot of money here either, I average around $500 per year above my raw expenses.

So lets say it costs you $2500/yr, and you pull in $3000/yr.

That's 20% profit, right? I wonder what Google's profit margins are vs revenue...

Re:Ads? What ads?

[Culture20]

I leave them on because they're not bothering me at the moment (there were some popup style ones a month ago that almost made me flip the switch though.

The telling point about this is that slashdot recognizes that it's usually a desirable thing to be without ads (otherwise, why is it a prize?).

Re:Ads? What ads?

[rdnetto]

Easy solution: FlashBlock (now available for Chrome)
Blocks all the worst offenders, and leaves static images, plain text and the occasional GIF.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[g0dsp33d]

We're talking about geeks here. Having an extra button to push is awesome no matter what it does!

Re:Ads? What ads?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Would I pay $2 a year to read slashdot?

Maybe so, but would you pay for a search engine, for a news site, for web comics, for blogs, for youtube, for all those sites from which you look up random pieces of information?

Let's face it: the web is better with a free option.

Re:Ads? What ads?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

That is precisely the problem -- we've never really had a viable option to test that.

We've had the free market. Subscription-based models haven't traditionally done as well as ad-based models. People are happier being annoyed by ads than they are making a bunch of monthly payments to all the sites they use.

Really?

[callinyouin]

This seems like some best-case-scenario-wishful-thinking to me. I really don't think this is Google's actual opinion on the issue, IMO.

Re:Really?

[poetmatt]

the article seems to be a bit of a strike on google. I am guessing a lot was taken out of context, akin to that whole google privacy debacle which was equally taken out of context.

I'm not saying google is perfect, they do a lot of good things and plenty of bad, but I also have skepticism here.

Re:Really?

[sznupi]

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)

Re:Really?

[sznupi]

I don't think any big browser can afford to be shipping openly with adblocker (Opera somehow does, but the visible part of it is purely manual, site-specific; that it can use a list like Adblock is not readily apparent...)

Such browser would be likely blocked outright by large portion of websites.

A good thing

[Thyamine]

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.

Re:A good thing

[AlexiaDeath]

We are stuck with ad-blockers because there's always an guy that assumes that being as annoying as possible is good to business. However, there are rare examples of ads and networks that I have left unblocked because their ads are not distracting, annoying or plain stupid. There have even been ads that I liked and never wanted to block. Such ads usually come from well controlled smaller syndicates and that includes Google text ads unless there are more ads than content on the page.

Re:A good thing

[thijsh]

Most people are OK with Ad's on some level... just not OK with obnoxious popup-type invasive ads that even crash your browser sometimes.
The solution is an ad-blocker with level-based blocklist like this:
- Allow only text ads (this is where google wins)
- Allow simple image ads (not larger than ...)
- Allow animated image ads
- Allow movie and interactive ads (flash ads)
- Allow all terrible ads (never use this ad)

Re:A good thing

[jonsmirl]

I use an ad blocker to stop:

        Video ads that automatically play
        Animated ads
        Blinking ads
        Ads that automatically talk
        Ads that automatically popup
        Large multimedia ads on a wireless link

I don't want my web pages to move or make noise unless I tell them to. Telling them to means clicking - not mouse over.

Unfortunately the ads blockers catch all of the other ads too. I don't mind ads that behave but the moving/talking ones are so annoying that I will block everything to get rid of them.

Re:A good thing

[garcia]

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.

I think most people don't understand that they can block the ads using easy to install software. It never ceases to amaze me the number of people still using IE6 (with no quick and easy adblocking abilities) or some outdated version of Firefox without running ABP.

I use ads to pay for the work I do on my own website but I, as a publisher of content, do what I can to ensure that the majority of my regular repeat readership doesn't see them. So in addition to the fact that Google's partners are supposedly keeping their ads sane, I'm adding an additional layer of security for those I care the most about.

As long as at least one party out there does that, it should remain in balance--for the most part.

Re:A good thing

[Krneki]

Add viruses to the list.

Re:A good thing

[pipatron]

But.. why are you encouraging this behavior by using the websites? I know there are for example news sites that I refuse to visit because of the ugly ads, but there are dozens or hundreds of alternatives (at least here in Sweden..) that carry pretty much the same information sans obnoxious ads. Of course there are ads there, but discreet enough.

Re:A good thing

[MBGMorden]

That's my opinion too. Google's text ads I don't care about one bit. Banner ads - I don't mind them as long as they are "safe for work". I DON'T want to be browsing MSNBC's news section and have some woman in a bikini advertising "Hydroxicut" or some other weight loss pill flashing on my screen.

The really annoying ones though are indeed the ones that the GP mentioned. Those ads that pop up when you scroll and cover the page until you find the (usually well hidden) close button for the ad. Or on online video sites that try to insert ads before the videos play. That was fine on TV when the ad to content ratio was measurable and consistent, but when browsing an online video site I can be flipping between tons of videos - many of which I might watch for 10-15 seconds before flipping to something different. If I have to deal with a 10-15 second ad before each one starts I just get frustrated and go somewhere else.

Re:A good thing

[customizedmischief]

I think this is not completely unrealistic. I do not block every ad, but I do it selectively for sites that irritate me. For instance, Facebook ads get blocked because I don't ever want to see those fucking teeth ads again. Also, I need to filter Facebook to block all of those surveys anyway. Slashdot apparently offers to remove ads for free if you post several good comments, but I have never taken them up on that and clicked the box because the ads here are not that irritating.

I don't think the advertisers will ever come to a consensus that blinking popup ads of dancing babies with awful teeth schilling for fraudulent mortgage companies that install malware are below a certain standard of taste and should not be used, but the sites I use most often already seem to have the self-respect not to run crap like that. Maybe if I spent more of my online time searching for free ringtones, things would be different for me.

Put another way, I am too lazy to block ads unless they piss me off. Maybe the folks at Google are expecting a lot of people to be like me.

Re:A good thing

[kemenaran]

Then Flashblock with a good whitelist ? That's what I ended up with, instead of using AdBlock. Works pretty well, I must say.

Re:A good thing

[bit01]

Most people are OK with Ad's on some level.

Yes, the ad's that don't work.

The entire point of an unsolicited ad is to grab a person's attention. If it doesn't do that then it's not working. And a person's attention is valuable to them.

If an ad "pays" for the attention in some way (e.g. entertaining or actual useful information and not spam) then it might be okay but almost no advertising does that.

---

The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".

Re:A good thing

[ajs]

Viruses... viruses... I'm not finding that. What do I apt-get to install that?

Re:A good thing

[icebraining]

I have noticed text ads, because they were seamlessly blended with the content. Flashing banner ads are either too annoying and I just leave the site, or not annoying and I mentally ignore them.

Re:A good thing

[Krneki]

apt-get install wine :)

Re:A good thing

[Big Boss]

I believe the package name is ms-windows, but you have to enable another repository and sell your soul. I don't have it installed on my Linux box, so I can't really comment on it more than that.

Re:A good thing

[pavon]

The fact that the current adblockers don't have that type of granularity is the reason I stopped using them. There are a handful of sites that I go to which are entirely supported by ads and usually have unobtrusive, tasteful ones. I don't want to deprive them of income just because other sites have annoying ads. Anymore, if I come to a site like that I just don't go back. If they really annoy me, I add them to my CustomizeOptimize Google blacklist so they don't even show up in my searches.

But it seems like I'm in the minority. Just look at how many posts here are of the "I don't care if it's just a text ad I'm going to block it" school of thought. Look at how the adblockers are all focused on removing as many ads as possible, without giving any sort of content-based (as opposed to host-based) granularity. I can understand the tracking concerns, for which blocking all ads really is the only safe way to go. I've been torn about doing so for that reason myself.

Instead I've tried to cobble together a set of plugins/config settings. I use Better Privacy and have third-party cookies turned off. NoScript was just too annoying for me, as was using a cookie white-list. I have pop-up blocking and Flash Block - I don't even watch legitimate flash widgets half the time, why waste the bandwidth and page loading time. I wish there was something similar for animated GIFs. Right now the browsers have the option of "don't play", "play once", "play continuous". I would really like it if a little play icon showed up when you hovered over paused animated GIFs that would let you view them, so I could keep that setting off for ads but still view legitimate animations when I wanted.

Re:A good thing

[Stepnsteph]

Right. Exactly. Personally I used to be anti-Ad Block Plus (I may have posted such a comment here quite a long time ago, actually). Even I broke down and got ABP eventually.

It's not that I didn't try, it's just that it became more and more laborious to individually block the offending ads. Obvious cycle is obvious, right? People use ad block, causing services turn to the irritating ads in some desperate act thus causing more people to begin using ad blockers. The problem is that ABP is a nuke, and I can't be arsed to go individually picking through them anymore.

On the bright side I've found that Element Hiding Helper is useful for blocking "features" of a website that aren't ads but that I find to be irritating or useless (I'm looking at you, Youtube).

Chrome is a fine browser in so far as performance (aside from that whole tracking thing). I'd use it - or more likely SRWare Iron - if it had ABP and X-Marks, and preferably some anti-tracking add-ons as well.

Re:A good thing

[Stepnsteph]

Awesome. I some how managed to fudge the URL between edits: http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

Re:A good thing

[nine-times]

Unfortunately, in order to have things really work, I think there needs to be something like feedback or negotiation. Like if you can set the levels you're talking about with ad-blocker, there's still this problem where the people paying for the advertisement don't necessarily know what you're blocking it or why you're blocking it, and so they don't necessarily know what they have to do to rectify the situation. I feel like it'd be great if someone could look at a sheet of stats and say, "Ok, well of the people who visit my site, X% will look at any ads I put up, Y% will block the animated images but not static images or text. But there are Z% of our visitors who will not block our ads if we put up text and static images, but will block all of our ads if we use Flash ads at all. Given the amount of money we make from static images vs. Flash, it makes sense to stick with static images."

Basically, until websites and advertisers can make that kind of calculation, it generally makes sense for them to throw up the most attention-grabbing ads and hope for the best.

Re:A good thing

[fotbr]

You forgot a sizeable category -- the group that won't look at any ads. Nothing advertisers do will ever please this category, but it'd probably be an eye opener if they had that number as well.

Re:A good thing

[TubeSteak]

The entire point of an unsolicited ad is to grab a person's attention. If it doesn't do that then it's not working. And a person's attention is valuable to them.

The ads you are talking about are the type that try to grab your attention and convince you that their product is something you want.
Google ads always try to be relevant to something you're already looking for.
It's the difference between ads in a trade journal and pharmaceutical ads in Time Magazine.

Re:A good thing

[0123456]

The entire point of an unsolicited ad is to grab a person's attention.

No, the point of an unsolicited ad is _TO CONVINCE SOMEONE TO BUY SOMETHING FROM YOU_. An ad that grabs my attention by being obnoxious and thereby convinces me never to buy anything from you is not just an utter failure, it's actually harmful to your company.

Re:A good thing

[Blakey Rat]

Amen. I feel the same way.

I just want AdBlocker Plus to have an option where it stays off all the time, except you can blacklist certain (content) domains to block ads on. Right now, it only has the opposite functionality.

Re:A good thing

[Grishnakh]

But... companies I will absolutely refuse to buy from, even if it means paying twice the price (yes, I've put my money where my mouth is already on this) elsewhere:

Old Navy
Harveys
Hardees
Arbys (strange that all three of the rhyming ones made my list... but I hated all their ads)
Robin's Donuts
Any 'Axe' based product (those body sprays, etc)

Those are the primary ones. I will absolutely, outright refuse to set foot in their store, or purchase anything with their brand.

So yeah, good job with your obnoxious, annoying ads. You permanantly lost a customer.

Why would you pay twice the price for any of this crap? Old Navy and 'Axe' products are overpriced brands where you're buying a label. If you want clothes, you can get comparable stuff to Old Navy at Target for half the price or less. For deodorants, you can get all kinds of generic brands, or other cheaper brands (or just take a shower in the morning). For Hardees and Arbys, they're just fast-food chains that serve crap food. You can get real food at any supermarket for much less, though you might have to put a little more work into making it, but at least you won't be filling your body with garbage. And I have no idea what a Harveys is.

So if you're a person that buys on value instead of mindlessly buying name brands like a lemming just because others buy that same brand, these companies aren't ones that would expect you to be their customer anyway.

Re:A good thing

[Grishnakh]

Look at how the adblockers are all focused on removing as many ads as possible, without giving any sort of content-based (as opposed to host-based) granularity.

That's because there IS no way to filter based on content. How exactly is an ad-blocker supposed to tell that image A from adserver33.doubleclick.net is just a nice, tasteful ad for a bird feeder, while image B from adserver69.doubleclick.net is a highly questionable ad for a male performance-enhancing pharmaceutical that will get you in big trouble if a lawsuit-seeking female at your workplace happens to walk by and notice it on your screen? It can't, so it filters them all, and that's the correct behavior.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't want to see any image ads, EVER. The advertisers had their chance, and they blew it, big time. Flash ads are even worse, and I don't want to see those, EVER. Text ads, OTOH, are fine, and I frequently find great little web stores that way. I even run my own dinky little web store and use Google text ads, and it's been an enormous help while being extremely cheap.

But it seems like I'm in the minority. Just look at how many posts here are of the "I don't care if it's just a text ad I'm going to block it" school of thought.

You're on Slashdot. This place is full of extremists who are not representative of the population at large. I think they're ridiculous for being so against text ads, but then again there's a lot of people here who will argue ceaselessly about why the BSD license is so superior to the GPL (and vice versa). Where in "meatspace" have you ever seen someone have that conversation? It comes up on here all the time. Just ignore them; they're a really small minority.

You probably are a minority, however, for taking the steps you do. Most people are in one of two camps: 1) they don't care about ads, and don't use an ad-blocker at all. This is probably 80+% of the general internet-using population. 2) They hate annoying ads, and use AdBlock Plus and/or FlashBlock, because they're quick and easy to install and set up, and let them surf everywhere without their browser slowing to a crawl and seeing offensive X-10 ads or whatever. They really don't care if they're hurting a few webmasters because there's too many others who have abused the privilege.

Re:A good thing

[martyros]

I've had a little check-box next to my front page on Slashdot for months that says "Disable Advertising: As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable advertising." I haven't checked it because the ads are in good taste, and some of them are actually interesting. Similarly, I often look at the ads I get in gmail, because the signal-to-noise ratio is much higher than normal advertising; there's probably a 5% chance that any ad will be at least mildly interesting, rather than < 1%.

I don't understand what people who make invasive ads are thinking. Is there anyone who, when reading an article and some random thing blocks out the whole screen and starts giving you ads, doesn't feel annoyed? And once being annoyed, is there anyone who doesn't just click the "close window" button without even looking at the ad? If you need to shout and scream at people to get them to look at you, then you're selling the wrong thing. Find out what people actually need/want, and you won't have any trouble getting people to buy.

Re:A good thing

[bluefoxlucid]

I could link you, but you'd have to download and run a shell script and then perform an administrative task at some point in the future when you've forgotten about it.

Re:A good thing

[harmonise]

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.

This is exactly why I block all ads. If advertisers can all agree on standards for ad width, height, and placement then they can also agree to acceptable behavior for ads (no sounds, flashing, etc). Since they have refused to the the latter, I block all ads because some advertisers cross the line with annoyance. What is the saying in English? One bad apple spoils the barrel.

Re:A good thing

[Gudeldar]

I feel the same way. It is very irritating to have to sit through an ad on Hulu just to realize that you need to jump to the next section of the video and then sit through another ad. They should have a system that only shows you an ad every 30/15 minutes of video regardless of how many different shows you watch.

Re:A good thing

[rdnetto]

Mod parent up.
I do the exact same thing, and it works like a charm. I find it the best way to block annoying ads while still contributing to the revenue of more considerate sites.

Re:A good thing

[Eivind]

Why ? Seriously, why would I set such an ad-blocker to any other setting than: block everything.

Ads aren't there for my benefit, they're there for someone elses. They're actually harmful to me.

Re:A good thing

[Haymaker]

This.

When I still used FF with ABP, I would whitelist websites I liked, such as Hulu, etc because I liked their service and their ads weren't extremely unattractive.

When I first registered for Slashdot, after a little while I noticed the checkbox for disabling ads due to being a contributer. I thought it was a really cool thing of them to do, so I whitelisted Slashdot as well.

However, I know I'm not most adblock users.

And allow them to collect demographic data...

[Ieshan]

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..."

Re:And allow them to collect demographic data...

[ArcherB]

I think it's a bit more nefarious than that. Allow me to finish that thought for you:

Google can come back and say, "Well, we've actually got some data on that, and...it appears that without the add blocker, your ad will be seen by 275 billion more people a day. We can add your adds to our "safe list" to allow them to get through our add blocker, but it will raise your rates by 35% in order to cover the administrative costs of maintaining your position on that list".

Re:And allow them to collect demographic data...

[Evanisincontrol]

I think it's a bit more nefarious than that. Allow me to finish that thought for you:

Google can come back and say, "Well, we've actually got some data on that, and...it appears that without the add blocker, your ad will be seen by 275 billion more people a day. We can add your adds to our "safe list" to allow them to get through our add blocker, but it will raise your rates by 35% in order to cover the administrative costs of maintaining your position on that list".

At which point people will just start using 3rd party adblocking software again to block all ads, and the cycle continues. Either:

1. Google will predict this cycle happening and thus won't bother trying such a stupid scheme, or
2. Google will not predict this cycle happening, will try what you suggested, and we'll get 3rd party adblocking tools again to compensate for punch-the-monkey ads.

Either way, we've nothing to worry about.

Re:And allow them to collect demographic data...

[Rennt]

Why would anyone write an adblock extension that phones home to Google? Unless Google wrote the extension themselves (unlikely!) it is just not going to happen.

Re:And allow them to collect demographic data...

[ArundelCastle]

I think it's a bit more nefarious than that. Allow me to finish that thought for you:

Don't Be Nefarious.....?

Goddammit.

Re:And allow them to collect demographic data...

[ajs]

Either:

1. Google will predict this cycle happening and thus won't bother trying such a stupid scheme, or

That's exactly right. The problem with people who try to come up with nightmare scenarios for how Google could screw you over is that 90% of them begin with the assumption that Google is populated by people who can't quite figure out that actions have consequences (and probably can't find their way out of their house in the morning).

Realistically, Google's single largest asset as an advertiser is their relationship with the millions of users that take advantage of their products. The moment they start abusing that relationship for short-term profits, they end their position as the premier ad vendor, and they know it.

Re:And allow them to collect demographic data...

[Saint Stephen]

Why wouldn't Google's AdBlock extension just phone home and say the user saw the ad? It would be more to their advantage.

Re:And allow them to collect demographic data...

[odin84gk]

Google is a fan of producing relevant, non-intrusive ads. I also understand that websites need ads. I would be ok if their adblocker removed the annoying ads and kept the decent ads. From Google's '10 things' (http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html)

6. You can make money without doing evil.

Google is a business. The revenue we generate is derived from offering search technology to companies and from the sale of advertising displayed on our site and on other sites across the web. Hundreds of thousands of advertisers worldwide use AdWords to promote their products; hundreds of thousands of publishers take advantage of our AdSense program to deliver ads relevant to their site content. To ensure that we're ultimately serving all our users (whether they are advertisers or not), we have a set of guiding principles for our advertising programs and practices:

        * We don't allow ads to be displayed on our results pages unless they are relevant where they are shown. And we firmly believe that ads can provide useful information if, and only if, they are relevant to what you wish to find – so it's possible that certain searches won't lead to any ads at all.
        * We believe that advertising can be effective without being flashy. We don't accept pop-up advertising, which interferes with your ability to see the content you've requested. We've found that text ads that are relevant to the person reading them draw much higher clickthrough rates than ads appearing randomly. Any advertiser, whether small or large, can take advantage of this highly targeted medium.
        * Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a "Sponsored Link," so it does not compromise the integrity of our search results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results and no one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust our objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust.

Re:And allow them to collect demographic data...

[camcorder]

I'm not using Chrome, and I'm not planning to use it either. So I don't worry or care anyways.

Re:And allow them to collect demographic data...

[Surt]

It would drop the customer penetration rate ...
There are metrics measuring the effectiveness of advertising you know, that's why people use advertising. They have solid evidence that it increases sales. When Google starts reporting that a billion people saw an ad who really did not, their sales team starts having to admit that a billion ad impressions == no sales. How much would you pay for a billion ad impressions that generate no sales?

Re:And allow them to collect demographic data...

[rm999]

Except that mainstream ad blockers like Adblock Plus remove almost all ads with their default filter subscriptions. The people who work on these don't differentiate between benign text ads and flashing flash ads - they all get blocked. You'll find very little useful information in the noisy "what ads are being blocked" signal.

Re:And allow them to collect demographic data...

[BitZtream]

Its too bad google charges per click not per impression, meaning ad blocking would lower the cost of your advertising, not increase it if you advertise via google.

Re:And allow them to collect demographic data...

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. Google didn't go from nothing to a multi-billion dollar company in under 15 years by making utterly stupid decisions, and even in the face of strong competition in the search space, they still have almost monopoly status (how many people use Bing? Three? Besides MS employees). Google doesn't sell a lot of products, and the lion's share of their profit still comes from advertising, while other internet advertisers are all crying the blues about ad-blocking.

I can see some large companies making such a brain-dead decision to make a built-in ad blocker and then let certain companies bypass it, but there are no indications that Google's management would ever do something that dumb.

The only thing I worry about with Google is what happens when their current upper management moves on, and is replaced by someone else. As someone who's worked at a couple of large companies with highly idiotic upper management, I've seen first-hand how dumb some of these executives can be. It wouldn't take much to turn this highly successful company around and drive it straight into the ground with some stupid decisions like the one presented here. As soon as they lose the trust people have in them, people will move to competitors.

Re:And allow them to collect demographic data...

[DiegoBravo]

> Unless Google wrote the extension themselves (unlikely!)

Why unlikely? This could be another way (and more effective) of asking the users what are NOT their preferences; ergo, by exclusion, knowing their preferences and improve the targeting of the ads.

Re:And allow them to collect demographic data...

[Grishnakh]

Not exactly correct. With Google Adwords, you can choose to pay either by click or by impression. I imagine most pay by click.

And yes, if you pay by impression, ad-blockers will lower your costs since they won't even get an impression. But if you pay by click, your costs won't increase, since people blocking the ad obviously can't click on it. You just won't get as many impressions, but impressions are all free if no one clicks. In fact, it's better if ad-blocking people don't get an impression, because they're less likely to click anyway. While impressions are free (if you pay per click), Google shows more impressions when your click-through ratio is higher. If no one's clicking and your CTR is low, then it automatically shows your ad less, and serves more impressions to ads that have a higher CTR. So the last thing you want is loads of impressions to people who will never click on them.

great news everybody!

[notgm]

I've invented an ad-blocking technology that is entirely funded by proceeds garnered from companies who will pay us to put small marketing statements, catch phrases, and logos on the visible interface of the software while the software is running.

it's genius!

Re:great news everybody!

[silent_artichoke]

Can't decide if this is +1, Funny or -1, Redundant.

Re:great news everybody!

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

I have some capital I would like to invest in your idea. :)

If you're as good at it as Google

[Silentknyght]

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.

Re:If you're as good at it as Google

[BrokenHalo]

Sort of, but the "non-intrusive" part depends on your perspective. I could live with a few text-only ads, but they are probably a wolf in sheep's clothing when hitched up to googleanalytics and whatever other scraping systems they've devised.

I prefer to live without any ads, so I keep my hosts file as current as I can, and use adblock and flashblock for fine-tuning.

If content providers don't like that, they might want to think about making the ads less obnoxious. And if a site insists on shoving hover-ads in my face, that domain gets totally blacklisted with no right of appeal.

Re:If you're as good at it as Google

[wvmarle]

I'm using AdBlockPlus. It's great.

But reading this article I recalled that some time ago I actually disabled ABP specifically for Google.com. This as I was searching for something to buy or so, and I missed the ads. When searching for commercial services I very often click those ads: they often offer exactly what I am looking for. The ad-results sometimes suit me better than the normal search results - the normal results are more non-commercial in nature. That's not good if you are looking for commercial sites.

So indeed Google doesn't have to be afraid. Not at all. Text ads on their site I like, really. Text ads in other people's blogs I don't care about (those are usually not relevant to me, or just not interesting).

And I have of course Flashblock. Click to play. That's one of the most important extensions to Firefox, really couldn't do without. No ABP? Too bad (flashblock takes care of the most irritating ads already anyway). No Flashblock? Disaster.

Re:If you're as good at it as Google

[CodeBuster]

The problem is that there is no deterministic way to determine what is and what is not a "peaceful, non-intrusive, text-only delivery system" so those of us using ad blockers invariably have regular expression rules that block any links with common advertising substrings such as "ads" in the URL. When people use ad blockers there is going to be "collateral damage", there is a reason why some call ad blockers "the nuclear plugins" after all.

Umm...

[Lazy Jones]

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).

Re:Umm...

[chrysrobyn]

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'm going to go out on a limb and say they're talking about me. In 2004, I installed a bunch of ad blockers, and I saw next to no ads. That lasted for a few years until I got a new computer. With the new computer, the ads were far less intrusive, and generally not worth going through all the ad blocking hassle (which isn't much, so obviously a threshold was crossed). The stupid monkey was gone, all the blue/red flashing background was missing, etc. I'll still keep FlashBlock on until the day the machines rise up against their masters, though. A line was irrevocably crossed when an ad started making noise and wouldn't shut up. Flash is great for games, but for so much of what's done, a simple JPG would suffice at a fraction of the development and delivery cost.

Re:Umm...

[Rigrig]

I've got Adblock installed, but disabled for most sites I frequently visit: If I like a site I figure I'll give them a shot at making some money by showing me their ads.
Usually it turns out their ads aren't that obtrusive, so they actually make some money from my visits, and I get to feel good for making them a little money, and the knowledge that I'm visiting a site that picks sane advertisements.
Then again, sometimes it seems like people have gone and had a long thought on how to really annoy visitors with their ads (floating divs, ads disguised as articles, ads inserted before flash clips, etc), in which case too bad for them, but I don't mind risking a few seconds of my time for sites I like.

Re:Umm...

[pipatron]

Maybe the websites who decided to take in the obnoxious ads should have thought about that. It's probably easier to lose a customer than to get a new one?

Re:Umm...

[Myopic]

Oh, damn. I remember that monkey. You're right -- that monkey might have been the reason I first installed AdBlock.

But, on the occasion when I use a browser without AdBlock, I'm still HIGHLY annoyed, so I am still a staunch user. We'll see how things go in the future.

Re:Umm...

[eddy the lip]

FlashBlock does most of what I need for ad blocking, too. I don't mind seeing ads - I even click on them occasionally. (Yes, targeted advertising does increase clicks! Imagine.) I've had Slashdot's "you have lots of karma, you can disable advertising" link on here for ages, and never used it. I like Slashdot, I don't mind paying for it with a bit of attention.

I finally installed ABP, though, when some site I was on had 1999-era blinky gif ads all over the sidebar. Impossible to read the article, then, and if I'm going to avoid a site's content because of their ads, they're not getting any revenue from me. Unfortunately, now anyone with well-behaved ads aren't either, so they're wrecking it for everyone.

I recently started using Chrome, and FlashBlock was on that thing in fifteen minutes. The web's unusable without it. No ad blocking software installed yet, though, so we'll see how that goes.

Anyway, I think Google's on to something with this. I can't be arsed to install blockers until I'm really annoyed, and I practically live online. Most people will put up with these things to a certain point, and if your revenue model is based on serving ads, you are invested in making sure they're not so annoying as to drive people to look for solutions.

Re:Umm...

[wolrahnaes]

I really don't get why so many people consider Flash on mobile browsers to be so important when as you point out the majority of Flash encountered by the average internet user (who doesn't block ads) is advertising, often the annoying CPU and bandwidth hogging kind. Exactly what you want on a device where both of those are constrained. A Flashblock-like interface will be mandatory before I consider a phone with Flash to be acceptable. Mozilla's Fennec is of course interesting here since it should be able to run many straight Firefox extensions.

I can guarantee you

[holychicken]

that I will never find online advertising to be a good thing.

Re:I can guarantee you

[Nadaka]

I run with no script active, That catches most of the annoying ads. I usually ignore the rest unless its something very specific I like, for instance RPG ads served at enWorld. Ads on the internet don't really bother me.

Re:I can guarantee you

[dada21]

If the content is fantastic, there will be large scale contributors.

http://mises.org/ has no advertising that I've noticed. They have some million-dollar contributors.

I have a newsletter site that is free, with no ads, and I have some contributors that offer me a few hundred a year. I don't even openly ask for it (there's a link to contributing that just says "Contribute."). If the content is good, the money will still come in.

Re:I can guarantee you

[AndersOSU]

mises.org is free in the same way that the CATO institute and Center for American Progress issue "free" reports for government consumption. They have ulterior motivations. You can take a loss on your website all day long if you can convince your readers that buying gold is always a terrific investment - and you happen to get kickbacks from someone who sells gold.

I am speculating - I don't know how mises.org is funded - but someone is paying them to serve up their content, and if it isn't advertisers, rest assured they're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.

Personally, I would rather look at ads than see the internet dominated by players that position their content as loss leaders.

Google Mind Trick

[JWSmythe]

[glazing over]

yes, ads are a good thing.

I like ads.

They make me happy.

I want to click.

[snapping out of it]

What? Damned Jedi^H^H^H^HGoogle Mind Trick®

Re:Google Mind Trick

[wvmarle]

Maybe I'm infected but I do like Google's ads on their site. Unblocked those in ABP. I literally missed them: that's where you find the commercial search results.

Re:Google Mind Trick

[JWSmythe]

But Google says I like ads. I want to click.

    Well, I use Firefox, with ABP, so I don't see them either. It's nicer this way. :) Their mind trick won't work on me.

    YOU HEAR ME GOOGLE?! YOUR TRICKS WON'T WORK ON ME! HA! :)

Re:Google Mind Trick

[Hurricane78]

If you’re so influencable... then why don’t you come over and I’ll show you my beautiful pendulum here? :D

Re:Google Mind Trick

[JWSmythe]

The watch is so pretty as it swings.

    back and forth....

    back and forth....

    and I start feeling sleepy....

    very sleepy....

    Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Google can survive them

[cowboy76Spain]

I think the point here is that ad blockers will have more impact in the less sofisticated ads (popups and the like). Probably Google thinks that it has the muscle to get its ads in a way that won't suffer as much. Either as they are less intrusive so less people is likely to try hard to get rid of them, or because they have technological ways of distributing the ad that make much harder to dismiss it without breaking the page that the users wanted to see. Or both of these reasons.

Kick the Pig to Win an iPOD * FLASH * FLASH *

[hexed_2050]

If the ads were less annoying I wouldn't mind them at all. Some of the ads are actually very informative rather than spammy if you are on a website that caters to your interest and delivers ads based on content served on the site.

I'd love to see sites implement an ad protocol such as this:

1. No flash-based or animated ads.
2. No ads bigger than 300 x 100 pixels.
3. No ads with bright contrasting colours such as orange when the entire site is white and green.
4. All ads can be turned on or off at the user's preference. This site implements an honour system.
5. Users can select what categories of ads they would or would not like to be served.

If websites and companies were just more sane about their ad policies, I think a lot less people would resort to ad-blockers.

Re:Kick the Pig to Win an iPOD * FLASH * FLASH *

[Necroloth]

and can i add to the list the rollover ads that suddenly fill your screen!

Re:Kick the Pig to Win an iPOD * FLASH * FLASH *

[L0stb0Y]

I completely agree with this- I actually enjoy ads that are for things I am interested in- further I like when a site I trust won't allow ads from companies that they deam are less than reputable (they do some weeding out for me)-

I really do think that the ability to turn ads on or off would be the best solution-

Re:Kick the Pig to Win an iPOD * FLASH * FLASH *

[secretcurse]

While I definitely agree with your overall sentiment, do you really want to take the time to fill out an advertising preference form (which would require registration) for every bloody site on the internet? I sure don't...

Re:Kick the Pig to Win an iPOD * FLASH * FLASH *

[Big Boss]

Good points. I would also include that the ad server must send the entire ad within 100ms. Part of the reason I use adblock is so I'm not sitting there waiting for some ad server.

Re:Kick the Pig to Win an iPOD * FLASH * FLASH *

[Cedric Tsui]

In this particular case, I would settle with standard advertising laws being implemented on the internet.
In Canada, the things you say in advertisements must be true. Telus recently sued Rogers because they continued commercials saying they have the fastest internet service after Telus completed an infrastructure upgrade which put that claim on shaky ground. So I'm saying, this ad should only exist if I ACTUALLY WIN AN IPOD IF I KICK THE PIG!!!

Re:Kick the Pig to Win an iPOD * FLASH * FLASH *

[Anachragnome]

Until a few months ago, my brother was using a 12 year old 333mhz PC. His page load times were painfully slow. CNN literally took over a minute to load. Simply as an experiment, I asked him to install Firefox then ABP.

His response:
"What the FUCK!? And I thought my ISP sucked!"

Turns out his machine was so slow that the ads alone were killing it. He never looked back, and probably never will.

Another issue that causes many people to use ABP?

Bandwidth Caps.
You will NEVER get someone to watch ads if they have to PAY for them.

Firefox users with Adblock: 12%

[bradley13]

Perhaps of interest: how many Firefox users currently use AdBlock Plus? According to this reference (search for "AdBlock" to find the spot), the number is around 12%.

Re:Firefox users with Adblock: 12%

[L4t3r4lu5]

The other 88% have NoScript too, which prevented their usage script from running and listing installed addons! :D

Re:Firefox users with Adblock: 12%

[YojimboJango]

Yeah, pretty much this.

I run flashblock and script block and that eliminates 95% of ads.

Bonus is that when I white-list scripts on pages that I trust I also see some of the nonintrusive ads.

Re:Firefox users with Adblock: 12%

[chexy]

And another small percentage modifies their hosts file to redirect all the advertiser domains to 127.0.0.1 and never have to worry about them again.

wrong assumption

[Tom]

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.

Re:wrong assumption

[hexed_2050]

Some ads can be informative and can remind you of an issue you needed to solve last week and still have not. I don't believe the problem is with the ads in general, but with the style and way they go about serving you those ads.

Re:wrong assumption

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I agree. So please get rid of that damn thing about Lemuria Skies from your sig, because, if I want to find out about skyboxes for a video game, I can do a Google search. Don't shove this information down my throat. Your sig is very annoying.

Re:wrong assumption

[fridaynightsmoke]

He was probably only talking about ads for "The Corporations!", because, you know, The Corporations are evil etc etc etc

Re:wrong assumption

[JordanL]

How, precisely, are you supposed to search for something that don't know exists? This is the primary function of advertising as a concept, (though not the primary function of the ads that I'm sure annoy you).

Re:wrong assumption

[bit01]

Some ads can be informative and can remind you of an issue you needed to solve last week and still have not.

That is a minute fraction of all unsolicited ad's. The cost benefit is not even remotely there.

There is a very real cognitive cost associated with every single unsolicited, unneeded, unwanted ad. And that cost over time adds up to a huge loss.

The entire marketing industry is in denial about that. A real shame that so many trillions of hours of people's lives and attention are being wasted on such dross.

---

An unobtrusive ad is a non-functional ad. It is a non-sustainable business model.

Re:wrong assumption

[Lazy Jones]

This is usually the point where marketing folk will want to convince you that they have "studies" showing that you can create demand out of thin air by just showing people completely inappropriate, boring, offensive, time-wasting ads that viewers will never see because theirs minds are blanking them out after enough exposure to similar crap in the past. This wouldn't be a problem and you could happily laugh in their faces and rightfully call them morons, if they weren't also feeding the same nonsense to marketing people working for big advertisers with a similar mindset and convincing them to only advertise in the most annoying matter possible. So website publishers can choose to put up those annoying and pointless ads or forfeit their chance to get any advertising money.
As for Google ads, they might be less intrusive and annoying, but they are far too often posted by fraudsters, pointing to websites with malware, or simply not appropriate for your audience. It would be much better if visitors could report ads as offensive/dangerous/inappropriate...

Re:wrong assumption

[quixote9]

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. Yes. Exactly. Seconded, thirded, fourthed, fifthed. Except I started using bing because they hang on to clickstreams for 48 hours instead of forever. And as soon as I started, M$ expanded it to a month. We need a non-commercial, open source, people's search engine. Get to work, Wikipedia.

Re:wrong assumption

[pherthyl]

>> it is the advertisement itself that is the problem.

I think it's taxes that are the problem! If I want to be paying money to someone else I'll go give to a charity, not have my money taken from me by force by the government!

Ads support the free internet, there's no ifs, ands or buts about it. If you are so opposed to ads that you refuse to have even non-intrusive ones on your page, then you're nothing but a leech. A worse "parasite" than you describe the marketing people to be.
Hosting content costs money. You don't want to pay? Get the fuck off the internet.

Re:wrong assumption

[Alascom]

and when you do go looking for it, those little ad boxes on the right come in real handy...

Re:wrong assumption

[Rogerborg]

so many trillions of hours of people's lives and attention are being wasted

To save everyone else doing it, a trillion hours spread over (say) a billion people worldwide is 1000 hours per person. If that's over 50 years (so far), that's 20 hours per person per annum, or 3.29 minutes per day.

So, not such a mad figure to bandy around.

Re:wrong assumption

[Necroman]

I wish I had mod points to get you up to 5. I actually don't mind ads when they aren't full page or something very annoying. It's a way for those marketing people to tell me about new and exciting products. Context specific, un-obtrusive ads have their place.

Re:wrong assumption

[pitdingo]

if i don't know about it, then i don't care about it. Precisely the parents point. If i want something i will seek it out. You have to be stupid to buy stuff based on advertising

Re:wrong assumption

[pitdingo]

I think it's taxes that are the problem! If I want to be paying money to someone else I'll go give to a charity, not have my money taken from me by force by the government!

Ok, give up the paved roads, police, fire, public education, public defense attorneys, military, coast guard, the internet, banking, pretty much everything in the industrialized world and live like people did in the dark ages. that sure would be fun. atuuk a luka luka lonna....

Re:wrong assumption

[KnownIssues]

He was just being ironical.

Re:wrong assumption

[KnownIssues]

The other function of advertising is--once awareness of the product is established, like with Coke and Pepis--to make the specific brand foremost in your mind. We don't like to admit it, but we as a whole group we're subject to the mechanics of our biology; repitition bumps the product to the top of our awareness queue. If you see 1000 ads for Coke and 1 ad for Fentime's, you'll go for the Coke if you don't already have a strong preference for the other brand.

Also, you get a brand cold war going. Once the top two brands establish a level of advertising, one of them can't drop their levels without giving the other brand an advantage. And for something like Coke and Pepsi where there's no real difference but brand loyalty, that's critical.

Re:wrong assumption

[YourExperiment]

If some new product has been released, I will learn about it through the (relatively) unbiased news sources which I read to keep me up to date with such developments.

I don't need the manufacturer of said product to grab my shoulders, shake me around and scream into my face "hey you! look! I've made something new, you'll love it - honest! BUY IT NOW!"

Re:wrong assumption

[KnownIssues]

Or rather, Fentiman's.

Re:wrong assumption

[pipatron]

It's very easy to disable sigs on slashdot. I used to do it, but it got annoying when I noticed that people often comment on the sig.

Re:wrong assumption

[arthurh3535]

No, it isn't that 'ads are bad' that is the problem. It's the fact that right now, ads are just a vehicle to be used by criminals to try and take over my computer.

If I didn't have to worry about ads infecting my computer with viruses and other malware, I could handle minor to moderate ads on web pages.

Re:wrong assumption

[yivi]

Man, I browse /. with sigs disabled/hidden, so I had missed the Lemura Skies thing. Because you mentioned it I had to do a search to see what the fuzz was about.

Because of you, there is tab back there with who knows what kind of result. And I'm afraid to go to that tab, and at the same time I really, really want to.

I fear I'll be disappointed though...

Re:wrong assumption

[nine-times]

No, I think ad content kind of is the problem. I mean yes, all of us find it annoying to have to see ads that we don't like, but certainly ads serve a purpose. Right now, for example, I don't watch broadcast TV or cable TV. For the first time in years, I'm hearing about popular products and movies through word-of-mouth that I had no idea existed. I don't miss having to sit through the same dumb ads every 15 minutes, but I do slightly miss being exposed to the new things that ads have to offer.

But it's not *just* the content. It's also the form. Being forced to look at or sit through an ad for a product that you have absolutely no interest in is stupid. The annoying/dumb/parasitic quality of advertising comes from advertisers thinking it's their job to force you or coerce you to buy their product. There's a funky quality where they seem to think, "Joe Schmoe might not like this product, but if we ram it down his throat frequently enough, he'll eventually give in and become a loyal customer." Not all advertising is like that, though. Sometimes it's just someone informing you that a product exists and letting you know what's good about it.

Re:wrong assumption

[bit01]

3.29 minutes per day.

Some numbers. On TV watching alone americans are averaging 153 hours/month. About 5 hours/day. Say an hour a day of that is advertising though it's probably more. Average hourly wage is about $20/hour. Total US population is about 300 million. So 300 million hours, the equivalent of 6 billion dollars, is being wasted on TV advertising every day in the US alone (100 billion hours/year).

And that's not even including product placement, junk mail, web, billboard, shop and newspaper advertising. Advertising costs us as a society a staggering amount.

---

The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".

Re:wrong assumption

[Myopic]

Correct!

The only problem with this is in discovering new products and novel services. How will I know to look for it if I've never heard of it? That's one problem which advertising solves.

But, I'm with you: I'm rather have the problem of having to hear about novel products some other way, than the problem of being annoyed so much by every web page, that I have to avoid the web.

I already have to avoid television and radio because of the advertising problem: I use Netflix, bittorrent, and podcasts to get at (some of) the content without the advertisements. I'm really thankful for the internet in general, which puts MUCH more power in the hands of the consumers.

Re:wrong assumption

[Myopic]

Indeed. An extremely tiny minority of ads are this way -- maybe, say, one in ten thousand. That tiny minority is an unfortunate victim of getting rid of all the rest. I can't think of a way to keep the good ads but get rid of the bad ones (can you?).

Re:wrong assumption

[Animats]

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.

Even from an advertiser perspective, Google's system sucks. On the forums for "search engine optimization", one discovers that ad clicks from Google search results tend to result in sales, while ad clicks from Google ads on non-Google sites (what Google euphemistically calls the "Google Content Network") don't. 50% of ad clicks come from 10% of the user base, and that 10% doesn't buy anything.

Google ads on non-search pages aren't that valuable to advertisers. So why are there so many of them? Because they're opt-out for the advertiser. Many Google advertisers have ads on the "content network" only because they haven't found the hidden button on Google's screens for opting out, as an unhappy Google advertiser reports: "I am running many Google ads and their CTR is around 10%-15% for search page impressions; However the CTR on the content network is 0.02%! I can exclude my ads appearing on certain sites however at the bottom of the URL list it states "Other Domains" which have a total CTR of 0.01% with well over 300,000 impressions in a month! This is driving my overall CTR down massively! If I can not view these sites and choose to exclude them...I need to opt out of all content based placements immediately. How can I do this?"

Also see "Good Reasons to Avoid Content Targeting: "The AdWords user interface misleads new advertisers. Industry consensus suggests that content targeting ought to be used selectively and one should bid lower on content than on search inventory. This is because ads on content inventory tend to convert at a lower rate than ads on search inventory. But when you walk through Google's campaign setup, you find that you've been automatically opted into the content network at the same high bid as your search campaigns."

Much of the "bottom feeder" problem on the Web comes from this one trick of Google's.

We measure some of this at SiteTruth, and some of the results are here.

Re:wrong assumption

[huha]

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.

... says someone whose signature contains an ad for his website.

Re:wrong assumption

[silent_artichoke]

I didn't know that this zoo inventory software existed. I found it rather quickly by searching for "software zoo inventory". On Google, even. Not a single ad was needed.

Re:wrong assumption

[JordanL]

Ah. So your version of the internet is full of people who's entire livelihood depends on being within the first ten results on google for the most generic search of their market.

As someone who owns a small business, that would doom me to utter and complete failure. As a small business I absolutely rely on targeted, relevant, awareness advertising to survive... because while I can spend $100 and get a few people interested in my product through internet advertising, I have to spend thousands of dollars before I hit the top ten results for my market on google, and thus see a return.

Re:wrong assumption

[brkello]

You completely missed the point. He doesn't actually care about the sig. The guy was complaining about ALL advertising, but has an advertisement in his sig. He is pointing out his hypocrisy in a clever way. It hurts me so much to have to explain it.

Re:wrong assumption

[shaper]

What sig? I turned off sig's in my Slashdot preferences a long time ago because I got tired of seeing them. Yes, I am an aggressive user of ad blocking, too.

Re:wrong assumption

[shutdown -p now]

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.

While I broadly agree, there is a special case here which, IMO, is a valid exception: new products embodying radically different concepts (or even something not different so much as non-obvious). In those cases, you may not find such things on Google because you won't know what to look for in the first place.

Re:wrong assumption

[silent_artichoke]

No, I just did a search for something I wasn't sure existed. I chose the very first result for my example. If I was trying to purchase zoo inventory software, I would go through the list of results, look on zoo software websites, check user forums, etc. I take responsibility for researching my purchases. And I tend to be biased towards purchasing from small businesses like yours because they usually offer more personalized customer service in my experience. I purchase based on reputation rather than popularity, so if a company wants my money, they should spend on customer service and creating quality products instead of advertising.

Re:wrong assumption

[Tom]

Excellent point.

Yes, it was a tricky decision. As an indy with zero advertising budget, it's one of the few ways to get word out, and get to Google where you can find me, if you care. And yes, I'm aware that it doesn't merge well with my words.

Because real life is in shades of grey. There actually is some advertisement that I find acceptable. But you can't say that to the ad people or what the hear is that you love ads, or at least their ads.

Re:wrong assumption

[tftp]

that's 20 hours per person per annum [...] So, not such a mad figure to bandy around.

It is two and a half work days per year to just read ads. With an average $80/hr rate of a consultant, this will cost you $1,600/yr. That's some real money here.

Re:wrong assumption

[jfitz369]

But what if you don't know a product exists? How would you know to look for it? How would the seller get the word out? Advertising serves a roll in a capitalist society. It's just part of the deal.

Re:wrong assumption

[bennomatic]

Actually, it's not so much a function of telling people about a product or service that they didn't know existed, but rather one of convincing people that they need a product they didn't know they needed. It's a subtle but important difference.

Re:wrong assumption

[noidentity]

Agreed; I hate seeing a person's signature over and over in every message. If you create an account on Slashdot, you can turn them off. Of course people often reference their signatures, leaving one at a loss as to what they are referring to. Note to signaturephiles: not everyone even has them displayed.

Re:wrong assumption

[JordanL]

Real life isn't shades of grey, real life is simply allowing yourself to be excluded from any standards which you hold others too. Thats a fairly universal human tendency... it didn't strike me as odd that you did that either.

Are you human? Then you're a hypocrite.

Re:wrong assumption

[JordanL]

Or, as well, people with a non-novel product of superior quality but without the thousands of dollars to rocket to the top of google for generic searches.

Re:wrong assumption

[Rich0]

On the forums for "search engine optimization", one discovers that ad clicks from Google search results tend to result in sales, while ad clicks from Google ads on non-Google sites (what Google euphemistically calls the "Google Content Network") don't. 50% of ad clicks come from 10% of the user base, and that 10% doesn't buy anything.

Actually, all that you know is that the people who view your ads on non-Google sites don't buy the items at that moment by clicking on the link and immediately buying it.

You have no idea how many people actually bought your product after VIEWING (not clicking) the ad.

By your argument a superbowl ad has zero impact, because not a single person clicked on their TV screen during the game and bought a Gilette razor or whatever.

I never really understood the obsession with click-through rates in the online advertising world. Sure, it is nice to have it, but I'd think that on TV or newspaper the rate would be even lower than online if such a concept even existed. The reason you advertise isn't so that some consumer drops what they're doing and decides that instead of reading the news they should be buying motor oil for their car. Instead, when they do go out to buy motor oil for their car you want them to be thinking, "I wonder if that Penzoil stuff is any better than what I'm using?"

However, I do agree that an advertiser would probably want to pay more for search ads than they pay for display ads. A search ad is much more likely to have an impact since you're targeting people who you KNOW are looking for your product. My objection is to the suggestion that non-search ads don't really have much value - they're at least as valuable as any other kind of advertising.

Re:wrong assumption

[pitje]

I've always thought I needed something I didn't know existed.

Re:wrong assumption

[Tom]

Actually, I tend to allow others the same exclusions that I allow myself. For example, I don't consider /. signatures advertisement in the same sense that popups or banners are. They just don't have the same "distract me from the real content" quality.

Maybe because they're limited to text. I do mind the sometimes huge banners in web forums.

Re:wrong assumption

[JordanL]

Ah. I think most people didn't understand that distinction because you were going after Google, who make pretty much all their money off of... yup, text advertisements.

No Problem

[whisper_jeff]

I have no problem with unobtrusive ads that aren't all flashing animation and sound and which do not slow down my system with their overblown Flash garbage. If it does not interfere with my use of the web, I'm fine with them.

Until advertisers start delivering those ads, I'll keep using adblock.

Only geeks and nerds care about ad blockers

[gzipped_tar]

... and they're already excluded from the intended demographic.

Re:Only geeks and nerds care about ad blockers

[Seth Kriticos]

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.

Re:Only geeks and nerds care about ad blockers

[Larryish]

Very true.

I keep AdblockPlus on my always-in-the-right-front-pants-pocket USB stick along with firefox, combofix, avg, spybot, etc. etc. because it is one of those things that every dumbass Windows user needs in order to avoid their computer-vagina from becoming infected with Internet-herpes.

Then they don't have to call me (as often) to give their Wintendo another digital penicillin shot.

Why I block some ads

[MaraDNS]

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.

Re:Why I block some ads

[Yvan256]

... anything that animates or continuously moves is very distracting for me when I am reading something.

Believe me, you're not the only one. That's one of the reason that I browse with the plug-ins disabled. All that's left is animated GIFs and those are less frequent these days, being replaced by Flash ads instead.

Good luck with that

[Tim C]

I started out just blocking Flash ads and obnoxious (= animated) image ads. I've since graduated to blocking all the ads I can, and using Greasemonkey to remove parts of sites I find objectionable (an iframe here, a div there...).

There will always be a group of us who have discovered the ability to control and customise our web browsing and will not give it up.

Besides, I don't know anyone who actually *likes* ads; at best they tolerate and ignore them.

Re:Good luck with that

[Surt]

That's why basically 100% of content is moving to flash where they can control your experience.

This argument has merit

[Vyse of Arcadia]

I wouldn't block ads if they weren't everywhere and flash-heavy enough to slow down my browser.

It would also help if ads were a bit more honest. I believe Bill Watterson referred to them as "insidious manipulation of human desires for commercial purposes."

Re:This argument has merit

[thetoadwarrior]

This is generally why I click on ads on Slashdot and no other site. The ads are generally straight forward, not too much Flash and it's for things that interest me.

I have zero interest in punching the monkey or shooting the duck.

The saying goes

[MassiveForces]

Keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer. All this will do is allow chrome to compete against firefox even more and once they reach a dominant market position they will have the power to invent ads that cannot be stopped. Yes, root for the underdog, as long as it stays the underdog.

They're a response to a problem.

[Dorkmaster Flek]

These companies don't seem to realize that ad blockers came about because the ads themselves because increasingly annoying and intrusive. If advertisers played nice and didn't piss people off (ha, right) then we wouldn't need to use ad blockers just to make our browsing experience pleasant again. I don't know anybody who actually likes ads.

Flash is evil

[bradley13]

Flash is just evil (for that matter, so is Silverlight). I understand why designers like it, but it breaks the very paradigms that make the Internet great.

Example: I recently ran across the web-site of a very nice little company in my neighborhood. Whoever they hired to do their website put the whole thing into Flash: the menus, the content, even the contact information. Result: you can't find their sitein Google, not even under their company name and address. Accessibility to the blind: none. But the website looks pretty...

Flash: just say "no"!

Re:Flash is evil

[maxume]

I could misuse images in much the same way.

Re:Flash is evil

[ArbitraryDescriptor]

I could misuse images in much the same way.

And I could make the flash site accessible to search engines and the blind (Sorry, blind search engines, no support yet). Flash is not incapable of being standards compliant, it is just attractive to lazy web-developers who couldn't care less.

Re:Flash is evil

[beej]

Without entirely disagreeing with you, Flash is great for games, and makes cross-platform development dreamy compared to AJAX. I would argue that it's not intrinsically evil.

Ad Types

[Foxxxy]

I love the fact that /. allows ads to be disabled. I enable every once and a while and click around just for fun.

What I really dislike are the ads that take up 80% of the screen such as the new CNN ads for Lexus and Mac that expand if you accidentally hover over them and take up the whole screen. The honor system works if you prove that you aren't trying in your face ads. I don't mind the occasional flashing ad in a small section of the screen, chew up my whole screen or have some loud audio and I visit the site a lot less. Show me your product or service and I will make a personal decision. Jam your ad in my face and I won't even take the time to see if you really are 1000 times better than your competition.

I don't use Adblock Plus

[david_thornley]

Really, I don't. I use NoScript instead, and will add defenses as I see fit.

It isn't so much that I like ads as that I don't mind them as long as they aren't dangerous or obnoxious. (This means that I'm never going to give an ad site clearance in NoScript, for example.) As long as advertisers don't bother me overmuch, I won't worry about them.

Fundamentally, Google's got an idea here. The only question I have is whether the advertisers will, indeed, learn to control themselves and live within this contract. About a third of television shows is ads, and there's plenty of obnoxious ads on the web. Heck, there's plenty of billboards along highways that try to get your attention, and that's potentially lethal. So, I'd bet that there will continue to be a need for ad blockers.

Re:I don't use Adblock Plus

[KlausBreuer]

Well, I guess one can get used to ads if you see enough of them.
I, however, didn't: no TV. No Radio. Always, always an Adblocker on the net. German highways: no adverts allowed.

And... why should I allow advertisers space on my monitors? I buy high-res systems because I need that, and see no sense in giving a good part of that away for some stuff aimed at morons...

Ads not acceptable if we pay for bandwidth

[RichMan]

With the ISP's pushing to get us to pay for every bit of data there is no way I am going to let any page I visit load every element without me giving it permission.

Page text 2k.
Page images 4 x 50k = 200k

Ad to text ratio 100:1. Sorry not a good idea.

Also page rendering time is a function of the size of the page elements. A snappy page usually has very few ad images.

If they can make the ads low bandwidth and not add a load to the page rendering and not annoying people might accept them. The odds of that are very low.

When are ads a good thing?

[stokessd]

In what other medium are the ads actually useful and value added to your experience? Now that I have a DVR that can easily remove the ads actually watching commercial TV is brutally painful. The ads in magazines don't augment the stories at all, they are just the filler that makes the magazine 100 pages instead of 12.

Ads may be a necessary evil for a medium's survival, but that doesn't mean we as consumers like them or appreciate them as Google is asserting. In this day of internet product researching, ads mean less and less to me every year.

Sheldon

The very next useful ad I see...

[rshol]

will be my first. I have seen some entertaining ads (for example during the Super Bowl), but never one I considered useful.

Re:The very next useful ad I see...

[nine-times]

You've never seen an ad for a movie or TV show and thought, "Huh, well that looks good. I'd like to see that." You've never learned about the existence of a product for the first time through advertising? Never?

Re:The very next useful ad I see...

[krelian]

There is a certain demography of people who have a very hard time admitting that advertising works on them. For them, it's as if they are associating themselves with Joe Sixpack who, as we all know, is a moron.

Re:The very next useful ad I see...

[Nightspirit]

I have. I can't find the video but someone posted on reddit a video of a refrigerator TV ad from a mom and pop shop which had an an enthusiastic asian guy talk about how to pick the best refrigerators (insulation, how to tell cheap models that cut corners, etc) and in about 1 minute I learned more about fridges than I have ever known. If I lived in the same area I have no doubt I would have bought a fridge from them if I needed one.

Re:The very next useful ad I see...

[patrickthbold]

Someone once told me that the main reason that advertising works is because people don't think it does.

Re:The very next useful ad I see...

[BryanL]

Ads are not meant to be useful to you. They are meant to be useful to the company advertising. Most of the time it is just to keep the name of the company fresh in people's minds. The sad fact is that ads do influence people's behavior. Take drug ads. For better or worse, people really do go into their doctor and request medications they have seen in magazines or TV.

Not even google

[sakdoctor]

The ads might be text-only, but they are rendered with reams and reams of Javascript, which I have blocked.
However targeted an ad is, it's by definition not what I'm looking for because it's an ad.

Under my ad-blocker, all are equal.

Re:Not even google

[Surt]

I see businesses getting listed on search engines, and selling merchandise to consumers for a profit. I know it seems complicated ....

Maybe you were referring to content providers? They should sell cheap subscriptions, or get on board with a micropayment provider that doesn't suck.

Re:Not even google

[znerk]

Without some form of revenue to compensate for the work that goes into the product/information the company is giving away, how can we expect companies to maintain the sites?

Perhaps they might try, oh, I don't know... having relevant search engine placement for the products I am searching for? Seems to me that if you want me to buy your product, you should simply make the best product that you can, and hope that people will buy based on quality, rather than because some obnoxious sales guy shouted in my face until I bought it out of self defense.

A Dilbert quote comes to mind: "We can't compete on price. We also can't compete on quality, features or service. That leaves fraud, which I'd like you to call marketing."

Q.E.D.

Re:Obvious conclusion is obvious.

[Emb3rz]

Negative! Some very effective ad-blockers work by modifying your computer's DNS entry to a given ad-serving domain so that it will appear as though the server does not exist. This works regardless of what sort of content is being served.

On the general topic at hand: I have found that, while ads are getting creepier as to how much they clearly know about you, they are getting to be more useful to me personally. "Got an iPhone? Like chocolate? Work in IT? Buy our combination iPhone case, chocolate bar, VPN token generator!"

Advertisers (and Content providers) Listen Up

[Nos.]

Its really very simple.

First, don't interfere with the reason I'm visiting the site in the first place. If I'm trying to read an article, or look up some information, and the mere act of moving my mouse across the page puts some annoying popup in my way, I'll do what I can to block it in the future.

I understand the desire to be noticed on a page, and not blend right in to other navigation or content. That's fine, but massive banners that take more room than the content, or are so obnoxious with animation or sound as to distract me, will make me avoid that site in the future.

Ads, what's the big deal?

[Flector]

I stopped blocking ads quite a while ago, though Flashblock is always on. They just don't bother me all that much and people need to support the ecosystem.

No Flash

[thetoadwarrior]

Ads are generally ok as long as they're not flash. There is nothing worse than a site with a load of god awful Flash ads.

Re:No Flash

[seven of five]

Here ya go: Flashblock, also available in fruity ie and minty chrome flavors.

A Brewster's Millions Option! None of the above!

[Chas]

Online advertisers will ensure their ads aren't too annoying

Yeah. Because this has worked REAL well so far.

Never mind the war going on between the crapvertisers and the adblockers.

Never mind the annoying fucking pop-overs.

Never mind the stupid in-video adverts now being used that cover over 1/3 of the content being displayed and don't go away until you click them away.

the company says, and netizens will ultimately realize that online advertising is a good thing.

And I say "Stick to search. When it comes to the psycho-social aspects of the advertising debate, you're just a piker (albeit a big, burly, heavily armed piker, but still a piker) giving tactical and strategic advice to people who know their business better than you do."

Make all popups double click

[Drethon]

My biggest problems with ads these days (beyond automatic popups, stupid corporate mandated IE6) is less about their visibility and more about just trying to click somewhere on a page when I've been working somewhere else and always having to close the add that pops up. With as slow as the internet gets at times here I don't always even see the add that I just clicked. Make it so they will only popup when you double click and you can put adds where ever you want (so long as they don't block out what I am actually reading on the page). Just my $0.02

haha

[pacobahyba]

Ain't that right? I can honestly say that now I've heard everything

Sounds right to me

[Thaelon]

I don't get why the tags "hahahaha", "whenpigsfly" and "yeahright" are on there.

They're mostly correct.

It's basically an arms race between ad blockers and advertisers. And AdBlockPlus, for one, is faster. So they only option they really have is to make ads that aren't so obnoxious they'll be blocked. ad blockers were created primarily because the ads got incredibly annoying and they're here to stay, so it's either tame the ads or have all ads blocked.

I mean, who bothers to block Google ads? They're usually relevant and never annoying (when compared to animated flash objects with sound at least).

So which ads get seen? The ones that aren't obnoxious. Which ads are the most expensive (and valuable)? Non-obnoxious, relevant ads. Primarily Google's.

I Am Always Very, Very Leery...

[RobotRunAmok]

...of anyone who uses the word "netizen."

So don't be indiscriminate...

[sznupi]

One of the solutions would not blocking ads from those providers which play perfectly nice (as Google does). This could actually promote them.

Good theory, but disproved by reality.

[chefmonkey]

Unfortunately the ads blockers catch all of the other ads too. I don't mind ads that behave but the moving/talking ones are so annoying that I will block everything to get rid of them.

I agree 100%. I feel bad about blocking huge swaths of ads (e.g., everything from doubleclick) just for one or two bad apples -- but I tried playing whack-a-mole by blocking only the annoying ones for a while. It simply didn't work. The hyperactive flashing, jumping, talking ads simply are created too quickly to block each of them as a one-off. So I have rules that, for example, block all of doubleclick.net. And anything with /ads/ in the URL. And 245 similar other rules.

I've even had to block the small, boutique ad providers -- like projectwonderful.com -- that I'd really like to see succeed. But they end up serving up too many animated and/or risqué ads, so I had to block them as well.

So, as much as I'd like to believe what Upson has to say about adblockers destroying the market for annoying ads, I just haven't seen it happen. And I've been watching for well over a decade now.

Re:Good theory, but disproved by reality.

[severoon]

I feel bad about blocking huge swaths of ads

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.)

Multiplyers and their Motivation

[phooka.de]

I'm a multiplyer. I set up my PC, my gf's PC, my parents' PC, my steppatrnts PCs... whatever I do will affect a number of people.

Many PCs are configured by multiplyers like me. We pushed the use of firefox over that of IE in Germany. And we implement adblockers.

Now, why do we do that? It's not because we were asked for it. The people whom we help don't know that ads can be blocked before we tell them. No, we want to have less work.

How do we minimise our workload for administration of relatives' PCs? We secure them. Part of securing a PC is to make sure that only intended content is executed on it. That's why we install adblockers on so many PCs.

One or two years ago, a web-advertising company called "Falk AG" in germany got hacked. They had their banners on all sorts of resprctable sites like major newspapers. Suddenly, when you were visiting the websites of the leading German magazines, your PC would be hacked through manipulated ads served by Falk.

Again, we want to reduce the time we have to spend on those machines, therefore we want to keep them as clean as possible, therefore we make them block ads. What type of ad? Flash, animated gif, static image? I don't care. If it's not loaded into the browser, it cannot exploit a weakness.

Now for google.

If something needs to be found, it will be searched for, most likely using google. If all other ads are blocked, only the text-ads served by google on the google result-page will ever be seen. It increases their value.

Why would google care about banners on other people's sites?

And even if Chrome would not allow adblocking, what if a user actually found something in an ad he likes? He wouldn't have to google it. Google loses.

So, I'm actually surprised it's not google themselves who provide an adblocker for Chrome.

Re:Multiplyers and their Motivation

[tacarat]

Please mod this up. Sites catering to video game players (WoW for myself) have unwittingly served up hacked ads in the past. While the end user was generally at fault for not keeping their system up to date on patches the ad companies must share in the blame too. Either they didn't secure their own boxes or didn't have steps in place to ensure they weren't serving up malicious code. If you were to combine compromised ad servers with an unpatched update, then everybody is screwed.

Re:Multiplyers and their Motivation

[bingoUV]

If something needs to be found, it will be searched for, most likely using google

Not always. Many people don't know that they need something. E.g. size does matter. No idea about whether products so advertized work or not, but this is not something a common person can imagine to be possible. So there is no way they will search for it.

Another example is adblocker itself. Most common people have no idea that obnoxious advertisements can be blocked. Even my somewhat technically inclined friends did not know about it till I told them about Adblock. Why & how will they search for something they don't/can't even imagine? And I knew about Adblock by browsing each and every add-on on mozilla.com.

In general, any new revolutionary product/service will not be known to people fast until advertisement. Now that LCD screens are common, if a new company comes up to make better LCD screens, they will be found by, as you rightly point out, by searching on Google. An unimaginable product/service cannot be found in a similar manner.

hmm

[thatskinnyguy]

Every time someone uses the word "netizens" Domokun kills a kitty.

Re:hmm

[PaulMeigh]

Damn straight. The appropriate term is cyber-netizen.

Wait, what?

[Kc_spot]

"Internet ads are a good thing"?? Will Someone tell me why random pop-ups about how I'm the "MILLIONTH VISITOR" and "CLICK ME NAO 4 VIRUS" is in ANYWAY a good thing? Please.

Re:Wait, what?

[Shados]

If they're well targeted, they're useful. "Thousand Free Smilies!!!oneone" is not. But I routinely see ads of a PC game I almost overlooked, a new netbook model I hadn't seen while shopping for one, and other similar things. Well targeted ads are nice, if they're clean.

Re:Wait, what?

[Kc_spot]

Wouldn't that mean they would have to track us online? Oh.. I guess they could just submit polls to us and target people like that...

Re:Wait, what?

[Shados]

Sometimes just putting the right ad on the right site is sufficient :) Advertising Xbox games in the Xbox section of Gamefaqs, advertising IT tools and services on Slashdot, etc.

No need for tracking really.

Tragedy of the commons

[Spykk]

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.

Re:Tragedy of the Commons

[mounthood]

Exactly: there is no communication to the AD makers about which AD's go to far. Ironic that communication between advertiser and their audience is the problem.

Re:Tragedy of the commons

[definate]

I can see how you've applied that logic, but it's not a tragedy of the commons. Since these properties are private, and any adverts which are placed have the consent of both parties, and each attempts to price the benefit/loss from this exchange.

You might be considering yourself to have a stake in the website, and as such are seeing it as a common good, but it isn't.

As such we can't model the problem as a situation where people can't be excluded from using it (nonexcludable) and one persons usage of it reduces anothers (rival), which is what we would need to assume to model it as a common good. Instead, we know that it is excludable (roughly) and non-rival, which is just a private good with economies of scale (a natural monopoly).

In which case, the customers of this site will decide to take it or leave it, and the site will have to decide on how much advertising to supply, knowing it may reduce the quality of their site.

As such we can see this is not a tragedy of the commons situation.

Re:Standards?

[beej]

I wouldn't mind them so much if there were at least some standards, like limited to a few per website, nothing annoying, simple text and images, perhaps allowing for moving ads where appropriate and non distracting, also no sound, EVER!

Dream on. Self-regulation isn't going to work, and neither is government regulation. The only sane solution is: if you don't want to view the ads, don't request them from a web server and display them to yourself.

I have two problems with ads today

[alispguru]

1. Some ads are flashy/obnoxious. I block those. I don't block ads on Slashdot because by and large they are not overly intrusive. I block automatic video ads wherever I can, and I don't return to sites with roll-over pop-ups of any type.

2. Some ads cause pages to render slowly, or stop rendering entirely. I give up and close pages that are clearly blocked waiting on j.random.adserver.com, for whatever reason (slow ad server, net congestion, slow home browser). I wish there were a way to relegate ad rendering in browsers to, say, one thread, leaving the rest of them for the content I really want to see.

The common theme with these two problems is: when ads interfere with my viewing of non-ad content, they get dropped or blocked.

this is when I realized it...

[ILuvRamen]

When I put ads on my own website and got approved for ads on my most popular youtube video, that's why I realized how great ads are lol. Although I still hate them and think every ad I've ever seen can just burn in hell (except thinkgeek, hurray thinkgeek! lol)

Usage Caps

[Akido37]

Regardless if the ads are intrusive or not, if the ISPs are successful in charging per MB, I don't want to pay to download advertising which I typically don't want to see.

Re:Usage Caps

[base3]

If the ISPs are successful in charging per MB, it will be the end of the Internet as a corporate communication and support tool. Download the manual for that new gizmo? I don't think so -- mail me one on paper or the gizmo goes back to the store.

What is advertising?

[X86Daddy]

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.

Re:What is advertising?

[An ominous Cow art]

You've summed up my own feelings about it so well that I have little to add, save to say: you're not alone.

2009 was the relaunch of the internet ad

[rolfwind]

Pop-up blocker used to be good enough. Not anymore.

This year, specifically the last 6 months, ads have been rethought and changed, often hijacked the browsing experience in a way a pop-up block just can't help.

I often watch a video, like the daily show, and now there is a 30 second advertising in the beginning of it. No way to get around it. Not relevant to my interests. And if I watch it multiple times it's the same thing, over and over again. And is a 45 second clip worth a 30 second ad? Probably not.

Many articles, despite being littered with ads, now also have an advert that blocks the entire page until you view it for 30 seconds or hit "skip the ad" (who knows how long that will be voluntary).

Pandora, an excellent service, really started pushing the ads. Now, I could upgrade for $36 a year (didn't it used to be $29?) and that's all fine and good, but I could let a string of decent/good songs play on it ad free, but as soon as thumb-down a piece of music, which I do at least 50% of the time, they play an ad. Not really giving them an incentive to play my tastes now, does it, when they get rewarded with advertising for playing all the wrong songs.

Youtube really has stumbled on something elegant recently, with the music videos and AMVs and fanmade music videos recently. Sometime this year, they silenced all the things that had infringing content - in conjunction with the RIAA. It played the video, but had no sound. But apparently youtube acquired or is using something like Shazam, to listen to the clips and link it to the relevant music piece. Now almost every music video or AMV or whatnot has a transparent bar on the bottom that lets you buy that exact piece of music automatically from amazon or itunes - truly an elegant and helpful system, advertising exactly as it should be. Youtube makes a few cents, music makes it's money, the people putting together the AMVs are happy, and the audience is served.

I really have to hand it to youtube here. But the rise in unavoidable and intrusive ads otherwise has me shiver about the future of the internet.

Re:2009 was the relaunch of the internet ad

[Grishnakh]

Many articles, despite being littered with ads, now also have an advert that blocks the entire page until you view it for 30 seconds or hit "skip the ad" (who knows how long that will be voluntary).

I'm sorry, I've never seen one of these since using ABP. Do you have a link of a sample?

I often watch a video, like the daily show, and now there is a 30 second advertising in the beginning of it. No way to get around it. Not relevant to my interests. And if I watch it multiple times it's the same thing, over and over again. And is a 45 second clip worth a 30 second ad? Probably not.

I have a simple way around this: I don't watch videos. I'm a fast reader, and I don't have the time or attention to sit through videos of talking heads, when I can read 10x as much information in text form in that same time. The ads in front make it even worse because I hate sitting through them. So I almost never bother to watch videos online, unless it's something particularly interesting, and I happen to be at home and not at work.

Since, other than some large news sites, most stuff is still in regular text form, I have to disagree that ads have "hijacked the browsing experience" as you allege.

I really have to hand it to youtube here. But the rise in unavoidable and intrusive ads otherwise has me shiver about the future of the internet.

People have been decrying the commercialization of the internet since 1994, yet there's more useful, free, and non-commercial material available on it than ever before. If you don't want to see annoying ads, install AdBlock Plus and stop watching videos. There's still tons of other sites out there.

Flash and animated ads are evil

[Theovon]

The only reason I bother to block ads is the evil animated ads, especially flash, that eat up battery charge. You can make the ad as colorful and noticable as you want, as long as it doesn't burn CPU cycles for nothing.

Re:Flash and animated ads are evil

[cdrguru]

Interestingly enough, Windows doesn't halt the CPU. So, regardless of what is happening on the computer, the processor is running.

So the ads do not really consume CPU cycles - they simply make pretty graphics move rather than counting unused numbers to infinity.

If you are really concerned about battery life, you need to be running an operating system that uses halting to stop the CPU. Not sure if Linux still does, but Windows does not. OS X? Solaris?

Re:Flash and animated ads are evil

[Theovon]

You clearly don't know what you're talking about. All modern operating systems halt the CPU and generally use all of the available CPU power states. This includes Windows. In fact, Windows is pretty damn good at it. Power management is one of the few things that Windows does well, at least as far back as Windows XP, if not 2000.

If Windows didn't use the halt instruction (the most primitive form of CPU power management), then Windows running in a VM would use 100% CPU all the time. It doesn't. When my Windows guest is idle, the VM process itself uses almost zero CPU.

Where do you get your information from!?

If IE has taught us anything...

[space_jake]

Random schmoes don't know how to change their browser let alone install extensions to block ads.

Tragedy of the Commons

[pavon]

The problem is that most people aren't going to filter ads based on site or ad-host. They will either live with them, all of them, or install an adblocker and let it run on it's default settings, which is to block all ads.

So even if a specific site or advertiser only uses a unobtrusive ads, they will still be blocked just as often as the horribly annoying ads. The good advertisers are at the mercy of the advertising community as a whole. And once someone starts using ad blockers it is unlikely they will stop using it - even if all the ads on the web became polite, how would they know?

Old behavioral experiment

[PontifexPrimus]

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.

Re:Old behavioral experiment

[houghi]

If you would have used the word "Pavlov" it would have saved you much time.

Re:Old behavioral experiment

[noidentity]

I'm sorry, I'm not a horse expert. Can you put that in terms of a car analogy, perhaps with spikes on the road and wheelies or something?

Re:Obvious conclusion is obvious.

[greyhueofdoubt]

On the general topic at hand: I have found that, while ads are getting creepier as to how much they clearly know about you, they are getting to be more useful to me personally.

I keep getting an ad in the facebook sidebar for "Woman looking for bigger guys". What the hell are you implying, facebook?

As an aside, you can get rid of a lot of ads by using an effective hosts file. I still see more ads in opera and safari than I do in FF, but nowhere near the amount that I see on my work PC (with unmodified hosts file).

-b

except none of the chrome extensions "block" ads..

[putch]

yet at least. so far all of the "ad blockers" i've seen don't actually block ads. they just hide them. they still use your bandwidth. their code is still rendered.

from what i understand the devs dont (yet?) have to tools necessary to actually block elements. they can only hide them. which kind of rules out the possibility of any legitimate noscript equivalent. which is more important than an adblocker.

ad blockers not quite as good in Chrome yet

[BOFslime]

I've been trying a few ad blockers, such as AdBlock+ and AdThwart, both use EasyList, but neither block the most annoying ad's to me and that is 'smart text' ad's. Forums that highlight key words that when you happen to mouse over them, they pop up some video nonsense. ABP blocks such ad's in firefox and its one of the biggest things keeping me from liking chrome currently. (the other being this bug: Issue 11700)

But what I consider "intrusive" is not the same

[SoTerrified]

A few years ago, I build myself a homemade PVR with off the shelf equipment and some open source software. Combine that with starting to buy a season of a show I liked on DVD instead of watching the broadcasts. I stopped watching regular TV. Interestingly I found code that already existed to identify probable commercials, and then would auto-skip. At the same time, I started using ad-blocker software on my browser. Long story short, recently I had an invitation to go over to a friends place, and we watched a live show he enjoyed and wanted to share with me. THE COMMERCIALS WERE UNBEARABLE. They were long, they were loud, they completely destroyed the narrative. Eventually, I had to tell him I couldn't do it. I would record the show on my PVR, then I invited him over to my place at a future date to watch future episodes. (We did, and I enjoyed the show so much, I now watch it regularly)

The point is that, only a few years ago, I was easily able to watch broadcast TV. But after viewing content ad-free for the last couple years, I now find ads incredibly intrusive, enough that they render shows unwatchable. If you said "You can only watch this show if you watch the ads", I would have to say I would stop watching the show. I imagine if I had to browse without ad-blocking, I'd feel the same way about the internet.

Re:A Brewster's Millions Option! None of the above

[Marcika]

Online advertisers will ensure their ads aren't too annoying

Yeah. Because this has worked REAL well so far.

Never mind the war going on between the crapvertisers and the adblockers.

Never mind the annoying fucking pop-overs.

Never mind the stupid in-video adverts now being used that cover over 1/3 of the content being displayed and don't go away until you click them away.

the company says, and netizens will ultimately realize that online advertising is a good thing.

And I say "Stick to search. When it comes to the psycho-social aspects of the advertising debate, you're just a piker (albeit a big, burly, heavily armed piker, but still a piker) giving tactical and strategic advice to people who know their business better than you do."

A piker? Are we talking about GOOG, the company that is forecasted to sell $20 billion in advertising space next year? The one who can (and does) put hundreds of PhDs to work analyzing the psychosociology of your clicking behaviour?

You might find that with their less-obtrusive text ads, they have pretty much won the ad war on the internet...

Tragedy of the Commons

[SleepingWaterBear]

Google's argument seems pretty sketchy. The idea that all advertisers will learn to make less obtrusive and obnoxious ads completely ignores the basic incentives at work in advertising. Flashy, annoying ads *do* work better - that's why they do them, and while it may be in the industry's overall interest to tone down the ads so that people don't use ad-blockers, each individual advertiser is likely to benefit from being as flashy and annoying as possible. This is a classic tragedy of the commons situation.

Now, it's true that there's also a market for more restrained ads - there are people who won't click the flashy ad, but can be tricked by the simple text ad that seems relevant to the page. The real reason Google has no problem with ad-blockers in Chrome is that the more popular ones don't block text ads, so Google is happy with anything that hurts their competition while leaving them untouched.

Ad blocking?

[Anachragnome]

Two words.

Faster Surfing.

Ad Blocking

[GourdCaptain]

I block all ads except those on sites run by independent content providers I like who depend upon ads for income. And even then, I have flash block on. (Bloody flash slows this old system down with no remorse.) The use of Flash for non-necessary purposes is pretty much a captial offense in my book due to it's resource-hogging and non-easily viewable nature on non x86 machines.

tragedy of the commons [nt]

[Weezul]

The worst ones will ruin it for everyone else, unless google plans on creating an ad rating service. Well, google's ads are the least annoying on the planet. Anti-trust case anyone?

Bandwidth!

[anarking]

The ads themselves don't normally irk me too horribly, it's that they consume all sorts of processing power for the video and flash and all, and an extreme amount of bandwidth. Normally the ads on a page are multiple times the size of the actual page's content! This is the same effect of SPAM, wherein 99% of email bandwidth is SPAM... We're starting to see things like 75% of web bandwidth is AIDS. err ADS.

Sometimes useful

[carvalhao]

I will probably be modded down as troll, but not only I don't mind at all having ads in my Gmail account (after all, I am getting a "free" service, it is only fair they get something in return) but in a number of occasions I've actually found them useful, suggesting me relevant products that I didn't know about.

The Superbowl

[zoward]

Some people tune into the Superbowl to see the advertisements, after all, so that's a kind of exchange: entertainment for eyeballs.

One of the reasons Superbowl advertising is so expensive is that so many people watch it live rather than Tivo'ing it or downloading it from the net. Those watching it live are much less likely to be blocking or fast-forwarding through the ads. Advertisers know this.

And as you point out, some people watch it just to see the ads - what better market to pitch to?

How will that work?

[jridley]

How will I decide that ads at some level are OK; once I started running AdBlock, I just didn't see any ads anymore. I can't make a decision that these ads are OK because I never see them.

FWIW, when I visit sites on other people's machines, the ads still bother me. And I've been using the web since it was invented (and the internet in general before that, with FTP sites and remote terminal login) and I have yet to click on an ad, let alone buy something from one.

Also, Chrome's ad blockers stink. The ads pop up anyway, then they disappear. It's very irritating. Apparently it has something to do with the architecture they've provided for plugins.

Google is being self serving

[Presto Vivace]

but I think that they are in the right of it. If your ad is so annoying that people resort to technology to get rid of it, then your ad campaign needs rethinking. There are TV's that automatically reduce the sound of commercials to the same volume of the program, for those too lazy to hit the mute button. Nothing says my ad company has no imagination more than a loud, flashing advertisement.

Re:You underestimate the Jews

[Mister Whirly]

Actually, it is dynamic range compression that is responsible for commercials being louder than regular content.

Google have a point here

[SpaghettiPattern]

The more intrusive an add, the less likely I am to consider it seriously.

Google have a point here and I hope it will catch on at upper management who will communicate to middle management its endless wisdom.

I have never ever felt the urge to do about Google adds. "Eye catching" images or flash thingies piss me off completely and hence get blocked.

Re:Google can't stop ad blockers anyway

[Surt]

You underestimate google. To defeat privoxy, all they have to do is rewrite the link handling in chrome to go through a google proxy, and compress the data heading into chrome so you can't filter the ads.

attention advertisers !!!

[viralMeme]

If the adverts weren't so annoying, then we wouldn't have to go to such trouble to suppress them. The most annoying is the audio ones that pop up in the middle of a new report, when are you advertisers going to ever learn. The INTERNET isn't like TELEVISION !!!

Secondly, when we arrive at a web site selling, for instance, contact lenses, we don't want to watch an advert, we want to know: do you carry our prescription and HOW MUCH DOES IT COST, that is all !!!!

Costs and Wages

[sjbe]

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.

Re:Costs and Wages

[Maxo-Texas]

These are raw $, not adjusted for inflation from a site i looked up a few weeks a go that summarized prices for milk, bread, cars, housing, salaries, and a basket of other things.

What they showed was that from 1940-1980's, every 10 years, everything doubled (wages AND cars AND bread). Starting in 1990, prices continued to double, but wages only rose 50% per 10 years.

Re:Costs and Wages

[sjbe]

These are raw $, not adjusted for inflation from a site i looked up a few weeks a go that summarized prices for milk, bread, cars, housing, salaries, and a basket of other things.

The numbers you need to look at are the CPI tables which is the most common benchmark for inflation. (there are others but the CPI is used the most, despite some weaknesses) On average the cost of a basket of goods rises about 2-3% in a typical year in the US. Sometimes more, sometimes less but usually inflation is somewhere near 2-3%.

What they showed was that from 1940-1980's, every 10 years, everything doubled (wages AND cars AND bread).

Sounds about right but that's normal inflation and wages have mostly kept pace during that period. Some stagnation in places.

Starting in 1990, prices continued to double, but wages only rose 50% per 10 years.

So you are comparing data from the 1940-80s with data from the 1990s onward. I think you need to be very careful about what data you are using and what you are comparing. If costs actually outstripped wage increases by double (which is less than you originally claimed) for the last 20 years we would be in FAR worse shape than we actually are. I've seen a LOT of data on the US macroeconomic picture and nothing I've seen supports what you are saying. Citations please - and it needs to be from someplace like the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, not some political blog.

Re:Costs and Wages

[Maxo-Texas]

Not what I'm saying...

http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/70yearsofpricechange.html
Dropping the great depression...

wages
1940 $1,725.00, 1950 $3,210.00 , 1960 $5,315.00 ,1970 $9,400.00 , 1980 $19,500.00 , 1990 $28,960.00 , 2008 $40,523
Note the big discontinuity start at 1990. I see a smaller increase in 1960 looking at this fresh. at my company this year,
no raises, no bonuses, but there are numerous "promotions" in the executive ranks-- no change in duties. It's just a slimy way of giving themselves raises.

house
1940 $3,920.00, 1950 $8,450.00 , 1960 $12,700.00 , 1970 $23,450.00 , 1980 $68,700.00 , 1990 $123,000.00 , 2008 $238,880
More than doubled in 1980, so we were less able to afford houses. It went from 2 years salary to 3 years salary- to 4 years in 1990 to 6 years in 2008.

car
1940 $850.00, 1950 $1,510.00 , 1960 $2,600.00 , 1970 $3,450.00 , 1980 $7,200.00 , 1990 $16,950.00 , 2008 $27,958 ,
Cars stopped doubling in 1990-- people probably couldn't afford a 32000 car or perhaps the spike in 1990 was an aberation since 7200->14400->28800.

meat
1930 12 cents , 1940 20 cents , 1950 30 cents , 1960 45 cents ,1970 70 cents , 1980 99 cents , 1990 89 cents , 2009 $3.99 ,
Meat has gone up a lot since 1990- but that may be a reaction to the dip in 1990's (so ranchers had less incentive to raise new cattle)

Meanwhile the GINI coefficient has climbed from from 39.6 to 46.6 (dropping from 47 in 2006) putting the United States very high in the list of countries with unequal income distribution.

no-one paid me for typing that ;)

[viralMeme]

"I will probably be modded down as troll, but not only I don't mind at all having ads in my Gmail account (after all, I am getting a "free" service, it is only fair they get something in return) but in a number of occasions I've actually found them useful, suggesting me relevant products that I didn't know about"

Yea, and no-one paid your for typing that ;)
---

The thing is - its the adverts fed to your correspondents., like this for instance, an advert for 'discount diapers', I have in no shape-way-or-form an interest in 'Diapers', what ever they are ...

Re:no-one paid me for typing that ;)

[carvalhao]

Well, given that I posted this from work (IT consulting, nothing to do with Google or ads), I could say I have been paid to write this. Only that I own the company, so I kinda paid myself ;)

Re:no-one paid me for typing that ;)

[PietjeJantje]

I'm critical of google, and I think I'm justified in being critical, but everytime I post something critical in one of these articles, it is modded down as troll while the fan boys continue their parade. But they never intellectually challenge my arguments. Or shall I say, the google employees?? In the meantime, all the lobbyists are just making it worse, and I think they will destroy google in the end, just as no one likes to be affiliated with MS except for the cash.

Block them en bloc

[ackthpt]

Any site which provides enough flashy ads to pull me away from content is en bloc, that means block 'http://annoying.adserver.com/*'

Unobtrustive ads sitting quietly to the side are the ultimate winners as I don't block anything that doesn't move (or try to talk to me,) unless it's served up by 'http://annoying.adserver.com' then that advertiser has been harmed by the ads from Big Flashy In Your Face Company.

I don't use AdBlock

[Pecisk]

Because non-Flash ads are usually less intrusive and annoying (read: less flashy smooth movements), so Google have some truth in this; also GIF animations can be turned off. I don't care about text ads, because they are usually very low-key.

Time For AdBlock By Default

[u64]

Google Ads are opt-out. That's why we need Browsers that
AdBlock By Default to gain back the balance we had. And to
give back privicy to all those non-technical people that
doesnt have a clue what to choose.

I install all Browser's to people with proper hosts and
some extra fine-tuning Browser-settings that hosts-file cant do.

I'm thinking of creating a Schedule job bat script that wget's an
updated hosts file every so and so...

But even this wont solve the whole problem. I'm already seeing
css-ads that i cant block yet. My battle to stop annoying web-browsing
has only begun.

Google:"The market will sort itself"
Yes it would if we lived in a capitalist utopia where everyone do
business without any greed to screw people over. And where customers
where in-depth experts in all details for every deal they make. Then
yes indeed such a world would be sweet.

epic [facepalm]

I sure hope Germany leads the way and ban AdSense spyware and all tracking
methods that could (and will) be used against us.

Re:You underestimate the Jews

[bluefoxlucid]

what the fuck is this bull shit?

Adorable

[Improv]

Oh google, you're so adorable. Everyone come pet the cute and innocent puppy!

Re:Adorable

[StripedCow]

they have to be cute.

there's a lot of intelligent people working at that place, who would certainly not work there if there wasn't anything noble about the job.

Re:Adorable

[Improv]

From what I know of the inside of google, it's a lot of things, but the chief attractions are not really that it's noble.

Re:Google can't stop ad blockers anyway

[Improv]

We do have the source to Chrome, you know...

That's funny...

[Goaway]

I'm not seeing any of all those Slashdotters who swore up and down that Google would never in a million years allow an ad blocker in their browser admitting they were wrong? What gives?

Re:Google can't stop ad blockers anyway

[Surt]

For now.

I hate to say it...

[denmarkw00t]

but, I kinda like the idea. My friend and I were in the drivethru, probably a Micky D's one day, and I got to thinking: "What if the whole McDonald's was covered in ads!? Advertisements wrapping the building, obscuring windows, constantly changing? Whats that? My combo only cost $1? Why? Oh! Ads offset my meal!" Just like the internet - if a site supported by ads can survive, its not because the site can offer an ad that EVERY SINGLE VISITOR CLICKS, but instead they can ensure that ENOUGH visitors will click. Enough will buy. And, while that doesn't drive insane profits, it does keep the site/company moving, and the goal here is to bring the customers in - even with free* stuff. Once you have the client, then you can charge them more and create a CFL.

Great -- everybody hates popups and banners!

[Randym]

Now, if Google would only come up with an ad-blocker for those annoying text ads!