Ars Technica Inveighs Against Ad Blocking

An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica recently conducted a 12-hour experiment in which story content was hidden from users of popular ad blocking tools. Explaining the experiment, Ken Fisher appealed to Ars's readership: 'My argument is simple: blocking ads can be devastating to the sites you love. I am not making an argument that blocking ads is a form of stealing, or is immoral, or unethical, or makes someone the son of the devil. It can result in people losing their jobs, it can result in less content on any given site, and it definitely can affect the quality of content. It can also put sites into a real advertising death spin. As ad revenues go down, many sites are lured into running advertising of a truly questionable nature. We've all seen it happen. I am very proud of the fact that we routinely talk to you guys in our feedback forum about the quality of our ads. I have proven over 12 years that we will fight on the behalf of readers whenever we can. Does that mean that there are the occasional intrusive ads, expanding this way and that? Yes, sometimes we have to accept those ads. But any of you reading this site for any significant period of time know that these are few and far between. We turn down offers every month for advertising like that out of respect for you guys. We simply ask that you return the favor and not block ads.'"

Comments

It's the freeloaders time

[sopssa]

Somehow Internet has made people to forget that creating quality content costs money. Often a lot of money. Often with these kind of things I'm really surprised at how dumb nerdy people can be too. You know, us who should know better and not be those stupid sheeps who are happy have a "mindless" job and then watch tv for rest of the evening and still enjoy it, even if theres no mentally requiring tasks involved.

But all the while a lot of people, mostly us geeks, cannot grasp that immaterial products and content also costs to create and takes just the same manhours. This is usually the same thing on discussions about piracy too - there's always someone pointing out that "duplicating" that content to sell it to you doesn't cost anything. Really? Are we really that dumb? That may not cost much, but it's creating it that does and those costs are got back from selling it to people. A lot of times a lot later, with some forms of entertainment even years later.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Anonymous Coward]

Plural of sheep is sheep.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[OffTheWallSoccer]

For me, it comes down to the annoyance factor. If the ads on a site are cleanly organized in a way that won't distract me while reading the article, then I'm okay with it. But lots of sites display those seizure-inducing, bright-blinking-scrolling ads. THEY get black-listed.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[morgan_greywolf]

While we're at it, we should also all pull the "fast forward" buttons off of our DVR remotes, too. Television shows cost a lot of money to produce, and we shouldn't deny the TV networks their hard-earned ad revenue either. And we should read every ad in newspapers and magazines, too. Don't forget when you're driving down the freeway on your way to work to stop and read the billboards, too. You guys out there actually watching the road are irresponsible freeloaders!

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[scarboni888]

Look - I don't care. In these days of over-saturation of accessible media, information, and other distractions I can tune into something else. If the business model a particular artist or other outfit doesn't work out without me shelling out cash or refraining from blocking the ads then that's not my fault - I'll find another distraction or information source that has found a business model that works.

I'm getting so sick and tired of this dinosaurian party line that we should be expected to pay for content! Seriously - you know what I say? I say that as a content producer you should feel fucking privileged that I'm spending my precious valuable time sopping up your info-goop with my greymatter sponge as opposed to spending it on some other outlet/avenue/source of infostream.

It's called supply and demand. When the supply is infinite the cost is nil.

In fact if I had it my way content producers would throw in some cash to attract my eyeballs to their info-goop stream. let's get with the times, people!

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[MoonBuggy]

I think it's more apathy than ignorance. To an extent we're wired to go for the short term pay off anyway, so considering what might happen to the site's revenues in the long term, when we see no immediate consequence, takes an effort to do. There's nothing really pushing us to make that effort so we just ignore the possible future problems.

I don't block ads for precisely the reasons you (and the author of the article) outlined. I have no problem with text ads, or non-invasive image or flash ads provided they remain confined to their section of the page. Pop ups, javascript rollover things on the links, interstitials or those flash ads that cover up part of the article all push it too far, but I've found that sites which resort to these tactics are generally not worth my time anyway. The one thing that continues to surprise me, however, is just how much money there is in advertising - just because I don't block them with technology, doesn't mean I don't ignore them.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[wolffenrir]

Then figure out another way to make money. If you business model is based upon annoying the shit out everybody, ripping through cycles, and just peddling bullshit on your website, then just have the guts to fail instead of begging people to play along with your stupid business plan.

Half of the people out there with Windows machines infested with malware got that malware because they DID NOT use privacy and security extensions. So we are all supposed to pretend like this practice a good idea just so somebody can continue making money on a business model we have known is a failed concept for almost a decade?

It's a bad idea. If you want to sell something, then just write it out in your html. Don't play games with your customers' privacy and security. Let's not forget that these adservers also act as data collectors which threaten our privacy in rather serious circumstances.

When a newspaper runs ads, it is not jammed right in the middle of an article. It doesn't jump of the fucking page and flash in red letters. It doesn't create another newspaper filled with bullshit ads and malware and shoot it out at your face. But when we are talking about ads on the web, that is exactly what is happening. We are never talking about people just putting a sales pitch and graphic embedded in the html.

Just modify the scripts that generate your pages to insert the ads yourself. Don't use third parties. Don't fuck with your users. You might be surprised by the result.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[KDR_11k]

Same here. I generally have flash and GIF animation disabled unless I need it (mostly because flash is a performance drain that shouldn't be running unnecessarily and GIFs are usually annoying, I don't want stuff moving in my peripheral vision when I'm trying to read something), anything beyond that has to be done manually. If an ad is annoying enough to make me bother to do that then forcing it down my throat would likely make me pick a different site to read. It's not like we have a shortage of people making free websites about stuff and these days professional journalists rarely if ever deliver content that's better than what other people do for free in their spare time. It's especially bad with writing on videogames where most people hardly even trust the professionals anymore because they're practically all bribed or otherwise compromised for the sake of the site's profits (e.g. troll articles to drive the hits up).

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Puff_Of_Hot_Air]

I (and I think I speak for many people here) do not have a problem with adds per say. What I have a problem with is intrusive adds. Google style adds don't bother me a bit, I click them all the time. Sometimes I'm looking for a product, or am just plain interested, and then I click. It is not for these adds that people like me run add blockers. The problem is obnoxious advertising. It's like those television adds where a guy just yells the whole time. Adds like this make me willing to invest the time, money, and effort in a TIVO style box. You would think other advertisers would be trying to stop this sort of thing to preserve their own revenue! Can you imagine how pissed you'd be if your add screened after screaming man? It's these guys that motivate people to find a way to turn it off! If an add move blinks, etc, I find it very distracting and will leave a site. I will not visit your sight again, and I use add blockers to avoid this kind of thing in general browsing. The submitter admits to intrusive adds, so your site would be on my shit list. It's nothing personal, it's just that if you want traffic from people like me, just don't do intrusive adds.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[sopssa]

You may have over-saturation of content, but it's shitty content and a lot of times copied from other sites (now before someone jumps on it, I don't include slashdot with this - the comments and discussions here are sometimes great and unique). But quality content does cost. If they can't sustain making it with ads, they will start asking users to pay for the content. I know a few sites I would pay for, just because I find their content good and a few dollars a month wouldn't really be so much (price of one beer that you wouldn't even hesitate to think about?)

I'm getting so sick and tired of this dinosaurian party line that we should be expected to pay for content!

Heh.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[KDR_11k]

Content is a pretty broad term. "News" content is a dime a dozen on the internet but proper free movies, games, etc are still fairly sparse with most of the free ones being vastly inferior to the paid ones (note I said most, I don't want to get random examples of great free stuff) so the producers of the higher quality material can usually afford charging for it. The professional writers for paid websites are rarely any better than hobbyists putting articles on their free website.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Svippy]

From TFA:

Invariably someone always pops into a discussion like this and brings up some analogy with television advertising, radio, or somesuch. It is not in any way the same; advertisers in those mediums are paying for potential to reach audiences, and not for results. They have complex models which tell them if X number are watching, Y will likely see the ad (and it even varies by ad position, show type, etc!). But they really have no true idea who sees what ad, and that's why it's a medium based on potential and not provable results. On the Internet everything is 100% trackable and is billed and sold as such. Comparing a website to TiVo is comparing apples to asparagus.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[nacturation]

FTFA:

Invariably someone always pops into a discussion like this and brings up some analogy with television advertising, radio, or somesuch. It is not in any way the same; advertisers in those mediums are paying for potential to reach audiences, and not for results. They have complex models which tell them if X number are watching, Y will likely see the ad (and it even varies by ad position, show type, etc!). But they really have no true idea who sees what ad, and that's why it's a medium based on potential and not provable results. On the Internet everything is 100% trackable and is billed and sold as such. Comparing a website to TiVo is comparing apples to asparagus. And anyway, my point still stands: if you like this site you shouldn't block ads. Invariably someone else will pop in and tell me that it's not their fault that our business model sucks. My response is simple: you either care about the site's well-being, or you don't. As for our business model sucking, we've been here for 12 years, online-only. Not many sites can say that.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Mr2001]

This is usually the same thing on discussions about piracy too - there's always someone pointing out that "duplicating" that content to sell it to you doesn't cost anything. Really? Are we really that dumb?

No, we aren't. You seem to have a selective memory about how these discussions tend to go, though...

That may not cost much, but it's creating it that does and those costs are got back from selling it to people. A lot of times a lot later, with some forms of entertainment even years later.

Yes, someone always makes that point. And then someone else points out that selling copies is not the only way to get paid for creating content -- in fact, it's a pretty poor way, considering that the fundamental nature of the medium makes it impossible to prevent others from distributing their own copies.

Likewise, selling ads isn't the only way to get paid for running a web site. It might even be a pretty poor way, considering that Ars is now having to beg their readers to pay more attention to the ads.

If people don't want to look at advertisements, that's something sites like Ars will have to deal with. Maybe they should sell subscriptions instead.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[scarboni888]

Look - it's now beyond the 'random examples of great free stuff' for me.

I am now at a point where I have access to an amount of high-quality free content and information that I lack the time to get to it.

I'm waiting for one or the other of them to get downright progressive and start offering me cash for spending that lack of time with them & not the other guys because seriously - do they want to be ignored?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Mr2001]

But [TV advertisers] really have no true idea who sees what ad, and that's why it's a medium based on potential and not provable results. On the Internet everything is 100% trackable and is billed and sold as such.

Yes, now take that one step further - on the internet, you can track clicks, not just views. I don't click on ads, period, so why should Ars or their advertisers care whether or not my browser displays them?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[betterunixthanunix]

"This is usually the same thing on discussions about piracy too - there's always someone pointing out that "duplicating" that content to sell it to you doesn't cost anything."

Which is true? In modern times, it costs nothing to make a copy -- that is why so many people are doing it from the comfort of their homes. We have moved past the age of requiring industrial equipment just to duplicate a song or a book, and you seem to be angry about that.

"That may not cost much, but it's creating it that does and those costs are got back from selling it to people."

First of all, many people produce creative works without turning a profit on it -- friends in a band, as an example -- so what is your point, exactly? That they should be turning a profit? That they should not be creating art if there is no money in it?

That being said, the answer to the issue of recouping the cost of production is not attacking modern technology, it is finding a new way to make money on creativity or moving to a completely different model of paying for creative works. It is not acceptable to create a system in which duplicating something is a crime, just because the publishing/recording/etc. industries fear the loss of their business, which is what this is really about.

Seriously, why do people keep attacking modern technology, just because it is a game changer? Yes, the reality is that computers have changed the nature of distributing creative works, and instead of embracing this new age of instant and unfettered available, people like you are attacking it and claiming that there is an inherent problem with mass availability. The incredible thing about it is that the copyright lobby (RIAA/MPAA/BSA/etc.) has been caught in lie after lie, and yet nobody questions their assertions, even when those assertions could not possibly be true (do you really think that recording companies are losing billions of dollars a year because of file sharing? Billions of dollars a year for over a decade, yet still throwing lavish A-list parties and somehow not going bankrupt?). Seriously, why defend such people?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Svippy]

Yes, now take that one step further - on the internet, you can track clicks, not just views. I don't click on ads, period, so why should Ars or their advertisers care whether or not my browser displays them?

Because they are paid per viewed ad as well as per clicked ad. So just by viewing the ads, you are providing Ars with revenue. Alternative; subscribe.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[blincoln]

I was fine with advertising on websites when it was limited to (non-controversial) static images without sound.
I started using ad-blocking software when website advertising became animated, sound-producing, and often included content that wouldn't be appreciated where I work. I became more aggressive about it when it expanded to include things that cover up the content on the site I'm reading, or similar popup-style behaviour.
Having had it hidden from me for years now, I find unfiltered websites a mind-numbing barrage of distraction that teeters on the edge of unusability. I had a similar experience when I moved away from watching television. I love films and serials, but I no longer have any interest in watching them in broadcast/cable/satellite form due to the ADD-inducing advertising model.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[scarboni888]

Sure the ration of crap to quality is about 100:1 but with the sheer volume of it all I have access to more quality content than I have time to get to.

So then the question becomes: "Why should I give any time to YOUR free content as opposed to the other guys?"

Because you expect me to put up with ads or pay for your content?

I think not!

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, are a retard.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[fooslacker]

It's not that I forget it's that I don't care. If the value of your content (to me personally) outweighs the annoyance of your ads then I'll read. If not I won't. I usually don't bother blocking ads I just avoid sites with irritating advertising. That said I'd be happy to block ads if the content was valuable but the ads were bringing the annoyance factor to an unbearable point. The content is not the only part of the product you're putting out. The ads are part of your product and horrible ads lower the overall value of your product so if you have to have ads your total product is worth less to me. At some point if it becomes without value to a large number of your readers and you go out of business even if your content is top notch.

Another thing that content producers seem to "forget" is that there is plenty of competition out there and just because you put out the best content doesn't mean you deserve to survive or make a living off of it. If the other content is "good enough" and doesn't annoy the reader with ads the overall value of that content may be higher. Ad revenue is not an intrinsic birth right, it's the result of providing a high enough quality total product that people are willing to consume it. Just like all business models it will not last forever and those that don't adapt will either die or attempt to legislate themselves a living at the expense of their consumers.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[morgan_greywolf]

Ars is full of shit. First off, on the Internet everything is not 100% trackable. There is no way for a web server to know how my browser is rendering a given page. So if you're getting paid per view (per 1000 impressions), the model is exactly the same as it is for television.

If you're getting paid per click, that is trackable, but many people, including myself, don't click through any ads. And there's always click-through fraud.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[fbjon]

We need an ad whitelist. I have a blocklist I've copied from somewhere else that effectively blocks just about everything ad-like. However, I don't actually mind ads that are useful and don't flash/scroll/make fart noises. Somehow allowing those through would make the web better for everyone.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[d3ac0n]

I'm with wolffenrir.

As an IT guy I spend far too much time cleaning up infected machines due to malware gotten from bad ads.

Frankly, I simply cannot trust ANYONE anymore. Understand that I have seen infections start after people visited CNN.com, Foxnews.com, MSNBC.com, ESPN.com, Facebook, Amazon, and MANY MANY MANY other major news/social/other sites that serve banner ads from 3rd party vendors. (or from a poorly secured internal ad server)

At this point I simply block all ads everywhere. I use Firefox with Adblock Plus and No Script and my surfing is safe.

I'm sorry Ars, but until you make a solemn and public oath (permanently posted to your front page) to only serve static image content using only html (no flash, no javascript, nothing but plaintext html) then frankly I can't trust you with my PC.

I understand that this is preventing you from making money, but you haven't earned my TRUST yet. You have to earn that BEFORE you get to earn money from me.

I'm sorry if that upsets your business model, but that's just too damn bad. You don't get to make money from me while putting my machine at risk.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Daengbo]

As ad revenues go down, many sites are lured into running advertising of a truly questionable nature.

Ars is full of crap on this issue. Annoying and questionable ads didn't come about because of ad blockers. Ad blockers came about to stop the animated "your computer is infected" GIFs and "punch the monkey" Flash ads. Many ad blocker lists specifically avoided blocking text ads because these weren't annoying and borderline illegal.

Ad blocker are a result of evil ads, just like popup blockers were invented to stop annoying pop ups, (not because someone in some tall tower thought that popup blocker might be useful at some future time). Wake up, Ars.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Machtyn]

I will have to agree on a point here. For me, besides getting rid of the annoyance factor, it is a security issue. I trust the sites I browse. I don't necessarily trust the third party sites that inject the advertising on to a page. Even reputable sites get bad adverts on their page.

My one disagreement on the above is the comment on newspaper ads. Many times the articles are split between two pages, the ads are in the middle of the article or are placed in a way that adjusts the flow of text so that you notice them.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Idiomatick]

There is a subtlty missing in the music comparison.

Pirating music gives the industry nothing yes. The alternative in the vast majority of these cases is simply NOT having the song which also gets the industry nothing. To top it off a chunk of people that pirate go on to buy products (tickets or cds). There is nothing comparable to that in the analogy.

Turning off ads means the site gets less money. The alternative is to leave ads on and the site DOES get money. In cases where the ads are so bad that you'd find a different site then the adblocker doesn't matter.

On a side note I've been thinking that decentralized p2p WEBSITES need to get created. Honestly, while I'm on a site I'm happy to spend some upload helping out. As well sites with files should start using torrents for their stuff. An indie coder with a single ap up that gets a few hundred dls a month could be put in the hole for no reason, why don't i see them offering torrents? Atleast as a suggested alternative.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Dachannien]

When a newspaper runs ads, it is not jammed right in the middle of an article. It doesn't jump of the fucking page and flash in red letters. It doesn't create another newspaper filled with bullshit ads and malware and shoot it out at your face. But when we are talking about ads on the web, that is exactly what is happening.

In fact, I find that many newspapers' websites are some of the worst offenders at annoying their viewers. As if tower ads that are bigger than the news article itself weren't bad enough, many of them also do interstitials and pop-ups/unders.

At this point, I generally don't go out of my way to block ads specifically when I'm surfing at home. Rather, I use NoScript and I don't use Flash, and because there are so few ads out there that aren't served up using Javascript and/or written in Flash, I don't see the ads - and this is primarily a side effect of safe surfing.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[CDPS]

Exactly, while TFA may try to claim this is substantively different from TV advertising, the only difference is that TV advertisers do not know for certain how many people they will reach. But if they think based on their models that they are going to reach, say, 100,000, that is what they are going to be willing to pay on--no more. I know that sometimes TV networks end up having to refund money if the tracked audience is well below what was predicted. No substantive difference at all therefore. The fact that TFA refuses to acknowledge this similarity makes their entire argument untrustworthy!

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Daengbo]

I'm waiting for some minor browser vulnerability to get exploited to place a greasemonkey-style script which replaces ads by major ad providers like Google, etc. with some slimy Russian ad network's ads.

I bet there's some really big money to be made that way. Spam in your favorite web page.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[AdmV0rl0n]

The problem is not so much about Ads.

Advertising on the net now is full of exploits, bad code, invasive practice, abusive behaviour, and information gathering.

Until people who want to gain revenue accept fully and without reserve that things have to change, there is no point whining about it.

People's dislike of ads has been driven by the way its been done. And if you push things that your customers do not like, you will always garner a response.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Mr2001]

Because they are paid per viewed ad as well as per clicked ad.

In other words, some advertisers have not yet realized that they can pay per click instead of per view? Shouldn't we be encouraging them to get with the times, instead of changing our behavior to suit their inefficient advertising model?

So just by viewing the ads, you are providing Ars with revenue. Alternative; subscribe.

Another alternative: set your ad blocker to load the ads without displaying them.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[xeoron]

I feel the same way. Although, I would also add that I have not once bought something because of a online ad I saw; because of this, I fail to see why it should matter if I block ads from most sites that annoy me with them, while allow them on sites that do not treat me like some kid traversing a candy store with flashy distractions. Granted, with noscript on and adblock off, most sites can't display ads anyways so it becomes a mute point. I am more likely to buy something based on a insightful review or discussion.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[TheCarp]

Sure but, theres two sides to this coin. I think that my own use case here illustrates this well.

I don't run ad blocking software, however, I do run noscript and requestpolicy. These are firefox addons that allow me to control what scripts and other risky (from the point of view of maintianing the integrity of my environment, including the security of my personal information) content run in my local browser by site.

As an example, fsdn.com and slashdot.org are both allowed to run their scripts right now, and fsdn is allowed to get requests from this site. So should someone manage to inject some content that would cause slashdot to tell my browser to run a script on some other random attack page... it would be refused unless I decided to allow it.

Now... anyone who knows much about how web ads work can see the problem here. This setup, done entirely for reasons other than ad blocking, blocks ads voraciously. Its not my fault, I didn't say "I want to block ads" but...the ads are all implemented in a way that makes it impossible to, wholesale, honor them, without risking honoring a malicous and common attack. Also, many of these ad sites attempt to track me from site to site, which, I do not condone.

They have every right to advertise and have advertising. They even have every right to close their site down to paying members, or just people who they can verify in some way view their ads, or run their scripts.

Of course, they don't do that because it would drive away readers if it became less convenient. Instead they have nothing that they can do but bitch and moan about the fact that other people aren't using what they are giving away publically for free in the manner that they intended people to use it.

Thats always a winnining strategy. Whining.

-Steve

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Runaway1956]

That is all well and good. But, then, the advertisers and the site owners forget that we don't all have unlimited bandwidth. I block advertising as a matter of course. Many, many pages have content that amounts to tens of kilobytes of data. Downloading the ADVERTISING often means hundreds to thousands of kilobytes of data.

Hey, if I had unlimited fiber optic access to the web, and I couldn't even tell the difference when advertising is enabled, I'd let some of it through.

Someone needs to remind corporate America that we don't all have the latest and the greatest technology at our fingertips. Stop using flash content, clean up the pages, use compressed material whenever possible - you know, make the pages load FAST!! Speed is the number one priority, no matter what you are doing on the web.

If cruft slows down my browsing, searching, research, or whatever the hell I'm doing, then the cruft is cut out. It's as simple as that.

Do I hear the words, "Business model" from anyone? Sell what the people want, and they'll come flocking to your door. Sell the sheep what they want, and the entire flock will arrive soon.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[TDyl]

No and definately NO again.

I have to pay for my intertubes and I do not wish advertising to slurp off of my paid-for bandwidth. If the "sites" want us to view their ads then one of two things should happen, either:

a) I have free broadband access and then I would be happy for (malware-less and flash-less) ads from proven (certified) ad pimps, or

b) I get a share of the ad revenue as they are using what "I" pay for to deliver their dross to me

As an aside, there are no ad's or companies that advertise that get my business, when I wish to buy something I will do my own research and talk to friends and family to decide which product is suitable for me and meets my needs; I do not respond to anything that is shoved wholesale down my throat - that is the best way for them to lose sales not generate them. TDyl

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[andydread]

Hey skxawng! Have you even read ars? Hardly any of the tripe you wrote here applies to that site. I just whitelisted them to see and no pop-ups, no-crazy flashing and all i can see are 2 ads on the entire page. One of which is an ars internal ad on the side about an article. The other is a banner at the very top of the page. I plan to leave them permanently in my whitelist. If they screw up with crappy flash of popups then I will remove them from my whitelist.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[illumnatLA]

I agree... I don't have a problem with web page ads in general.

It's the damn ads that

1. Pop up a graphic that covers most of the screen when you accidentally mouse over them
2. Little floaty windows that float over the content you're trying to look at until you close them
3. An overabundance of inline text-linked ads that also float something when you mouse over them
4. Ads that automatically start playing sound.
5. Seizure inducing blinky ads
6. Ads that disguise themselves as error messages
7. Ad servers that slow down the entire page load time

It seems that some webmasters/advertisers have gotten it into their heads that the more annoying they make their ads, the more likely we are to buy their product. In actuality, all they are doing is causing users to close the window and move on to someone else's less annoying site. If one of their stinking ads gets in the way and I accidentally click it, I don't look at the ad... I immediately close the page it opens in annoyance.

Stop trying to annoy the hell out of your readers with terrible ads and they'll be more likely to stop using ad blockers or at least whitelist your site.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear a lot of talk about how annoying ads are from the perspective of people viewing the ads. I have seen numerous articles written by people like Ken Fisher which bemoan the fact that their companies need advertising revenue in order to stay afloat. Of course, I have also seen all of the marketing fluff from the ad networks talking about how great their services are for people like myself who are trying to sell a product.

I want people to block my ads -- as a ad buyer why the hell would I want to pay for an impression, or a click through, from somebody who is not interested in my product? Now, of course I sell something that is legit and my business plan does not depend on some poor bastard accidentally clicking my ad.

Anyway, as an ad buyer, I encourage people to block ads -- if you are not interested in seeing an ad then block it -- save me money.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[walt-sjc]

I'll allow static non-animated pictures. Anything with flash, javascript, or embedded in iframes is blocked. If you can't communicate your message with a picture, you don't deserve my attention. Oh - and adwords is fine too.

Advertisers have no morals and no shame. If they could legally send a barker around who breaks into your house and yells at you through a megaphone, they would. The industry would (and currently is attempting to) outlaw any technology that is capable of bypassing ads in any medium. Hell, if they could get away with it, they would outlaw eyelids so you couldn't close your eyes and mandate locking seatbelts that wouldn't allow you to get up and go to the bathroom during commercial breaks.

Did I mention I hate most ads?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Epsillon]

That's all very well, but these ad farms aren't just serving ads, are they? Most of the time they're also installing tracking cookies and collecting private information. You want me to see ads? Don't try to track me, then. Until this shit stops, I won't just be using AdBlock, I'll be blacklisting ad farms on my proxy and barring them on the gateway. Not only is this the primary motivation for me eschewing ad farms but it is also my fundamental right to retain control of what I allow in and out of my private network. Don't like it? Tough. My network, my rules.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Alphathon]

Same here. Google text ads don't bother me in the slighest.

I do wonder though, are the ads Ars use generally pay-per-view or pay-per-click? If they are pay-per-click, I doubt anyone who uses ad-blockers would be clicking them anyway.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Runaway1956]

"but proper free movies, games, etc are still fairly sparse with most of the free ones being vastly inferior to the paid ones"

Hmmm. I remember a discussion years ago, regarding piracy. The guy I was arguing with stated something to the effect, that no one owes it to me to entertain me.

And, of course, your comment brings that argument back.

You want news? I think you're entitled to that. You want information? Again, I think you're entitled to that. You want to be entertained? Well - entertainment is available for free. You say you want better quality entertainment? Well, then, maybe you SHOULD pay for it. Those mindless flash games on the internet that are available for free entertain my wife quite nicely. She'll sit down and play one after another for half an hour or more when she gets home from work, before starting on her evening routine. She's happy. It's her little form of "social hour" I guess, as she gets to chat with all the other players, while trying to spank their asses.

Now, if she demanded a higher quality game and/or graphics, then she could expect to cough up a few dimes for the privilege of using those resources.

I expect a lot of content on the web to be free, but I don't necessarily expect all of the very best content to be free.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[RocketScientist]

Do you use a DVR to skip commercials?

If so, please explain how that's different from using adblock.

Now I'll tell you how using a DVR is different from using adblock. I haven't seen a TV commercial that an infect my TV and make it quit working or invade my privacy or steal my identity. I have seen very widespread Flash advertisements on web pages that will do exactly that.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[walt-sjc]

To be honest, if it were REASONABLY PRICED, I would pay for content. I am not about to sign up for a subscription at $30 / year for a site I visit maybe once a week. Where are the promised micropayments? I would certainly put up with, and use a system where viewing an article that may cost me a nickle as an alternative to a monthly / yearly subscription - but I'll tell ya - long term subscriptions WILL NOT FLY. The internet is not a collection of magazines where you may subscribe to a half dozen. We know that. How would it be if every site on the internet had a long-term subscription-only model? How would you even FIND good sites?

The internet works as a news / research tool BECAUSE it's freely (or cheaply) available. The lack of a micropayment system is WHY we have this problem today.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Daswolfen]

As far as I am concerned, its not about the ad, its about the safety. I only block ads because they are a vector of infection. Can you guarantee that ads are safe? No? Then get off your self pretentious soapbox. If content costs so much, then the creator will either find an revenue stream that doesn't include ads (and honestly... this is 2010. Who clicks ads anymore) or they will fold.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[BeardedChimp]

Like many here I find web ads annoying but I have previously considered whether I should disable adblock for "the sake of the web".

I came to the following conclusion. My girlfriend doesn't run adblock on her laptop and since she spends all my money anyway, their targeted advertising should probably target her.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[twidarkling]

Uh, they can tell if your browser pulls the URL for the ad, which counts as a view. So, ad block plus, and Opera's ad blocking method means that you'd not be giving them revenue, whereas Chrome's method of rendering, then hiding the ad would.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[mrclisdue]

From TFA:

... pops into a discussion like this and brings up some analogy with television advertising, radio, or somesuch. It is not in any way the same; advertisers in those mediums are paying for potential to reach audiences, and not for results. They have complex models which tell them if X number are watching...Comparing a website to TiVo is comparing apples to asparagus.

Ok, so the author of the TFA has determined, all by himself, that we aren't allowed to use this comparison.

What if I want to use the comparison, despite his objections? His opinion(s) trump any of my arguments because he's said so....?

hmmm

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[ultranova]

Somehow Internet has made people to forget that creating quality content costs money. Often a lot of money. Often with these kind of things I'm really surprised at how dumb nerdy people can be too.

Dumb? Or just indifferent? This is a society which glorifies greed and selfishness, of watching out for number one and putting one's personal gain above all. Time and again do hear that the purpose of business is to generate profits for the owner, not care for the common good. Again and again do "libertarians" argue against public services because they require taxation. Should it really come as a surprise when the rest of us say "fine" and jump in on the bandwagon? And does that really make us dumb?

This is simply normal people emulating the aristocracy, doing what they're told is proper and good over and over again. "Not my problem", says a businessman who fires his employees; "not my problem", says a netizen who deprives a site of any source of revenue. Welcome to the next round of "Consequences of Capitalism"; the sound you heard is the society slowly crumbling around you since no one can be bothered to maintain it and often actively cursing any attempt to force them to.

You know, us who should know better and not be those stupid sheeps who are happy have a "mindless" job and then watch tv for rest of the evening and still enjoy it, even if theres no mentally requiring tasks involved.

I enjoy Jackass. It doesn't mean I'm dumb, it just means I enjoy Jackass.

You fail logic forever. But then again, most people who call others "sheep" do.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[twidarkling]

The AC's right. Paying you to use their bandwidth? They would literally be better off with you ignoring them if they had to pay you. Places like Ars are a *business,* out to make money. Not give it away. If the content alone isn't enough to make you visit, your presence there doesn't help them. And then they hope that their content is good enough to either subscribe to, or at least be worth turning off ad block.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Tharsman]

What about you just don't visit the site? If they annoy you, don't waste their resources or your time.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Nadaka]

This is exactly what I do.
If they went back to the old days of displaying a jpg in a banner at the top of a page,
I would see it (and most likely ignore it).
The only place I really click through on ads in on enworld where they have very on topic ads and I go there looking for info on things I might buy.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Upsilonish]

http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

His opinion(s) trump any of my arguments because he's said so....?

Correction: His facile and overly-simplified opinions.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[fruitbane]

I concur. However, beyond this, internet advertising often serves a different purpose than TV advertising. Many TV ads are for products they don't expect you to go right out and buy (click through?). They want to plant the product names and images in your head so that when you next go shopping for certain classes of items you will buy their particular brand. If you have a headache you'll reach for Tylenol instead of generic acetaminophen, or Dial instead of Irish Spring. It's assumed that continued sales of a product have something to do with the presence of advertising.

Internet ads tend to take up less time and space than a full TV ad so they can't do the little story and humor vignettes but are, instead, used to flash crazy shit at you so that you'll click through and either a) get malware or b) maybe make an impulse investigation into their product. Internet ads are like leaders to a full ad instead of the full ad themselves. I guess in their current form internet ads function more like billboards on the highway, only without the "keep us in mind" ads, instead focused solely on "MacDonalds - Exit 32, 2 miles"

Maybe if banner ads advertised products like Dove soap or Cascade dish detergent instead of questionable mortgage products it would be more stable and less likely to be blocked. Internet advertising simply hasn't risen to any kind of reputable level.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Hittman]

Since most sites feature those annoying ads, it's easier to just block them all. Advertisers don't seem to realize that one flashing ad on one site will result in us turning off all ads, everywhere.

If there was no animation in ads I'd leave them on - sometimes they're useful, sometimes they're entertaining, and at the very least they may help the site make a buck. But that's not going to happen. We're constantly subjected to ads that get more and more annoying, so we just turn them all off. And when a site takes the time to carefully screen their ads it doesn't make much difference - we've already blocked them everywhere.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[makomk]

Well, it figures that the ads would be at their tamest right now, since Ars Technica is trying to encourage people to turn off ad-blocking. They've had problems in the past, though, and apparently even deliberately run obnoxious ads:

As for the larger, more intrusive ads: they are here to stay, provided they abide by our guidelines. We have two options: run these kinds of ads on a limited, select basis (usually one per reader per 24 hours), or stop publishing. That was true 5 years ago, and it is even more true today. Ideally, we'd be able to run these ads without them breaking stuff. We're trying to address that. But these kinds of ads, rare as they may be, are essential to our business. While I am well aware of many of your personal theories as to the ultimate detriment of these ads on a longterm basis, I do not agree and will abide by my data. I have 11 years experience running this business, through worse times than the present, and I remained convinced that we are making the right moves 90% of the time.

Also, note that stuff like obnoxious expand-on-rollover ads is apparently also entirely within the rules.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[mobby_6kl]

In other words, some advertisers have not yet realized that they can pay per click instead of per view? Shouldn't we be encouraging them to get with the times, instead of changing our behavior to suit their inefficient advertising model?

Or maybe they discovered that there is value in having your product/brand visible to people, and understand that almost no one would instantly rush out to buy their stuff. Instead, once people know their offering, once they need something in that category, they would be more likely to pay attention to the product that they saw on a banner a month ago.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[dc29A]

Exactly!

Take this an anecdote or whatever, just for the kicks I whitelisted Ars Technica.

For about 100 or so page loads:
- The majority of the ads are for GQ magazine. I didn't even know what the fuck that was before clicking on the link. And no Ars, I don't give a shit what the fuck Kobe Bryant is wearing neither do I care how Pierce Brosnan is having more fun that me. Also, why am I bombarded with GQ ads in the hardware section of the site?
- I had 3 annoying Gilette ads about their Fusion razor. Full blown flash with sound. How is this relevant to a tech/geek site? Ars, I really don't care what razor a douchebag steroid abusing baseball player uses. No really, I don't.
- I get a metric fuckton of ads for Wired magazine, already on their RSS feed, more irrelevant ads.
- I got about 10 or so Microsoft ads about some 'Business Synergy Client Focused' gobbledygook. What the shit? Oh and it's animated flash bogging down my machine.
- I got about 5 or so ads that didn't load completely, I can't even make out what the fuck they are. Trying to connect to some backwater adserver, great way to make sure the page will take years to load.

Why can't I get ads I would be even remotely interested in? Gadgets deals, hardware deals, game deals, interesting bands, interesting books ... you know ... geek stuff? I don't care about fucking GQ, I am not "GQ", never will be.

Sorry Ars, back to the block list.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Z00L00K]

Unfortunately the majority of the ad providers do provide all kind of annoying ads - and the ads are often overloading the client computers. Many ads written in Flash or similar technology are frequently taking 100% CPU out of the client computer.

And then - many computers used aren't state of the art or latest model at all. Some are still using old Pentium III laptops just because they still can be used to surf with. And with AdBlock installed they can survive that, but with ads - no way.

Also - don't forget that some people are using dial-up. They may even need to disable the display of images in order to be able to browse the web to the sites they want to see.

The need for adblockers is created by the ad makers themselves and even since not all ads are bad every ad is swept away and collateral damage occurs.

The day the ad makers figure out how to create non-intrusive ads that don't disturb people and still catches the interest we won't need adblockers anymore.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[scarboni888]

Ok so I'm getting ahead of myself but look - the point is this: I'm sitting here (in my life) with more free high-quality content than I have the time to consume. So, thinking in strictly economic terms suddenly my time is more valuable than the content I'm consuming. That makes me wonder which providers will offer me something above and beyond what the other providers offer. What makes me choose one over the other when they're all just so good and all so free? What distinguishes one over the other?

Well paying me in cash to claim me as a set of eyeballs in whatever business model it is that you use must surely be worth something at some point in all this, wouldn't you think?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[therealmorris]

Ars is pay per view:

There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won't hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis.

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[RocketScientist]

Yes, and when a bad ad hits my radio, it doesn't cause my radio to give out my credit card number. When a bad ad hits my PC, it installs a keylogger.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[DJRumpy]

Perhaps not the best way to word it on a 'News For Nerds' site, but I don't think this deserves a Troll rating. In-artful yes, but this is certainly relevant to the topic and is not trolling. It actually made me stop and think about the sites that I do visit. I block as as a general rule, mostly for mobile access reasons, but I never turn it off at home either. I would consider turning this back on for a few key sites if they were responsible with their ads, avoided flash, and didn't let the ads overwhelm the content.

"Somehow Internet has made people to forget that creating quality content costs money. Often a lot of money. Often with these kind of things I'm really surprised at how dumb nerdy people can be too. You know, us who should know better and not be those stupid sheeps who are happy have a "mindless" job and then watch tv for rest of the evening and still enjoy it, even if theres no mentally requiring tasks involved."

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Kelbear]

I would like to point out mint.com's advertising model. It's a spread of ads for the typical financial institutions an individual might use (Credit cards, mortgage rates, insurance, etc.)

What they do is take the current offers of each of these institutions, rank them in order, and serve up the top 10 list to each person. If the person enters their specific needs, they'll re-order the list to find the one that matches best to that person's needs, with a final total to show how much they might be able to save.

It's a hybrid of advertising and service(separate from their main service of tracking your financials), and must pull in a ton of money for them because while I rarely click an ad, I've already explored Mint's in at least 3 categories.

Certainly this specific model isn't adaptable to many websites, the idea of meshing the advertising with a service can make the advertising more welcome.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[wilsone8]

I would also add that I have not once bought something because of a online ad I saw; because of this, I fail to see why it should matter if I block ads from most sites that annoy me with them

I think you are missing the entire point of article. Ars gets paid per view of their ads. If you don't view them, then you aren't (indirectly) paying for the value you are getting. It doesn't matter in the least if want the products the ads are selling or not. The point is that if you like ars technica, you should view the ads because that is how they pay the bills. If you don't want to watch the ads, then don't visit their site.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[cynyr]

Any ad with motion is too much, i won't be able to leave your page open and not watch firefox/chromium eat at least 20% of my cpu. Static text ads relevant to the content on the page/site are useful.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[scarboni888]

Wow - a well-thought out & creative business model that appreciates and values the consumer rather than thinking they still have the right to make us pay or put up with spamvertising. What a concept!

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Somebody Is Using My]

Another issue with adverts that seems not to be covered here is the idea that advertisers can (and are) using internet advertisments to build profiles on users. For instance, if I were a visitor to Ars Technica, they might know I have an interest in nvidia video cards and open source software based on the articles I read. However, they wouldn't know that my other interests might include doggie porn (does that exist?) or sewing frilly pink dresses as a hobby*, because I go to other websites to fulfilll those needs.

Unfortunately, advertisers can do this very thing. It is quite likely that the same advertiser who sells impressions on Ars Technica may also sell impressions on NaughtyPooch.Com or PrettyInPink.Org. All of a sudden, simply by visiting sites I might enjoy, a single company can build up a detailed picture of me.

Of course, nothing you do on the Internet is truly private; just by browsing the web I am leaving a trail of information behind me. But I've no desire to help companies compile this information into a big profile about me. Thus, I block all advertisements in order to help reduce this likelihood. Maybe this is all wasted effort. Perhaps, as they say, privacy may be dead, but I've no inclination to shovel dirt onto its corpse.

* disclaimer for the humor impaired: no, I'm really not interested in any of these things. Please do not forward me interesting links to raunchy mutts in pink dresses

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[wilsone8]

And yet, your post seems to show that advertising was working on you:

- The majority of the ads are for GQ magazine. I didn't even know what the fuck that was before clicking on the link

. Perfect. The ad gave you knowledge of a product you were unaware of before. That's the whole point of advertising.

- I had 3 annoying Gilette ads about their Fusion razor.

If you can remembver the name of the product afterwards, then the ad is working. Also, and I know this may come as a shock, but not every ad is going to be perfectly relevent to you.

- I get a metric fuckton of ads for Wired magazine, already on their RSS feed, more irrelevant ads

You expect Ars to some how know that ahead of time? You whine that the ads aren't relevent, but they are for a product you already use. I would say that means the ad was at least targeted at the right demographic, even if its not relevent to you in particular.

- I got about 10 or so Microsoft ads about some 'Business Synergy Client Focused' gobbledygook

Another tech related ad on a tech site. Makes sense to me...

All this is missing the point of the article. Ars gets paid by the view. If you don't view ads, they don't get paid. That means they have to get rid of staff, reduce content, etc. If you like Ars, you should view the ads. If you don't want to view the ads, then either become a subscriber or don't view Ars.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[NonSequor]

Bullshit. In the same way that one can create a model defining the fraction of folks exposed to a TV ad who watch it, you can create a model defining the fraction of folks with webblockers. The analogy is a good one, and Ars Technica, as usual, is full of shit.

They already have a model for that, you dumbass. That model is that the site does not get paid by advertizers for pageviews in which ads are not served.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[rhyder128k]

"First of all, many people produce creative works without turning a profit on it -- friends in a band, as an example -- so what is your point, exactly? That they should be turning a profit? That they should not be creating art if there is no money in it?"

That would be an interesting point to pose to some of the Slashdot users who create commercial software. Some people create software for free, why shouldn't everyone?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[cherokee158]

An Ars Technica reader whose never heard of GQ magazine? Shocker.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Scrameustache]

Hardly any of the tripe you wrote here applies to that site. I just whitelisted them to see and no pop-ups, no-crazy flashing and all i can see are 2 ads on the entire page. One of which is an ars internal ad on the side about an article. The other is a banner at the very top of the page. I plan to leave them permanently in my whitelist. If they screw up with crappy flash of popups then I will remove them from my whitelist.

Well, ftfs: Does that mean that there are the occasional intrusive ads, expanding this way and that? Yes, sometimes we have to accept those ads.

No, I don't have to accept those ads. I have ADD and I CANNOT read text that has something flashing next to it.

You don't want me to block your ads? Fine, give a garantee that you will have responsible, ethical advertising, and I'll whitelist you. Otherwise, if your ad servers have given me one of the moving/interfering/noisy ads in the past I've already added them to the black list and they will stay blocked.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[j_166]

No, its a moo point. Not moot or mute. Its a point that not even a cow would care about.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Obyron]

If I had mod points I'd mod you up. Hear, hear.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[j_166]

"Another issue with adverts that seems not to be covered here is the idea that advertisers can (and are) using internet advertisments to build profiles on users."

and YET, at least in the case of Arse Technical's ad providers, they clearly aren't using those profiles to target ads at visitors (hence the GQ and Kobe ads), which begs the question: What are they doing with the data they are collecting?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[nitehawk214]

As long as they use this adblock hide article technique to hide articles that are simply vague advertisements anyhow. I don't see a problem here!

Actually I haven't read Ars in years; so I cannot say if they bow to the pressure most hardware sites do to become advertising parrots. If I remember correctly, their focus is on geek culture rather then hardware now. (Note, my memory sucks.)

At any rate, flash or full page ads = adblock on the entire site. even if they also have less annoying text ads.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[blackraven14250]

+1 insightful. Most people don't realize this is something many marketers consider, especially in established companies or with established brands.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Ihmhi]

Because if they tracked clicks instead of views the whole house of cards would fall apart and everyone would lose a lot of money.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

So, let me see if I got this right:

Geek developed the internet. And in a daily basis we develop the software and standards that run the internet, and everything behind it. We managed to find a development model that doesn't hurt the product. We fund the development ourselves. We find jobs elsewhere and do it on our free time, take donations, find companies that benefit from our software and will hire geeks to develop more free software, etc. And we release the software untouched, completely free, for you to do what you want with it.

Do the same, or get out of the way. We don't need your content, Ars Technica, You need our clicks. If you leave, we'll find our content somewhere else, or we'll create the content ourselves (like we do everyday).

Seriously, we don't need you. You are not making a profit? Shut down. Someone else will fill that space.

You are getting a free ride in our world. We make the rules. Accept them or go away.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[blackraven14250]

I don't know what crack you're smoking, but I have no-ad privileges here on /. from karma, and I still pay for a subscription occasionally because I like the site that much.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Flammon]

Yes, we understand all of that. The problem for me, especially in the movie and television industry, is that an actor can be paid $1,000,000.00 for a 20 minute episode (Seinfeld, I'm looking at you) and $20,000,000.00 for a movie. That's outrageous and it shows how overpriced their product is. The music industry is the same. Does an artist really need to make millions for an album? Same thing with professional sports, $10,000,000.00 per year to play a sport! I don't feel bad for these people at all. They all got paid way more than they deserve. Music should be no more than a penny per song, tv shows 1$ per season and movies no more than a quarter. And even at those prices, they'd all be millionaires.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[jedidiah]

I started blocking ads only when they got annoying. Advertisers are abusive
and all of this blocking nonsense is entirely their fault. They insist on
escalating things past civilized levels and invite counter-measures. It is
a shame that some channels and websites get caught in the crossfire. However,
I feel no guilt in reclaiming a civilized viewing experience for myself.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[mjwalshe]

as most readers of a tech site or male razors makes sense and some geeks appriceate a well cut suit so GQ makes sense. Though some of the targeting of adds can go off I was looking a takinga role at a fashion site and for ages after i had had a look at the asos site I kept getting ads for for slinky dresses and shoes popping up on various tech sites :-)

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[mdwh2]

Perfect. The ad gave you knowledge of a product you were unaware of before. That's the whole point of advertising.

Perfect, eh? That's the whole point?

Well, I wonder why advertisers bother with this whole idea of targeted marketing at all. I mean, if a man learns about a new tampon product; if a gay person reading a gay magazine learns about a new contraceptive product or say a Russian brides website; and if Slashdotters learn about the latest product from My Little Pony, it's done its job, right?

All this is missing the point of the article. Ars gets paid by the view. If you don't view ads, they don't get paid. That means they have to get rid of staff, reduce content, etc. If you like Ars, you should view the ads.

But that money doesn't come from nowhere - if they get less money, then the product advertising also has to spend money. So I could equally argue in the reverse - viewing those ads means it costs the company more money, they have to reduce staff.

Note that the specific issue here, I presume, is whether the ads are downloading - not that I have to see them. So, you're arguing that I should collude with a website, to download adverts even if I have no intention of viewing them with my eyes, just so they get paid more money? Okay, I suppose if I like the website it might be in my interest, but I fail to see how this is more ethical than not downloading the ads.

I mean, if I like a website, should I sit and hit reload repeatedly, so that they get even more ad revenue?

This argument also misses the point that in many cases, I don't give a damn about the website. E.g., when someone links me to an abysmal article by tabloids like the Daily Mail, I read it to see what the hell they're saying, but I'm wary that by doing so, they make money from advertising. If there's a way to stop downloading the ads, then for those sites I fail to see the problem.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[jedidiah]

This reminds me of the local cable monopoly that liked to take very well placed national ads and run really inappropriate ones on top.

Sometimes, they even managed to run their own local commercials over top the show itself.

Then they would run ads for their own cable ads.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Oligonicella]

OK, you answered half of his question. I think it's valid to question the idea advertisers have that views mean anything. I often read the first paragraph of an article and close the tab because I find it doesn't interest me. Any and all adds below my screen cutoff are unviewed (as well as most above), but they record as viewed. It's a skewed count.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[chris234]

So your time, effort, and brain are worthless?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[mdwh2]

The point is that if you like ars technica, you should view the ads because that is how they pay the bills. If you don't want to watch the ads, then don't visit their site.

If you really like a site, do you sit and hit reload repeatedly, to give them extra ad revenue? Surely, if we've decided we want to maximise the revenue they get from the ad company, even if we have no intention of even looking at the ad with our eyes, this is entirely fair behaviour?

And for all the sites I don't like - you'll agree using ad blockers is fine?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Oligonicella]

Would that Adblock maintained two lists and I could put offending and offensive ads on a "don't load" and all others on a "don't view".

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[jedidiah]

> You want news? I think you're entitled to that.

Someone else is willing to give it to me. So "entitlement" doesn't even enter into it.

This isn't about "piracy". This is about competition.

The COMPETITORS of Big Content have always been much more dangerous than the "pirates".

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[mdwh2]

So they should update their broken model, and do the same estimates that if X number are visiting, Y will likely see the ad.

The analogy fits perfect. I don't see that whining that ad blockers mean you have to have a more complex model is in any way different to the fact that they need more complex models for TV etc.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[mdwh2]

In the same way that one can create a model defining the fraction of folks exposed to a TV ad who watch it, you can create a model defining the fraction of folks with webblockers. The analogy is a good one, and Ars Technica, as usual, is full of shit.

Mod parent up - I know that "shit" is a naughty word, and might be offensive to some, but the point he was making is spot on. Once again, the few who get mod points these days are using "-1" for "I disagree". If the parent's logic was wrong, then you should post explaning why it's wrong, instead of hiding behind your mod account.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Oligonicella]

"When the supply is infinite the cost is nil."

Your gray matter doesn't do logic or math well. Perhaps an overabundance of hubris.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[jedidiah]

There's plenty of commercial software that gets strangled by it's competitors.

You don't need "pirates" to make whiney wanna-be businessmen cry uncle and run screaming back to mommy. The market is brutal enough by itself.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

In comments to the Ars article one of their tech guys says that they don't run ads that play sound without user interaction and they load all of their ads in iframes so a slow ad won't delay page loading.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Oligonicella]

And you were paid "jack shit" for your "time, effort, and your brain"? Right.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Deathlizard]

Personally I don't care about ads. They never bothered me on a site as long as they didn't interfere with the site itself. (IE Popups, sound, or random hyperlinking)

What I do care about is Malware, and most of the Malware sites out there (your Antivirus 360's of the day for example) spread using Advertising firms that are tricked into hosting their malicious flash Ads. Add to the fact that high profile sites like the Murdoch sites (Myspace, FoxNews, ETC) or Gawker (Gizmodo, Kotaku, ETC) can get hit by these malicious ads because there's only a handful of Ad companies serving millions of sites and you have a real mess on your hands.

For that reason and that Reason alone I use AdBlock Plus.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Ifni]

Why can't I get ads I would be even remotely interested in?

Probably because you block ads, therefore preventing the ad hosting companies from developing a history of your browsing habits with which to create better targeted content. So when you do finally unblock ads you have to suffer whatever random ads their confused algorithm throws your way. It's a vicious cycle, I know, but if you are genuinely open to targeted advertising then you have to sacrifice a little of your privacy. If you want to continue to enjoy free content on the Internet, you (maybe not you personally, but a significant percentage of the population) have to accept some level of advertising. I hate the obnoxious ads just as much as the next person, but the problem also is that ads that stay conveniently and quietly out of the way are also easy to ignore, and thus ineffective. Obnoxious ads annoy users and so perform the opposite of their intended function, so there is a very fine balancing act where everybody (well, most everybody) has to make some sacrifice for the system to work.

Slow ad servers, however, are unforgivable. Or, more accurately, poorly designed websites that require ad content to be loaded before the page can be properly rendered that are then tied to slow ad servers, are unforgivable. If I could view the page content while the ads are being downloaded, then I could obviously care less if they ever finish loading. Waiting for 30 seconds to see the content I originally came to see while watching a commercial (like on TV) is one thing, waiting 30 seconds TO EVEN watch a commercial AND the content I originally came to see (as with a slow ad server) is quite another.

I do appreciate your argument that an algorithm, knowing nothing else about you, and thus just beginning to build its database on you, should take note that you are browsing a tech site and provide tech targeted ads like video games and computer hardware. But then again, personal grooming products and magazines that frequently feature scantily clad females is not all that unexpected of an (stereotypical) interest for that demographic.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[DrPizza]

It's pretty fucking obvious why it's wrong, and it's even addressed in the fucking article: TV/radio advertising is based on _predicted audience_. Web advertising is based on _actual audience_. Web advertisers only pay for people who see the ads. There's no need to model some proportion of people blocking ads; they're never counted as ad views in the first place.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[DrPizza]

Because advertisers aren't retarded and understand that brand awareness is itself valuable, and not click-dependent.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Ifni]

I think that the point Ars is trying to make is that while yes, the ad blockers were created to block the truly hideous ads, they over-zealously also block the more acceptable ads, thus punishing the sites that refuse to run the obnoxious ads, even though they aren't contributing to the problem. His argument that sites are lured into running those such bad ads is a little more flimsy, however, as it seems to me that such a decision would only accelerate an already existing death spiral as more customers are either turned away or convinced to use ad blockers. I guess if the ad hosting companies that serve those ads pay more per click or view or something, then this might make some sense, but I don't have any experience with ad revenue structuring, so I don't know how much more financially tempting it is to run one ad over another.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[ottothecow]

well that guy disabled his ad blocker just to view ars...so obviously they would not have any profile on him (and profiles can probably easily get lost if you change IP, clear cookies, etc.)

From there, they probably give him some default set of adds. Ars gets a lot of dude page views...so mens magazines and shaving products seem normal enough. Also, not everyone is using some super high precision, pull a background check on you before serving ads, profiling system...GQ may not care that this guy likes to sit around (unshaven) in his underwear--they may just want their ad displayed to as many users of ars as possible. Also, he admitted that the ad worked when he said he had to figure out what GQ was...now if he decides to clean up one day, maybe he will do a search on how to shave, get a whole list of results, and in the back of his mind he will feel some familiarity with "GQ: How to get the best damn shave ever" that he doesn't feel with "Esquire: The art of the close shave"--that is how brand advertising works.

Of course the real problem here is not the ad content, it is (as everyone else is saying) the fact that the ads are annoying as hell. Ads that slow the page load, make noise, pop shit up when you mouseover text, etc. are all awful. They drive people to block ads in general for performance reasons--I use adblock plus on my eeepc but nothing more than a modified hosts file (blocking out the inline text junk) on more powerful systems because I don't mind seeing ads that don't suck.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[MistrBlank]

It may not delay page loading, but it is a bandwidth burden, something that many of us moving to mobile platforms don't want when we're saddled with 5GB limits.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[blackest_k]

How about downloading the ads and not displaying them?
Its not really ad views but ad downloads thats counted isn't it.

GQ is elitist crap full of soft porn and over priced clothes, the fusion razer is very good a blade lasts for ages and isnt dead if you shave off a beard. I didnt see the ads or read the article

Microsoft is well Microsoft and i don't use windows. Hmm I guess as a beardy Linux user I am not the target audience for these ads. Doesn't that mean I would be helping ARS exploit their advertisers by making them pay for useless page views if I viewed the Ads. Ars is being paid to deliver customers for the advertisers products i'm not the customer. It would be dishonest of me to encourage this fraud by colluding with Ars.

If Ars can tell when ads are blocked then they should block me and others like me from their site and I will maintain my boycott of Sony products and RIAA recording labels. I have to admit I've never bought a new sony product and my Cd buying days were before CD's but these days its a legitimate boycott ;)
Oh and I will boycott Ars as well from now on i will be not going to their site because i'm boycotting them too
not because I never go there.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Ifni]

Oh no! It's almost as if advertisers are completely unaware of statistics and thus fail to adjust the price paid for viewed ads to compensate for the expected skew. Oh, wait. Crisis averted; they do.

I don't know what advertisers (or financiers) call it, but scientists call it the "margin of error", and I'm pretty sure that it is taken into account that some ads will be served that aren't viewed. Just like your (the hypothetical you, if you were a webmaster) web site's page hit counter would count me as two unique viewers if I viewed your site both from home and from work, but that the small percentage of users that viewed your website from multiple locations, and the corresponding few that share a computer or browse from behind the same proxy or NAT server, cause an acceptably small impact on the accuracy of your data.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[PopeRatzo]

But all the while a lot of people, mostly us geeks, cannot grasp that immaterial products and content also costs to create and takes just the same manhours.

It's not the job of consumers to properly appreciate a company's business model.

What works is giving people a choice. Here at Slashdot, I have the option to subscribe, pay a very small amount, and not have to see advertisements. I make use of that option, and I appreciate having it. I played around a little bit with some of the options within the subscription, where I can turn on or off ads on different parts of the Slashdot site. I don't mind seeing a few ads on the main page as long as I don't have to see ads when I'm reading the individual stories, so I adjust my subscription accordingly. Ars Technica has a similar subscription system, but it's not nearly as well thought-out or flexible.

I pay gladly for the sites that I use a lot, whether it's Slashdot, or Ars Technica, Demonoid or IMDb. Sites that use advertisement in an obnoxious manner just get the AdBlock or Ghostery treatment. In this way, I make my preferences known.

Stunts like this Ars Technica story seem to somewhat miss the point. If they just made their model more user-friendly, they might not have to pull these tricks and be perceived as dicks. And I don't even think it's about the amount that they charge for subscriptions - it's all about how easy it is and how well I can tailor the subscription to my needs and desires.

But when a company acts like it has to teach me to appreciate their business model by, say, blocking the Oscars from my local cable company, or hiding content if I block ads, it seldom endears me to them. More likely, I just say "fuck that" and turn to one of the nearly infinite number of other ways to spend my time and money.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[xeoron]

Because of all of this, I unblocked Arc, even if it makes reading their wonderfully detailed and insightful articles tarnished.

Mdwh2 does make a good point about reloading pages to increase their page per view income.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[An Onerous Coward]

P2P websites? Not a terrible idea, but it runs into a few problems.

It's relatively easy to P2P a single, consistent chunk of content. Anything you can get a consistent MD5 hash out of is fine. Websites today aren't like that at all. Most any page you go to today will be dynamically generated, linked to a DB backend, etc. You're going to have to find a way to keep the various P2P sources in sync, at a minimum.

The other problem is that it doesn't solve the big problem: for most sites that are facing these issues, the money spent for bandwidth and hosting is probably small compared to the cost of content generation (read: paying the writers and artists).

Still, for the situation of a small group of volunteers, who are willing to create for free but don't want to be hammered by hosting fees, there might be something to a P2P or website republication system.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[xigxag]

It may be "valid" to question it, but it is silly. Advertisers have already paid for the research on this. You can't click on newspaper ads or billboards either -- why do you think advertisers have paid for these things throughout the centuries? Because it's been shown, empirically, over and over again, that advertising works. Click-thru ads are a relatively recent phenomenon, and initially advertisers were excited by the prospect of only paying for advertising that could be tied to immediate results, but over the years they've learned 1) that most people, even if they might eventually have an interest in a product, don't really want to interrupt what they're doing at the moment to go off chasing an advertisement, which has caused click-thru rates to drop. And 2) that some people, who have no interest in buying a product, will engage in click fraud to cheat the advertiser, which causes click-thru rates to be not as reliable as initially hoped for. This doesn't mean cost per action based advertising is useless, but cost per impression advertising will remain part of the ad toolbox for the foreseeable future, as a tried and true, if less viscerally exciting, method of reaching consumers.

About your "screen cutoff" objection, well yes, obviously so, but this is why ad placement matters. Again, you're talking about something that's always been true. You're certainly going to pay more for an ad on page A1 of a national newspaper than on page D11.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Ifni]

Thats always a winnining strategy. Whining.

It is here on Slashdot - we change the world without ever leaving our moms' basements!

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Sancho]

Slashdot uses Micropayments, and apparently you don't subscribe to them.

$5 for 1000 page views. With the D2 discussion system, you don't even load pages to get new comments. It's a pretty good deal.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[precariousgray]

I won a few of those plush boxing monkeys from Treeloot a long time ago, if that's what you were referring to by the boxing monkey. MORE BOXING MONKEYS.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[capebretonsux]

Not trolling, but I have a much different take on this. While under the current 'model' of the internet, yes it does cost money to create content, I don't believe that if there were no advertising revenue to be had the internet would cease to exist. People would still create content, as they do now, of varying quality, and given that the original purpose of the internet was to share information, I believe that content would still be distributed. Now, you'd have an argument that the internet as we know it now likely wouldn't have grown as quickly or widely as it has without the support of advertisers, but I think it would still contain much of the same mix of quality and trash content. We'd just have the problem of sorting through all the crap without google...

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[deep-deep-blue]

Once I had an idea to modify AdBlock to add an option not to block one site ad's, but redirect them to /dev/null. Seems fair enough to me to support favorite sites.
Personally I use all means against the flash based, epilepsy inducing ads. Text based and reasonably sized static images are ok.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[c_forq]

So because GQ and Gilette aren't good at aiming ads to their demographic you are punishing Ars for it? The reason you probably can't get ads for the stuff you're interested in is because you use ad blockers, smart companies marketing geeky stuff know their audience is very likely to have ad blockers so they don't put their advertising money there.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Microlith]

"Questionable ads" in that context are ones masked as stories. Generally those result in two things:

- Editorial compromise
- Invasive advertising that can't be blocked.

All I can think of is that people bitch constantly when others get tired of working for free and decide they actually need revenues. Two solutions: suffer advertising, or buy a subscription.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[CodeBuster]

Sorry Ars, back to the block list.

How about we geeks make a deal with Ars? We will agree to whitelist them on our Adblock plugins and in return they will agree to run TEXT ONLY ads clearly marked as such, ala Google sponsored links, that are relevant to the content actually being viewed. How about that Ars? Sounds reasonable doesn't it? No more flash and no more bullshit pop culture nonsense ads. Sounds fair to me.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Mendy]

The problem though is that for the adverts to be relevent, either based on knowning the users interests or their location would have some privacy implications. It would work better, for the user at least if you could give the advertising network a list of subjects for adverts you would find acceptable. The problem with this though is that a lot of advertising exists precicely to try to sell things to people that they don't already think they need.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[dzfoo]

Or, he could just as easily continue blocking ads and visit the site at his leisure, and ignore the arguments and complaints.

I don't know of any person who blocks ads that complains about ads, they just block them and live merrily. The ones complaining are the people depending on the ads for their business model. They are the ones who need to take action.

        -dZ.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Sir_Lewk]

Probably because you block ads, therefore preventing the ad hosting companies from developing a history of your browsing habits with which to create better targeted content.

I'm not buying that, it is not hard for a site to get advertisements that are relevant to their readers.

Hell, this is something even slashdot gets right. Almost all of the advertisements on slashdot are geek related in some way, generally advertising enterprise software of various sorts or whatever. Slashdot also lets certain registered users disable viewing ads, I haven't seen an add on slashdot in months and I generally do not use an adblocker.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[hairyfeet]

I have to agree with them 100%. I whitelisted Ars because they asked nicely, but from the looks of things they will be blocked next week and if they pull their experiment blocking content bullshit? Well it isn't like there isn't a metric fuckton of geek sites out there.

Now I don't mind ads that actually might appeal to me in the slightest, Newegg shows PC gear? makes sense. But let me give an example of how fucked up the ads at Ars is. Out of all the ads that came with this article, and there were a shitload of ads, there was only ONE, I repeat one, that someone who actually reads sites like Ars would be interested in, and that was for a new IBM bladeserver. The rest? Fricking jock ads for crap like GQ. WTF? I'm a geek, do you really think I give a shit about some sports players?

If you want me to keep ads you have to give ads that make sense. If I am on a review site for PC hardware? Well show me the ads for the latest ATI GPU or the latest prices for the parts I'm reviewing. Make the ads have a point. By selling to any old ass that walks through the door Ars has shown me they don't give a crap about the readers or what they might like, it is all about the cash. So next week they'll be back on the blocklist. Because I'm not wasting my bandwidth for a bunch of ads for crap I wouldn't take on a bet.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[NotBorg]

Exactly.

If you want to make money off of ads as a content provider you must insure they don't piss your users off. Ars has more control over what ads get shown than users do. Its up to Ars to insure quality ads. If they force the user to do the quality control then they will lose out. If their ad providers don't offer some level of control then Ars should get their ad revenue from somewhere else.

It doesn't get any simpler. If you want users to view your ads then make sure they don't piss them off.

It would be nice if I could go to a web site and find a seal/logo that indicated that the site doesn't tolerate badvertisements and that its safe to turn ad blockers off. Use of the logo would would be restricted to sites that insure some level of user control, feed back, and quality. Abuse the logo, 3 strikes, lose it for good, get a new domain.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Tharsman]

I know people, actual people, who host webcomics, that are about to shut down their sites and not because they don't get enough traffic, but because lately a huge percentage of viewers are using ad blocks, and the percentage get larger every day.

Problems he face are anywhere between "clients" not wanting to pay because he got less views than he said he had traffic, or clients just not wanting to advertise anymore on his site.

Every time readers blocks ads and go to pages, they are helping kill the sites they visit. But it's not your job, car or mortgage payments that are in the line. It's just some stranger that may loose his job or not be able to make his car or mortgage payments, not you.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[hairyfeet]

No, it is called basic common sense, which sadly the world has a severe shortage of it seems. Let me give an example from ars. clicked on the article about how to shop for a Windows 7 netbook. Now logic and basic common sense would say that ads should be for netbooks or Windows 7, yes? Nope, all jock crap like GQ.

I mean Good Lord man, it is a fricking geeks site! Let me show you how easy it would be if I were choosing ads to be displayed there. The latest ATI and Nvidia GPU ads, the latest Intel and AMD chips,netbooks, notebooks, gamer desktops, Windows and Mac ads, gamer mice, servers, PMPs, tv tuners, wifi cards, see how easy this is?

I could understand non targeted ads on a complex site where many different kinds of stories are run, but this is ars for the love of Pete. nearly every damned story there is hardware, software, or OS based. You can't tell me there aren't a shitload of geek ads they could be running instead of non geek crap, it is just laziness on their part. I'll give them a week but if their ads don't get better? Back to the blocklist baby.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[BatGnat]

We need an ad whitelist.

No, YOU need a whitelist. I am Quite happy with blocking ads.....

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[NotBorg]

You don't need to invade privacy to put up relevant ads.

If the content of a page is about tuning muscle cars for performance it stands to reason that an ad for an auto parts store is more relevant than an ad for fingernail polish. If the content of the page is interesting to the user and the ad has to do with something on the page then it stands to reason that the ad is relevant.

Broadcast TV has been doing for about as long as TV has existed. Watch a home improvement show and you get more ads for home improvement tools and materials. Watch a show about cars and you'll see ads for oil, spark plugs, fuel additives, etc.

Are TV ads ineffective and irrelevant because they don't look though your TV set to see what your living room looks like?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[dc29A]

And yet, your post seems to show that advertising was working on you:

. Perfect. The ad gave you knowledge of a product you were unaware of before. That's the whole point of advertising.

I remember Google going from small startup to a gigantic behemoth because they spewed forth a metric fuckton of irrelevant and highly annoying ads in flash.

Oh wait ...

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[bhtooefr]

I just turn Flash off, except on sites that need it. (Actually, all plugins - Opera is all or nothing for a given site.)

And, one tech site that I'm on (come to think of it, it spun off of Ars circa 2000) actually watches the forums for complaints about the ads (from their content, to CPU hogging Flash, to unsolicited sound (maybe all sound, I forget.))

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I can't quite tell if you're serious here - but I'll assume you are...

If the business model a particular artist or other outfit doesn't work out without me shelling out cash or refraining from blocking the ads then that's not my fault - I'll find another distraction or information source that has found a business model that works.

So in other words, "if a particular content creator isn't giving away work for free, I'll find something else". Or is there some new business model you've thought of that is more suitable for your tastes?

It's called supply and demand. When the supply is infinite the cost is nil.

Because quality journalism (and other content) is infinite?

In fact if I had it my way content producers would throw in some cash to attract my eyeballs to their info-goop stream. let's get with the times, people!

See, this is the line that makes me think you're just messin' with us...

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Lulfas]

In the article, it states they are pay-per view.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Brian Gordon]

And it's not like the advertisers are losing money on it - you'd never buy anything from an ad.

I would never even click on an ad. They're not losing any business by me blocking ads, and anyway I'm not obligated to render every piece of data that comes in on the wire exactly as they want me to render it.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Omestes]

While I agree with you that people should recognize the need for publishers like whoever owns Ars to make some money, I also recognize the some people have declared total war on ads, I being among them. Ars is perpetrating the same behaviors that make people block ads, Flash ads, noisy ads, off-demographic ads, distracting ads, and worse, a total GLUT of ads. I am not obligated to make them money, nor should I be. Me making them money is, and should be, a voluntary act on my behalf, and should follow the principles I would willing engage in. If they want to charge for content, fine. If they want to hide all content when they detect an ad-blocker, fine. I will go elsewhere. If they want to have a limited amount of small, Google-like, text ads that are targeted to the content, then I might turn off my adblocker, but only if these ads may be useful to me, personally.

I am not obligated to give anyone money.

Though, to be completely honest, I probably won't turn off my ad-blocker, or white-list Ars if they decide to be responsible advertisers. I am sick and tired of advertising. I'm absolutely SICK of people trying to force their products down my throat, worse trying to hoist their products on me with cheap, annoying, psychological tricks, completely eschewing the only thing that matters, the actual quality of their product (and if it would actually be useful to me). I hate television, where its getting to the point where it is 1:1 ratio between ads and content (which now often is nothing but a thinly disguised ad). I hate sports (used to love baseball, at least), because they are nothing but an after-thought for advertisements, the advertising is now the content, the sport (or program, or webpage) is only to entice you in. I'm sick of constantly being attacked by distracting ads. I'm sick to the point where a scotched earth policy is the only psychologically satisfying conclusion. I'm had to alter my recreational habits to the point where completely eschewing anything that tries to force its manipulative ideas down my throat is not a sacrifice.

In a short; "fuck 'em!".

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[kz45]

"How about we geeks make a deal with Ars? We will agree to whitelist them on our Adblock plugins and in return they will agree to run TEXT ONLY ads clearly marked as such, ala Google sponsored links, that are relevant to the content actually being viewed. How about that Ars? Sounds reasonable doesn't it? No more flash and no more bullshit pop culture nonsense ads. Sounds fair to me."

That sounds like you are blackmailing them. Why would they ever agree to this?

Have you ever installed adblock plus for Firefox? Google ads are disabled by default.

The problem isn't that individual sites are blocked. It's that entire sites get their ads blocked, before some users ever have a chance to see them.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[TeamMCS]

That gives me a thought, when an advert seriously contrasts with a page (*cough, HardOCP) it should be killed.

It would be nice to see a way to [easily] finely tune AdBlock to allow certain types of adverts. That way we could take the power without dwindling ad revenues.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[kz45]

"There are ads on /.? I did not know that. I block all ads all the time."

You are part of the problem.

"Advertisers already own all the private spaces. That's fine that is *their* space. They also own most of the public spaces. That's not so fine. They DO NOT OWN my computer screen. That space is mine to do with whatever I want."

Yeah, but you don't own the servers you are connecting to. Content providers do.

"If they don't want to serve up content to people that block ads, then I'll just go somewhere else. End of story."

Good luck with that. Eventually, you will be left with shit content, because all of the good content creators will have left.

You sound like a child that doesn't know how the world works. Even Slashdot needs to be able to pay their bills. Hosting a website that gets millions of visitors/month costs money.

There was an article I read recently about the current youth feeling entitled to everything. Many of the posts here (including yours) are proving this article right.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[kz45]

"And it's not like the advertisers are losing money on it - you'd never buy anything from an ad."

This is the same excuse I hear about software piracy. The problem isn't with people like you. The problem is that it's being installed on people's computers that would click on the ads, but never see them in the first place. As this happens more and more, more people will expect and ad-less Internet, which will make it very difficult for people to make money (or even pay for the hosting to run these sites).

"I would never even click on an ad. They're not losing any business by me blocking ads, and anyway I'm not obligated to render every piece of data that comes in on the wire exactly as they want me to render it."

This is fine for you. But, what if Comcast decided to block Youtube because they wanted you to go to their video site. Hell, what if they redirected it through DNS? According to your logic, they should be able to do render it however they want.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[schnell]

Why can't I get ads I would be even remotely interested in?

Remember that website owners don't just pick any ads they think you might be interested in - they only show the ads of those companies who have chosen to advertise with them. If GQ Magazine ads on Ars Technica aren't relevant to you, it isn't because Ars made a bad choice about which ads to find for you, it's because GQ Magazine made a bad choice purchasing impressions on Ars. If the companies offering things that you might be interested in don't choose to advertise with Ars, then you won't see them.

Whether those companies with stuff you are interested in don't advertise online or with Ars is because they think their target customers tend to block web ads is an entirely different question, and one I don't have the answer to.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[mikevdg]

English is a badly broken language. Let's fix it one word at a time.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Alex Belits]

Microsoft is well Microsoft and i don't use windows. Hmm I guess as a beardy Linux user I am not the target audience for these ads.

The point of Microsoft ads is on sites frequented by users who avoid Microsoft products is intimidation.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[morgan_greywolf]

I don't use either ad-blocking technology. I do, however, use NoScript. That prevents JavaScript from being executed. That has the side-effect of blocking Flash ads and ads delivered via JavaScript. I feel zero symphathy for anyone delivering ads via JavaScript. Sorry, but random JavaScript, Flash, and Java code cannot be trusted.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Yvan256]

Yeah, but what can I say. Creating quality content costs money. Often a lot of money.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[socsoc]

A lot of smaller publishers embed ads in iframes, so for instance if they are calling Google's DFP to serve them they don't slow the load time of the content that you sought. And they are called via JS.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[phantomfive]

I had 3 annoying Gilette ads about their Fusion razor. Full blown flash with sound. How is this relevant to a tech/geek site? Ars, I really don't care what razor a douchebag steroid abusing baseball player uses. No really, I don't.

Apparently it is more relevant than you realize. Seriously. It's real.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[ATairov]

I gotta say, when you're on the highway, "MacDonalds - Exit 32, 2 miles" is pretty relevant. It's information that's actually useful to me about a product I actually want. If internet ads were like that, I'd click on a lot more of them.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Skrynkelberg]

If I had mod points and you could me modded to +10, you would have gotten them all.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Game_Ender]

Ars sells campaigns where in they agree to meet a certain view count. So they are not payed directly per view, but for meeting specific targets.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Game_Ender]

Yet Ars doesn't run those kind of ads. No autoplay sound, any animated ads are one-shot (ie. the animation stops in a few seconds). People who blanket ad-block never know if a site is running decent ads, because they never give anyone a chance.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[calzakk]

Plural of sheep is sheep.

Jeez, who really cares?!

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[martin-boundary]

Jeez, who really cares?!

But that was a quality comment. Don't you realize how much good copy editors cost, you insensitive freeloader?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[abigsmurf]

Tell me, how do you make money?

Donations? Don't make me laugh, you cannot pay people's salarys on donations. People may donate to wikipedia or wikileaks. Once. They're not going to donate to a small tech news blog they visit once a week.

Merchandise? Do I want to be wearing a t-shirt showing a tech site's logo? No.

Paid subcriptions? Not an option for this tech site. No one is going to subscribe for light news content.

There is a problem but it's not the business model.

Car analogy time! Someone who visits a car dealer, spends 30 minutes with a sales guy, is about to get him to sign on the dotted line, only for him to pull out. That happens occasionally and the dealer can absorb the staff costs that results in it. However if enough people do it and the dealer doesn't have sales staff free to deal with real customers, the dealer will fold.

Going around the web with ad block fully on; You're a guy that spends 20 minutes talking to sales guys, takes a few of their glossy brochures but is perfectly happy with his push bike. Car dealerships are a tried and tested way of selling vehicles and the only practical way of selling lots of cars. You're being an ass and wasting their time then blaming them for your behaviour.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Game_Ender]

They exclusively use doubleclick (google) to serve ads, and you can opt out their tracking: http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/dart_adserving.aspx You can also disable third party tracking cookies so they can't determine the shape of your tinfoil hat ;).

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Game_Ender]

Also, if you skip Ads with a DVR they advertises don't know it. They also take that skipping into account when paying for ads. Ars on the other hand sells a certain number of ad views to advertisers, and these are very closely tracked.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Rowan_u]

There is no such thing as a relevant ad. Unless I am looking to buy something, I don't wanna see your product. Even if I am looking to buy something . . . I sure as heck ain't going to find it through your ad. I'm going to find it through careful research, done by multiple third parties. This is why I have no television, no radio, and you can pry my adblock out of my cold dead fingers.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[arikol]

I think the comments on their site pretty much showed that their readers are willing to accept static ads only. Sound, or migraine inducing animations get them removed from whitelists.

Mail them, tell them your experience so they hopefully fix something.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[arikol]

Actually they are not referring to those ads from satan (flashy, splashy, moving and pop-up ads) but rather to "hiding" ads in the text, having the ad become part of the article. Also known as whoring out your integrity, which is done by too many media outlets.

The "punch the monkey" ads and similar should get someone shot. At least spanked. Bloody annoying.

I have now whitelisted Ars due to their asking me nicely, and the fact that they only have nice, static ads. I also view ads on Slashdot (even though slashdot gives me the option of turning them off, ok to support the sites I really use)

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[icebraining]

So you're one of the freeloaders TFA talks about.

The space is your screen is yours, but the content you're downloading isn't. If you don't want to pay for it (either by subscribing or watching ads), maybe you shouldn't see the content.

You know, this isn't like in file sharing were all that is "lost" are hypothetical sales. You are effectively using their resources and thus costing them real money.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Phoobarnvaz]

The industry would (and currently is attempting to) outlaw any technology that is capable of bypassing ads in any medium. Hell, if they could get away with it, they would outlaw eyelids so you couldn't close your eyes and mandate locking seatbelts that wouldn't allow you to get up and go to the bathroom during commercial breaks.

Did I mention I hate most ads?

According to the industry...just recording their programs for later viewing is stealing...since the ads they're running may not be applicable for whatever later time I may watch the show. Plus...I'm stealing future revenue...since having seen the average TV show...don't want to watch it again...so no season whatever of that show on DVD or ITunes.

Just wonder how much of a load they would drop when they find out I edit out EVERY commercial...so I don't need to watch a wasted 15-20 minutes of the hour they STEAL from me. Do I really need to be told I can't get it up anymore without the blue pill or make sure to remind me that that time of the month is coming up?

You want me to watch your commercials...you pay me to do so. At that time...you'll have my full attention & will gladly give you the time I would otherwise spend for my own pleasuring.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[PCM2]

I'm with both of you, and I'm in the media business. My income depends on people paying me to write stuff for their Web sites/magazines/whatever. But personally, I use AdBlock Plus. Life is just too short to deal with all of that shouting in your face. It's not what I come to Web sites for, and if I can use technology to avoid it, I will.

That said, I haven't invented the alternative to the "failed business model" the GP describes. Have you?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Huntr]

Awesome. Give me a fuckton of knowledge about stuff I'll never buy. Show me, a guy, all the tampon ads you got since just informing me of the product is the point. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[MikeFM]

I agree. If ads are annoying or make the content difficult to read I'll block it. If it's offensive or inappropriate for work or family I'll block it. I use ads for my own business but I try to make sure they are discrete and in appropriate places. I prefer to sponsor a site for a small mention than to put big obvious ads every where.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[jackharrer]

That's the reason I'd like to have option in Adblock to load ads but do not show them on the page for whitelisted sites. This way everybody wins.

Sadly nobody cares...

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[cas2000]

Probably because you block ads, therefore preventing the ad hosting companies from developing a history of your browsing habits with which to create better targeted content. So when you do finally unblock ads you have to suffer whatever random ads their confused algorithm throws your way. It's a vicious cycle, I know, but if you are genuinely open to targeted advertising then you have to sacrifice a little of your privacy.

so, in order to get ads (that i don't want) which advertise some product that there's a chance i may be interested in (but still won't click on the ad to buy because I always research a product before buying it) I have to let some advertising company spy on me for months? and even then i'll STILL mostly get mainstream market ads because they constitute the bulk of all advertising.

FTFAJ.

my browser displays only text ads (e.g. from google) and sometimes i even notice them. all graphic, flash, etc ads are blocked....i started blocking ads in the mid 1990s by spending a few hours figuring out how to write a squid redirector script shortly after i was annoyed by the first animated banner ad that i ever saw (i wasn't annoyed by gif ads until they started being animated and distracting from the content). i'm never going to change this practice.

i occasionally (e.g. when using someone else's browser, or trying a new browser that doesn't have ad-blocking capability) view web sites with all of the ads....and i'm fucking appalled at just how unbearably ghastly it is. if i had to use the web with all that shit all the time, i just wouldn't bother - it wouldn't be worth it. (just like how i rarely watch commercial TV and *never* listen to commercial radio - ad-infested radio is so bad i just can't understand how ANYBODY can listen to it for more than a few minutes without wanting to smash their radio)

and there's no way i'm *ever* going to let advertising companies run programs - flash, silverlight, javascript, whatever - on my computer.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[cas2000]

The problem isn't that individual sites are blocked. It's that entire sites get their ads blocked, before some users ever have a chance to see them.

you do realise that that's precisely why people use adblock, don't you? to block ads before they see them.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Korin43]

For me it's just that no ads are acceptable. Why is it that the only options seem to be "look at these annoying ads that we'll make a couple cents from you with" or "pay us $20 a month"? One of my favorite webcomics has an option to "subscribe", which charges you $3/month, with basically no noticeable benefits (except the money adds up and you can buy stuff from their store if you want with it). I chose to do that because it helps support something I like without an unreasonable price. I think the Pirate Bay was working on something more general where you choose sites you like and a certain monthly allowance is split up between them.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Idiomatick]

"It's relatively easy to P2P a single, consistent chunk of content. Anything you can get a consistent MD5 hash out of is fine. Websites today aren't like that at all. Most any page you go to today will be dynamically generated, linked to a DB backend, etc. You're going to have to find a way to keep the various P2P sources in sync, at a minimum."

I was thinking more of a flexible system. While sites are very 'on demand' the images and videos usually aren't. ArsTechnica hosts plenty of images which account for most of the bandwidth. And I don't think the generated things would be impossible BUT that would only be available for open source sites (likely) since you'd have to send out the scripts making it unlikely.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Idiomatick]

Last time I checked freenet was worthless since it was insanely slow. I would argue for a combination p2p/dd setup. From the front it'd look exactly like regular internet, usable with just an addon, or nothing at all (DD only then).

I'm thinking you'd be on your site of choice, and at the bottom there'd be a 'help us save bandwith costs' button. It'd give you a FF addon which enables p2p webness. Nothing changes in the user experience, site saves money and the addon would gain traction easily. As it is freenet won't be used by more than a few people.

Disclaimer: I haven't looked in a while, if something close to this exists do tell.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[isomer1]

Why can't I get ads I would be even remotely interested in? Gadgets deals, hardware deals, game deals, interesting bands, interesting books ... you know ... geek stuff?

You mean ads personally tailored to you? based on your interest? As long as you are willing to provide a good deal of personal information to the site and in turn to advertisers, including information linking your online activities to your real world ones, then go for it. But the next time a Slashdot headline comes across touting the latest in user identification and tracking you'd better not bitch about the invasion to your privacy.

Ideally there might be a neutral trusted middleman. But that mechanism requires a good deal of infrastructure and would then itself be subject to exploitation.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[wiredlogic]

Do you use a DVR to skip commercials?
If so, please explain how that's different from using adblock.

When you use a DVR you're not using up any resources from the content provider. You're either receiving a free OTA broadcast or a service you're paying for the privilege of viewing. On the internet, accessing content is a real expense to the provider. If you aren't engaged in commerce, serving up ads is the easiest way to bring in cash to run a web site. If everyone is leeching then they have to have an alternate source of revenue. A similar issue happens in television wherein ad rates are determined by viewership. If every television user never watched an ad there would be no free television outside of subsidized channels and subscription fees would skyrocket.

That being said, I'm a shameless adblocker user for many of the reasons stated here by others. I'm not interested in receiving malicious javascript, being bogged down by ponderous flash apps, or being delayed by non-responsive ad servers. When the ad industry cleans its act up and empowers me to choose what type of ads I'm willing to receive I'll end my blockade. /. is the only site I have whitelisted and ironically it doesn't serve up ads because of my karma.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Altrag]

No, its business. Anyone who sits around complaining that the ad servers don't know what they want need to stop and think -- where would they get that information? Oh yes, from all of the data mining that we're equally abhorrent about. Same with television, meatspace fliers, etc. Believe me the ad companies would LOVE to only show you stuff you're interested (even more so in the real world where price per ad is significantly higher than on the internet). They just run into problems with the whole privacy thing whenever they start wanting to gather information about people.

That said, there's really no excuse for big annoying flash ads anymore. Google has proven to a great extent that you can generate a hell of a lot of money with unobtrusive, small text ads placed in a side bar (and out of the way of the normal flow of your site. Sure your page designers have 5-10% less screen space to work with, but I'm sure they'll manage). Annoying flash ads just make me install adblock.

On the other hand, maybe that's just me. They might be morally ambiguous, but large scale advertisers aren't generally stupid -- way too much competition in the field for that. Its just like spam in that sense -- you spew your big annoying flash ad across 100million page views, and if only 1/10% of the people click through (intentionally or not), then you've still got 100,000 "views".

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[vertinox]

Somehow Internet has made people to forget that creating quality content costs money. Often a lot of money. Often with these kind of things I'm really surprised at how dumb nerdy people can be too. You know, us who should know better and not be those stupid sheeps who are happy have a "mindless" job and then watch tv for rest of the evening and still enjoy it, even if theres no mentally requiring tasks involved.

Question... Since you mentioned TV....

Should I be forced to not be able to change the channel or get up from my seat when a commercial is on?

Not that I mind entertaining commercials, but I'm kind of tired of watching those Sunsetter Retractable Awnings for the 50th time or am I stealing money from Adult Swim when I go use the bathroom.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[toddestan]

Your DVR doesn't show its own ads or periodically phone home?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[WereCatf]

Of course creating quality content costs money, and people should be rewarded for the effort they do. However, that just isn't enough. I personally block ads because 90% of them are Flash-ads which slows my computer down quite a bit, most of them are really distracting and annoy me when I try to read the content at hand, and heck, some of them even include sound! If the ads weren't Flash, distracting and even downright annoying I wouldn't mind. But well, there's an even more important reason to block ads: viruses and malware. It's well known nowadays that ads often carry unwanted stuff with them and as such having ads enabled is just a huge security risk.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[atomic777]

Great to see that someone gets it. Of course the ad buyer's perspective is not considered in these whines from publishers because the money that pays for those ads just comes from "somewhere" , and these ad blockers are disrupting my flow of $$$ from that "somewhere"!

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[adoll]

I frequently click the ads of companies and organizations I disagree with (eg. PETA, soft) to bleed money from the advertiser to the website. Except I open the ad in a background tab on Firefox, then close the tab without viewing it.

This is the same thing as send back those pre-paid envelopes for 'business reply' to groups I dislike and leaving the envelope empty.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[SQLGuru]

I don't block ads. If a site I want to visit insists on pop-up / annoying ads, I don't visit them any more. I've had that little check box that says "disable ads" from Slashdot for quite a while not, and yet, I don't click it because I want to support them. Sites I like, I'll occasionally click their ads so they get some click-through credit. As long as the ads aren't terribly obnoxious, I don't mind seeing them.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[gamecrusader]

yes its a real pain especially with the pop up adds, non stop pop up adds which makes one want to take a base ball bat to ones screen.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[RedWizzard]

So you're one of the freeloaders TFA talks about.

The space is your screen is yours, but the content you're downloading isn't. If you don't want to pay for it (either by subscribing or watching ads), maybe you shouldn't see the content.

You know, this isn't like in file sharing were all that is "lost" are hypothetical sales. You are effectively using their resources and thus costing them real money.

I don't know about the poster you replied to, but in my case I get a little checked box saying "Ads Disabled, Thanks again for helping make Slashdot great!". Slashdot graciously gave me the option of disabling the advertising and I took them up on that offer.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[mundanetechnomancer]

- I had 3 annoying Gilette ads about their Fusion razor.

If you can remembver the name of the product afterwards, then the ad is working. Also, and I know this may come as a shock, but not every ad is going to be perfectly relevent to you.

this is based on the concept that anytime someone remembers the ad, the ad is a success. I have avoided products because i found their ads annoying, but marketing people don't think that happens

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[morcego]

I agree that people can be dumb, specially when placing blame.

I don't blame either the users or the websites for this, but the advertisements.

There is always a level of advertisement that people will accept. How intrusive and distracting it is. When we go after that limit, people will either start block adds, or look for a new website. Give enough websites with excessive/annoying adds, and people will start blocking everything, just in case. Does this surprise anyone ? Anyone with even a bare knowledge of human behavior could predict this outcome.

Keep the adds simple, non intrusive. Make them attractive and "distracting" only for people interested on whatever the hell you are selling. It is not hard. Leave everyone else alone, otherwise whenever those people want something like what you are selling, they will go out of their way to avoid you. I did it in the past, and know a lot of other people who did the same.

Do people really need (as in not to be annoyed) adblocking software for all websites they visit ? No. Do they need it on enough software that they will just rather leave it on by default ? Yes.

So, here is an idea. Make a group of websites that agree to a given standard regarding add. Get in contact with the people who develop the add blocking addons, and ask them to add a new option so people can block adds for all websites but those from that group. Make that option on (people can see the add) by default, but make it easy for the users to turn it off if they still want.

Also, make sure there is someone, maybe some 3rd party, to check that these websites are following the rules, and dump them with extreme prejudice if they break them.

It is totally possible to have a healthy amount of advertising, without becoming annoying to a point where the option are to either block the adds, or stop visiting the website.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[wilsone8]

If you really like a site, do you sit and hit reload repeatedly, to give them extra ad revenue?

Whether you hit refresh a 100 times or not makes no difference. For one, they are likely paid for unique views only, so refreshing does't make any difference. For another, I didn't say the point was to maximize Ars's (or any other site's) revenue. My point is that they need revenue to provide their service and if I have to view a few ads to get that service for no charge, then I'm more than happy to make that trade. The key point is that it is a trade. To take something without giving anything in return is called 'free loading'.

And for all the sites I don't like - you'll agree using ad blockers is fine?

If you don't like a site, why are you visiting it in the first place?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[wilsone8]

Well, I wonder why advertisers bother with this whole idea of targeted marketing at all. I mean, if a man learns about a new tampon product; if a gay person reading a gay magazine learns about a new contraceptive product or say a Russian brides website; and if Slashdotters learn about the latest product from My Little Pony, it's done its job, right?

Ok, but GQ is a magazine for men. Hence, advertising it on a site that is visited mostly by men sounds like good targeted advertising to me at least. I think trying to pretend that My Little Pony is the same as GQ is just a little bit of a strech.

I mean, if I like a website, should I sit and hit reload repeatedly, so that they get even more ad revenue?

Typically, sites are only paid for the unique vistor, so I don't think that would make any difference. Even if did, the point isn't to maximize the site's revenue. The point is to pay for the service they are providing (even if you pay indirectly by viewing ads). You want the content without paying for it, which seems wrong to me.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Waccoon]

The real problem is habit. So many web sites were using annoying ads for so long, that it's a habit for people to leave the ad blocker on all the time, rather than use it only when an annoying ad comes up. No matter how much advertising on the web changes, this is going to be a very difficult habit to break. It's just another case of 90% of people abusing a system, so the remaining 10% have to suffer.

I don't use a subscription to an ad blocking list. I block only when something annoys me. To me, an ad blocker is a mute button. That's the way it's supposed to be done.

Now, JavaScript is a different issue. I have it off by default. If web browser developers allowed you to block all 3rd party JavaScript and use only it from the domain you are viewing, then I would treat it like a blacklist (like ads), rather than a whitelist. This is also the reason why I find it difficult to add JavaScript to my own web site. I know a lot of people have it turned off or use a whitelist system like NoScript. I don't want to force people to turn on JavaScript so they can use my web site, even if I'll eventually have to give in whether I like it or not.

Unfortunately, ads are what drive the Internet. The chance of web browsers changing to favor the community and not the advertisers is pretty remote. That's why Firefox relies on a 3rd party ad blocker in the first place. They aren't trying to kill it since it's a killer feature, but they're not going to add something like that by default unless the browser is in a death spiral.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[DavidRawling]

Apparently I missed the bit where said car dealer has a flashing neon sign and a sales person on the premises of every business you visit over the course of your day. And the weekends. And the 3am run to the 7-Eleven.

Or maybe that car analogy sucked. Where's BadAnalogyGuy when you need him?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[DavidRawling]

Actually, Opera has something that would start to enable this. I think it's Opera Unite? It's a web server built into the browser.

There's only one small problem - you still need to have that listening port open, and in Australia (I'm guessing that it's also true elsewhere) most home user connections block 80 inbound - if not at the ISP then at the router. I don't think a FF addon that opened router ports would necessarily be appreciated :D

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[dzfoo]

My job does not depend on a precarious business model.

        -dZ.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Brian Gordon]

Well, Comcast is subject to regulation because they're granted a monopoly on local infrastructure and have taken uncountable piles of taxpayer money to build their network on public property, so they can't just do whatever they want.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[gregmac]

I'm the same way. I don't have an uncontrollable urge to click and buy things from every ad I see -- do all these adblock users have that? I understand for the annoying ads (punch the monkey, etc), but really, I'll just stop going to the site. Likewise with NoScript. What is people's obsession with not running scripts? Many apps and sites make huge use of scripts, and that's what's enabling us to get to the point where so many apps are online, running in a browser. Nothing to install, update, etc, and the apps are getting very powerful and functional. Do you want to go back to the old days of platform-specific native apps? It's like people have gotten to that age where new technology is scary.. no doubt this same conversation happened when going from 3270 terminals to PC, and from text-mode to graphical UI, etc.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[dmneoblade]

When I am reading the paper, with relaxing music in the background, the newspaper does not start talking to me.

Websites, however, do. If I am reading slashdot articles in google reader, the last thing I want is to have a bunch of articles pre-load and start talking, desynched just enough to be very loud cacophony.

This happened looking at _this_ article, causing me to find and install an ad-blocker in chrome. If its an ad in a video, feel free to talk to me, or play music. But, if I am reading, STFU!

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[blackpig]

The space is your screen is yours, but the content you're downloading isn't.

The content may not belong to me, but the bits certainly do.
I pay heavily for bandwidth ($100 for 6GB) so I reserve the right to not pay for stuff I don't want.

The business landscape these sites operate in includes people with ad blockers. If their business plan doesn't take this into consideration then find another business plan, or another business.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[ekhben]

Who do you think pays for "free" OTA broadcasts? :-)

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[eddyk]

Somehow Internet has made people to forget that creating quality content costs money. Often a lot of money..

Somehow Internet has made people to forget that adds costs money consumers (we) are paying for.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Ponyegg]

Ars sells campaigns where in they agree to meet a certain view count. So they are not payed directly per view, but for meeting specific targets.

OK, so it's obviously too early in the morning, but how does 'meet a certain view count' NOT equate to being not paid 'per view'.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[NickFortune]

And yet, your post seems to show that advertising was working on you:

Well then, I guess that's a win for the advertiser. As long as they're happy to define win as having one more consumer who hates and publically reviles their product. I know a lot of ad agencies think like that.

It's not a win for Ars, however, since the GP (disgusted with the annoyance factor of the ads in question) has gone back to blocking ads on the site.

Ars are a good site and I care what happens to them. I don't give a wet fart about GQ or Gillette. Ars had a chance to add an increment to their ad revenue and lost it, purely becuase of over aggressive advertising. You say they ads are working, but they're not working to the benefit of Ars Technica. Not in this instance, at least.

In TFA, Ken Fisher makes the point that websites advertising is not like TV advertising. I think maybe the ad agencies need to learn the same lesson: this isn't like broadcast TV where you can pump the most noxious crap into people's homes willy-nilly. On the Internet you advertise at a person largely by their consent. If you over tax the paitence of your target audience, you risk losing it, possibly forever.

There's are lessons for web sites here, too. Fisher says that Ars monitors its web content very carefully, but it seems to me that they dont set the bar high enough. If they forbade animated and flash based-ads from the site, they'd have a far stronger chance of persuading their readers to whitelist the site.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[dpastern]

mmm I disagree. Watching free to air TV doesn't cost money. If one doesn't like the ads you can channel surf. Or just walk away from the TV for a few minutes. That's akin to blocking the ads in my books. I have one rule:

my computer, my rules. If I don't want cookies or ads or other shyte, then I'll sure as hell block it. If Ars Technica, or any other "popular" site doesn't like that, then no ones making them put up web content, are they? If it's such a terrible thing, they don't have to do it. People aren't holding a gun to their heads. Just close the website down and go do something else. Of course, me being smart, I know that these guys are *making* money, and this crying poor is just BS to get people to feel sorry for them, so that you don't disable ads and they make EVEN more money. I'm not gullible, and I'm sure as hell not stupid.

Dave

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[ppanon]

What is people's obsession with not running scripts?

What is it with people's obsession with not allowing undetermined actors the ability to use features of their computers that have shown a history of vulnerabilities and put their system at risk of a security compromise? Do you also ask "What is it with people's obsession on using rubbers and dental dams during anonymous sex?". If something provides me sufficient benefit and I have reason to believe the provider knows and applies a reasonable minimum of due care and diligence regarding computing security, then I'll allow scripting execution. Few web sites meet that threshold, and I'm OK with that. My scripting experiences are deep and meaningful.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[henrik.falk]

I think we all get that things cost money. We all just assume that someone else will be watching all these ads.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[makomk]

Except that if they're capable enough to do that, then they almost certainly also take into account the number of TV viewers that fast-forward through ads, or go for a toilet break, or... and the argument that it's not like TV because they know how many people view the ads is a load of bullshit.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[makomk]

Half of the people out there with Windows machines infested with malware got that malware because they DID NOT use privacy and security extensions.

According to Caesar, the bug from Ars Technica behind this attack on ad blocking, it's their fault for not keeping up to date with security patches. Yes, really.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[makomk]

Bug from Ars Technica? Guy from Ars Technica even. (I must have the bug that randomly redirects you to a blank page if you view Ars Technica articles in Konqueror without ad blocking on the brain. Apparently, that's also your fault for using an inferior browser.)

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[wolffenrir]

But why does Ars not just manage the ads themselves? If ad revenue is so important to their bottom-line, then outsourcing the business represents poor business planning. I say that for the entire web industry. Don't buy into the Google and Doubleclick nonsense. Sell your ads directly. *You* know which products and services your readers would find most interesting. Become a businessman and make your sales pitch to them. Sell the ad space directly. Construct your own guidelines about the nature, content, and behavior of these ads. Embed them yourself in the pages you serve. Let's not pretend like this is difficult either. It's just a script that generates a page for each user. You have cookies to keep track of them. Most people don't block cookies from the sites they visit, but rather the third-party sites.

When the web began, this is EXACTLY how people did it. The entire .com boom was born from people doing EXACTLY what I just said. It is feasible, good business, *and* you can sleep at night.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[wilsone8]

I'll go on blocking their adverts until they start showing adverts I can look at without my eyes bleeding that advertise things that I might actually want.

I'll ask the stupid question: how will you know when that happens if you are blocking advertisments?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[AmiMoJo]

I don't really care what the ad is for, relevant or not. All I care is that:

- It isn't animated
- Silent
- Doesn't make content hard to read (especially on my Android phone)
- No overlays/content blocking
- Isn't porn/NSFW
- Doesn't slow page loading (hint: iFrames)
- Obviously no pop-ups, annoying Javascript etc.

I don't mind getting ads that have no interest for me, as long as they don't annoy me.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[AmiMoJo]

Problem is that ads for a Windows 7 netbook on an article about Windows 7 netbooks looks like endorsement/payola by Ars and most people definitely won't click on them anyway due to the assumption that it will be easy to find them cheaper elsewhere.

Price is king on the internet so you can make people aware of products but advertising a particular online shop tends not to work. People will search for the lowest price anyway. The only exception is where you have some kind of deal with the site like a special discount code.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[mcgrew]

Somehow Internet has made people to forget that creating quality content costs money. Often a lot of money. Often with these kind of things I'm really surprised at how dumb nerdy people can be too.

You know, I don't give two shits about your profit margin. There are other sites out there with the same content or better. Your profits or lack thereof is your problem, not mine. I'm really surprised at how dumb some content providers are, not realizing that I don't owe you anything. If your business model sucks, find a better model or a different business. It isn't my problem. Your intrusive ads are my problem, and I solve it with either adblock of simply going to another site.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[cayenne8]

""What is it with people's obsession on using rubbers and dental dams during anonymous sex?"

Ok, this is a new term for me...what the hell is a "dental dam"?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Quirkz]

Exactly! Ad blocking is entirely a security issue for me. I've heard too many stories of computers picking up viruses from reputable sites, and I've seen it happen in person. It doesn't matter how much I want to support a site. Unless I know I can trust every single person who advertises with them (and I simply can't), then I'd rather block ads than take any chances.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[mcgrew]

The majority of the ads are for GQ magazine. I didn't even know what the fuck that was before clicking on the link
Perfect. The ad gave you knowledge of a product you were unaware of before. That's the whole point of advertising.

No, the point of advertising is to increase sales. Serve me an ad for GQ and you're wasting your advertising budget, because I have no interest at all in magazines like GQ. Putting a Rolex ad in Boy's Life is just retarded; as retarded as an ad for GQ in a nerd rag.

I had 3 annoying Gilette ads about their Fusion razor.
If you can remembver the name of the product afterwards, then the ad is working

If your ad annoys me, I'll remember your ad all right, and avoid your product like the plague when I'm shopping.

If you like Ars, you should view the ads.

If Ars wants me to view the ads then shey shouldn't serve ads that annoy me, as they're more likely to lose my readership than to sell me their advertiser's product.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[geminidomino]

""What is it with people's obsession on using rubbers and dental dams during anonymous sex?"

Ok, this is a new term for me...what the hell is a "dental dam"?

Used to prevent fluid transfer during cunnilingus.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[geminidomino]

Ok, but GQ is a magazine for men. Hence, advertising it on a site that is visited mostly by men sounds like good targeted advertising to me at least.

Then you are easily impressed. Sports Illustrated and GSM are also magazines "for men", but the mere presence of testicles does not a demographic make. That's not good targeting, it's half-assed scattershot.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[nobodylocalhost]

Time to include dom object name regex in adblock, URL based blocking is stone age technology.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[geminidomino]

Also, isn't Ars targetting a more sophisticated audience than say... Toms Hardware or w/e that to could explain why GQ ads are appearing.

No. As pointed out elsewhere, GQ ads are appearing because the same douches who own Ars know *also* own GQ.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[hrimhari]

That's why I chose to not use my "remove ads" option in /.

I still use one of those flash-B-gone add-ons and point some of the most annoying ad hosts to 127.0.0.1 in my /etc/hosts, but pssshhh don't tell anyone.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[TechnicalPenguin]

"not my problem", says a netizen who deprives a site of any source of revenue.

Blocking ads does not deprive a site of any source of revenue; at most, it limits the amount of revenue that can be generated from that one particular source of revenue. Advertising is not the only revenue model in existence; there are plenty of other models that can be used either instead of or in conjunction with advertising. If a website is not making enough money to cover the costs of creating its "quality content" using their existing set of revenue sources, then the people running the site need to look at what mix of revenue sources they are using, how well each one is working, and what other models might work for their site and for their content, then figure out how to better optimize that mix of sources to increase the amount of money coming in.

In this case, if advertising isn't bringing in enough money, the problem is not that ad blockers exist or that lots of people use them, the problem is that this site is relying too much on advertising to bring in more money than it is actually bringing in. Right now, advertising online is very hit-or-miss; it is not terribly well-defined or even well-understood (although it is often terrible). Over time, advertisers and web site owners and content producers will all gain a better understanding of what works and what doesn't for online advertising. Until then, instead of complaining about ad blockers, the people running this site need to change and adapt to the current realities, and then continue to change and adapt as those realities change.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[orngjce223]

I came up with the idea a long time ago: someone should create a separate blocklist for "annoying ads" only. I'd make it, but I have other projects already running, some of them pretty time-consuming. If this "annoying ads only" list became as well-known as EasyList, it would actually put selection pressure on advertisers to tone down the ads!

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Gabrosin]

Amen. For example, I'm never going to use E-trade, or any other product that feels the need to use talking babies in their advertisements. In fact, I've had cases where I've been using a product and then found their ads so terrible that I've switched to a competitor.

Subway, you earned my business when Quiznos was making some of the dumbest ads on the planet a few years ago. But you've lost it again with that idiotic $5 song. Now I try to find non-chain sandwich places whenever possible.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Gabrosin]

Say there was a website you enjoyed visiting on a daily basis that provided you with news content that's relevant to you. They have no advertising.

One day, they realize they can no longer afford to continue without revenue (probably Day 1). They give you three choices: pay a subscription fee (with the cost being determined by how much they need to make to maintain business operations (possibly including a reasonable profit, or at least earnings in order to expand their content), divided by how many people are willing to pay it); view ads while using their site (disabling any viewing if you have an ad blocker); or go elsewhere (where elsewhere might not exist without the same options). Which one do you choose?

Me, I'll take the ads. I could turn off Slashdot advertising but I don't. If the ads get too obnoxious, I'll find another site where the ads aren't so bad, or I'll leave entirely. But I won't block the ads. See, I recognize that if the website derives the revenue they need to survive from advertising, and everyone who uses the site blocks ads, then no revenue is generated, and either the site closes (or at least suffers horribly in quality) or moves to a subscription model. Thanks, but I'd rather keep the site free.

I don't disagree that you're not obligated to give a site money, but I hope you realize that if your war on ads succeeds, and you win people over to your point of view, then all of the things you love on the internet will require a subscription, and you'll be forced to pay up or go elsewhere. And if enough people choose to go elsewhere, then the subscription fee will start high and possibly keep getting higher. If a sustainable price point can't be found, then the site will fail.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Omestes]

Later on in this topic, I stated that I have ad-blocking disabled on Slashdot, and I have unchecked the "Your awesome, disable ads?" box. I did this for two reasons, the first being that I've been visiting /. daily for years, and it is one of the few pages I would miss if it died (99% of pages are expendable crap). The second being that I'm using Chromium, and can't actually block ads, just hide them, therefore I never have to actually SEE a single ad from /., while they still get the credit for showing them. This is win-win (and perhaps a loss by the advertisers, but I don't care about them).

If I start noticing a slow down from bad ad-servers, or they try to circumvent my blocker, then the box is being checked again.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Meski]

I don't block ads, I just fetch them from 127.0.0.1 instead. :)

Ok, know I've made my smart-arse comment, my suggestion to Arstechnica, and others: Give me an option to not have ads, that involves a subscription. If you have decent content, I'll subscribe. I'm not going to click-thru 99% of the ads I see anyway, so you'd be ahead. (assuming you only get paid for click-thru)

The reasoning behind ad blocking isn't just 'I don't like ads in my face' - some ad servers have been compromised into serving up malware scripts.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Meski]

now, not know. Grrr

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[hairyfeet]

But I didn't say put windows 7 netbook ads, did I? And how the fuck is pointing out they have piss poor ads redundant? What I said was you could have ads for all kinds of netbooks/notebooks/tablets, because if you are reading a review on how to shop for netbooks, hey you might be more willing to snatch one if they offer a good deal.

Second they could have had links to windows 7. How about links for HP, since most netbooks will only have starter? why not an ad touting the advantages of windows 7 pro? hell even Windows server ads would have been better than all the lame ass ads that no self respecting geek would have clicked on.

in the end it is all about common sense. if you are a geek site, don't be running ads for tampons, duh! Ads for servers, laptops, netbooks, things with Internet access, hell even ads for ISPs or cell phones! This is day 3 for me leaving Ars unblocked, and their ads just keep getting worse. If they haven't gotten better by Friday it is back in the blocklist they go. I mean Good Lord man, how hard is it to pick ads for geeks? It ain't like we are the most complex creatures on the planet. As my GF says "just give you something with lots of gigas and mega and more buttons and features than you will possibly know what to do with and you're happy" and she's right. It would be like a right wing teabagger site running ads for the Huffington post and the daily Koz. WTF?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[kerrbear]

Time and again do hear that the purpose of business is to generate profits for the owner, not care for the common good...Should it really come as a surprise when the rest of us say "fine" and jump in on the bandwagon?

IMHO this is one of the most insightful slashdot comments I have ever read. Thank you for this. The whole "We can be as greedy as we want because it's good for society, therefore you should act selflessly" argument has been totally eviscerated by your post. I'm actually going to save this in a file.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Mr2001]

Or maybe they discovered that there is value in having your product/brand visible to people

In some cases, I'm sure that's true. But is there really value in having your product/brand visible to people on the internet?

Think about it. Have spammers made you more likely to buy Viagra, or less likely? Do sexy banner ads make you feel better or worse about the idea of paying for online porn? If you remember X10's massive ad campaign, did it make you more or less likely to buy one of their cameras?

I don't know about you, but when I see an ad online, I almost always associate the advertiser with desperation and sleaze. That doesn't make me want to spend money, now or later. When I see their brand in a store somewhere, I don't think "hey, that brand's familiar, must be good" -- I think "oh god, it's that company from the banner ads, time to leave".

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Ol Olsoc]

I don't block anything that just puts up an ad, just lets me look at it. I do block anything that tries to put tracking cookies on my machine, pops up an ad just because my mouse happened to go over a link, or throws up crap dancing around on the screen.

Same with Television, if a really loud and compressed ad comes on that blasts out at me, I hit the mute button, and don't listen to any other ads in the break until the show comes back on. (note, they tell us that they only compress them, but I've meaasured 12 db difference between program and commercial a few times.

The point is, the provider of the commercial is a guest on my screen, just as anyone coming into my house is a guest. If a guest becomes obnoxious or behaves badly, they are invited to leave. I don't watch the ads I don't like in the same way that I don't watch the programs I don't like.

It's plenty rude to call me a freeloader - I'm not. All I ask is for the commercials to not suck, to not track my browsing habits, and to not intrude on my evening. I would suggest that if a company was interested in making good commercials, they ask for people's hostfiles, then go to the sites in the hostfile. See why they are blocked. That would be doing market research, and maybe companies could create better ads.

Arse Technica (sic) is close to making it into the hostfile if they pull another stunt like that.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Ol Olsoc]

I keep hearing that good or bad, if you remember the ad - it worked. Wrong, wrong, wrong - Massive Fail!

The ad does not work unless you Buy the product. The company is not paying the ad agency to get you to hate them and never buy another product because of an insulting or distasteful commercial. How would that be called a success? There are lots of things I don't buy because they have bad commercials.

Not to say that some companies/ad agencies that think that memory of the ad is the goal. Maybe that's why we see so many really bad ads?

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[Alex Belits]

No, its business.

I see no contradiction. Microsoft long ago reached the point when intimidating its enemies is more effective than recruiting allies.

Hmmmm

[zoomshorts]

If the ad blockers would actually follow the links and give the
people the clicks they desire, without displaying the advertisement,
would that help?

Sure it would pollute the ad revenue, but at least it would not
pollute my eyes... plus the demographic studies these revenue
sources depending upon the click analysis would fail. How nice.

Re:Hmmmm

[dk90406]

It is not only clicks. They are payed per SHOWN add. Even if you never click on one, they make money.
For what it is worth, I accepted their plea and white-listed them.

Re:Hmmmm

[mrsteveman1]

Not seeing an ad removes around $0.003-0.009 revenue per person. Clicking an ad can bring in $20+ per click.

Automating that click would be fraud.

Re:Hmmmm

[IceCreamGuy]

If the ad blockers would actually follow the links and give the people the clicks they desire, without displaying the advertisement, would that help?"

Are you asking if illegal click fraud would help Arstechnica? I think the answer is an unequivocal "no;"

...the demographic studies these revenue sources depending upon the click analysis would fail. How nice.

Why is that nice? Because then you'll see the ads that should have gone to 90-year-old widows instead of the video game ad you would normally see? How nice because Ars would go out of business? What exactly is your point here... because if it's what it seems to be on the surface then it's really dumb.

Re:Hmmmm

[mikael_j]

If the user automates the "click" to make certain that his/her browsing experience isn't impaired due to not clicking ad links then that isn't fraud, by the same reasoning browser plugins that "preload" all linked content would be illegal.

/Mikael

Re:Hmmmm

[mrsteveman1]

Except no one in this case was ever even talking about clicks, Ars technica gets paid per view.

Even so, browsers preload FILES, they don't pre-run the javascript in the ad code.

Re:Hmmmm

[mikael_j]

You mentioned clicks, as did the post you replied to.

Also, what if I create a browser plugin that pre-renders the prefetched data so that any possible "next page" from the page I'm viewing right now is already pre-rendered and just has to be shown? AFAIK that's still not fraud since the intent wasn't to commit fraud and the user would not be limited by any contract between the site owner and the ad publishing company.

/Mikael

Re:Hmmmm

[Daengbo]

So Chrome's ad blockers (which download but don't show content) only cheat the advertisers?

Re:Hmmmm

[mrsteveman1]

You mentioned clicks, as did the post you replied to.

Yes, i'm sorry i wasn't more clear.

I was originally responding to the idea that you could automate clicks to ensure the site gets paid by the advertiser, while also blocking ads from appearing on the screen. That would be click fraud from the perspective of the advertiser and may actually hurt the site long term because thousands of people "click" and the advertiser sees absolutely no value in return; they may stop paying for advertising on the site.

In response to what YOU said though:,

If the user automates the "click" to make certain that his/her browsing experience isn't impaired due to not clicking ad links then that isn't fraud

....so far as i know, in this case clicking ads never made any difference, users weren't being prevented from seeing content until they clicked something. They were being prevented from seeing content because they blocked the ads from ever appearing.

Also, what if I create a browser plugin that pre-renders the prefetched data so that any possible "next page" from the page I'm viewing right now is already pre-rendered and just has to be shown? AFAIK that's still not fraud since the intent wasn't to commit fraud and the user would not be limited by any contract between the site owner and the ad publishing company.

/Mikael

When i say "fraud", I'm not talking about violating a contract with the user or breaking the law. From the point of view of the advertiser, anything that artificially increases their costs without receiving anything in return is fraud. You aren't going to get in trouble, but if the advertiser thinks they are being taken advantage of, the site may lose their contract with that advertiser which again, would hurt rather than help.

The situation you describe, where the browser just pre-renders content including ads, is unlikely to make any of them care because its just one additional impression, which is worth a fraction of a penny, but actually clicking ads will make them care because clicks cost them hundreds to thousands of times more than impressions.

Re:Hmmmm

[gnud]

How can a link I follow from Arstechincas server be illegal click fraud? I have no contract with Ars, their advertisers or anyone else to manually review a rendering of images/html I request.

Re:Hmmmm

[d3ac0n]

That sounds like a neat thing for the Adblock Plus guys to do. Find some way to NOT download the content, but make the webserver THINK the user downloaded the content so that the website owner still gets paid.

Best of both worlds for both the website owner and the user. The great thing about it is that neither the owner or the user can be held liable, and the only people screwed are the obnoxious ad companies.

Re:Hmmmm

[walt-sjc]

Are you asking if simulated ad clicking would help Arstechnica? I think the answer is an unequivocal "no;"

There. Fixed that for ya.

Re:Hmmmm

[IceCreamGuy]

Fair enough.

I have ad block in because of facebook

[codeguy007]

The only reason, I have ad block is because of facebook. While personally I don't like facebook, I have lots of friends on it so I do use it. The problem with facebook is it allows ads that look exactly like facebook apps. Sometimes is really hard to tell the ad from the app. So I installed Ad block plus to remove those annoying ads. If facebook would smarten up and start blocking those ads, I would be willing to remove the ad blocker.

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[asdf7890]

The only reason, I have ad block is because of facebook. While personally I don't like facebook, I have lots of friends on it so I do use it. The problem with facebook is it allows ads that look exactly like facebook apps. Sometimes is really hard to tell the ad from the app.

My solution there is just to completely ignore them - both apps and ads that look like apps. I use facebook due only to people I know being on there too, but the people I know on there know I'm only there to use it as a messaging service and don't take part in the apps business.

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[DarkOx]

Its the advertisers fault. I understand that advertising is all about making sure your message is heard above the noise but they are the ones who jumped the shark.

When it was just banners and the occasional frame with some adds in it, I never attempted to filter them out other than with my own mental powers. When they started doing pop-ups and float overs, I even tolerated it. When they started making adds that pretended to be system messages, virus scanner alerts, and other applications that really struck me as fraudulent and abusive and so I started blocking ads and helping others do the same.

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[betterunixthanunix]

"While personally I don't like facebook, I have lots of friends on it so I do use it."

You know, it is not that hard to stay off Facebook, even if your friends are on it. I would guess that all of my friends are on Facebook, but the fact that I am not has not caused any major problems...

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[amiga3D]

I really love the ones that scan my "C" drive showing all my .dll files that are infected with malware. Interesting that I can't find a "C" drive on my Xubuntu setup. I'm having trouble locating those infected dll's tool. Maybe they're hiding in /sbin

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[Spatial]

Its the advertisers fault. I understand that advertising is all about making sure your message is heard above the noise

Well that's really the principle at work here isn't it.

To an advertiser, the content of the site is noise. To us the adverts are noise. Some people block adverts on that principle alone.

The rest depends on the signal-to-noise ratio. Too far in one direction and you don't get enough money, too far in the other and you alienate your readership. The key is balance.

Advertisers forgot that. They took the short-view and went with increasingly intrusive and annoying adverts. They broke the balance in their favour, so we broke it in ours with filtering tools.

It just so happens that it's easier to block every advert on the entire Internet than to be selective about it. And here we are.

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[dirk]

While I agree with a lot of this, the issue is that with ad-blockers even sites that don't use these advertising methods get caught. I know many sites that I just couldn't visit without ad-blocking because they are so bad. SO you install and ad-blocker and it blocks every ad from every site. So when you visit Ars, you never get the chance to see that they do basic no-frills ads and not the flashing, noisy, deceptive ads that everyone hates.

I would much prefer an ad-blocker that would allow you to turn it on per site (instead of off per site). When you first go to a site, it should load the site and ask if you want to block ads on the site. That way you can see what the site is like before you choose to block the ads. Instead, everything is blocked by default and people don't even consider unblocking sites. At the very least it would be nice to have any option to download the ads but not display them (which I swear used to be an option but I can't find it anymore). Then places like Ars could get the credit for the ads that pay per view (yes, there are much fewer than them, but it is better than nothing).

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[bwcbwc]

You know if we really want to train the advertisers, we should only click on tasteful, unobtrusive ads. This rewards the sites that don't pander to the "used car dealers" of the internet and educates the advertisers that to reach some market segments, discreet is more effective.

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[wraithguard01]

Perhaps you have to run "sudo ls" on the /sbin directory?

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[martyros]

When they started doing pop-ups and float overs, I even tolerated it.

I never understood how marketing people could not make the connection: if I annoy my target market with my image, they will associate my image with annoyance and be less likely to buy.

GMail's ads are not at all intrusive; what's more, they're targeted, so that instead of having a 0.01% probability that I might find any particular ad interesting, there's probably more like a 1% probability. So I actually look at gmail's ads, because there's often something there that I actually want.

That's the best part of marketing: connecting people with a valuable product to people who would find that product really valuable. The worst is trying to push a load of crap on people who don't really need it.

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[KPU]

The problem with facebook is it allows ads that look exactly like facebook apps.

The problem here is that the vast majority of facebook apps are advertisements.

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[FlyingBishop]

Facebook apps scare me more than Facebook ads. With Facebook ads I know there's a solid paper trail.

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[Rick17JJ]

I have also seen several of those ads which claim to have detected viruses and spyware on my computer. I was using Linux each time, most recently I was using Kubuntu Linux. After announcing what it had detected, it would ask for my permission to scan my hard drive. Despite not giving it permission, a progress bar then appeared showing that my drive C was being scanned. About 60 seconds later, it then announced that both viruses and spyware had on my drive C and also in my registry. That is odd I thought, since Linux does not have a registry and does not name its hard drive partitions with drive letters. Infected dll's were also mentioned, even though Linux does have dll's either.

Afterwards, the advertisement then always suggested that I purchase their anti-virus product to fix the problems. In the most recent instance, despite not choosing to purchase their anti-virus program, a box popped up asking me what it should do with the Windows executable file which the website was trying to download to my computer. The filename had an EXE extension, so it was a program designed to run on a Windows computer, not under Linux. Of course, I would not have tried to run the non-Linux program under WINE.

Shortly after that latest experience, I started using both the NoScript and Adblock Plus Ad-ons for Firefox. On both my Linux computer and my Windows computer I have now enabled both of those security related ad-ons for Firefox. That add-on can be enabled by selecting add-ons from the tools menu. I only enable the running of scripts for certain websites which I trust or where they are needed to make some important feature on the website work. I can enable that either temporarily or permanently of specific websites by right-clicking on a special icon in the lower right corner of Firefox.

On my Windows XP computer I also run Firefox sandboxed within a security related program called SandboxIE. However, that only sandboxes my default browser for security purposes, it does not block ads.

In an earlier encounter with one of those ads, a pop-up appeared on my Linux computer, saying that Microsoft had detected viruses and spyware on my computer. That was a surprise, since I did not have a single Microsoft product installed on the computer.

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[Rick17JJ]

In my above post, I forgot to mention that I was using a firewall on the Linux computer. I also had an additional firewall turned on in my DSL modem. All ports visible to the outside world were both closed and stealth in both firewalls. I would assume that it is not that easy for an advertiser to just casually scan my harddrive like that, without my permission.

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[Randle_Revar]

What do you mean? FB apps don't look like anything except items in your news feed, and the ads certainly don't look like that. I have an idea that maybe a long time ago FB apps where in little boxes on the side of your screen (kind of like the ads are), but that was a long time and several redesigns ago

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[DarkOx]

I never understood how marketing people could not make the connection: if I annoy my target market with my image, they will associate my image with annoyance and be less likely to buy.

The reason is it is not true. There have been lots of studies with limited accuracy because its hard to study the effects of advertising without biasing the results, that show a negative response to an add does not in many cases make it ineffective. The biggest single predictor of your product, assuming we are talking about a commodity type product where there is only slight variation in price and features such like say televisions sets of a given size, being selected over a competitor is if your name is familiar to the purchaser.

Now not everyone is the same, I am sure there are many people out there who say you know that companies ads are really irritating and or abusive so I am not going to patronize them. Most people though if the name is familiar either wont remember where they saw it, will figure just because they seen it must be a respectable organization or whatever and will buy it over the other guys.

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[MichaelSmith]

Some advertisements these days show pictures which border on NSFW. How is this supposed to make me want to buy a product? I either avoid sites with those adverts or block them. Its a race to the bottom and I think (hope) we are close to the bottom.

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[MichaelSmith]

My wife uses facebook and I noticed the other day that my sister has 417 friends. Thats a lot.

Re:I have ad block in because of facebook

[drcln]

The key is balance. Advertisers forgot that. They took the short-view and went with increasingly intrusive and annoying adverts. They broke the balance in their favour, so we broke it in ours with filtering tools. It just so happens that it's easier to block every advert on the entire Internet than to be selective about it. And here we are.

So true. I get a dead tree newspaper and a few journals. The ads in these publications support them and don't annoy me at all. Sometimes I even learn something useful from an advertisement. I'm used to it. If ads in online journals didn't really annoy me, I'd never have bothered to figure out how to block them.

If Ars wants us to view ads to support their content, make it look and act like an ad in Science or Nature, seen but not detracting from the content. Show me ads as text boxes or non-animated gif/jpeg/png that stay in one place on the page.

Don't serve ads from any domain that serves blinking, animated, noisy, moving, flash, or most especially deceptive adds. Any advertiser that delivers deceptive ads WILL be blocked at the firewall. Adblock/Noscript takes care of the rest.

Really, Ars, we were fine with adverstiment supported publications for a long time. Poisoning that covenant was your own making. Now, it's just easier to block 'em all. So, if you want our eyeballs on your ads again, find another way to deliver ads so unobtrusively that maybe people won't bother adjusting their filters.

Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[markdavis]

We have been through all this stuff over and over again. People wouldn't have started blocking ads in the first place if they were reasonable ads. These are the reasons I use an ad-blocker:

* Animation- movement of any type
* Sound
* Popups
* Flyouts
* More ad space than content space
* Slow loading third-party sites

I am so anti-animation (I can't STAND movement on the screen while I am trying to read) that I have to block even non-Ad content (using "Flash Killer" and/or a manual Adblock addition for those sections with movement). Sometimes I even have to resort to killing Javascript ("JS Switch"). I don't want to deny sites revenue, but without being able to block the above types of Ad's, I wouldn't visit (or stay on) a site, anyway- so there is little difference.

Sorry Ars Technica... you can CLAIM your ads are non-intrusive and "quality", but I just visited your site with adblocking off and was immediately met with one highly annoying animated banner and a second, lower-animated, section. At least you only had two.

I am tired of companies trying to turn the Internet into Television.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[jhoegl]

Dont forget the viruses transmitted by Ads. Sure this only happened a few times through large internet ad agencies, but its only a mater of time before it happens again
Ads would be the #1 way to saturate a lot of computers in a short amount of time. Ill never remove ad blockers.
That being said I am sure website developers can come up with a solution which checks if their ads are being blocked and if so, deny access to the site.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[tonycheese]

CONGRATULATIONS, YOU'VE WON A FREE IPOD NANO!
It's been so long since I've heard those words yelled at me through my computer speakers. Not to mention seeing so many huge ads of almost naked women when I'm trying to do something basic on the internet. It takes some effort for people to other to install ad-block and much more effort for someone out there to maintain their list of things to block, so it's clearly in response to something hugely bothersome.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[markdavis]

Everything is in the eye of the beholder. YOU might not think it is a big deal, but I do (and so do many others). And no, it is not making excuses. Before there was such a thing as adblockers, I hacked Netscape to "break" animated GIF display (there was no option for turning it off). Then came Flash, which totally ruined major parts of the Web and can't easily be blocked without usually removing useful parts of the site. And now it is AJAX/JS animation, which is nearly impossible to stop without ruining a site.

My beef with animation is very real. As for static Google ads- I actually ENABLE those, because they are small, fast, non-animated, quiet, and *RELEVANT*.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[KDR_11k]

We grab ad blockers because they do what we want, if they do more than that (e.g. block text ads) we aren't going to go out of our way to stop that. Animations are a much bigger deal if you don't spend your whole time browsing with animated ads everywhere, when I use someone else's computer I find even basic movement in ads unbearable because I set my browser up to disable all animations.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[BoxRec]

If you are a regular reader maybe you could consider subscribing to their site, that way both parties are happy, you don't see any ads and they get a little revenue.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[MobyDisk]

I find flashblock eliminates 90% of the animating ads, without blocking normal ads. I think Firefox has an option to disable GIF animation. Hopefully, one day it will have the ability to block HTML5 animations too.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[owlnation]

Could not possibly agree more!

I've never seen many animated ads on websites. In the days before adblock, I'd scroll the screen, put a piece of paper over that part of the monitor, or just leave the site -- never to return usually.

No-one has ever gotten any money from me by showing me an animated ad. No-one EVER will. If by chance I happen to catch the name of the company that produced the ad, I will do everything I can to avoid buying from them for the rest of my life. If your company doesn't respect my eyes, time and intelligence, then fuck you! I'm not giving you any money.

You want ads, fine. Google got it pretty much right. Discreet, contextual links. Those are quality ads. They can even have pictures in them, but if they move -- they die.

Arstechnica, if you aren't smart enough to understand this, and as the parent said; this is oft-discussed and well-known, then your site will eventually die. And it will be ENTIRELY your own fault. Quality ads do NOT intrude on the user -- they do NOT need to. It's just that simple.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[Bit101]

I'm with that too. I'm perfectly fine with ads like the Google text ads. Hell, I even enjoy them sometimes. I went to a site that had these ads that constantly advertised for different MMOs, which I tried. I won't have found about these sites.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[betterunixthanunix]

Which sites are ruined by not having javascript enabled? Which sites are ruined by not having Flash installed? Certainly not Ars, which I browse without either. Slashdot seems fine. I guess I am missing out on the major new developments on the web or something like that...

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[lc_overlord]

I have to agree, though personally i don't mind the slightly animated ones.

They started it (not specifically Ars Technica), they got greedy in wanting to maximize ad exposure and now they have to pay the price, it's that simple.
I mean i am not against advertising as i am myself trying to start something up that is partially ad supported, but until something can be done about this i have to block everything, and so should everyone else.

I have a suggestion, lets introduce a new html tag called noadblock (or possibly a CSS value)
within it the browser and relevant plug-in will make sure that content cant be alowed to
*make a sound
*change size, visibility or position
*expand past it's set borders
*be transparent
*have a total area larger than half a screen or something like that
*take long to load (in addition they also have to load last)
*interact with the user except for normal linking

but in return all adblockers will respect that tag and show it

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[edumacator]

No-one has ever gotten any money from me by showing me an animated ad. No-one EVER will.

I've actually seen some interesting items in flashing ads, but I'll leave the page, clear my cache and cookies, then go google the site, so that the company with the ad doesn't know the flashy ad worked...

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[DoktorFaust]

They addressed exactly the issue you cite in the fourth comment of the article. From the comment,

When you disable Flash completely, we serve up static backup ads. Flashblock, however, breaks this so it's effectively the same as running a dedicated ad blocker. It's more a technical problem with Flashblock, though.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[Jeff DeMaagd]

My general policy is the ad media type must match the content media type. If the content is video & sound, then the ad may be video and sound. If the content is a text article, the ad may be text. Motion, sound & animated ads for still content is out of bounds as far as I'm concerned. Ad networks and sites that aren't content sensitive don't earn my pity.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[Kuroji]

So wait, if you don't HAVE Flash installed, they've got backups, but if you DO have Flash installed and the elements sit there and are never loaded...

Jeez. This whole article reads like a little boy who nobody's listening to because he cries 'wolf', and he's trying to get people to listen to him cry 'wolf' again. Where is the real wolf when you need it?!

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[Deorus]

I find NoScript pretty effective for what you describe. Ad servers are usually on a specific domain, even those hosted by the content providers themselves, thus making them easy to block. It requires some tweaking at the start, including personalizing a lot of settings and teaching NoScript exactly what to block, but once you've been running it for a while you won't even remember that it ever existed, you won't have third party WSRP slowing your browser down, you will never have to run untrusted Flash content again, and your regular websites will continue to work as they always did.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[markdavis]

JS: Any site using forms or other controls, and there are MANY. Example: Netflix.
Flash: Any site using Flash to provide content, and there are MANY. Example: Infiniti.

Ars doesn't require either to work properly.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[markdavis]

Or
*animate

Remember, animation is far more annoying to many people than half of what you listed. If there were a method to block what you and I listed, and yet still display ads that remain, yes, I would give it a try. But I doubt something like that will ever happen.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[markdavis]

>As it stands, AdBlock is pretty much the nuclear option - wiping out all advertisements because some of them are annoying.

I agree with everything you said, except part of that statement. It is not because SOME of them are annoying, it is because MOST of them are annoying. Big difference.

Turn off adblock and browse a few sites. Then COUNT the ones that are not animated, not too big, don't make sound, don't take over content, don't produce flyouts, etc. My estimate is that less than 10% of ads are non-annoying.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[teg]

Firefox with flashblock and image.animation_mode=None (see about:config) fixes most of this, without killing every single ad.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[betterunixthanunix]

Forms...like, oh, Slashdot? I am using an HTML4 form right now to post. No Javascript needed, friend.

As for Flash, well, perhaps I just do not immerse myself deeply enough in the world of Flash provided content. I really do not watch Youtube or Hulu or any of the other dozens of "rich" websites...

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[couchslug]

After Ars sold out (kudos to the creators for making money on a very good site) this was inevitable.

Dear website management everywhere:

I block what annoys me. I'M the CUSTOMER for your content. I'm all about me. If I like you, because you please me, I will be supportive. If I like the content but your adverts irk me, I will block them and browse anyway. I don't care what you like. Know that.

Please me or fuck you, that simple. No, I don't really care if your business model fails. That's Capitalism. The market decides. I'm the market.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[bwcbwc]

One highly-annoying banner ad seems like a small price to pay. It's not a pop-up, pop-under or anything really obtrusive. Scroll past it and forget it.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[mrmeval]

They do know it worked because it's trivial to correlate your visit to when their ad is displayed. If they get a lot of 'anonymous' hits they know an add in a given time frame worked and will keep doing it. If they display ad x on day y and you visit on day y about product x they have a match. If they're even smarter they'll put a coupon code or other uniq identifying code on the ad which is spawn in real time for every browser getting the ad. That will tie you to the serving website.

I really thought the product coupon created for each browser view to be pretty cool even if I hate ads, it's a subtle hack that takes a huge amount of server power.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[nxtw]

We have been through all this stuff over and over again. People wouldn't have started blocking ads in the first place if they were reasonable ads.

This is simply not true. I started blocking ads because they were there.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[fast turtle]

Then you're using NoScript in the wrong Manner. The way to use NoScript is to block all by default and only allow a few websites to run scripts/flash that need it. It's a proactive instead of reactive solution. Yes it breaks many websites but then of the many I visit most don't require scripts to work and the few I frequently visit such as Google and Newegg are in the Whitelist that allows scripts/flash to run. That's how you use NoScript. Not as a poor mans replacement for Adblock/Plus.

The reason I quit using Adblock was simply the fact that as the filter grows larger and larger, Firefox gets slower and slower. I'm one of those who find that any website I can use w/o allowing scripts/flash and all that other crap is one I'll visit again. If it doesn't work w/o it, I'll never come back and I've been that way since the first pop-up/under opened enough windows on my system that I had to pull the damn plug to regain control in the mid 90's. Sorry but that kind of abuse taught me damn early to be proactive about preventing the issue in the first place and now days due to all the advertisers that have been hacked/used as attack vectors for malware and such, I've expanded things to blocking at the hosts file level after my local proxy server. It's a simple monitoring app that allows me to keep track of my current traffic that I can vary the length of the list. Works damn nicely and allows me to review the http/s traffic (headers/response) with the full unobscufated name of the website that responds. Yes I've caught many advertisers this way and have blocked them in the hosts file as anyone who goes to such effort to block/hide the domain name is up to no good in my books and I have no desire to communicate with them.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[weaponsfree]

Sorry Ars Technica... you can CLAIM your ads are non-intrusive and "quality", but I just visited your site with adblocking off and was immediately met with one highly annoying animated banner and a second, lower-animated, section

Ars Technica has for years discouraged its users from running ad blockers. They need the revenue; I get that. However, since Ars was acquired by Conde Nast, the ads have become significantly more intrusive and annoying.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[edumacator]

They do know it

Damn it!

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[neosake]

I don't want to deny sites revenue, but without being able to block the above types of Ad's, I wouldn't visit (or stay on) a site, anyway- so there is little difference.

So in essence you're hurting the site more by visiting them with no ads than not visiting them at all. TFA's point was that not visiting them doesn't cost them bandwith / server fees etc, but visiting them with adblock costs THEM to serve you content. With no return.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[Game_Ender]

So the only thing they had was animation and those animations stopped after a few seconds didn't they? They also loaded after the page's content. I think you have to get over yourself, they are as low key as possible while still satisfy the people who pay for the ads. As for internet = TV, they are both "rich" media, ie. if it allows animation it will be used. If you are *truly* tired of the Internet being TV you would never use an online video site, or use it to gather video.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[markdavis]

Ars' site is certainly not horrible, by any definition. But, no, the animation did NOT stop after a few seconds. To me, it is not as low-key as possible if the ad is animated. Period. (And it doesn't have to be an "ad" to drive me batty while I am trying to read, it is any type of content). Different people have different tolerance levels for different types of annoyances/stimuli. Certainly there are things in YOUR life that annoy you to a similar level... how would you like being told to "get over yourself" regarding those things?

To me, it is like trying to listen to a song with another song playing at the same time. When I am reading, I don't want and can't "tune out" movement. I don't have that "experience" when reading a book, a newspaper, a magazine, a menu, or a manual. And it is precisely WHY most humans have a hard time tuning it out that most ads use movement in the first place... to draw attention to them! They want to be distracting, and they are.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[Reziac]

Intrusive ads and slow-loading 3rd party sites are the real killers for me.

Hitting me in the face with an ad doesn't make me more likely to buy; quite the reverse. Oh, I might remember it... but I'll make a point of NOT buying that product.

And forcing me to wait for someone else's slow ad-server (I'm lookin' at YOU, google) ... well, at this point I either abort the page-load or give up and go elsewhere. Expecting me to wait 30 seconds for someone else's irrelevant-to-me junk is just BS. Oh, it's only 30 seconds out of my day? Multiply that times 50 or 100 pages a day. NOW how much of my time have you wasted??

I didn't mind the old-fashioned SILENT banners, even if they had some minor animation -- that only looped ONCE. I didn't mind the original google ads that loaded instantly and sometimes actually were interesting. Go back to that, and maybe I'll look at your ads and your site again.

Re:Sorry Ars, you are animated too

[bingoUV]

Evil bit FTW. Yo man, you found the solution at last.

Ads suck

[mcelrath]

Ads are invasive, intrusive, annoying, and I don't want to see them. ever. There are laws against sending advertisements over the fax and cold-calling cell phones. The logic is that the recipient must pay for the unsolicited advertisement (in fax paper, toner, or cell phone minutes).

Internet ads are no different. I pay for bandwidth and connection time, so your ad directly costs me money, and it should be illegal for that reason. It costs me time too, making your page slower and more annoying. I don't want to have to hunt for the content among all the cleverly disguised ads. I don't want to have to examine the links to figure out which ones are ads and which ones are legitimate.

I will continue blocking ads until the end of time. If you can't figure out how to make money without annoying people, that's your problem. Get creative folks, and stop whining about how you wish people would just be more receptive to being annoyed.

Re:Ads suck

[Iyonesco]

If you don't want to see adverts don't visit any websites that have adverts on them. If you're repeatedly visiting websites that you know to have adverts then you're looking at the adverts voluntarily so it is no way an invasion or an intrusion.

Besides, without adverts the only way websites will be able to fund themselves is through fees. Would you rather pay a few dollars a month for every website you visit?

Re:Ads suck

[rbb]

I pay for bandwidth and connection time, so your ad directly costs me money, and it should be illegal for that reason.

Funny, by blocking ads and still visiting the site you are costing the content provider money. You don't seem to have a problem with that. If the ads bother you that much, the solution is much simpler than using adblocking software. Just don't visit that site.

Re:Ads suck

[Registered Coward v2]

Ads are invasive, intrusive, annoying, and I don't want to see them. ever. There are laws against sending advertisements over the fax and cold-calling cell phones. The logic is that the recipient must pay for the unsolicited advertisement (in fax paper, toner, or cell phone minutes).

Internet ads are no different.

Internet ads are different - the key being unsolicited - you chose to go to a site, unlike fax spam or cold - calls where the sender initiates the communication.

I pay for bandwidth and connection time, so your ad directly costs me money, and it should be illegal for that reason. It costs me time too, making your page slower and more annoying. I don't want to have to hunt for the content among all the cleverly disguised ads. I don't want to have to examine the links to figure out which ones are ads and which ones are legitimate.

You can chose not to visit a site and not expend the bandwidth if you don't like the ads. If you don't like how a site pays for itself, don't visit it. Pretty simple; and if enough people do that the site will go away. Sites have real bills to pay; and unless they do that they will eventually fold. Ads are one way of doing that.

I will continue blocking ads until the end of time. If you can't figure out how to make money without annoying people, that's your problem. Get creative folks, and stop whining about how you wish people would just be more receptive to being annoyed.

They are - one site I frequent ran a public radio style pledge campaign, and vigorously polices its ads to remove annoying ones. Others are moving to paid content. In the end, there is no free lunch; good content costs money and if people insist on blocking ads they will have to find another way to make money or go out of business.

Re:Ads suck

[Puff_Of_Hot_Air]

Of course, another way of looking at it is "only a smallish percentage of people will be tech savy enough to do the whole add blocking thing, so let the other saps pay for it" Now this is going to break down for tech oriented websites, in which case I suggest "no intrusive adds, and ask people to unblock your site". There, see, everyone is happy.

Re:Ads suck

[edumacator]

Good points.

But then do you have a valid way for companies that produce the content to turn a profit? I'm willing to see non-intrusive ads that don't flash or talk, but the intrusive ads bug me, so I don't return to sites that have consistently intrusive ads.

But if we don't accept some ads, and if you are being honest, the cost of ads is miniscule in bandwidth cost.

Again, the points you make are valid, but I don't see any practical alternative.

Re:Ads suck

[mcelrath]

If you don't want to see adverts don't visit any websites that have adverts on them.

That's supposed to work how? I'll just reprogram my browser to send a HTTP DOESTHISSITEHAVEADS request before following every link...

Besides, without adverts the only way websites will be able to fund themselves is through fees. Would you rather pay a few dollars a month for every website you visit?

Yes. But I don't want to juggle 50 different subscriptions at $50/year each. Get creative folks.

I do have a couple subscriptions, but I'm not going to buy a subscription for a one-off site I visit because the link appeared on slashdot (or google news, or twitter...). The threshold for buying a subscription is very high. e.g. I had one for lwn.net because I loved their excellent kernel traffic summaries, and I found myself reading it weekly for that.

Get creative.

Re:Ads suck

[MobyDisk]

You know advertisements on Slashdot just financed your ability to post that message.

Re:Ads suck

[mcelrath]

Go ahead and implement RFC31783, the HTTP COMPENSATIONNEGOTIATION extension, and I will use it. Or block people who use ad blockers. It's your perogative.

You object to my moralistic argument but you clearly feel it's my moral obligation to view your annoying ads. I smell a double standard...

Remove morality from the argument. This is business. You want to make money, I don't begrudge you that. I don't want to be annoyed. Don't begrudge me that. Now get creative.

Re:Ads suck

[Fnkmaster]

One thing I never really figured out is why mega-content-networks never sprouted up to put huge volumes of online content, ad-free, behind paywalls. Or micro-paywalls. The point is if you had a common subscription or micropayment framework and the people producing this content all banded together, they could make money off it without the awful advertisements that none of their customers want, or at least a more modest form of advertising that wouldn't be so repugnant we all ad-block it away.

Cable TV still has ads, admittedly, but my premium channels don't and my on demand content doesn't. I pay for all that through the cable company, which acts as a common provider of content (they also provide the pipe, and it's not a great overall analogy, just making a general point). The reason you don't want to sign up for 50 different subscriptions is that 1) the prices are too high because all these sites know they get a tiny, tiny fraction of viewers to sign up so they price accordingly and 2) the effort to enter all your credit card information and set up and manage monthly billing from all these different entities is a huge pain in the ass (and you know once you sign up, de-signing up will usually be impossible).

The obvious solution is a common content network that lets you easily manage your subscription to all the sites you pay for online. You might not be willing to pay 20 bucks a month for Ars Technica, but you might be willing to pay 20 bucks a month for a mega content network that gave you paid, ad-free, full subscription access to New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Slashdot, Ars Technica, and tons of other sites you visit.

Content doesn't have to be free and content doesn't have to be solely supported by godawful advertising that everybody eventually will block. Somebody just has to put together a network of content providers that creates enough value to create critical mass.

Re:Ads suck

[mcelrath]

For a concrete suggestion:

Why don't there exist subscription "networks"? If you look at the sites slashdot links to, I bet you could list 20 sites that get 90% of the links. These guys should all get together and create a network such that a subscription on one site buys you no ads on the other sites. Most subscriptions would end up being with link farms like google news or discussion sites like slashdot, probably... Buying subscriptions for one-off sites that appear on a link farm is not worthwhile. This needs to be the regime of micro-payments. Of course very small payments are also impractical, so one solution is to aggregate.

Personally I'd put a voting meter too (kind of like stumbleupon), kind of a thumbs-up, thumbs-down meaning "I'm happy paying for this" or "Get this shite out of my face". That information that could be used for many purposes by the payment network admins...

Re:Ads suck

[mcelrath]

Actually slashdot allows high-karma moderators to disable ads. So my ad blocker is still running, but slashdot doesn't show me ads. ;)

Re:Ads suck

[edumacator]

You aren't leaving them a lot of room for creativity.

Your criteria is don't charge me and don't show me anything I don't want to see, and still provide me with good content.

Using the "Get creative" argument is an attempt for wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Your comments suggest this is an all or nothing issue for you. Why not allow simple text ads that aren't intrusive, but don't visit sites that have too many blinking flashing ads that truly ARE annoying?

Re:Ads suck

[MobyDisk]

I have that option too. I left the ads on. I didn't want to drain the site, and the ads are so unintrusive I don't even see them any longer.

Re:Ads suck

[baegucb]

You don't have this option?

"Ads Disabled
Thanks again for helping make Slashdot great!"

I actually didn't mind slashdot's ads when I used to see them years ago. And it could be amusing when the company advertising was being trashed in the comments. But it's just plain good security to run adblock and noscript. But as others have stated, unobtrusive ads I don't mind, and some sites I go to I still see some of those when the author has taken the care to design his site that way (makes me even click on them too).

Re:Ads suck

[mcelrath]

ERROR 3734: Logic fault. Terminating conversation...

Re:Ads suck

[mcelrath]

I never said "don't charge me". I'm unwilling to be annoyed and have my time/attention wasted. I'm not unwilling to pay for content.

Re:Ads suck

[edumacator]

Ok, good suggestion. Let's go into business and make it happen. Kidding of course. I'd have no idea how to put that together.

Re:Ads suck

[Stauken]

Hell in a lot of cases the fact is that UNBLOCKED ads and visiting the site and using its service still actually costs the content provider money.

Re:Ads suck

[blarkon]

You are not a customer. You are a parasite.

Re:Ads suck

[bwcbwc]

I pay for bandwidth and connection time, so your ad directly costs me money, and it should be illegal for that reason.

And how much have you paid the authors and editors of the sites you visit lately? TANSTAAFL.

Re:Ads suck

[allo]

you do not need to provide content to us parasites. But if you do, do not cry if we do not load all of your content, but only the content we want to load.

Re:Ads suck

[Al Dimond]

Slashdot rewards some people with the ability to disable ads personally. But ultimately all the cash that comes in is from showing somebody ads.

Re:Ads suck

[sootman]

Wow. You are so totally wrong you don't deserve a single "insightful" mod. Since Slashdot still lacks a "-1. factually incorrect" mod option, I feel compelled to reply, lest people stand in awe of your "+5, Insightful" score and think you're actually right.

"There are laws against sending advertisements over the fax and cold-calling cell phones. The logic is that the recipient must pay for the unsolicited advertisement (in fax paper, toner, or cell phone minutes). Internet ads are no different. I pay for bandwidth and connection time, so your ad directly costs me money, and it should be illegal for that reason."

Wrong, wrong, WRONG. The ads you see WHEN YOU VISIT A SITE THAT SOMEONE ELSE IS RUNNING are NOT "unsolicited." Let me put it to you this way: if some junk mail arrives at your house, that's unsolicited. If a magazine that you subscribe to arrives and it contains ads, those ads are NOT "unsolicited." If someone sends you an ad via fax, that is unsolicited. If you're watching a TV show and it has ads, those ads are not. See the difference?

Ars is a business. They choose to pay writers to create content, they buy servers and pay for electricity to keep them running, and they pay for bandwidth to--believe it or not, they do not get ONE PENNY of the money you give your ISP. And since they spent all this money to create content, they get to choose how to pay for it. They offer subscriptions but obviously your cheap ass isn't paying for that--if you were, you would not be here complaining about the ads because you wouldn't see them. Pretty much the only other option they have to make money is to sell ads. It's their product that comes along with these ads, so they are fully within their rights to do whatever the hell they want to with it.

It breaks down like this:

• They pay to create content.
• They use ads to pay for the content.
• You are free to block their ads.
• They are free to deny you the content they paid to produce.

And that's the deal. You don't like it? Then block their ads or don't visit them. If they go out of business it is, as you say, "their problem." But get the idea out of your head that they're supposed to pay a staff to create content, pay to keep a bunch of servers running, AND then give that content away.

If somebody wants to run a site as a hobby and give away content, that's fine. If someone decides to run a site as a business, they are free to do so, and like EVERY OTHER BUSINESS N THE PLANET you are free to patronize them or not. It's just that simple. You don't like it? Then pay for some writers, start your own site, and give away the content, or "get creative" and find a way to monetize it that doesn't make whiny freeloaders like you unhappy. Otherwise, please STFU.

Re:Ads suck

[Ifni]

Your logic in your sig is highly flawed, which might explain the view espoused in your comment.

1. 1^2=1; good so far

2. (-1)^2=1; yes, yes

3. 1^2=(-1)^2; I'm with you so far

4. 1=-1; wait, what? You just said that (-1)^2=1, now you are saying it equals -1? Shouldn't the previous statement evaluate to 1=1?

5. 1=0; Um, that's not how this works (though it might explain the mistake in step 4), even if we took that last statement at face value - you are supposed to add, subtract, multiply, divide, etc each side the same (simply removing the exponent, as you did in step 4, is not a valid operation), so you would either add 1 to each side, or subtract one from each side (or multiply/divide both sides by 1 or -1), not add one side to the other. So you would end up with either 2=0 or 0=-2

I suspect you know this, which is probably why you felt this was humorous enough to include as your sig, but in a cutthroat community like Slashdot, having a logic error in your sig does not foster confidence in your comments. Especially when your comment is a perfect example of such logical fallacy.

YOU chose to view their free content, so the ad is not unsolicited - just like radio and TV and newspaper and magazine ads. THAT is the difference between web advertising and fax/cold calls. Since your basis has just been shown to be invalid, the rest of your argument crumbles.

Re:Ads suck

[Ifni]

You mean like cable television where I pay $40/month for the two channels I watch simply because it is part of a package with 75 other channels I could care less about?

Great plan! Where do I sign up?

Yes, I see your idea where you get to choose who you like and don't like (hello Twitter generation!), but again, this is the reason why I pay for 3 channels of ESPN and the Golf Channel - lots of people like sports, and I couldn't care less about them. This is why TV is chock full of reality TV. The point is, most people don't mind the ads much (which is why this model continues to work - so far), and so if you go by popular vote, things are much moe likely to stay the same. Since you are viewing Slashdot, it is a safe bet that you are largely in the minority of Internet users. Most people on the Internet are the tweens using MySpace and Twitter or the Average Joes managing their fantasy football league. You want them choosing what you pay for in your network?

The current model isn't perfect, but at least I only pay for what I actually enjoy, rather than paying twice as much (or more) in order to support everybody else's crap. You might say that because my interests are niche, that the things I like receive insufficient funding under this model, but I can prove otherwise (by the fact that they exist and continue to flourish). In your model, I would be forced to join (and thus pay for) potentially dozens of networks that each contain only one or two sites that I like. Sure, the Slashdot bundle would probably be worthwhile, but I also visit a wide variety of web comics and news sites that are distinct enough that they would be highly unlikely to be profitable in the same network unless I can customize my own network, a la the micro-payment plan discussed earlier.

Also, how would your plan (or the one I just linked) work when I go looking for information using Google - I will likely hit dozens of sites that aren't in any of my networks, are hidden behind paywalls thanks to the abolition of ad revenue, and that I don't want to sign up for (at $10/month because I have to buy a whole package) because I will probably never visit them again (and they might not even have the info I was looking for anyway)?

Re:Ads suck

[Ifni]

the ads are so unintrusive I don't even see them any longer

Just what every advertiser loves to hear!

This is why they continue to get more intrusive. Also, Slashdot gets more money when you click on the ads (I suspect, anyway). The best thing to do would be to occasionally click on an ad link so that the click through rate remains high so the advertisers don't decide that unobtrusive ads aren't effective enough. Of course, at some point they will begin tracking conversion (if they aren't already) - the percentage of clicks that result in revenue - and then it becomes a little trickier as you would then have to start giving the advertisers due consideration, possibly resulting in a purchase.

However, since most people aren't necessarily impulse buyers (beyond small items which require a level of instant gratification that web purchases don't typically satisfy), this would be a poor idea on the advertisers part, since most of the value of advertising is to plant the brand in the consumers mind, possibly resulting an revenue months later when the customer eventually finds himself in the market for what you are selling. I think advertisers realize this, and so I don't forsee conversion tracking being a major issue.

Re:Ads suck

[BatGnat]

You could be a slashdot subscriber for free, yet you are a anonymous coward....

Re:Ads suck

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Besides, without adverts the only way websites will be able to fund themselves is through fees. Would you rather pay a few dollars a month for every website you visit?

Yes, if the content is good. I could easily see budgeting myself $50 a month to cover favored web sites without any advertisements or third-party tracking. I understand that creation of quality content is not without its costs in both time and infrastructure. I'd much rather part with some small amount of money than have to a) watch ads jumping all over the screen or b) look at small unobtrusive ads connected to a larger ad service that is monitoring my viewing habits.

That also gives me a much more direct means of control over the sites I frequent - if I don't like the direction they take, I can stop paying. A thousand people who cease subscribing at $1/month ($1000 @ $1 ea) will have far more effect than ten thousand people who stop seeing ad imprints ($30/mo @ .003 / imprint)

Advertising (from the perspective of content providers) is the business of selling both the attention and viewing habits of their readers. When the attention you're selling is mine, the good content I receive in exchange is a pittance. My attention and privacy is worth more than that to me.

If you're selling something, sell it to me. Don't sell my attention and privacy to a third party leech, and attempt to unilaterally dictate the value of my attention and privacy as the price I must pay in return. Your news article/blog entry is not of sufficient value for me to accept it as payment.

That being said, the best way to make this point is not to adblock -- but to refuse to use the site. If a site does set the price of their article to be my attention/privacy -- then I don't have the right to say "No, that price is not acceptable, but I'm going to take the content anyway." My choice is to accept their terms or walk away from the deal.

If sites would either a) start charging directly for content (I love /.'s per-imprint model, though their subscription page seems to be broken at the moment) or b) start providing their own advertising without giving my data to third party networks, I would be able to spend my time on a much wider range of sites. Hmm, perhaps this is a good thing that I can't then... ;)

Re:Ads suck

[tftp]

* You are free to block their ads.
* They are free to deny you the content they paid to produce.
And that's the deal. You don't like it?

I personally like it very much and think this is the only civilized way to solve this problem. Everyone will be within their rights, and everyone's choice will be his own.

If they hide the content from adblockers then I do not know what I will do; my guess is that in 90% of cases I will just move to another web site, and in 10% I will whitelist them temporarily. If that's what they prefer me to do then they should just hide the content.

Re:Ads suck

[theskipper]

Me too. Plus Microsoft gets to pay for a worthless impression every time their Visual Studio banner pops up.

Power to the little people!

Re:Ads suck

[ATairov]

Notably, The Economist has a lot of content that's open and visible only to people who have RL subscriptions to it, but you're still able to buy selected reports for a reasonable fee if you want them, and a lot of the fresh content is available freely. They seem to be doing OK.

Re:Ads suck

[ATairov]

Same.

Re:Ads suck

[mcelrath]

Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.

Re:Ads suck

[mcelrath]

Oh don't worry, there was a little fight over moderation between "insightful" and "overrated". I always thought slashdot needs a "-1 disagree" moderation...but "overrated" gets used instead. Someone even went so far as to go back and mod down my posts on other stories, they disagreed so much.

I refuse to expend my resources on things which do not benefit me. It is in no way my obligation to spend CPU cycles and bandwidth spinning flash ads. These things also may cause me tangible harm, in viruses, privacy violating tracking, etc. You see loading flash ads on my n900. It's sllooowww, and 3G is not that fast in the first place. You better believe I run an ad blocker there. The marginal cost to me on a desktop computer is lower, but the principal is the same.

P.S. I never, ever click on ads anyway. So I'm saving you money in bandwidth by not requesting your ads. Hmmm...are pages with un-clicked ads self-supporting in bandwidth costs? Then we can just load ads in a hidden div. Surely advertisers would catch on if people started doing that. But I'm still not going to burn CPU to animate your gif or run flash or java.

P.P.S. I seriously lament the death of journalism. I really wish there was a way I could pay for it. But in no way can I consider annoying me to be a form of payment. Best I do right now is buy the print Economist on a semi-regular basis. But I'm not spending $50 because I visited Ars once. (I'm not a regular reader there) I'd hardly call that "journalism" anyway...

Re:Ads suck

[JD-1027]

I allowed ads through Slashdot as well even though I had this option. Within a few days I had my first case of "Waiting for ads.whatever.com" while my page wouldn't load.

Needless to say, I blocked everything again.

Sometimes?

[Aladrin]

If sometimes you 'have to accept those ads' then I have to block your ads totally. Maybe you should rethink that strategy, Ars?

Re:Sometimes?

[kakapo]

One way or another, Ars has to make its payroll or go out of business. I am sure they would love to get by with a couple of graceful text ads for worthy products at the bottom of each page, but it would seem that in the real world the people who work there can't make their mortgage and feed their kids that way.

But if it really bugs you, you can just not visit sites whose advertising content annoys you. And doesn't Ars sell subscriptions, which I assume are ad-free?

Part of the death-spiral of our local newspaper seems to have been a rise in hard-to-block pop-ups on its website. I could have beefed up my pop-up blocker, or I could just delete it from my list of bookmarks / feeds. I deleted it. (And I realized that almost all of the information it offers is actually available elsewhere, partly because our town has an experimental "hyperlocal" news site with original reporting)

This argument is as old as the net, but the answer to intrusive ads seems to be easier than a pop-up blocker. As they used to say in the days of TV, if you don't like it, just turn it off.

[Suspect I might burn some karma on this one]

Re:Sometimes?

[distantbody]

Maybe you should rethink that strategy, Ars?

Paywall here we come!!!

Re:Sometimes?

[betterunixthanunix]

If Ars cannot make its payroll without intrusive ads, then Ars needs to go out of business. To be honest, their articles are not really worth paying for (at least not for me), so it would seem that basic economics should kick in...

Re:Sometimes?

[distantbody]

Maybe you should rethink that strategy, Ars?

Paywall here we come!!!

Re:Sometimes?

[gardyloo]

Really? So how do you know their articles are crap? Probably because you've read some of them???

Yes, that's generally accepted as the most honest and effective way to know that something is crap. Present comments excepted, of course.

So... you (like a ton of people posting here) want better stuff then they are producing now, don't want to pay for it, and don't want any ads in place to generate revenue some other way.

I think people need to take some economics courses. There is no free lunch.

Of course we want high-quality stuff, for free. THAT's basic economics. Additionally, if the content goes away, I won't care. That's also basic economics. Bandying about Adam Smith and guilt isn't going to win you an argument about content which was independent until about two years ago, and has since been taken over by a magazine publisher.

      I used to like Wired in paper form. I really, really did. Now I can hardly wallow through their inserts and adverts, and the content, aside from one or two in-depth articles, is ALL FLUFF. If they didn't keep trying new layouts and "Wired, Tired, Expired" shit which no one seems to care about, and actually focused on the content, then I might put up with the ads. But they won't, and I won't even shell out $10 per year to have the land-filler shipped to me any more. That's basic environmentalism.

Re:Sometimes?

[couchslug]

"Paywall here we come!!!"

Buh-bye!!!

Re:Sometimes?

[Gaffod]

Who cares? With so much content being regurgitated by everyone, maybe some paywalls would get rid of duplicate content on the internet.

Re:Sometimes?

[Ifni]

And sometimes when you run computer software you just have to accept that it will crash. So you should probably just log off the Internet and never come back. In other words, what I think he was trying to convey is that such ads occasionally slip through - not that they are intentionally accepted by Ars. Ars could drop the offending ad provider, but the reality is that it probably isn't their fault either. They deal with thousands of ads per day and so can't have a person inspect each and every one that they accept for distribution. They rely on their clients to follow their guidelines, which prohibit creating certain types of ads. They probably also have technical measures that help to reduce the odds of accepting such ads. But unscrupulous clients will occasionally break those rules. The (reputable) ad company usually pulls them from rotation as soon a they are reported, but the fact is that you will still, on rare occasion, see one slip through, just like your spam filter isn't perfect (unless you, as you suggest above, just block ALL email).

If you can't accept anything less than perfection, then you have bigger issues than web advertising. By far.

Re:Sometimes?

[Hurricane78]

I know the “paywall” gets bashed a lot around here. But if you actually have valuable information, it’s a valid concept. In fact it’s the only concept at all, that guarantees you will get something in return.
But other than you might think, once the information is passed on trough the paywall, control of that information is split between the sender and the recipient. So then the client can choose if he wants something in return himself. And so the value of information is inversely proportional to the amount of people having it.

But passing the information on for free, and then expecting something in return, is like making music in the streets, an suing everyone who walked by without throwing something in your hat.

Re:Sometimes?

[Game_Ender]

I have been on that site for 5+ years, and they have only run 2-3 of those campaigns ever. And they were really nothing more then a large non-cycling animation banner on the top of the site, linking to the sidebar. You pervasive ad-block everything people are very oversensitive, the real world is much more annoying an unwilling to bend to your will.

Intrusive ads

[dushkin]

I block flash by default (click-to-flash) both at home and at work and run an ad blocker at work. The flash bit is because Flash is full of problems, and I don't always want it loaded. The ad block at work is because ads make it look like I'm not working :/

Ads have tuned down a bit since a few years back, so I'm actually not as inclined to block them anymore. Except, like I said, if it's Flash or I'm at work.

Also, ads on Israeli websites make me want to kill myself. They're so intrusive. Popping over text as a flash graphic for instance.

ugh.

Malicious...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are simply too many blinky, flashy (and indeed Flash) ads out there. Popups. Popunders. Sound. And far, FAR too many malicious ads: it's bitten too many sites and too many major ad networks to trust any of them. I don't want third-party cookies tracking me, I never did, and I don't.

I've blocked banner ads on the web since they existed. I helped with the Proxomitron (RIP, Scott). A web browser isn't finished these days until it can block ads, and if you're locking people out because they don't view the ads, I will help with ad blockers' counter-countermeasures.

The reason is simple: because banner ads are fucking annoying. (Hint: I don't block text ads. That is reasonable.)

I don't care about your business model, I want to browse your goddamn site without having blinky Flash shit in my face and without having malicious Javascript even try to fuck my browser. We're not pirating or anything, we're just not displaying your ads, we're showing your site to us on our terms, because it's our computer and we can do what the fuck we want.

This makes you come over as a whiny crybaby. "Oh noes, it costs money to write articles!" No it fucking doesn't. People send you gear to review, damn it, what's costing you money about that? Oh my god, traffic? What a monster. Oh, wait, I own a hosting company, and traffic is fucking cheap. Thousands of bloggers prove you wrong about content costing money to produce. I appreciate what you do, man, but it didn't cost me a dime to write this.

Don't make the mistake of thinking readers need your site. Believe me, it's the other way around.

Re:Malicious...

[Donniedarkness]

Banner ads annoy you? For me, as long as it's not making sound and not obscuring the content I'm trying to view (those pop-over text ads are annoying), I'm not much bothered by ads.

Block content and...

[Deorus]

You won't be indexed by search engines, so you lose more than if you don't block it. Furthermore I stay clear of any website forcing me to add exceptions to NoScript that would allow third party advertisers to run any kind of code on my browser.

Re:Block content and...

[YojimboJango]

I'm with parent on this one. I don't default to trusting anyone running code on my machine. I've got flash and javascript blocked by default (NoScript, FlashBlock).

If I trust your site (and I do trust Ars Technica), I'll white list them and only them for javascript. However I do not trust the half dozen shady ad and tracking services wanting to run scripts.

If you want my ad views, host it yourself.

Re:Block content and...

[nxtw]

You won't be indexed by search engines, so you lose more than if you don't block it.

Not true. I have seen member only/premium sites that allow their content to be indexed by Google. They even instruct Google not to cache the page.

Re:Block content and...

[Ifni]

This may be an option for larger sites, but for smaller sites the overhead would likely eat up any revenue that the ads themselves would provide. And I'm not just talking about bandwidth, but interfacing with the clients and vetting their ads to make sure that they meet your standards. The latter part is still required even if you use ads provided by some third party ad agency (you would likely just have some automated script downloading their ads to your server nightly). And even then, the unscrupulous advertiser will simply set up the ad to behave well when you view it, but behave obnoxiously when viewed by others, preventing you from properly vetting it. You can block all ads from that agency or company, but most of these are probably random fly by night organizations and a new one will just crop up, owned and operated by the same people, to continue their atrocious practices.

The point is, hosting the ads on your site only solves the problem of slow ad servers holding up the page loading. It provides additional overhead that is costly to the larger sites and unmanageable to the smaller ones without significantly improving ad quality. Disallowing Flash and JavaScript ads may work, and I can support such an initiative, but ads that are easy to ignore don't generate revenue, and thus become less attractive to advertisers, eventually cutting off the revenue streams of your favorite sites.

Fake virus scanner

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to the girl who got that stupid fake virus scanner that I cleaned off her computer friday. Came from a served ad.

Disable Adblock for the sites you like, simple

[Ziekheid]

Ads are fine with me as long as they aren't screenfilling/blocking content (like some flash ads that fill your entire screen with some shitty animation).
I have adblock enabled by default but add sites I visit regularly (like this one) in the allowed list so they can display ads.

Adblock Plus proposal

[kasper_souren]

They're missing the point. Most of the ads only get them money if people click on them. From my experience people who run adblock software are also people who refuse to click on ads in general. So instead of calling people to be annoyed by ads they should call people to turn off their adblock for a second, click on an ad and turn it back on. But well, that's not gonna make the advertisers happy. The authors of Adblock Plus came up with a better proposal http://adblockplus.org/blog/an-approach-to-fair-ad-blocking - I wonder if Ars Technica has looked into that.

Re:Adblock Plus proposal

[Nirac]

From the article:

"There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won't hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis."

Re:Adblock Plus proposal

[pr0nbot]

Is there a version of adblock that hides the ad but still downloads ("views") it, to /dev/null?

Re:Adblock Plus proposal

[dzfoo]

But that argument itself is based on a misconception: that advertisers are just nice rich guys that will throw money at you for just displaying ads, and that the mere fact of exposing the ads is value in and of itself.

Advertising is an investment. The expectation of the advertiser is to recoup that investment by increased sales or market share. If site visitors ultimately do not care about the ads and do not click on them, or somehow the impressions are not translated into a return on that investment; then they do nothing for the advertiser. Eventually, the value of those ads will decrease to the advertiser, to the point that it will pay less for them, or it may decide not to advertise at all on your site.

In the end, it is not just merely displaying the ads that makes money, but the complex dynamics of the market, its interaction with potential customers, and the ability to influence their behaviour. Sure, the nice rich guys will throw money at you for the short term, with the promise that all those eyes on your site will eventually turn into gold, but counting on this a priori is a flawed business model.

This is not to say that advertising does not work. Obviously it makes a lot of money to a lot of people. However, it means that a site cannot monetize every single viewer, at least not realistically for the long term. It also means that those who refuse to view your ads will only inflate your page view count artificially, if somehow you manage to force them into exposing them to the ads. And ultimately, this will result in diluting the value of your site to advertisers.

        -dZ.

Re:Adblock Plus proposal

[bwcbwc]

FTFA: There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won't hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis.

Re:Adblock Plus proposal

[Cl1mh4224rd]

But that argument itself is based on a misconception: that advertisers are just nice rich guys that will throw money at you for just displaying ads, and that the mere fact of exposing the ads is value in and of itself.

Advertising is an investment. The expectation of the advertiser is to recoup that investment by increased sales or market share. If site visitors ultimately do not care about the ads and do not click on them, or somehow the impressions are not translated into a return on that investment; then they do nothing for the advertiser. Eventually, the value of those ads will decrease to the advertiser, to the point that it will pay less for them, or it may decide not to advertise at all on your site.

So how do you explain advertising in traditional print media, television, or radio? There's no inherent means of tracking purchases, or even interest, generated by advertisements placed in those mediums. And I don't think anyone considers McDonald's to be "nice, rich guys" for paying large sums of cash to have their latest burger repeatedly displayed on a television screen.

Companies will pay good money to simply get their product in front of a lot of people, with no guarantee that any of those viewers will actually purchase the advertised product (immediately or... ever).

I'm not here to defend advertsing (I use NoScript, which blocks the vast majority of ads on websites), but your view seems completely wrong-headed.

Re:Adblock Plus proposal

[Rocket_Sci]

This is a misconception. Most ads are sold on a cost per view basis. Cost per click is primarily a way to sell search-engine based text ads.

Re:Adblock Plus proposal

[stephenpeters]

In the end, it is not just merely displaying the ads that makes money, but the complex dynamics of the market, its interaction with potential customers, and the ability to influence their behaviour.

Which makes the advertisers insistence on displaying blinking noisy crap on a technical site whose audience has a hair trigger on Adblock all the more bizarre. While the article is mainly Ars whining, most commentary on this issue misses the point that both the advertisers and Ars would make more money if the advertisers were a little more intelligent about what type of ad they display to specific audiences. I keep hearing about the death of online advertising, but as Google has shown the market can be very healthy indeed if one pays attention to the audience.

Perhaps the next few successful ad startups will be those that can place ads while resisting the natural proclivities of the ad agency and client to gravitate towards garish and overbearing. I can only hope so.

Wo are the REAL freeloaders though?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Next Ad you Click on may be a Virus:

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/06/15/2056219

Also, if a websurfer can go faster online by blocking out banner ads (as well as safer, per the article above), then they have that option via browser addons like Adblock (or protection vs. their more than potentially infected scripting via NoScript), or by mechanisms like PAC files or specialized CSS files, or a custom HOSTS file.

There's that above, which means quite possibly spending monies on removing said infestation (which is not cheap, and not every "Joe Sixpack" knows how it is done, or wants to for that matter), and the fact that people pay for their own linetime.

So it's ok for Ken Fisher of arstechnica to ask those same people to not only pay for their linetime, and for possible removal of viruses/spywares/rootkits/trojans/malwares in general that they may have caught from malicious adbanners too, but also to pay for Ken Fisher's life on top of that all as well? A life and lifestyle made off of millions made from ad banner revenues no doubt, and yet not off of his own efforts writing up every article his site has done, as well as the coding work put into his site (which I doubt he did every line of himself as well).

So, who are the REAL freeloaders here? The end users, or those using the end users to make their living from those passing by their sites and being forced to look at flashing ads (which are attacks on the psyche no questions asked and not much better than subliminal ads on T.V., since both basically snag a user's subconscious attention via a "look at me and let me sell you something you may not even need"!)

So, once more: Who is/are the REAL freeloaders here??

The end users, or those using them (website owners) to make their living from those passing by their sites and being forced to look at flashing ads (which are attacks on the psyche no questions asked, basically yelling at them "look at me and let me sell you something you may not even need"? There's the real question to ask here!)??

This is a "double-edged sword", and that is all there is to it, period.

Above all - I wonder how much Ken Fisher pays his article writers in terms of the percentage of profits he makes off of their efforts?? How come I have this feeling it is only tiny crumbs from the massive profits he's earned over time from ad banner monies given he by his sponsors???

I hope the article writer reads this.

How is this different than muting TV commercials?

[schwit1]

Or changing the channel when a commercial comes on?

My thoughts

[Mystery00]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't internet ads generate their revenue through the amount of clicks they incur? I know Google's ads do this.

By using adblock, what I'm saying is: I'm never going to be clicking on any of the ads on your website.

If I didn't use it, I still wouldn't be clicking on any ads on your website and they will also annoy me.

It's most likely that the people using ad blocking don't care about the ads you display and won't be clicking on them anyway.

Re:My thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't internet ads generate their revenue through the amount of clicks they incur? I know Google's ads do this.

Ken Fisher, the article author, corrects you:

"There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won't hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis."

There are so many benefits to RFTA. Yes, I must be new here.

Re:My thoughts

[MobyDisk]

I thought they moved on to "impressions" not "clicks" - I don't think I've ever (intentionally) clicked on an ad in my life.

Re:My thoughts

[bwalling]

You clearly didn't read the article. That argument is refuted from the outset. I've got to assume that as the (now former) owner of the site, he at least knows how he gets paid for his ads.

Re:My thoughts

[rel4x]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't internet ads generate their revenue through the amount of clicks they incur? I know Google's ads do this. By using adblock, what I'm saying is: I'm never going to be clicking on any of the ads on your website. If I didn't use it, I still wouldn't be clicking on any ads on your website and they will also annoy me. It's most likely that the people using ad blocking don't care about the ads you display and won't be clicking on them anyway.

Small text ads are generally pay per click, large banners are generally pay per 1000 views.

Re:My thoughts

[DoktorFaust]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't internet ads generate their revenue through the amount of clicks they incur? I know Google's ads do this.

RTFA. From the THIRD and FOURTH sentences in the article,

There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won't hurt a site financially. This is wrong.

Re:My thoughts

[smd75]

Good job not reading the article. The author specifically states that they are paid per view, not only clicks. If it were clicks, they wouldnt be making very much money anyway.

He also mentions that advertisers for tv are paying to reach a large guaranteed audience, websites can't guarantee an audience.

Re:My thoughts

[Mystery00]

I stand corrected.

But I have to wonder, how does that method generate any money? It doesn't really matter if I see the ad or not, I will still not buy the product, click the ad or ever talk about it. I block ads because they are irrelevant and annoying. Same as I don't watch ads on TV and focus on other things while those annoying, (muted) internet video ads play.

Why would you ask your users to intentionally worsen their viewing experience of your website, to put it bluntly they don't care about you, if the ads aren't gaining enough suckers and you think your content is an unrivalled, top quality jewel of the internet then make it subscription based.

Re:My thoughts

[Junior J. Junior III]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't internet ads generate their revenue through the amount of clicks they incur? I know Google's ads do this.

By using adblock, what I'm saying is: I'm never going to be clicking on any of the ads on your website.

If I didn't use it, I still wouldn't be clicking on any ads on your website and they will also annoy me.

It's most likely that the people using ad blocking don't care about the ads you display and won't be clicking on them anyway.

You are wrong.

Ads did used to pay only for clickthrough, but I think this model went away a few years ago, because it was a poor model for advertising, and failed to account for the value of branding even when a sale isn't directly attributable to a specific viewing of a specific ad.

Ads currently pay two ways: for clicks and for views. Even if you never click, if your browser downloads and displays the ad, it helps support the site that presented the ad. So, if you're blocking ads entirely, you're denying the site revenue for those ad views that they fail to generate.

I don't block advertisements

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I only block Flash. Or, rather, on some machines I don't even have any Flash implementation installed. If the ads don't make it, well...that's their problem. Google AdSense is fine, flashing, screaming monsters are not. But I guess that sites like Ars Technica don't make users block ads by serving them such crap.

It's the capitalist's time!

[gzipped_tar]

Now, you run a website. You can't maintain a viable business model. You lose money. Your readers are leaving. Now choose one:

1. Just accept failure and die.
2. Blame your customers and somehow die later.
3. Be too big to fail and get government bailout.

It seems that Ars chose the worst, i.e. no. 2.

Re:It's the capitalist's time!

[TheCycoONE]

Of course that is not an exhastive list of options, you forgot 4. Find another business model.

I hear merchandising is a popular and fairly successful one (e.g. most webcomics). Donations can work if people care enough about the content (e.g. wikimedia). If your content really stands out and you appeal to the right demographic a paid subscription model might work, though I can't personally think of any content I'd pay for besides research journals.

Re:It's the capitalist's time!

[d3ac0n]

It seems that Ars chose the worst, i.e. no. 2.

No, the worst is number 3.

By picking number 2, at least if they die later they still aren't stealing from the taxpayer at large via their corrupt government connections.

I don't need Ars!

[m1k3g]

I use ad blockers. period. always will. If your goal (or primary concern) in setting up a website is to make money, I suggest you are in the wrong business. I don't allow solicitors to throw crap on my lawn or leave junk by my front door either. I use comskip on my HTPC so that my family & I don't have to watch crappy advertising on TV. I pay a monthly fee for television access, a monthly fee for Internet access, and god-knows-how-much of my taxes go to support the companies that spew all of this advertising. If you want to block me from reading content on your site because I exercise my right to only look at what I want to look at, screw you. I don't need Ars or any other website that thinks this way and I WILL go somewhere else!

Re:I don't need Ars!

[BatGnat]

Exactly what I was going to say. Thankyou.

Use RSS to avoid ads and page formatting

[BodeNGE]

but aparently not a "perfect" solution either...

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/06/full-content-rss-fee.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+(Boing+Boing)

The other side: Ad abuse and malware

[KingSkippus]

I posted this there, and I'll post it here, too.

I consider it irresponsible not to browse the web with a really good ad/Flash/javascript blocker. Not just because of the annoyance factor, but because it is a significant vector of malicious code attacks. This isn't just hypothetical; in the recent past, sites such as Wikia and a gaming site I visit injected malicious code and infected users' machines. The site hosts were completely unaware of it; the code was being injected through a third-party ad provider. Fortunately, I found out about this through someone else when they brought it to my attention, because the code never made it to my browser.

Ars raises a good point, but the simple truth is that given the choice between having less content available or putting my system's security at risk, I'll choose the first option any day. I'm sorry--I really am, because I know that it is devastating to sites such as theirs, and I'd gladly whitelist their site but for the risk. I don't blame reputable sites like Ars, I blame a decade and a half of abuse by ad companies. But such is the state of affairs.

Plus, please keep in mind that a lot of sites I visit are new to me, and they're sites that I don't know whether or not they're reputable. Many of them engage in what I consider an "ad assault" on me, barraging me with all sorts of annoyances for content that is of little to no value. When I'm just puttering around the Internet without visiting one of my usual haunts, most of the content means so little to me that until I have a chance to evaluate whether or not it's worth it and whether or not they advertise in some sane, responsible manner, I feel fully justified in not letting them force feed such annoyances to me.

For what it's worth, he is right, I'm glad they brought the issue up in a tactful manner, and I'm going to subscribe to Ars since I do indeed find its content of high value. When sites I value provide such an alternate business model for paying for their existence, I do try to do my part to support them.

Re:The other side: Ad abuse and malware

[Anonymous Coward]

I appreciate that you acknowledge what many others here don't...

Ad blockers = less revenue for ad-based content providers = less content

Some here want more content w/ less revenue and seem to expect that's their right somehow. You've made an informed decision understanding the consequences.

Re:The other side: Ad abuse and malware

[Stray7Xi]

I consider it irresponsible not to browse the web with a really good ad/Flash/javascript blocker. Not just because of the annoyance factor, but because it is a significant vector of malicious code attacks.

Exactly. I will gladly view the ads if they were served by Ars (yes I know this isn't how web advertising economics works). I have a relationship with ars, they provide me with content. I'm willing to reciprocate in some way but I'm not giving the keys to my computer to some stranger who writes Ars a check. I don't have a relationship with doubleclick, adsense or f7feghn.cn. I don't trust those sites, and even if they served me plain static images I don't want them tracking my web browsing. I'm a kindle subscriber to Ars and I adblock them on my PC.

Re:The other side: Ad abuse and malware

[couchslug]

To be fair, browsing the Web using Windows is high-risk.

If you can't abide Linux due to gaming, use a Linux browser appliance and browse with that. It won't be enough load on a gaming PC to matter.

Re:The other side: Ad abuse and malware

[Anonymous Coward]

"The site hosts were completely unaware of it; the code was being injected through a third-party ad provider. "

It's worse. They are aware of it, and they don't give a damn.

A site I regularly go to started hosting 3rd party ads and migrating to more intrusive ads. During the Adobe debacle with pdf being used to inject code, I patched as soon was the news broke. When I went to the site for the first time that day, I found some windows launching and stalling in the background, from a site which never popped up a window previously. I found clearly that the ads were being used to inject material, since the pages with the problem all had the same ad from the same 3rd part host getting launched.

Contacting the site twice over the period of a few days. This is a site that regularly updates their material, and where their editors read the material submitted. Over a week later, that same 3rd party site serving the ad was still being used with the same result. The ad revenue overrode their feeling of responsibility of the matter; they could have simply rejected that ad site until things were cleared up. They didn't.

"I consider it irresponsible not to browse the web with a really good ad/Flash/javascript blocker. "

An additional concern are those of us who don't want to make it easy to be tracked by some unknown third party "collect and sell" ad revenue company, like doubleclick. It still amazes me how many cookies were simply not showing up in my browser's cache when I started mapping/redirecting known ad sites to localhost. Even Flash cookies are significantly down.

"I'm glad they brought the issue up in a tactful manner, "

Here, I disagree strongly.

The sad fact is that, while I used to like Ars, I feel their "experiment" is going to cause more harm than the point they were trying to make. They proved this could be done, which will drivie up demand on other sites. It was a proof of concept successfully done, and other sites will copy and keep it there.

Also, Ars did so with a singular point in mind, which was site revenue solely and only, when clearly a more tactful approach, called conversation and discussion, prior to making a move might have potentially resulted in a nicer solution and warning to their site visitors. In my view, they showed themselves to be no different than any other content site, where money is the bottom line. This is something I felt Ars had separated themselves, where content and the joy of information and the community was primary with ad revenue being secondary and in assistance to the primary objective. Sadly, this doesn't seem to be the case.

Then again, I hold a very low opinion of the changes on /. since it's inception 13 some years ago, and I'm still posting here.

Re:The other side: Ad abuse and malware

[c-reus]

I don't use ad blockers. However, I do have ad.doubleclick.com and a few other ad serving sites in /etc/hosts, mapped to 127.0.0.1.

The logic works like this: if an annoying ad is shown somewhere, the ad server gets added to /etc/hosts. Ad servers that serve static or text only ads are fine by me.

Re:The other side: Ad abuse and malware

[fwr]

I agree. A lot of people throw around the word right too, well, liberally. There are very few rights in this world. The right to view content without ads is non-existent. If there were such a right, and the people creating content didn't want to, or couldn't afford to, what would you do? Would you force them to create content? Would you enslave them, making them toil away at creating content for no pay? Of course not.

At the same time, the content creators have no right to ad revenue. If people don't want to view their sites with ads, then you can't force them to. Well, I suppose you can turn your web pages into one large dynamically created JPEG per page, with the ads embedded. But you can't force people to view your web site at all, let alone force them to run intrusive JavaScript and untrusted code from third party ad servers.

The content providers certainly have a right to say what they want, and to try and find an alternate business model that works for them. The content viewers, or consumers, have the right to choose what content they consume, or whether to consume any at all.

If the model that the providers use is not acceptable to the consumers, then the providers will just have to find something else to do, and the consumers will have to find a different provider. That's called the free market, which doesn't have anything to do with whether the content is free or not.

Re:The other side: Ad abuse and malware

[blahplusplus]

Unfortunately Ars is expecting the MOST TECH SAVVY community to not block ads? Sometimes you have to wonder if they know their audience.

Slashdot ads

[i'm lost]

I haven't ever read Ars Technia (except for following links from slashdot), but I did try to whitelist ads for this site. Unfortunately, I would have to allow javascript from whatever ad servers slashdot uses. Disabling adblock on this site and allowing javascript from this domain isn't enough to view ads, so I don't see them. It would be nice if I could support slashdot by viewing ads without trusting javascript from an ad server.

This is the solution !

[burni2]

I think we can all conclude that the cause for using adblockers is the annoying way some ads are appearing. Though blocking normal non-intrusive ads can be seen as collateral damage.

And here comes my solution, while clicking ads means money for the site-owners, we need ad-blockers which visit the ad in background and kill the tracker-cookie afterwards.

This way the site-owners get money - the ads are clicked but not seen. While most internet users have a very low technical skill, the impact on the advertisement business is small.

Couple of things the submission missed

[bheer]

* The content was blocked without warning, leading many to think Ars was broken
* Readers who complained were called "leechers" who were "held in contempt".
* They use Doubleclick and serve animated Flash ads
* Apparently text ads (e.g. Google AdSense) don't pay very well

Many of us do understand that Ars is more expensive to run than Stack Exchange or (maybe) Slashdot, because Ars has to pay writers. However the fact that web advertising is so inflexible and user-hostile is very sad and says something about the industry. BoingBoing and Daring Fireball seem to be doing well with their homegrown ad networks, maybe someone will take some ideas from them and come up with a non-evil ad network.

Re:Couple of things the submission missed

[makomk]

Readers who complained [arstechnica.com] were called "leechers" who were "held in contempt".

And then their forum accounts were permanently banned. Don't forget that part.

Re:Couple of things the submission missed

[bheer]

You're right. Seriously shameful.

Re:Couple of things the submission missed

[Ol Olsoc]

However the fact that web advertising is so inflexible and user-hostile is very sad and says something about the industry.

And there you have it. That is exactly what they need to hear.

And I'll say it in more direct terms:

Ars and other content providers, if you provide ads that do not violate my machine, do not install tracking software, and simply allow me to see ads that don't break my machine, I'll look at the darn ads!

It's going to have to be an industry wide thing. We hear about self policing. Start doing it. Otherwise I'm not going to turn on the ads. It's your system that is broken, not mine. I'm just trying to protect myself from your system.

Then I won't be a leech, and you won't be part of a system that delivers evil to my computer.

Ads are not integrated

[digitect]

The reason we have ads is because they are easy for advertisers to generate sales/revenue with them. They are a shortcut instead of actually providing a product we really need.

Face it, do we need much that is advertised? No. We also don't need much of the content we read. Advertising is this dance that occurs within non-critical content because we really don't have to watch TV or read entertainment news.

If products were so important, name dropping within actual content would be sufficient to generate sales commensurate with demand. Advertising is a way of increasing demand that wouldn't ordinarily exist (since we don't need it in the first place.

Re:Ads are not integrated

[Game_Ender]

If nobody knows about your prefect product, how is it going to sell? You have to build awareness somehow, not everyone gets free press about every product they create (like Apple). By the way "name dropping within actual content" is something that most journalist would *never do*. They might run a story about an interesting product they find, but how would anyone here about that product without any advertising? (See we have come full circle again).

Turn off Flash ads, and I'll turn off the ad block

[TodLiebeck]

If I open Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, with a few tabs active in each on popular sites, the entirety of both cores of my Intel E7500 CPU will be consumed by Flash advertisements.

I'm on a Linux machine with a lot of memory, which makes for the worst case scenario: First, Flash is horrible on Linux. Second, I use virtual desktops and leave browsers open for days at a time. Memory is not a problem.

Flash ads tend to be poorly written by a creative designer who could give a rat's rear end about your system resources.

The ads interfere with my ability to work, which costs me money. They also cause my computer to consume significantly more power. So in effect, your Flash ads are even bad for the environment.

They're also of course quite annoying, and if given only the options of browsing the internet with Flash ads or not browsing the internet at all, I'll choose the latter.

How about you try this experiment: Turn off Flash ads. Post a banner at the top of your site that says, "Hey, we've turned off Flash ads. Please exclude this site from your ad blocker so we can make money."

Re:How is this different than muting TV commercial

[jhoegl]

Thats actually a good point. Those of us who do not watch commercials probably also have ad blocker technology on our systems.
Logic then concludes that we are not the target audience for these ads.

Re:My 0.02

[bcmm]

Looks like I accidentally posted as AC... Anyway, the parent is me, not that anybody will read it now.

Flash is my problem

[Lemming Mark]

I've never really bothered to block web content until recently. But I've now started using rekonq's Click-To-Flash mode having seen (far too many times) pointless Flash applets consuming 100% CPU when I just leave them. I'm currently using nspluginwrapper so at least I can hunt down the misbehaving Flash and kill it directly (a la Google Chrome), which is better than the old days where I had to guess which Firefox tab might contain an applet that's hammering performance. Unfortunately this means I don't see all the ads - I've never been that bothered by ads appearing, just one of those things that you get because people need to pay the bills. Occasionally ads are even amusing (e.g. the Plants vs Zombies parodies of the maddening Evony psuedo-porn adverts).

I don't block adverts specifically, though. Non-Flash ads are free to take up screen space and my attention and very rarely they're even interesting. Google's text-based ads are also fine, although some sites make it difficult to distinguish those from the actual articles. But these days it's a pretty hard sell to ask people to run resource-hungry software just to get adverts. Maybe Flash behaves better on other platforms - but OTOH, advertisers are going to lose revenue on iPad and iPhone customers if they don't move away from Flash at some point. For lots of these adverts I'd be tempted to say that an HTML5 video might even be more appropriate (!).

Linux Weekly News (http://lwn.net/) which is by far my favourite "serious" geek news site (mainly because of their kernel page) has a nice model involving some adverts + subscription. They do have some adverts. They also delay some of their best content by a week if you're not a paying subscriber. Subscribers can categorise themselves according to an "honour system" to choose how much they pay if they want to subscribe. Apparently it works OK for them. I suspect this only really works for them because they produce extremely high-quality, specialist articles - you plain can't get some of this stuff elsewhere, so it's worth supporting them. A general-consumption geek news site is going to find that sort of thing a lot harder.

Re:Flash is my problem

[Al Dimond]

I agree on Flash. I've long found it worthwhile to control which sites use Flash applets. Web designers shouldn't cry over it. They've never truly been able to count on Flash working universally anyway. Especially now with the rise of mobile browsing.

HTML5 and the improvement of Javascript engines' performance will just make things worse. Currently much of the annoying, processor-sucking crap on the web has one easy-to-block point of entry: the Flash plugin. When it's all done with JS and HTML5 the document will be unified with the ads (as on a newspaper page). There will be heuristic techniques to block annoying ads but it will just become an arms war, and I'm not really interested in participating. We'll essentially be at the mercy of web designers again. Web designers seem to want the web to be an application platform where users have no control over the code that runs on their own computers.

Re:Flash is my problem

[Joe U]

When HTML5 rolls around, I'll write something to force the browser to ignore anything off domain.

Until then, I have a button that turns flash on when I want it. Very simple, works 100% of the time.

Re:Flash is my problem

[Al Dimond]

As I understand DNS, any site could create a subdomain that resolves to their ad provider. I think the ad provider would have to configure its server correctly to handle that, but it's not hard.

Alternately sites could begin hosting useful content off-domain. That's why ads in Flash and images are effective, because sites do useful things with them. You'd be stuck with IP blocking.

At any rate, to me the issue isn't that I'm seeing some ads. They're basically necessary for the Internet as it is today. The issue is that I have so little control of the code that runs on my computer. Whether it's an ad or it's supposed to be part of the content, whether it comes from off domain or not, it's nice to have some control.

Re:Flash is my problem

[eloki]

I love LWN's ad/subscriber policy in that it's so reader-friendly but Jon Corbet repeatedly indicates that the site is not economically sustainable in the long term.

Effectively he must be subsidising it, so it does't serve as an example of how sites can succeed with such pleasant policy.

Targeted ads suck

[billsf]

Ads that originate from the site, I display, the rest >/dev/null. You can proxy where the ad is displayed 'internally', the site gets paid by the trash provider and I never have to see it. 'Flash' ads are by far the worst and no site I use places them directly on their own site. (A 30s flash commercial may take 10s to load >/dev/null) On the brighter side, the conduits for targeted ads can be sometimes used as proxies to beat the "Not available in your country" crap.

So Ars is selling impressions?

[drinkypoo]

If Ars was selling click-throughs, then ad blocking would only help them, because it saves them bandwidth they're using serving ads you'll never click on. But they're obviously selling impressions.

They're going to save even more bandwidth if they ban people using ad blockers; I, for one, am content to get my news elsewhere. Ars articles have been going steadily downhill anyway. I haven't even seen one linked from here in quite some time, so I'm not clear on why I need to read them anyway. I suspect I don't. Any content which cannot exist without ads is not important to me.

Re:So Ars is selling impressions?

[DrPizza]

Most or all big ad campaigns are based on impressions rather than clicks, because big advertisers know that there is value even when people do not click, due to increased brand awareness and so on. It's unbranded and low-end advertising (e.g. Google's text ads) that are click-based.

Don't forget

[Redlazer]

No matter what you do, so long as you know you are now stealing content, that is allright. It's not illegal, but it's hardly justifiable.

Re:Don't forget

[Spewns]

No matter what you do, so long as you know you are now stealing content, that is allright. It's not illegal, but it's hardly justifiable.

Your knee-jerk, canned, irrational, intellectually dishonest response also isn't illegal, but it's also hardly justifiable.

Re:Don't forget

[Redlazer]

My comment is none of those things.

You are avoiding the primary method of income for the website. Factual statement.

You are reading content at full cost on their website, directly using their services, and are blocking ads from loading, so they make no money when you load their page.

Like I said, you are stealing. I realized I was stealing, so I became a subscriber.

-Fred

Re:Don't forget

[mikechant]

Like I said, you are stealing.

You just can't steal something that is *freely given* (in the hope that you might look at the adverts). I guess you've just redefined the word steal to mean whatever you like, but you'll have trouble communicating with people if you use words in a way that only about 1% of the population recognize.

Re:Don't forget

[Legion303]

Nice try, Fred, but if they didn't want to use the world wide web's intentionally open architecture to share content with others for free, they wouldn't have put it up in the first place. Your mistake is in assuming that the web is there for people to make money. It's not.

Re:Don't forget

[Redlazer]

They get to define what they consider theft of their own content, do they not? Their specific business model is making money from ads, and you have a tool that specifically denies them income on that count.

I'm not copyright nazi - I wholly believe that the ability to reproduce knowledge at virtually no cost is where the internet needs to go - it must be as free as possible so that it can be as useful as possible. The great equalizer.

That said, I merely have a specific problem with this specific case, and it is entirely because I am a fan of the site.

I would suggest that RSS feeds and their ilk are the best way to digest information with no ads, and seems to strike a fair balance between the demands of both sides.

Re:Don't forget

[Legion303]

"They get to define what they consider theft of their own content, do they not?"

They do not. Well, I guess they can claim whatever they want to, but laws and regulations define theft, not CEOs.

Re:Don't forget

[Redlazer]

A fine point. Perhaps I'm talking about something more subtle here?

Perhaps I should qualify my position? I recently started using adblock on Chrome, but before that I've just mentally walled out the areas on websites that have ads.

I paid for no ads on /. a few times in the past, and have been "rewarded" with it as well, and I realized that ads just plain don't bother me much. I mean, there's ads, and then there's ads.

I'm talking about the specific ads on Ars. I subscribed to Ars coincidentally - I was not affected by the content block at all. I knew people were going to get all bent out of shape about it, because the bottom line is this:

It's just not in the spirit of the web. It's not the kind of thing you would do to your friends, and the web really seems to redefine (or perhaps create another category) what "friends" are. I would have felt quite betrayed, and I still DID feel betrayed by Ars merely having read about it. I immediately wondered about my investment, and hoped that eventually, cooler heads would prevail, as I think they did, as I think the opinion offered is quite balanced.

But, yes, its totally against "what makes the internet great", but I also recognize the necessity of revenue. I solved both problems: I donated. No more ads, and other perks, plus the satisfaction of actively helping a website I care about, because that website is my online "friend".

...It's quite possible you'll think I'm an idiot after reading that, so here's this as well:

No, you!

Re:Don't forget

[Legion303]

I do understand your point; it's similar to my stance against stealing music or software from people I know who create it. But there is a spectrum even here. While I (unlike most Slashdot commenters) consider piracy to be at least some form of theft, I don't consider blocking ads to be theft of any sort whatsoever. You do, and I get that. I've never visited Ars that I'm aware of, but I can certainly extend a hypothetical, and I can see that even if someone I knew and liked made a living off of ads, I'd still find some other way to support that person. Because fuck advertising and fuck marketers.

Re:How is this different than muting TV commercial

[nacturation]

RTFA.

If only they were safe.

[E-Sabbath]

The problem with this is, the advertisements themselves can not be trusted. Beyond the issue of the sound and animation, advertisements are a malware vector. I'm having a huge problem with 'Antispyware 2010' and its variants. One idiot claims he got his from Microsoft, because it says Microsoft on it. If they were less hazardous, I'd block them less. I turned off blocking for Project Wonderful and for Google's text ads, after all.

Stop annoying us with your ads

[dmesg0]

There are way too many sites with intrusive ads, very low content/advertisement ratio, lots of flash banners that eat up CPU (Isn't it annoying to see 100% CPU taken by the browser?). There is even a site that displays a screaming flash ad, so when I visited it at work, it was quite embarrassing.

So it's very simple, as long as there are many such sites, we'll continue to use ad blockers. The webmasters must finally understand that in order to get some revenue they should not annoy their visitors. And it's not that hard to do, I don't think many would mind a few text ads or one static banner on a page.

And if you refuse to let us see the content without flashy ads, well, go to hell, such sites aren't worth visiting anyway.

It's *my* CPU you're using

[Colin Smith]

*My* RAM. *My* bandwidth.

I pay for it all, and I don't really care if your site folds (this includes you slashdot), you're just a momentary diversion, don't flatter yourself otherwise. There will be another along in 10 minutes.

So, i'm going to continue to block images, particularly moving ones. Javascript, flash, and pretty much anything else they come up with. I used to leave google ads alone, they were relevant, textual and just sat there inviting a click, but they blew it as well.
 

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[edumacator]

Wow.

What a parasitic way to think about the content on the internet...

Personally, I try to reward good content...yeah that's you slashdot...sometimes...by allowing their ads. But I accept your somewhat jaded perspective. Hopefully their are enough people like me out there, so good sites don't fail.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[Pav]

I agree. I've been on the web since the beginning, and I can't remember clicking on a single ad... I can say with certainty that I've never made any purchases because of them. I actually hope banning ad blockers becomes the norm - I'm already inhabiting the non-commercial areas of the Internet more and more (eg. technical discussions on IRC after a LOOOONG hiatus after the 90's, mailing lists etc...). I strongly suspect forcing ads on people will precipitate out the more technically minded users with less patience for distraction to the non-commercial net. I'd be quite happy with that. If that makes me parasitic so be it.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[edumacator]

You pay for a connection to the internet if I'm not mistaken.

And like I said, I accept your jaded, and apparently angry, perspective. My point though was that if we all thought like you, the internet would shrivel up and die. I wish we had a world that would allow for free content to all, but as it is now, many of the people who create the content have families to feed and mortgages or rent to pay.

I agree that we've been seeing an influx of more annoying ads over the years, but we have a more diluted market place, so companies are struggling to make money. Personally I'd like to see the good sites stay, hence my willingness to view ads on those sites, and for the bad ones to go away, hence my avoidance of those sites.

Blocking every ad that comes across the screen blindly punishes good sites and bad ones equally. Forbes used to have audio ads that were hard to find and impossible to turn off, so I stopped going to Forbes. Slashdot hasn't presented me with intrusive ads, so I leave the ads on, even though I could disable them.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[cynyr]

leave a site that is loading random ads in via JS from a third/forth party server open for 2-5 days in firefox. come back and let me know how much CPU time and RAM firefox is now using. do the same in opera/chrome/etc. I do not need to be giving 50% of 1 core to firefox when it isn't even loading a new page that I requested. Now I have the /. browse without ads checked, and i run adblock+ with easylist.

1471 user 20 0 1977m 949m 7480 S 0 24.0 33:43.14 chrome
4478 user 20 0 829m 24m 13m S 1 0.6 0:01.03 chrome
4482 user 20 0 832m 23m 12m S 0 0.6 0:00.68 chrome
4824 user 20 0 825m 7612 3836 S 0 0.2 0:01.94 chrome
6222 user 20 0 813m 147m 11m S 1 3.7 1019:31 chrome
10737 user 20 0 835m 18m 4972 S 0 0.5 0:39.42 chrome
14741 user 20 0 967m 172m 13m S 0 4.4 12:59.65 chrome
26431 user 20 0 912m 51m 6416 S 0 1.3 1:56.36 chrome
31026 user 20 0 897m 137m 17m S 0 3.5 56:59.07 chrome
31027 user 20 0 162m 2056 1632 S 0 0.1 0:01.59 chrome
31028 user 20 0 179m 1272 928 S 0 0.0 0:00.20 chrome
31050 user 20 0 838m 29m 4536 S 0 0.8 13:35.87 chrome

Thats just chrome on my machine. Yep the web uses way to many of my resources already.
09:57:45 up 22 days, 21:05, 23 users, load average: 0.28, 0.37, 1.13
So yes I don't really ever turn this machine off, I'll start doing that when i get the resources together to build a fileserver. Last time it was rebooted it was because the wifes "helen of troy" dvd borked my dvd drive requiring a hard reset to make it work again.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[raddan]

It should also be added that, on Slashdot at least, you can "buy" page views. I realized at some point last year that I had been reading the site for nearly ten years, and over that time I have learned a lot and made friends through this website. In fact, I just met another longtime Slashdotter yesterday, and-- he's a professor now! Time to pony up.

I still block ads for Slashdot, because I'm never going to click on one, and they are always distracting, by definition. But, as with NPR, I owe something for what I take, so I pay up. If you enjoy reading this site, you should too, especially if you ad-block.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[rotide]

I pay for my connection to the internet, I also pay for the hardware all sites plus their ads are displayed on. It is also my time that is taken by going to said sites, generally, it's time I wish to devote to those sites.

The problem is a lot of sites I frequent have malicious ads from time to time. There was a point where I played World of Warcraft and even the _reputable_ sites (worldofraids, mmo-champion, etc) had malicious ads served.

Then on sites that aren't gaming related, I started to see a _lot_ of fake virus scans, malware scans, etc. Fake system messages. It's just too much.

The problem now is, it's going to take more time to go through and verify if a site (currently) is non malicious in nature and whitelist them than it is to just block ads wholesale. If I never saw a legitimate, annoying, potentially damaging reason to start blocking ads, I never would have. The problem is, I can't trust those who don't know what ads are going to be served.

You can be a perfectly legitimate site and one day your ad "provider" decides to put up a malicious ad. Your site is now infected and so am I, potentially.

I simply won't and don't put up with the chance. The bonus is I don't see any other ads anymore either.

P.S. I don't think you give the market enough credit. If ads were banned from the internet all together, I'm sure the good sites will find a way to make a living. Ads are just the easiest way to get revenue. Take them away and the "next easiest way will prevail.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[KPU]

Slashdot gave me a checkbox to disable ads. They're not making money from showing me ads. They're making money from my comments which apparently draw people here who don't use AdBlock.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[Ifni]

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we have reality TV programming and the pop sensation of the week...

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[cfalcon]

There's nothing at all parasitic about that. A website deals up data. There's no implied social contract about how that data will be used, viewed, thought about, or otherwise perceived. Your browser should work for you, filtering out the dross (like ads) completely.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[LihTox]

I think you're right: if a website is just a diversion for you, easily replaceable by any other website, then block the ads on it with no guilt at all. Such a website is just a commodity, and supply & demand (particularly supply) have pushed the cost of commodity websites to $0, no matter how much they cost to run.

If a particular website means something to you, and is not replaceable, then we do have to deal with the fact that the website may die if their revenue is cut off. Maybe this won't happen for general-interest sites, which are still visited by lots of people who don't know how to (or don't care to) install an ad-blocker, but for specialized sites, particularly those aimed at tech-saavy users, this could be a problem.

That said, I don't think that's a reason to turn off the adblocker; I think it's a reason to send them cash. Budget a certain amount of money each month or year (if you can afford it of course), and distribute it to the websites you'd like to see stay around, if there are indeed any you care about. Don't think of it as paying a debt, think of it as an investment whose dividends are the survival and additional content the site produces in the future. Maybe this isn't the way we're used to thinking about financial transactions.

Am I right that a banner ad typically brings in $0.01-$0.05 per viewer? It might be interesting to have a Firefox plugin which keeps track of the number of times you visit a given site, and roughly how much they would have made off of you in ads.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[Hurricane78]

Yeah, about as parasitic, as taking stuff
that someone else throws out there for free, for everyone to see.

It doesn’t matter what you ask for AFTER you passed on the information. It’s too late. Passing on information equals splitting control with the destination. You can ask for something in exchange, before doing that. But afterwards it’s too late.

Besides: You seem to not even realize how browsing works:
Let’s use a snail mail analogy: When “going” to a page, thats’s like doing this:
You submit a letter to the site, containing a message that says: Could you please send me that page X?
Then the server of that site can decide whether to honor your request. And the thing is: They do. They send you that page X for free, just like that. They don’t say: “No, that’s valuable! Nobody else has it! I had much work with it! I want something for it!”.
So OK, you get that packet in mail, open it, and there is your page X. But in it, there are other things referenced. Images, scripts, etc.
Now you can submit additional request letters. But obviously there is no obligation to do that. Since there were no strings attached to that packet. It was specifically sent to you without any conditions.

Demanding that you now request a ton of large advertisement packets is the wrongdoing here. The server should have asked for something in return if he wanted something. Now it’s too late. So stop bitching and fix your imaginary business model!

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[rockNme2349]

What I find funny is slashdot is one of the few sites I would be willing to put up with ads for, and they gave me a niftly little check box to turn them off.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[ATairov]

Strangely enough, I have clicked on some ads, and once I think I even made a purchase because of one. The thing is that, even if every single internet ad was relevant, there are far more ads than I have money to buy things, and most of them aren't advertising products that I would make a purchasing decision based on an advertisement.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[bit01]

My point though was that if we all thought like you, the internet would shrivel up and die.

No, the junk internet would die. Most of my favourite websites are ad-free or allow subscription. Sites like Ars just repackage (trying to be middlemen in other words), have laughable opinion pieces, and are basically just a net zero.

What people like you fail to realize is that if people aren't willing to pay for your website then your website isn't worth anything to them and they won't care if it goes away. Really. Deal.

---

"Advertising supported" just means you're paying twice over, once in time to watch/avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[MichaelSmith]

But I also wondered if information about who would and would not turn adds off if given the choice is worth money to advertisers.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[martin-boundary]

Quite so. In fact, it's arguable that the huge costs of serving typical commercial content are entirely self-inflicted.

A properly peer to peer system (even just the old Usenet) can distribute content cheaply at practically zero cost to the creator. But of course, companies prefer to keep control over their content, and that is why they want centralized hosting and branded websites, and fall prey to ad networks. I do not pity them.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[Reziac]

Your post gives me an idea. How about sites pay US to view the ads? After all, they're using up our time, our bandwidth, our CPU and RAM to display them. We should get something in return for helping prop up their business model.

Or maybe this: Any time advertising uses more bandwidth than the site's actual content, we get paid to view the page!

Oh, bandwidth costs money, so we should pay? Okay, but.... what percentage of that bandwidth is used BY those ads you're serving us?? MOST of it?? Thought so.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[edumacator]

Most of my favourite websites are ad-free or allow subscription.

I'd venture to say there might be a few people with different aesthetic and content opinions than you. While you might be willing to pay, not everyone would. My original point was that we, as consumers, can influence the quality of the internet by where we allow ads to appear. I think /. does a decent job of providing a resource, so I don't turn their ads off. If I don't like a site, I would.

Really. Deal.

I know these kinds of rhetorical flourishes are fun, but I prefer to keep a level of civility, so we can discuss things without them turning into flame wars. It might be we both have useful opinions in the larger discussion.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[nica]

You could have the best of both worlds. Block ads, but send money to websites you like. You don't have to worry about ads, and the sites will have a revenue stream from you.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[edumacator]

I meant parasitic in that one party, the reader with ad block always on, benefits at the expense and eventually the demise of the other.

A parasite could say that there is no reason contract between it and its host. I wasn't try to draw a moral distinction, though I can see how it would be taken that way; I was only implying that to avoid all advertising eventually kills that upon with you feed.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[master_p]

Slashdot ads are not that intrusive. I hardly ever notice them. Unlike other sites that ads are truly annoying.

Some ads on Slashdot, when combined with specific topics, are truly funny. For example, an anti-Microsoft topic with an ad for Microsoft Office or Visual Studio, for example.

Personally, I don't mind if sites close due to lack of profit from advertising. The internet is not a TV. The really interesting things on the internet will be there, ads or no ads.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[bit01]

While you might be willing to pay, not everyone would.

Yep, and if they're not willing to pay then it never was of much value to them. Whatever amount of time they wasted on it when it was "free". Something that many in the unsolicited advertising industry are in complete denial about. You too apparently since you completely failed to respond to my point and tried to talk around it. Repeating: if they're not willing to pay then it's not important to them.

In any case it's quite straightforward for website owners to embed advertising in their material such that it cannot be easily automatically excised. Just like product placement in movies. Maybe they're scared of the result if they tried.

Personally, I'd be happy to see the entire unsolicited advertising industry die. It's largely parasitic (if you make any purchase decision based on unsolicited advertising then you are a fool) and has very little socially redeeming value (billions of manhours are stolen by it for almost nothing in return).

---

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

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[xtracto]

Although this thread is quite old, I just felt I needed to reply to it. I also disagree with the thought of adblocking being bad or parasitic.

It is the sole nature of the internet to allow people to publish content making it available to others.

If websites like Ars Technica or others want to get paid for such content, then they should simply ask for money for each article. If they make the information open then they should not complain when people are using it without paying back (via ad clicks or any other mean).

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[Kabuthunk]

Even Slashdot blew their chance with me. The god-forsaken, shaky, animated ad of the woman bitching to the husband about the mail server being down or some shit? Sorry, too irritating for me. I COULD keep reloading the page until a different ad comes up... but that a) wastes my time, b) wastes my bandwitdth (and thus my money), c) wastes slashdot's bandwidth (every little bit from every person adds up), and d) promotes continuing to have annoying ads since from their perspective, they are getting more ad-views. AND, the ad-server takes longer to load than the entirity of the rest of the page. Not cool, man. I will wait for the site, I won't wait for the ads. If they load faster than the rest of the site as a whole, fine. But they don't.

Thus... blocked. Don't like it, fix online advertising. As others have said, if this site goes down, several more will take its place. No skin off my back, and barely the slightest annoyance to me.

Remember sites: you're trying to either draw me here, or KEEP me here. Drive me away, that's too damn bad. I owe you nothing since I'm already here. It's your job to find a way to make money with that fact without driving me away or causing me to block your attempts.

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[bingoUV]

But that could mean 2 opposite things, right?
1. They could be using drastic Ad filters, so they are not even bothered about having Slashdot remove the ads for them.
2. They actually don't mind seeing a bit of sane ads.

1 are people that are useless for advertisers. 2 are people who are useful. Since they are measured by the same yardstick (does not accept the offer to remove ads), how is this information useful to advertisers?

Re:It's *my* CPU you're using

[bingoUV]

I've compared it to a fruit vendor. When buying apples, everyone selects the best apples for himself and leaves the not-so-good apples behind. After a day of such selling, only bad apples remain which cannot be used next day because it would increase the proportion of not-so-good apples, and customers would flee. This is common practice. There are 2 options for the apple vendor:

1. WAAAH, NOT FAIR!!!, you should take both good and bad apples. If you only take the good apples, my business model is broken and I go into losses.
2. He can simply consider the possibility of people choosing good apples into his business model.

True, but just one problem

[KingSkippus]

I (and I think I speak for many people here) do not have a problem with adds per say. What I have a problem with is intrusive adds. Google style adds don't bother me a bit, I click them all the time. Sometimes I'm looking for a product, or am just plain interested, and then I click. It is not for these adds that people like me run add blockers. The problem is obnoxious advertising. It's like those television adds where a guy just yells the whole time. Adds like this make me willing to invest the time, money, and effort in a TIVO style box. You would think other advertisers would be trying to stop this sort of thing to preserve their own revenue! Can you imagine how pissed you'd be if your add screened after screaming man? It's these guys that motivate people to find a way to turn it off! If an add move blinks, etc, I find it very distracting and will leave a site. I will not visit your sight again, and I use add blockers to avoid this kind of thing in general browsing. The submitter admits to intrusive adds, so your site would be on my shit list. It's nothing personal, it's just that if you want traffic from people like me, just don't do intrusive adds.

I'm really sorry in advance, because I try really, really hard not to be a pedantic ass, but after reading what you had to say and agreeing with most of it and thinking that it's a relevant point, I just have to get this off my chest and out into the open:

For god's sake, man, it's ad, not "add." It stands for advertisement, with just one d. "Add" is what people do to numbers to produce a sum. "Ad" is what people do to some to produce numbers.

Re:True, but just one problem

[amiga3D]

Do you feel compelled to straighten crooked hanging pictures?

Re:True, but just one problem

[Runaway1956]

I can't answer for him, but I feel compelled to hang pictures crookedly, just to annoy people who compulsively straighten them out. Imagine, if you will, sharing an office ABOARD SHIP with one of those people. Hang up a pic, instead of screwing it to the bulkhead. Just use one screw, so that evertime the ship rocks, it moves. Oh, Lord, I drove that man CRAZY!! And, he would never give up, either! Talk about funny - that was one of my funniest pranks ever!

Re:True, but just one problem

[d3ac0n]

I would have just gotten the power screwdriver and a screw and permanently fixed the damn thing.

Then I would have chucked your ass overboard. But that's just me.

Re:True, but just one problem

[Runaway1956]

Heh. I've an idea that you're not big enough, fast enough, sneaky enough, or man enough to throw a man overboard. Real men don't need a "power screwdriver", so that's a pretty damned good indication that my idea about you is right. Obviously, you watch to much of that Bob Villa dude, who couldn't build his way out of a mudhole if his life depended on it.

A real man might do any of the following:

A: Throw the damned picture overboard
B: Burn the fucking picture
C: Use a screwdriver and a screw
D: Weld the bastard in place
E: Frag the fucking office

At least you weren't dumb enough to opt for a hammer and a nail. There's not much wood aboard today's warships.

"not immoral" precedes moral argument

[FuckingNickName]

On a practical note, I make a point of never clicking on adverts. The only way I interact with an advert is to make a little mental note to reduce my opinion of the advertiser and to make it less likely for me to recommend them. It is more helpful for you if I block your adverts entirely.

On an Internet's note, if you don't want something rendered as I please, don't send it via unauthenticated HTTP. As a reasonably technically competent magazine, you should know better.

On a personal note, I owe you nothing. If you think your content is worth charging for, charge for it. If you provide your content, I will take it, just as I am happy with people taking the fruits of my labour as published on the Internet (and sharing it). Change your business model and try voluntary donations or subscriptions if you want, but don't ask me to be dishonest with your advertisers.

On a general note, paid advertising is not a good way of raising awareness, and I will take no part in the cycle -- enough essays have been written about this already.

Re:"not immoral" precedes moral argument

[lordandmaker]

On a personal note, I owe you nothing. If you think your content is worth charging for, charge for it. If you provide your content, I will take it, just as I am happy with people taking the fruits of my labour as published on the Internet (and sharing it). Change your business model and try voluntary donations or subscriptions if you want, but don't ask me to be dishonest with your advertisers.

On a personal note from me, I'd far rather all news sites be free to visit, and pay through ad revenue than have to subscribe to every news site I might want to view. Right now, wherever the 'good' news (or whatever) is, I can go and read it. If I had to subscribe to *every* news site in order to get it, I'd be restricted to a pretty limited set of sites. I'd much rather see well-placed and targeted ads than have to actually hand over money.

I honestly don't see the problem with advertising in general. I browse with no ad blocker, and if a site's got daft ads that annoy me, I leave - as I would if anything else about it was crap. If a site doesn't irritate me with its ads and has whatever I was after, I'll stay. I've also, on occasion, clicked through ads for products that interest me.
On slashdot, for example, I've never felt the need to check the 'disable advertising' box, since the ads just don't annoy me, and are occasionally useful.

Re:"not immoral" precedes moral argument

[FuckingNickName]

OK, but you are presenting me with a false dichotomy. Other options are not limited to:

• voluntary donations/subscriptions;
• membership offering extra benefits, such as early access to content, discounts, printed material, meet-ups, etc.;
• State funding: e.g. the BBC in the UK, or various culture/arts councils;
• affiliate programs, possibly.

HTML is precisely designed so and successful because I get to choose how to render it; all you can do is give me recommendations. The moment you suggest that a CSS file is some sort of moral contract, you change the spirit of the Internet. Some ads annoy me and some don't, but I have no use for any of them, and am not wasting bandwidth or potential attention on them.

Re:"not immoral" precedes moral argument

[DrPizza]

The BBC is scaling back its funding of web content amidst complaints that it spends too much. It should still have a strong web presence (especially news.bbc.co.uk), but state funding is no panacea.

Re:"not immoral" precedes moral argument

[98 Rezz]

I keep it checked, I browse /. on my Droid at work. I'm not willing to create a new account just for my phone either. $Deity knows Verizon would have me by the testicles if I started incurring overages.

Re:"not immoral" precedes moral argument

[Osty]

On a personal note from me, I'd far rather all news sites be free to visit, and pay through ad revenue than have to subscribe to every news site I might want to view. Right now, wherever the 'good' news (or whatever) is, I can go and read it. If I had to subscribe to *every* news site in order to get it, I'd be restricted to a pretty limited set of sites. I'd much rather see well-placed and targeted ads than have to actually hand over money.

I honestly don't see the problem with advertising in general. I browse with no ad blocker, and if a site's got daft ads that annoy me, I leave - as I would if anything else about it was crap. If a site doesn't irritate me with its ads and has whatever I was after, I'll stay. I've also, on occasion, clicked through ads for products that interest me. On slashdot, for example, I've never felt the need to check the 'disable advertising' box, since the ads just don't annoy me, and are occasionally useful.

Good for you. Go ahead and keep browsing with ads and clicking on them. As long as you do, I don't have to. For the same reason, I don't donate to charity, pay for PBS/NPR (other than through my taxes), etc. As long as there's no impact on my access to those resources if I don't pay, there's no reason for me to pay, whether with my eyes or with my wallet. I will continue to block ads and "leech" from sites like Ars (their "adblock block" was trivially simple to bypass without whitelisting the site). I will continue to watch/listen to PBS/NPR programs. I will take as much advantage of "free" sites and services as I can as long as someone else is paying for them. And I will not feel bad about doing it, because if they didn't want me to the sites/services wouldn't be free to begin with.

Lucky for you, people like me are relatively rare. There are people like you who choose to surf without ad blockers, and there's the much, much larger contingent of people who don't even know what an ad blocker is. The impact of "freeloaders" like me is pretty minimal, and is generally built into the model. When you're offering something for free, you're betting that the group of people who are willing to give something back is larger than the group of people who give nothing back because your stuff is free. If that's true, you survive. If it's not, your business model failed. Deal with it.

Re:"not immoral" precedes moral argument

[yuhong]

Which Ars already does: http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/

Re:"not immoral" precedes moral argument

[sincewhen]

if a site's got daft ads that annoy me, I leave - as I would if anything else about it was crap. If a site doesn't irritate me with its ads and has whatever I was after, I'll stay.

That's great, but from the site's point of view, they are the same. They have served the ads up to you and been paid for their content whether you leave in disgust or stay and read the page.

Cart before the horse again....

[macraig]

Here we have yet another politician trying to manipulate us into seeing things his way with a fallacious argument. Why does anyone decide to use ad-blocking software in the first place? Do people set out with the express goal that "Heh, I'm gonna teach these fuckers a lesson"? I certainly didn't. Nope... I employed ad-blocking techniques because the ads became a truly hard-sell nightmare. Does anyone recall the meatspace jokes about car salesmen and "hard sell" tactics? That's what we're talking about here: digital ads that take a hard-sell approach.

NOBODY likes the hard-sell tactics. That's why I, and most other people, employ RECIPROCAL tactics to block ads, because far too many are insanely hard-sell. Has it been simple greed and lack of self-restraint, no scruples, or did their business model just suck vacuum from the start? Is either cause my fault, my problem? Honestly... and they blame *us* for starting the whole contest? Ya got it ass backwards there, chum. Ad-blocking is here to stay BECAUSE your foolish greed arrived first.

Honestly, it's already just too damned late; this ship had already sailed. Advertisers proved themselves to be consistently untrustworthy and self-centered, and we responded in kind. How do they intend to win back our trust? Oh, that's right: by blaming the bad behavior on *us* and claiming they always had our best interests at heart.

Bullshit.

Ya know what? I do believe I could survive well enough without their "content" if it just dried up and blew away. So find yourselves a revenue model, guys, one that actually works and that we can actually afford, or just go away. Ad-blocking is here to stay.

Re:Cart before the horse again....

[Pherlin]

Uhh, have you ever BEEN to Ars? It's a great site, with great content, and the ads are fine. Real Journalism costs money. Money typically comes from advertising revenue, when one is talking about journalism. They've been around over a decade, so it's -not- a case of a web 2.0 money grab.

The real killer for newspapers hasn't been online CONTENT. The killer has been online ADVERTISING. Craigslist et. al. has caused a drop in demand for classefied ads in the papers, which leads to a loss in revenue.

You can, at times, get Good 'Free' Conent. But most of the time, Good Content costs time, which in modern society equates to money. If sites like Ars were only done in people's free time you'd have a lot less great articles.

Re:Cart before the horse again....

[HumanEmulator]

So find yourselves a revenue model, guys, one that actually works and that we can actually afford, or just go away.

Unfortunately that model might be even worse. Similar problems with TV viewers skipping ads on their DVRs have been affecting the TV industry and the result has been to move the ads into the shows. And before you say "That's why I don't watch TV", a lot of people here work in jobs where staying informed on computer technology is a requirement. So they can skip reading Ars or Slashdot, but they can't skip reading anything.

Technology news is generally news about products (ie. announcements , updates, plans, etc.) -- do you think you're going to be able to spot every time a product appears in an article because it's a paid sponsorship? Or an article that has conclusions influenced by money? And even if you could, how will you know about articles that were paid to disappear?

I block Flash (to kill the popover click the monkey spam) but I don't block ads because I want them to stay put in obvious little boxes. However, ad blocking isn't going away, so how about an ad blocker that continues to load the images and content but prevents them from being displayed? Sites and advertisers get the numbers -- we get to keep our attention and focus.

Re:Cart before the horse again....

[brit74]

The problem I have with your comment is that it treats websites as one monolithic group. The reality is more along the lines of:

- Company A shows advertising on their website to gain revenue.
- Company B comes along with "hard sell" tactics
- Users get angry and block all ads.
- Company A says that they've been responsible with advertising, but are getting hurt by ad-blocking.
- Then you come along and say that Company A is to blame for "hard sell" tactics, as if Company A and Company B were the same company, or that Company A has any control whatsoever over what Company B does. Now, not only does Company A lose ad-revenue, but users blame *them* for something they never did ("Ad-blocking is here to stay BECAUSE your foolish greed arrived first.")

Re:Cart before the horse again....

[Antony-Kyre]

If only more sites took the wikipedia approach, asking people for donations.

Re:How is this different than muting TV commercial

[jhoegl]

Logical assumptions buddy... read my reply.

Love this comment by Ars

[s.d.]

"If you're not willing to unblock our ads, we're fairly happy for you to not read the content we work very hard on, or to just stop visiting the site altogether." (in comment thread here)

Ok, your terms are acceptable. See ya.

Re:Love this comment by Ars

[Jon-ZA]

Amen brother. As if Ars is the ONLY place to get information about products on the web.

Re:Love this comment by Ars

[Somebody Is Using My]

This reminds of when Salon decided to put all their content behind a paywall; it seemed to make economic sense to them at the time. Unfortunately when the users hit the paywall, many of them decided the content wasn't worth their money and left for greener (and freer pastures). Not only did they stop visiting the website directly, but whenever they saw a Salon link, they did not click it because they knew there was an intervening paywall.

Some time later, Salon decided to revist the issue of paywalls and decided making their content only available to paying customers was not the best way of doing things after all. Down came the paywall. But the people they lost *still* avoided the site because -as far as they knew- the content was still only available for a fee and therefore they continued to avoid Salon entirely.

Although the paywall arguably was necessary for Salon to survive an economic rough spot, it took them years to recover (in terms of numbers of readership) from that decision. I wonder if Ars Technica may suffer the same fate; users with ad-blockers will not be able to see the content, and decide to write off the site entirely. Should Ars Technica revisit their policy, those users will have no way of knowing, since they aren't going to the website and won't hear about the change.

And let's face it: most readers of Ars Technica are more technically-inclined than the rest of the Internet, and are thus more likely to be using ad-blockers. If they follow through with this policy, this could have some severe blowback.

Re:Love this comment by Ars

[Angst Badger]

Ok, your terms are acceptable. See ya.

Pretty much. Ars Technica's approach here is to ask people to do something they dislike so Ars can make money. What they're finding out is that a substantial number of people dislike the ads more than they like the content, and if push comes to shove, they're willing to give up the content along with the ads. If your business model consists of haranguing your users and telling them that if they don't do something unpleasant, they'll be sorry, you have become rather embarrassingly detached from reality and should probably look for something else to do. It's 2010, fer chrissakes. You'd think that by now people would have figured out that, at least on the web, popular does not equal profitable, and any business "plan" that involves attracting lots of non-paying spectators and making money from their mere presence is likely to crater.

Re:Love this comment by Ars

[Macrat]

Ok, your terms are acceptable. See ya.

Yup. If they have any content that's really notable, it will appear on other sites anyway.

Re:Love this comment by Ars

[Chicken_Kickers]

Amen, brother. My daily morning routine used to be open up my email, browse Slashdot and then Ars. Been doing this for many years now. I even whitelisted Ars but after reading the exceedingly arrogant comments by the Ars site admins, I have deleted the Ars website from my bookmarks. The truth is that there are many other websites out there that do what Ars does and pissing off your readers is suicide. Good luck to Ars if they continue on this trajectory.

Re:Love this comment by Ars

[Angst Badger]

It is funny that you say this with some sarcasm, like you are somehow "sticking it to them" by taking them up on their offer. They give content, you give nothing back. You stop visiting... and, how exactly is that bad for them?

I'm not sure the idea is to "stick it to them" here. The content that they have is simply not sufficiently valuable to the OP to deal with the ads, so he/she is okay with not visiting the site anymore. Other people may feel differently and put up with the ads. That's just the way a free market works.

Speaking only for myself, there is almost no content on the web that I am willing to endure obtrusive advertising to see. The only significant exception that comes to mind is Wikipedia, which I frankly wish would at least run Google ads so Jimmy Wales would stop holding his hand out for donations all the time. (I usually do donate during WP donation drives, just as I did for my local PBS station back when I watched TV.) That said, I suspect I'm not alone in this. There's a whole lot of sites that I visit that I wouldn't bother with if if I had to deal with lots of ads or if they had paywalls. All the web has done is make it easy for people to publish content to a global audience. Creating content that entices people to actually pay for it hasn't gotten any easier.

It's not like this is unique to the web. When I walk into a store, I don't always buy something. And when I do buy something, it is one product (or a few products) from the thousands or tens of thousands of products in the store. If I had to pay an entry fee just to get into the store, or if every last salesperson on duty interrupts me at least once (this means you, RadioShack) to try to sell me something I'm not remotely interested in, odds are good that I'm not going to visit very often. Unless you're selling necessities like medical care, food, or cars, you just can't get away with annoying the hell out of every customer. Light entertainment -- which is, in the end, what Ars Technica provides -- just isn't worth it.

Re:Love this comment by Ars

[yuhong]

The only significant exception that comes to mind is Wikipedia, which I frankly wish would at least run Google ads so Jimmy Wales would stop holding his hand out for donations all the time.

And Wikia already does, I think.

Whitelist of Ads

[Rivalz]

I block all scripts, flash, ads, by default. Once the website is trusted I whitelist it. It is a huge pain for me to temporarily allow a site I setup macros to allow certain content. On TV FCC regulates the content. On the Web I regulate the content. I'm sorry if I get to use your site without contributing to your income.

My counter argument

[erroneus]

Not blocking ads can be devastating to users' computers.

Blocking ads is more than just a means to cut down on the annoying clutter on the screen. It is a security measure. And the fact is, "respect" is and should be a two-way street. Advertisers do not respect the audience. They will place as many ads "...as the market can bear" or will tolerate. They want attention and will use seizure-inducing colors and flashing to get it. Further, hidden among the many redirects, there are scripts and other exploits designed to turn a user's computer into a bot or worse.

If advertisers used only the most respectful methods, the need for ad blockers would not exist and neither would the ad blockers themselves.

As things stand, even on the most legitimate of sites, users are at risk due to the methods advertisers use when enlisting and deploying advertising campaigns.

Lower my defenses so you can earn money from my eyes? Burn in hell!

1. Pay respect to your audience
2. Use methods that do not require "web client cooperation" and trust the sites hosting your ads. (Use scripts to inject text based ads into the articles originating from the site being read, not from external sites! There is a problem of trust that everyone needs to overcome.)

I don't leave my windows and doors open to allow advertisers to walk into my home because OTHER people will enter as well.

Re:My counter argument

[zippthorne]

Yeah, I find it humorously absurd that because the advertisers don't trust the content producers to properly report impressions, the users are asked to trust an entire industry of shady third-parties not to F-up their computers with malicious code, and in addition to that, the content producers are further asked to trust these said-same third parties to have enough bandwidth and latency to not be too much of a detriment to the users' experience, driving them away.

But then, the content producers agree to this faustian bargain and are upset at their users for not wanting to put up with that shit.

Content Creators Just Can't Win

[GospelHead821]

This sort of argument, as it pertains to piracy, is pretty darned common over at TechDirt, which I also read. I have a lot of sympathy for the creators of "boring" content, like news sites. At least a musician can do live performances and sell merchandise; an author can do lectures and book signings. People used to pay for content so we blame the content creators for having a bad business model and challenge them to come up with something that we'll buy. But we still want the content and we want the money-making good/service to be related to the content too. What is a news site supposed to do? How many people are going to buy an Ars Technica t-shirt? So they make money by selling ads to third parties but people find ways to avoid looking at the ads. Some people would argue that this is Ars Technica's problem and that if they can't find a service that people will buy, they "deserve" to go out of business. How can people have this kind of attitude and then wonder why the content that remains is spineless and pandering? It's because we've driven the real content creators away and all that's left are marketers with delusions of creativity.

Re:Content Creators Just Can't Win

[carcosa30]

This is just the way the world is. I'm sure the makers of horse troughs felt the same way. It's a bitch. It's only just gotten started.

Re:Content Creators Just Can't Win

[Garwulf]

Well, first off, you've raised some very good points, but you shouldn't have included authors in your list for a couple of reasons. Number one, authors don't get usually paid for book signings; and number two, most people still consume books as paper objects - the printed book occupies around 95% of the market, with the e-book and audiobook fighting over the remainder - so the original business model still actually holds true.

(And, the 2009 figures are in - the e-book made a lot of gains in 2009, reaching 3.31% of the total market. Source: http://www.publishers.org/main/PressCenter/Archicves/2010_February/SalesUp4.1in2009Release.htm )

That said, there will be adjustments in the market. The way I figure it will play out is as follows:

1. Advertising-based sites lose revenue from ad-blockers, and content quality goes down.
2. Those sites either move to a subscription or corporate sponsorship-based revenue stream (or something else that works) or die out.
3. Something new happens.

Ultimately, somebody has to pay for the content - whether it's paying the writers (always a good thing!), or just for the bandwidth, the money has to come from somewhere. So, with online advertising having become somewhat toxic (as has been pointed out, a lot of these ads carry malware), that particular business model is on its way out. Eventually, a new one will come in, and it will last as long as the market allows.

So, it's not really a matter of deserving anything. The business plan either survives contact with reality or it doesn't.

Re:Content Creators Just Can't Win

[DreadPiratePizz]

Sites like Homestar Runner are supported entirely by merchandise. There isn't a single ad on the site, so it can be done.

Re:Content Creators Just Can't Win

[Z8]

Yep, Slashdot is full of the same people, like the +5 comment above that says "If you can't figure out how to make money, that's your problem." But isn't it his problem too if all the sites he's ad blocking go out of business? I guess that thought is too complicated for most people; they assume that all these sites that "deserve to fail" will magically be around forever for them to leech off of.

Re:Content Creators Just Can't Win

[tftp]

But isn't it his problem too if all the sites he's ad blocking go out of business?

It's not a problem at all. If you remember first years of Internet (or even better, FidoNet, or BBS) then you know that money is not necessary for running a network. Sure, we'll lose slick, expensive sites that publish big name writers and employ staff. Not a major loss, I think. Most of comminication is occurring on peer to peer basis (just as I reply to you) and not on the client-server basis. We could discuss this over any number of free or nearly free technologies - some IM, FreeNet, Skype or whatever else is out there. It doesn't cost much today to run a reasonably sized web or mail server, to host a blog or to run a mailing list. And there is no requirement for any such site to have 10 million users. I read and post to some mailing lists that have maybe 50-100 active users. I don't charge for my contributions, and neither do other posters. But if there is anything worthy of a discussion we don't wait for Gods of Slashdot to accept an article, we do it ourselves, within minutes.

Re:Content Creators Just Can't Win

[GospelHead821]

Homestarrunner.com also hasn't updated since last October. (For the record, I've purchased merchandise from them.)

You missed my point, though. HSR.com can support itself on merchandise at least in part because it's an entertainment site. People like having merch that shows their support for their entertainments. The same model does not seem that it would apply nearly so well to a news site.

Blocking content to those who block ads

[jddimarco]

It's fair for Ars to block content to those who block ads from their site, if that's what they wish: it's Ars content. It's also fair for those who use ad blockers to be annoyed at Ars for it: nobody likes having something nice taken away from them, and Ars is taking away ad-free access to the content. Ars needs to be careful about the trade-off: is the increased ad revenue (if any) worth the bad publicity?

the problem with ads these days

[RobertLTux]

even if you ignore the pop over under float frames interstial type things most pages these days are

counting from the left
Ad rail with a few site links
content frame with a half dozen embeded ads
first rail of site link content
second rail of site link content (with videos) and duplicates of first rail
ad rail number 2
ad rail number 3
then you mix in the banners scattered across run of the page and the list of comments and various blog and share links

ONLY 5 PERCENT OF THE PAGE IS ACTUAL CONTENT

oh btw am i mistaken that ad block plus actually DOES NOT DOWNLOAD THE ADS IT BLOCKS

Re:the problem with ads these days

[The Barking Dog]

oh btw am i mistaken that ad block plus actually DOES NOT DOWNLOAD THE ADS IT BLOCKS

I wish ad blockers *would* download the ads, but not display them. It would never result in a click, but it would result in a view, so depending on the ad deal between publisher and advertiser, the site may still get credit.

Re:the problem with ads these days

[RevWaldo]

ONLY 5 PERCENT OF THE PAGE IS ACTUAL CONTENT

Just like the newspaper. At least back in the day when a daily newspaper would be a 1-2 inches thick and still only cost 15-25 cents. And even then the ad/content ratio was around 60/40. But Craigslist et al ate up all the classified ad revenue. Now you're paying 50-100 cents for a paper that's half an inch thick.

Long story short - TANSTAAFL!

Re:the problem with ads these days

[Andy_R]

I disagree, it's in nobody's interest that bandwidth and electricity gets wasted sending you an advert that you will never see. While it might make financial sense, the site is charging the advertiser for a 'view' they are not getting, and the advertiser is given no feedback that their behaviour is considered unwelcome by you.

I think the real problem is that advertisers do not see the value in targetting adverts at just those people who will not be annoyed by them. Consider these two scenarios:

1) For $x we will show your advert to 100,000 people, y% of whom will have negative feelings about you and your company, because the consider your advert is degrading their browsing experience.
2) For $x we will show your advert to 100,000 - y% people, all of whom who are known not object to seeing adverts enough to install blocking software.

The advertiser is clearly a better off in scenario 2. It is clearly also in the advertiser's interest not to behave in a way that increases the value of y. If everyone looked at things that way, and valued the technical abilities of Ars users to correctly place themselves in the y group rather than wanting to block ads but being unable to, then we'd be a big step closer to ending the advertiser vs user war.

Re:the problem with ads these days

[Spewns]

oh btw am i mistaken that ad block plus actually DOES NOT DOWNLOAD THE ADS IT BLOCKS

I wish ad blockers *would* download the ads, but not display them.

And I think you're insane. The best part of a good adblocker like Adblock Plus is the fact that it doesn't download the illegitimate content to begin with, saving my bandwidth and resources and speeding up browsing. It's not my responsibility to worry about the business models of whatever stupid site I happen to be visiting. I don't want any part of it.

Re:the problem with ads these days

[Game_Ender]

Have you been to Ars? Its ads are none of those, a single banner and 2 block ads (soon to be one). With the occasional single cycle animated flash ad (ie. the animation stops after a few seconds). They don't have any in text ads, and don't spread their articles over extra pages to get page views.

Ad blockers are just a business risk.

[TermV]

Look, if you're running a web site that makes its money from ads, you have to understand the problems with your own business model. You have to understand that people can and will block ads, and factor that in as a risk to your business. If ad revenues are dropping and you have to lay off staff then let me get out my little violin because that happens for a multitude of reasons across the entire business world. Simply find a way to make it work -- find a different way to make money, cut costs, make it difficult to block your ads, etc. The customer/reader is not beholden in any way to keep you in business by behaving the way that you expect them to. If your web site fails, it's because you're a poor business person and not because of the world around you.

Re:Ad blockers are just a business risk.

[Game_Ender]

They have been running the site for 12 years (longer then most ad supported sites), and have actually had to lay off site because of drops in ad revenue. They also have a subscription model. The only two possible sources they don't have are micropayments (really not going to happen) and donations. They probably going to start merchandising again, which allow the equivalent of donations.

So they are really do everything they can to keep creating original content (which slashdot doesn't do) while just asking people to support them by loading a few KB of ads when they visit the page.

Internet exchange.

[Albert Sandberg]

The main thing with internet is that it's free exchange of information. It's just profit-hungry news companies that needed ads to begin with (since other companies deals with physical products). It's basicly in the last few years that people are demanding that their web envadours are going to be financially secure and pay their salaries.

The main problem (cost) is that of bandwidth and the ads sure haven't made that easier.

I never use ad-blockers but when I see animated noisy ads I sure wish I would.. but instead I simply stop visiting those pages for most of the time. Ads are fucking annoying.

contradiction

[deander2]

Imagine running a restaurant where 40% of the people who came and ate didn't pay. In a way, that's what ad blocking is doing to us.

I am not making an argument that blocking ads is a form of stealing, or is immoral, or unethical, [...]

really. because when you compare ad blocking to stealing food at a restaurant, it seems that you are making the argument that blocking ads is a form of stealing, is immoral, and unethical.

Wrong economic model

[moteyalpha]

A business makes money by definition. if [-e "whine"]; then echo "I feel your pain.";fi
If they had a section which said "Find out about buying X" they might actually get real results from the stuff. A Microsoft ad will never sell me anything and if there were an ad for routers I would probably click to see what they had to say. I personally do not like being treated like an object. If you run a site for an intelligent audience, don't treat them like tools or statistical models.

12 Hour experiment with death

[nurb432]

I hope you got a good taste of what it would be like if you piss off all your customers.

"Stealth" ad blocking

[RevWaldo]

It would seem technically feasible to have an ad blocker that actually downloads the ad content as if it's being displayed - and just not display it. It would appear to the ad agency the ads are getting through, even though in reality the user never sees them.
Not a good solution by any means, as it needlessly wastes bandwidth, processor cycles, memory, etc.
Of course this would just be one more salvo in the internet advertising arms race. What the advertisers would do to get around this should make one shudder to think.

Re:"Stealth" ad blocking

[Braedley]

If I remember correctly, the original AdBlock had this option, albeit a global one, so that pay-per-view ads would still earn on page view. As you say, what we need is a way to specify that visiting (as an example) arstechnica.com should always download the ads there, but never display them. For sites that you don't frequent, the difference doesn't make much of a difference in their cash-flow. For ads that are pay-per-click, it doesn't matter at all, because you weren't going to click them anyway.

TOTC

[cvtan]

You realize that saying, "Please don't block our ads or people will be out of work." is a Think of the Children argument. "Please buy our heroin or our poor farmers will starve." "Please buy our 1975 Trabant or the Fatherland will surely perish!" See 50 Worst Cars of All Time: http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1658545_1658533_1658030,00.html. Please see the Abbott and Costello mustard routine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q24mfUn9HFU

No excuse for lazy programmers

[managerialslime]

With ads - without ads - what a waste of argument when geeks could instead debate an interesting arms race.

The ad-blocking technologies work because the ads themselves are easily identified by the source web site as different from the main web page. A small change in architecture would allow ads to be funneled through the main presenting web page server and integrated with the main web site in real-time.

Current versions of Ad-block plus and No-script would then be rendered useless for the purpose of ad-blocking.

What the opposing side would then need to do is develop databases of ads, analyze screens and then repaint screens with blank space where the ads where.

No wait! The ad presenters would then need to problematically vary every ad as appearing to be unique.

No wait! The blockers could then use Bayesian logic to detect areas of presentation close enough to ads to be suppresses anyway.

Whole new levels point-counter-point spy-vs.-spy program evolution!

Whole new discussions, trolls, and flame-wars about the nuances of why one approach is SO MUCH BETTER at blocking (or overcoming blocking).

That would be the slash.dot, SourceForge, and Mozilla Add-on communities I have come to know and love.

Bwahahahahahahaahahh..........

Change the channel to what?

[nurb432]

To another station blasting ads at you.. Ever notice how they are all timed to go off about the same so you don't have much choice, other then to walk away and do something constructive.

Re:How is this different than muting TV commercial

[Spatial]

According to the article, it's different because it more directly affects the amount of money derived from Internet advertising. On TV it's based on prediction, on the Internet it's based on actual data.

Subscriptions means the end of links

[drewhk]

One serious problem with subscriptions and paywalls is that they effectively prevent linking content -- the most important feature of the web.

Then Stop Annoying Me

[ElusiveMind]

If ads didn't have video, or audio that plays by default, or stuff that pops directly over the content I am trying to view via a modal dialog, I would make less of an effort to block them.

The catch-22 is, the more the advertiser tries to get the attention of the viewer, the less I am willing to put up with the annoyance of being required to click on modal dialogs or hit the "sound off" option.

The last thing I want to hear at 11pm when everyone is asleep is "CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU ARE OUR 10,000TH VISITOR" or some shizz. Facebook has a good model. You can "dislike" or block ads that are repetitive, annoying, or otherwise uninteresting - and it helps them target you better.

I have no problem clicking on ads for things I am genuinely interested in. But I have zero interest in being annoyed in the process.

And what about NoScript?

[RevWaldo]

NoScript technically isn't an ad blocker, but it does block a lot of ads. Is there less of an ethical quandary to blocking scripts as opposed to directly targeting advertisements?

Don't forget page load lag

[Late Adopter]

Ironically Slashdot demonstrated this for me when I tried to pull up their front page before coming into this story. I'm on a pretty snappy connection, and Slashdot is no slouch, but because my browser was waiting on ad.doubleclick.com I was stuck looking at the top banner and that was pretty much it.

If you have js code that loads ads it *must* come at the end of the page. I try to be good about keeping adblock off, but incidents of these things lead me to blocking a domain's ads.

Re:Don't forget page load lag

[kill-1]

but because my browser was waiting on ad.doubleclick.com I was stuck looking at the top banner and that was pretty much it.

Honi soit qui mal y pense.

Re:Don't forget page load lag

[u38cg]

Well, if only you weren't a late adopter you would have an option to turn off /. ads like us old ones do...

Re:Don't forget page load lag

[harmonise]

If you have js code that loads ads it *must* come at the end of the page.

Why? That sounds like a browser bug. JavaScript shouldn't be executed until the entire page has loaded.

Re:Don't forget page load lag

[Omestes]

I actually un-checked that box. I'm using Chromium, so I can't actually block the ads, just hide them. I figure its a win/win situation that way, /. gets some small pittance from the ad company, and I still don't have to see the damn things. /. might be the only page that I would do this for, though, since I feel somewhat obligated to it since it has been keeping me amused (and away from doing those tedious "productive" things) for god knows how long. There isn't many pages on the internet that can claim as much, though. I can live without Ars, but a life without /. would suck (though I suppose my sanity would improve).

Google is the only other site I let through, mostly because I don't even notice their ads anymore.

Re:Don't forget page load lag

[Game_Ender]

Ars loads all ads in iframes in a such a way as they do not slow down page loading.

Don't abuse something that's a privilege.

[Dukenukemx]

Remember when websites used to use pop up ads? Always had to click it off, and usually, another would pop back up. This is sorta the same problem here, only you can't close the ads. Plus, a lot of websites like to abuse them, like HardOCP does. I swear, without Adblock Plus, I'd have a seizure from induced epilepsy, cause of the flashing ads. Just saw Ars Technica's website, and it's pretty bad. What do visitors get to see, from Ars Technica? Regurgitated tech news that every tech website has? I have a hard time visiting HardOCP with Kyle Bennetts skewed comments, with all the ads they have on their. Another thing, is that tech websites seem to be doing this a lot, and will complain about Adblock Plus. Tech-Report and HardOCP will permanently ban forum members, if they mention Adblock Plus. BTW, if you think you're getting an unbiased review from these websites, try to remember they can't give out information that will deny sales to the product. Otherwise, they'll never get their hands on new hardware to review. It's not magic that these websites all release benchmarks on a single day. I remember spending hours to figure out why Windows XP would always crash and reset on boot when I put together a new system, using a Abit BF6 motherboard, which according to FiringSquad was the best motherboard ever. Long and behold the default motherboard settings had an IRQ conflict. You're better off visiting Newegg, and reading user comments about the hardware. The only good thing about tech websites is their benchmarks, and there's hundreds of other websites that have benchmarks. Wanna stop people from using AdBlockers? Then host the ads on your site, and keep it unintuitive. Majority of websites have the ads hosted on another server, usually through another company. How you think adblockers work? Majority of ads are hosted on common servers. All you gotta do is block those servers and 99% of website ads are gone. Too many good reasons to use an ad blocker. #1 Faster load times. Majority of it is flash or gif based, and animates. #2 Some people don't have unlimited internet, and would like to save bandwidth, by avoiding ads they don't click anyway. #3 Less likely to get a virus, as has happened to some people in the past. Honestly, unless other websites stop with annoying ads, then I'll keep my adblocker. I'm too lazy to allow some websites to show ads, and don't give a damn either. Keep it to one ad, and don't animate it. Adblocker gave me back my internet.

Re:Don't abuse something that's a privilege.

[Legion303]

"You're better off visiting Newegg, and reading user comments about the hardware."

You're even better off asking people you personally know, ever since those marketing fuckbags learned the joys of astroturfing and viral marketing.

Privacy

[digitalhermit]

Here's the main problem I have with enabling ads..

Load NoScript in your browser.. Then load some random sites. Some of them are advertiser sites that are being blocked. Some of these advertiser sites (maybe disguised as a social networking site) can then set/read cookies from your browser. In their databases they can aggregate your browsing patterns.

Here's where it's a problem...

On one social networking site that I use I have many of my co-workers and business associates. In the past I've already had ads start showing up on non-related sites after browsing new products. For example, I don't have a pet but someone asked me to research some flea medication. Within moments after researching on one site, I started noticing flea powders being advertised on another site. Coincidence? What would you think?

I don't want my personal life to start spilling into my public/work life. The problem with these ad sites is that I do not know what information they are storing about me. I don't know if their revenues one day start to decline so they start opening up my records to seedy advertisers. What if Facebook modifies their policy or some seedy advertiser exploits a bug in the Facebook API and starts posting on my home page? What if my co-workers start seeing "Holley 4-Barrel Carbs and the Men Who Love Them" on my page and get the wrong impression? What if LinuxJournal posts "Finger, mount, fsck and sleep" on my wall (and say I work at Microsoft)?

Aside from annoying

[nurb432]

Besides annoying, a lot of these things slow your browser ( or entire computer ) down and is just uncalled for. Its bad enough to have the ad, but if i have to suffer because of it? F-off!

While I'm just one person and I wont make or break a company, i still make a point of NOT buying products from companies that use offensive ads in my face like this.

Slashdot does it right

[Idiomatick]

/. has ads for passerbys and noobs. To support the community they let good users have a free pass, this doesn't cost them much and improves the site. Lastly they allow people to donate/sign up with money.

They plan for and only expect a small chunk of people to sign up, but each signed up person pays for 1000 not signed up people. And the other bit of advertising is additional revenue without annoying anyone you really want on the site. Perfect! All sites should be run this way.

That or have an additional source of revenue and leave the website as a loss in efforts to increase $ to the other products. Put website into 'advertising' as an expense rather than kidding yourself and thinking it is a revenue stream.

Re:Slashdot does it right

[Danny Rathjens]

• The carrot: "As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable advertising."
• The stick: "story content was hidden from users of popular ad blocking tools"

This reminds of when the guy running freshmeat had a hissyfit and blocked access to the site content for everyone for a while. On the other hand, /. and freshmeat get almost all of their content from the public while ars seems more like an online magazine with paid writers creating their content. (ah, yes, ars is actually owned by a magazine company: Condé Nast and they do have subscriptions.)

The argument is irrelevant....

[Jon-ZA]

I simply do not click on adverts so why would I want to see them? Even if there was no way of blocking them I would never click on them. It's as simple as that. Finished and klaar.

Well now.

[Smooth and Shiny]

When sites go through the extra trouble to make sure that ads are not intrusive and that they do not contain rootkits, trojans or other nasty stuff, I will stop blocking ads. Until then, I don't feel bad AT ALL.

And NoScript?

[Mathinker]

In the name of improved security, I block third-party Javascript using NoScript. I cannot fib, however, and claim that I am unhappy that this removes a lot of annoying advertising.

P.S. I agree that text ads have never bothered me. Well, maybe once or twice in total over a humongous amount of browsing time.

Re:And NoScript?

[metamatic]

In particular, NoScript seems to prevent 100% of Ars's ads. I don't have AdBlock installed, but I have NoScript, and I see no ads on that page.

If they are saying they demand that I run all the scripts on their site if I'm going to look at the content, well sorry, no way.

Packages are the future

[cellurl]

We all know where this is headed.
In the future you will be offered cable-esque packages.

$29.95/mo for 100 of your favorite sites ad free. wsj, Nickjr, ...
$9.95/mo for 10 of your favorite sites ad free.


Legal speed

Re:Packages are the future

[graft]

I make a similar proposal here. Universities have used this model for years to share expensive content - digital library subscriptions for journals. Paysites could certainly arrange the same thing with digital library sites. If it becomes ubiquitous (which it probably should), then (a) everyone will pay for viewing content (indirectly, through their library subscription), and (b) linking won't be an issue, since everyone will be able to read behind most of the important paywalls. $10 a month seems more than enough - I can get a bunch of magazine subscriptions for that price, and there's a much lower distribution cost involved here.

Degrees of gullibility

[Forget4it]

Gullibility is in the eye of the beholder.
Close the eye and you lose that gullibility.
Indiscriminate advertising get's what it merits
if it treats all as equally gullible.

All should have the right to divert their eyes away from what is trying to take advantage of them.
Some people have a high tolerance to this "being taken as gullible";
Others less; It's a question of degrees:
Ad-blocking is for those, like me, who are disturbed by indiscriminate advertising
in the same way as Cayce was allergic to brand in Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

Depends where you're coming from

[Joce640k]

AT might be quite neutral compared to other ad-infested sites but if you're used to browsing without ads then *any* movement on the page is very distracting while you're trying to read the text.

I get the same with TV. I don't own a TV set, I see all programs without adverts via torrent. Whenever I go to somebody's house the adverts seem unbelievably loud and obnoxious though they claim not to notice them at all (yeah, right...)

Re:How is this different than muting TV commercial

[Anonymous Coward]

The article is wrong. Ars claims that there is a difference because TV ads are "potential" based ads, where the advertiser has a stochastic model which tells them how many viewers will actually watch the ad, whereas web-ads don't use a stochastic model because the ad server can simply count the impressions. But of course web advertisers also know that quite a lot of ads are never viewed. They might be below the fold and the user never scrolls. They might be loaded in tabs that are never viewed. The user might have another window blocking his view of that particular part of the browser window. The idea that web advertising has a reliable way of counting impressions is bullshit. What if ad blockers started downloading ads without showing them? Would that satisfy Ars? Following their argument it should, but of course advertisers would simply discount the impression count by the percentage of visitors with ad blockers, just like they discount reach to account for channel hoppers and ad muters in the TV world.

It's like with the music industry: There was a short time when they profited immensely from the technology which made music creation cheaper while the market price of music had not started to decrease. Publishers have for quite a while profited from the advancements in desktop publishing and online distribution. They've churned out so much bad journalism at pre-online prices just because they could that some of them have forgotten what good journalism looks like. Now literally everybody can reach millions of readers with practically no up-front cost, and this reduces the value of the usual advertising-as-content or two-before-breakfast opinion pieces. Unless they have information which is valuable in and of itself (i.e. not just opinion pieces, press release relays and unboxing stories), they compete against millions of other publishers. No matter how they fight the fight: Their revenue will go down. It's simple market economics. IMHO the quality of information that could support subscription models just isn't there, and of course that is reflected in ad revenue too.

Scholarly cloaking

[tepples]

You won't be indexed by search engines

Elsevier, Wiley, Springerlink, JSTOR, and other sites in Google Scholar appear to be indexed despite all the cloaking they do.

Stack Exchange?

[tepples]

Many of us do understand that Ars is more expensive to run than Stack Exchange or (maybe) Slashdot

"Stack Exchange"? Are you conflating ExpertS-exChange with Stack Overflow?

Re:Stack Exchange?

[bheer]

Eh, I meant the engine behind StackOverflow, SuperUser and the like.

Sales, not views, are what generates revenue

[grimJester]

Perhaps the site would get paid, but that's really not important in the long run. The actual profit is only made when a customer buys something from the advertiser. Making uninterested people listen to a sales pitch is a waste of time. Generating ad views that have no chance of generating a sale is doing a disservice to both the advertiser and the viewer.

How would you feel about an ad blocker that loads the ads in the background without showing them to the reader? That's fine, because Ars Technica gets paid?

Re:Sales, not views, are what generates revenue

[Threni]

That works for me, as long as there's *no* way of loading any virus/malware crap. Also, perhaps a Firefox plugin which clicks on the ads of sites you like without you having to 1) click or 2) see the results of the clicks, if doing so would help. Perhaps it wouldn't help, but really I'm with the people who run adblocking software because of the security risk, and also because I'm immune to commercials.

Besides, Murdocks pay-to-view model, if it works, might inspire non-news sites to charge, and perhaps before too long most sites, when they get to a certain size and/or they get greedy and want to go public or just make more money than they can from ads, will charge. A lot of people would pay for Slashdot, for example, if it was just a few pence per day. Or perhaps it could be a charge that ISPs could pay for you to get you to go with them.

Re:Sales, not views, are what generates revenue

[Scrameustache]

Making uninterested people listen to a sales pitch is a waste of time.

I once worked at a company that made ads, and my boss explained that making uninterested people listen to a sales pitch is the whole point of advertising.
Interested people are going to do the learning effort on their own, it'd be a waste of time to pitch your sale to them, he said.

Re:How is this different than muting TV commercial

[osgeek]

Read TFA. It's very different.

Advertisers...

[Joce640k]

By definition, the entire advertising business is based around changing/influencing my behavior and the ONLY way they can do that is by intruding on my time/space (if there's another way, nobody's come up with it yet).

Now they're surprised when I try to prevent them? LOL!

Your model is broken

[bryan314]

If people are blocking ads, the problem is with your advertising, not with the people.
Adverting by definition, is a request for attention, not a requirement.
Ad block software is our way of telling you, you f'd up, and we're not paying attention until you, the site owners, fix it.
I have no sympathy if your site goes under because of your poor business model advertising decisions.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:How is this different than muting TV commercial

[makomk]

It's based on actual data for TV ads too, except the data is obtained by statistical sampling of the population rather than just monitoring everyone.

not me

[McGiraf]

" Does that mean that there are the occasional intrusive ads, expanding this way and that? Yes, sometimes we have to accept those ads."

Maybe you do, but I don't. You want to sell my eyeball for money? give me a cut, not "content".

I don't click them, why should I see them?

[davepermen]

I never clicked an ad except out of accident, ever. Why should I be forced to see them when I know I will NEVER react to them. You won't make money out of me except out of accident. And you don't deserve that.

Noone would block ads if they were not obnoxious

[unity100]

and increasingly intrusive. leave those aside, they have increasingly became loaded with javascript, which are aimed in abstracting various information about the visitor on whose computer they are displayed on. and on top of these, they are incurring latency. often im finding that my page has paused loading because it is waiting a response from a 3rd party adserver serving a random ad on the page.

Make ads worth seeing rather than obnoxious

[unity100]

its like tv ads. remember how the ad agencies in europe started to make funny/interesting ads so that viewers would at least watch them once, and tell them to other people ? its supposed to be like that. when an ad is funny, even if you havent seen it, you HEAR it from someone else. eventually you end up checking out the ads if the thing will come up or not, if you cant find it directly online. and then you watch it and laugh. you laugh, and the ad agency delivers their message. give and take, everyone is happy.

the situation of online advertising is more like american advertising of old times - obnoxious, intrusive, repetitive, stupid (or at least takes viewers as stupid) and makeshift. noone wants that.

Sucks to be them.

[pushf popf]

Somehow Internet has made people to forget that creating quality content costs money.

In The Beginning, shortly after God said "Let There Be Light," great content was created by users because they wanted to share it, not because publishing companies saw that slices of dead trees were becoming less profitable.

If every site on the planet that requires advertising for survival closed, the world would not be a significantly worse place and in many aspects would be better. People would run their own websites (which can cost less every month than a "value meal" at Burger King), continue to create wonderful content and the internet would become what few current users ever experienced: truly ad-free.

Let me be the first to bring out The World's Tiniest Violin and play a sad little tune for all the leeches being hurt by Ad Blocking.

If your business can't survive without advertising revenue, it's time to figure out what you can do for a living that actually benefits humanity, quit your job and move on.

Re:How is this different than muting TV commercial

[Junior J. Junior III]

The ars article explains this... With TV ads, the advertisors pay broadcasters to put the ads out there. There is no way to know how many people actually see the ad. They basically pay a lot of money on a chance that you'll see it. With internet ads, they can tell through server logs how many times a particular ad is served, and so they pay out based on the number times an ad is served. If your blocking software worked by downloading the ad, but then didn't display it, then the advertisor wouldn't be aware. But most ad blockers work by blocking the call to the server that would bring the ad down. This only makes sense because why waste bandwidth on something you're not going to use, but the unfortunate consequence of this is that the content provider never gets paid out on the ad. So, I see a way for ad blockers to have a smarter implementation that allows everyone to get what they want (well, except the advertisor, but that's OK because they're inhuman scum.) Modify the ad blocking software to download the ad, and simply don't display it to the user. Make this a mode that you can turn on or off, so you can still conserve bandwidth if that's important for you, or so you can deny revenue to sites you don't want to support. Currently, Adblock Plus allows you to whitelist or blacklist a domain. A middle option to blacklist-but-support-ad-revenue would fix this. Advertisers might not like it, but they wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

I used to create banner ads...

[webdog314]

I am embarrassed to say that about a decade ago, I was one of those designers who was making ad banners for various advertising agencies. Interestingly, at the time, our specifications for design rarely included animation (as a gif - flash? what's that?) and if they were animated, it had to be tasteful and minimal. The LAST thing you wanted to do was piss off a potential customer with an invasive and annoying banner ad. In less than a decade, advertisers on the internet have completely reversed this principle, and while I no longer do this kind of work, I can't understand their reasoning. Advertising ALWAYS works better when you can attract the attention of a potential customer in a POSITIVE way rather than a NEGATIVE one. Maybe they are funny, or amazing, or even thought provoking. But successful ads are never annoying.

I want....

[jimpop]

I want the sites I frequent to continue their success. However, I've found that blocking ads makes those sites load much faster, and they layout much cleaner. If sites want me to load their ads they *must* solve the speed and layout issues, because I'm already addicted to the fast and clean version of their site.
 

Ars Technica? Who is that?

[wowbagger]

Ars Technica, who is that? Oh yes, that's one of those annoying sites I don't read anymore, because they insist upon breaking every story into a dozen pages so they can push more ads.

Hey Ars,
here's some
advice:

(buy Brawndo capacitors - they got electrolytics, its what current craves!)
(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next)

Rather than
making me
search for
a Print link

(Buy BigJuggs Disks - you KNOW what you want to store!)
(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next)

So that I
can read
your site
quickly

(Play NoLife for free for the next three minutes- only $123.99!)
(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next)

and actually
use ALL of
my screen,
instead of
just the
middle

(Host your site on NotWorking Pollution!)
(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next)

why don't
you put it
on one page

(Microsoft, we aren't sociopathic monopolists, we just act like one)
(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next)

And see
if that
works.
(visit our sister site ICanHasContent!)
(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next)

(post us to Wastebook!)
(Post us to Shovel!)
(Post us to DidntReadIt!)
(Post us to NoLife!)
(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next)

Re:Ars Technica? Who is that?

[raynet]

Yeah, that silly pagination is really irritating and usually just causes me to jump to the conclusions page. I probably wouldn't block their ads if they had a synopsis page with content related ad and then a button that allows me to read the whole article in one single page. They should even sell that button for sponsors, stamp nice AMD logo on the button and maybe even put some kind of footer ad on the end of the whole page article with 'This article was sponsored by the new AMD hyper-mega-super-GPU, read more here -> '.

simole solution ...

[tomhudson]

let most of the ad-supported sites die.

Aw, no more ars technica? Not missed anyways.

Aw, no more gmail? Tough shit - more than 95% of all the bogus registrations I see are from spammers using gmail.

Aw, no more search? Aw - guess we'll have to depend on good old word-of-mouth, and specialized sites that also cache searchable content from elsewhere. And distributed search.

Aw, no more podcasts and webinars? Nobody watches them anyways.

It's going to happen anyway - ad-blocking/security agents with enough intelligence to remove all ads. By 2020 the big Internet advertisers are all dead and gone, because change is chaotic, not gradual. Find another model, or FOAD.

Re:simole solution ...

[tftp]

It won't be even that bad:

Aw, no more gmail? ... Aw, no more search?

Google runs text ads and most people don't block them (they are often relevant anyway, and they don't hurt anyone.)

Aw, no more podcasts and webinars? Nobody watches them anyways.

A good percentage of webinars is ran by the industry - by companies like TI, Motorola, Analog Devices. Those companies don't have ads and they aren't interested in subscriptions, they run their Web sites to advertise, support and sell their own products. Those Web sites will stay, and they are the best part of the Web, IMO, compared to the rumor mill that "tech" sites run. So we may lose an opinion of a writer about some Abit motherboard, but www.abit.com.tw is not going anywhere, and we'll be always able to read about their products, and discuss them either right there or with some other mechanism, free or not.

Re:simole solution ...

[Scott Kevill]

"And then they came for me."

Re:simole solution ...

[tomhudson]

"And then they came for me."

Don't be silly.

Nobody is stopping anyone from setting up a web site.

Your ISP has an email server - use the damn thing. Or set up your own. You can rent space on a server cheap.

The bottom 99% of the Internet could disappear tomorrow and you wouldn't notice - except for the massive reduction of spam.

Effectiveness of advertising

[sphealey]

> Its the advertisers fault. I understand that advertising is all about making
> sure your message is heard above the noise but they are the ones who jumped
> the shark.
>
> When it was just banners and the occasional frame with some adds in it, I
> never attempted to filter them out other than with my own mental powers.
> When they started doing pop-ups and float overs, I even tolerated it. When
> they started making adds that pretended to be system messages, virus scanner
> alerts, and other applications that really struck me as fraudulent and abusive
> and so I started blocking ads and helping others do the same.

The dirty secret here is that there has never in human history been a reliable way to measure the effectiveness of advertising. Macy's puts a 4-page spread of children's clothing in the Sunday newspaper and the next week sales of children's clothes go up. Is that a result of parents reading the ad, absorbing it, and making a purchase as a result? Is it the result of the ad jogging the parents' memory about the need to buy back to school clothes, but they would have gone to Macy's anyway because they always have? Or is it just back to school time and the sales would have gone up anyway? No one ever knew.

Now there are direct and provable methods to precisely measure the effectiveness of specific ads on the Internet, and a good measure of the effectiveness of advertising overall. The result? Advertising turns out to be very INeffective and has very little affect on people's decisions. The consumer goods industry and the ad-makers are having a really, really difficult time dealing with that.

sPh

"Few and far between"?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Try "none", and then we'll talk.

Sometimes, I make an effort to block individual ads and ad networks, but sometimes it's easier to just block ads on a given site, especially when they've clearly demonstrated they don't care how much they annoy me.

Internet advertisers made a choice:

[Burz]

They could more closely emulate the ads of printed media, which drew only rare complaints from readers... or they could emulate the ads of TV, which cause a lot of people to recoil.

What we got on the web are TV-like ads without sound but which:

still flicker, shake and gyrate;
actively obstruct the UI;
imitate system warnings to mislead;
peg the CPU to near 100% on slower systems;
act as a programmable vector for malware and surveillance.

Yikes.

In order to keep infection rates of my naive Windows customers down, I have to not only educate them about trojans and phishing (teaching them to hover over links before clicking works wonders)... I also have to install Adblock as an absolute necessity. Otherwise they WILL get infected in short order, often in an attempt to rid themselves of an "infection" that a popup ad "found".

What's more, this is not television. People come to the Internet to find what they want, not to have "Hey we know what you want!!" pushed in their faces twice as often as with ye olde media.

I now believe that ads should be limited to GIFs and JPEGs on the website's main page. The advertisers crossed over into unethical territory before ad-blocking users, about the same time that actual content on websites became heavily dependent on Javascript. That leaves me with the following questions: What are journalists and advertisers doing about this problem? Do advertisers even care that their delivery infrastructure is poisonous?

Adblock might compromise by letting GIF and JPEG through as a default. But these questions still need to be dealt with.

Re:How is this different than muting TV commercial

[dzfoo]

Amen. I wish I had mod points for you.

+ 1 Kick-ass Insightful.

They cannot win

[allo]

for every counter-adblock measure, there will be a script, which blocks even with counter-adblock in effect. the user controlls how your content is displayed, and its his good right. And the crackers will always be faster than the DRM-producers.

I would also like to add

[Burz]

that I do not use Adblock personally. I use NoScript, which is a struggle and unsuitable for novices but still prefer because its even safer and lets the GIF/JPEG ads through anyway.

So I disabled adblock...

[rihkama]

.. on Ars Technica. No ads. I guess their ads are broken if the browser is blocking JavaScript from 3rd party domains.

Host your own ads

[TSPhoenix]

The only time I'll click an ad is if I know where the URL is going, not some stupid 80-mile URL that doesn't even take me to what I want. 99% of the time ads aren't even relevant, but when I see sites that host their own hand-picked ads, I'll click them if it looks interesting.

It makes sense too, a site picks out ads that they think their audience will be responsive to. They host them on their own server as to avoid ad blocking, and I actually click said ads. Sure ad-tracking and such can't really work so seamlessly, but it could be a lot better.

Put the burden on the advertisers

[chaotropic agent]

I think maybe Adblock Plus, or some other trustworthy party should generate a list of companies and adservers that comply with delivering non-intrusive, friendly, good quality ads so that users could allow those ads to go through, while blocking all other ad content. If an advertiser on the good list then comes along with a pop-up or some flash that takes over the whole screen, users should be able to vote them off the list. That way, we aren't judging the website or blaming the user, who are not the people who are the problem. The websites, knowing full well that the ads from the advertisers on the good list are being delivered to the user, will let those advertisers use their space over the other advertisers and in the end it would be the advertisers who would have to change to become more friendly to the users. I think users all just want the highest quality of content to be delivered to them, and we need to teach the advertisers this and not penalize the already proven quality of the websites we frequently visit.

Re:Put the burden on the advertisers

[tftp]

I think maybe Adblock Plus, or some other trustworthy party should generate a list of companies and adservers that comply with delivering non-intrusive, friendly, good quality ads so that users could allow those ads to go through, while blocking all other ad content.

By "going through" I presume you mean "download into /dev/null" if that's the option you select. It's one thing to download the ad to generate a valid view for the ad server, but it's a completely different thing to render it and see it. Same as the "mute" button on a TV remote. The ad is honestly served, but the viewer refused to look at it.

In general yes, I think Adblock Plus would benefit from such an option. The blocking subscriptions could be updated to include the "view" flag, and it could be configured by the user too. It's a half-measure, admittedly, because I am unsure about future of ads on Internet, but it is an easy thing to do.

Re:How is this different than muting TV commercial

[schwit1]

I did. Do you believe that people's TV commercial viewing habits would change if the advertisers could determine who is watching their ads and then complained about the lack of viewers?

Re:How is this different than muting TV commercial

[drooling-dog]

There was a time when the FCC limited advertising on commercial television to something like 7 or 8 minutes of advertising per hour. With deregulation, that's now up to around 19, or nearly a third of program time. Broadcasters can do that because there apparently are enough people who are willing to sit catatonically through them all without complaint. Of course, you can take a bathroom break, visit the fridge, or take the dog out during the commercial breaks, but that would be wrong because it only hurts the people who bring you all of that fine free programming.

The problem with 'micropayment' subscriptions

[illumnatLA]

The issue I have with the concept of many content providers going to a 'micropayment' subscription is that for the user, eventually, all the micropayments for the stuff they want to read ends up being one big MACROpayment.

I've got enough monthly payments to deal with between car payments, car insurance, rent, phone bill, internet, and so forth. I don't want to and am not going to add a bunch of $.99 micropayments on top of everything else.

$.05 an article? Micropayment? How many articles have you read on the internet today? How many this month? Let's see... in the past hour or so I read... $.05 1-Article MMO-Champion.com $.10 2-Articles WoW.com $.10 2-Articles Slashdot.org $.10 2-Articles ArsTechnica.com $.10 2-Articles Cracked.com $.05 1-Article NYTimes.com $.05 1-Article NewsoftheWeird.com

Ok... that works out to $.55 in an hour. Let's say 3 hours on the internet per day or 21 hours per week... $11.55 a week multiplied by 4 to get per month... $46.20... multiplied by 12 for the yearly cost... $554.40. $554.40 a year on micropayments!!!

So... tell me again... are you willing to make micropayments for every article you read on the internet?

Also, if many websites go to a micropayment model users will get sick of having to enter their credit card or paypal account every time they want to read something. Someone like Rupert Murdoch will come along and offer a whole bunch of this content for one payment instead of a ton of little payments.

It'll be a reintroduction to an AOL type experience where everything the average user would look at would be through the filter of one giant corporation.

Yep... Micropayments is exactly where the big corporations would like us to go.

Re:The problem with 'micropayment' subscriptions

[atomic777]

These micropayments are not micro in any way; if a site expects you to pay 5 cents for an article, they are asking the equivalent of a fortune ($50 effective revenue per thousand). What we need is a real micropayment infrastructure that can be shared across sites and do away with the obtrusive ads once and for all.

While it varies from site to site, the effective revenue that most sites get for every thousand views is not usually more than a couple of dollars, and for small sites far less. This translates to fractions of a penny of revenue per page viewed.

So doing the math again on your year-end total would be in the range of $10-20, not $550

Re:The problem with 'micropayment' subscriptions

[illumnatLA]

First off, the $.05 is based off of what the parent comment stated they would pay as a reasonable cost per article.

Secondly... how does a micropayment infrastructure that can share revenue across sites get in place? Sounds like you need a large parent company to set that up.

Can anybody sign up for that? If not, who decides who can and cannot sign up for it? What about censorship? What if the company that controls the revenue doesn't like what I write?

What about smaller players? Don't they deserve a share of the revenue as well?

What if the revenue sharing is controlled by a company that acts as PayPal does and freezes accounts for marginal reasons?

Doesn't a micropayment infrastructure across many sites set up sort of a new version of AOL where consumer X sets up payment with internet content provider Y with the majority of their internet experience filtered through that very company that's providing the micropayment infrastructure they are subscribed to?

Please elaborate in detail how such a micropayment system would work.

Just stating 'you wouldn't have to pay very much' doesn't cut it.

Re:The problem with 'micropayment' subscriptions

[atomic777]

If you think about it a bit, you'll realize that it is fundamentally not any different than the current 3rd party ad-server architecture; the only thing that changes is where the money comes from -- direct from readers, and not from advertisers. To the publisher, all they really care about is making money and they will sign on to such a network the second it becomes available, because there is little risk on their end.

Eventually, someone will build a network like this that will revolutionize the way money is made by publishers, and do a whole lot of good for the internet as a whole in the process, but it will be an uphill struggle to unseat a lot of players that have a strong vested interested in things remaining as backwards as they are.

Re:The problem with 'micropayment' subscriptions

[illumnatLA]

1993

User pays America Online a small fee (i.e. micropayment) for filtered access to online content. AOL users' online universe consists only of content provided by AOL and its exclusive partners. Some more 'sophisticated' AOL users hear tale of this thing called 'USENET' and start posting there, screwing it up for the the perviously existing user base.

AOL eventually becomes big enough to buy out a major media conglomerate, Time-Warner.

2013

'Someone' builds a network that revolutionizes the way money is made by publishers and calls it Internet Online. This new company, IOL is backed by a major media conglomerate (News Corp. perhaps?). Major content providers partner with IOL making their articles and media exclusively available through IOL.

The average internet user doesn't want to pay multiple micropayment bills to pay for content so they choose one. Because of the size of IOL's size and power (being backed by News Corp perhaps?) they own the majority of online content so the user chooses IOL.

User pays Internet Online a micropayment (i.e. small fee) for filtered access to online content. IOL users' online universe consists only of content provided by IOL and its exclusive partners. Some more 'sophisticated' IOL users hear tale of this thing called 'USENET' and start posting there, screwing it up for the previously existing user base.

Tongue in cheek, yes, but that's how it would work with an overseeing network.

The thing to remember too is that when money's involved, business doesn't care if it's good for the internet as a whole. It's all about profit.

I'll see the micropayment model as a good thing only when someone can explain to me how it will work in a way that doesn't end up with AOL version 2.

Re:The problem with 'micropayment' subscriptions

[RedWizzard]

$.05 an article? Micropayment? How many articles have you read on the internet today? How many this month? Let's see... in the past hour or so I read...

$.05 1-Article MMO-Champion.com $.10 2-Articles WoW.com $.10 2-Articles Slashdot.org $.10 2-Articles ArsTechnica.com $.10 2-Articles Cracked.com $.05 1-Article NYTimes.com $.05 1-Article NewsoftheWeird.com

Ok... that works out to $.55 in an hour. Let's say 3 hours on the internet per day or 21 hours per week... $11.55 a week multiplied by 4 to get per month... $46.20... multiplied by 12 for the yearly cost... $554.40. $554.40 a year on micropayments!!!

I think those numbers are high - you're talking about averaging 33 articles a day. I doubt many people read that much. Personally I probably average less than 10. So I'd be looking at something like $150 per year, which doesn't actually sound that bad. Except that I already pay something like $500 a year for internet access.

Re:The problem with 'micropayment' subscriptions

[makomk]

Can anybody sign up for that? If not, who decides who can and cannot sign up for it? What about censorship? What if the company that controls the revenue doesn't like what I write?

The same is true for advertising. If you create a site that the big ad companies don't like, you can't make money from advertising.

What if the revenue sharing is controlled by a company that acts as PayPal does and freezes accounts for marginal reasons?

The same is true for advertising. Sites have had huge problems with Google AdSense withholding payments for dubious reasons, even some relatively well-known sites.

well then

[sohp]

1. Do not allow ads that popup, cover, dance, wiggle, make noise, or do anything other than sit there, NOT flash or any other plugin techonology.

2. Do not let the ads overwhelm your design, either by placement or quantity.

and the biggie...

3. Never EVER let your business model depend on ad views, click-throughs, or anything else the ad buyers foist on you to "prove" their ad is seen. It's BS anyway. Magazines, TV, newspapers (remember them?), all survived just fine without advertisers ever having proof if anyone gave them business because of the ads. Coupons came along for reason, you know.

Corollary to 3: Don't let ad revenue be your sole source of income. Consider a mix of strategies, including ads, but also including premium content and features for subscribers; peripheral merchandising (think hats and t-shirts); and various collateral deals.

Re:well then

[sohp]

I forgot one: if your page loads are EVER hurt because the ad server is slow, FIX IT.

Re:well then

[Game_Ender]

They do all of that except for the occasional animated ad which doesn't play for more then a few seconds. They are going to be re-opening your their store as well, but they do offer a yearly (soon to be monthly) subscription.

The Problem is Third-Party Ads

[Prototerm]

Ok, here's a really radical idea: Maybe the problem isn't the ads, but that the ads are provided by third party hosting sites that are out of the control of the web site *using* those ads. If the web site hosted the ad file, then *they* would be held responsible for the singing, dancing gophers trying to sell you the latest in prophylactics, and ad-blockers would be less effective.

But in general, the reason ad blocking exists, and will continue to exist is:
1) animation (any kind)
2) sound and/or music
3) popups, pupunders, and any other sort of ad that *demands* your immediate attention like a little kid jumping up and down, waving his hands because he has to go to the bathroom.

Advertisers need to understand: we *tolerate* you. But make yourself too annoying, and we *will* cut you off at the knees. This is true of Television (Tivo), Radio (iPod), Newspapers (yeah, just flip the page here), and now the Internet. Push us too far, and someone *will* develop ad blocking software that happily tells you we are viewing your ad, while at the same time dropping the whole thing in the trash. Please don't turn this into a war. It's one you can't win.

This is just like piracy

[KamuZ]

To be honest, I think this is just like piracy. "I block them because I can and is easy for the average Joe".

People saying "yeah, I block them but let the good sites to show me the ads" is probably from the same ones saying "I download music from torrents but if I like them, then I buy them".
People saying "I don't trust any script from ads because they will hack my computer" is probably the same ones saying "I don't buy music from the RIAA because they are evil" or "If they didn't have DRM"

If you think ads from Ars are bad, don't visit them or send them an e-mail.
And don't come with the "They should change the business model", well maybe they need to but it is not that easy and come on, if they charge $2 dollars/month for a subscriptions everyone will whine and say "no no no, I can get all the content free on the Internet or other website", then, if that is the answer, GO to the other sites already.

*sigh* burning karma

Re:How is this different than muting TV commercial

[Abjifyicious]

Because it doesn't cost the TV stations money when you turn your TV on. Websites have to pay bandwidth fees and the like.

I've got mixed feelings about ad-blocking, so I'm not saying it's good or bad, but it's definitely different from muting TV commercials.

They've killed the golden goose

[Anonymous Coward]

Adds in general have reached a tipping point where people are no longer interested in these mediums and have found alternatives.

When I have to sit through 20 minutes of adds per hour of a paid subscription to cable tv just to watch a show, hear only 4 songs on the radio durring my 40 minute commute, or pay for a pound of newspaper that only has a page of content I'm interested in, I'll just throw in the towel with these mediums. Same thing for the Internet, count me out if I can't block adds on a lot of sites.

Ars are owned by Condé Nast

[T-Kir]

I searched the comments here and noted that no-one has mentioned that Ars are owned by Condé Nast, a company with an estimated $4-5Billion+ annual revenue. They also own Wired and Reddit, let alone Vogue, GQ and numerous other publications.

Why do I mention this? Context. If Ars was still an independent operator then I'd have more sympathy for their argument, and yes they still have numbers to maintain... but have you considered their sister magazines, take Vogue/GQ for example and think of page content vs pages of advertising. I watched "The September Issue" a few weeks ago and the thing that stuck in my mind was that that issue of Vogue had about 800 pages and only over a 100 pages were actual content, the rest were adverts. Fucking nuts! So yes, the argument of advertising driven content isn't going away and we'll see what happens should Mr Murdoch (who seems to want to own every content producer on the planet) try his pay-wall experiment.

As for ad-blocking... I continue using it and am glad since I've seen the latest shit that people have to deal with, auto-loading videos, sound, fly-outs you can't shut, flash ads that grind your page to a halt, as well as the malware that floats around and even hits high profile sites... I want control of what opens up in my browser and the only ads I'd ever consider are Google textual ads... why? cos they don't piss me off. Advertising should be an enticement of a good deal, done in a thoughtful and pleasant manner.. Unfortunately the Advertising 'industry' (I also include SEO bastards too here) battles everyone to promise customers the Earth while pissing off the very people they're meant to attract, they go through periods of continual fads in order to push shit and pretend to everyone they are 'unique' in their services, yet do the same as everyone else. The arguments from most advertisers that people who use ad-blocking software need burning at the stake tells me a lot, in that they just don't 'get-it', a good advertiser/marketer will have spent time arguing both camps and understand the issues at hand (as well as the people they're meant to be advertising to) whereas the rest fail at being the clever people they advertise themselves to be.

My suggestion to Ars, if it is that much of an issue then block your content from being shown 'full-stop' to anyone using ad-blocking software as you did in your experiment... then you only have to serve a minimal bandwidth using text page explaining why, fucking deal with it instead of whining like everyone else (i.e. News Corp, et al). The advertising industry won't die, but it will contract, change and evolve. But as a web browser I will not be dictated to that I have to have certain content forced down my throat, and I will control what I choose to see. There are multiple revenue streams possible, and I view Ars as producing higher quality content than a lot of other sites out there that I would be willing to pay for if I visited it enough (El Reg, BBC News, Slashdot and Fark tend to be my usual reads, and as a TV license holder I already pay for BBC News). Going back to context again, it would also be handy if Ars was to tell us their average percentage of userbase are that employ ad-blocking, which as a tech site I'd guess would be higher than a regular new site.

Re:Ars are owned by Condé Nast

[aaandre]

Remember that in Vogue most of the editorials are actually advertorials.

Unless you pay for /., you're a freeloader too

[mdwh2]

If you read a site with ads, you're just as much "freeloading" - you're getting benefit, of something that's paid for by someone else.

Your post is a straw man anyway - who are you arguing against? Who holds these views, or are you just making up a viewpoint to argue against, to get modded up on a first post?

I don't run an ad blocker btw (nor do I disable them from Slashdot, even though they give me the choice). But equally, I don't see how this argument couldn't also apply to say, people who go to the toilet or make a cup of coffee during TV ad breaks. To suggest that they are the cause of people losing jobs, or that they believe that things are free to make, is ludicrous.

You choose put a site on the Internet available to the public, I'll read it how I like. If you don't like "freeloaders", then the ad-supported model is not for you - switch to a paid for model instead (which doesn't mean you have to pay - many sites have operated on a basis where you can use it for free, but pay for extra features, e.g., LiveJournal was like this for many years, although they've now switched to an ad supported model).

Re:How is this different than muting TV commercial

[GuldKalle]

FTA:

Invariably someone always pops into a discussion like this and brings up some analogy with television advertising, radio, or somesuch. It is not in any way the same; advertisers in those mediums are paying for potential to reach audiences, and not for results. They have complex models which tell them if X number are watching, Y will likely see the ad (and it even varies by ad position, show type, etc!). But they really have no true idea who sees what ad, and that's why it's a medium based on potential and not provable results. On the Internet everything is 100% trackable and is billed and sold as such. Comparing a website to TiVo is comparing apples to asparagus.

Nut up or Shut up

[j_166]

See, here's the thing: I don't care.

Clearly you have the technology to withhold content from users running adblockers, so why don't you just do that?

Why don't we make a deal? I don't care how you run your site if you don't care how I run my browser. If that means excluding me from your content if I refuse to look at ads or run flash or scripts, then so be it. If its compelling enough content to make me turn off my ad blocker, than I will. If you're worried about losing impressions due to people not knowing why your site isn't rendering, include a message saying as much in the ad-block version.

Its time to nut up or shut up. Bitching about it in this article is a lame attempt at emotional extortion.

History People

[zoomshorts]

Prior to 1994, it was not legal to make commercial use of the internet.
Congress allowed that. Before it was for educational and DEFENSE usage.
They were often tied together. Educational institutions did and still
do research for the DOD.
Most of you do not remember those days. Text only pages.

LYNX - remember that one? University of Kansas. Didn't think so.

Surely it's what type of Ad you're blocking?

[Tomsk70]

There are two types of adverts. Those that intrude and those that don't. Noise, or graphics covering what I was actually trying to read count as those that do.

If I have to run an Ad-blocker to stop them, then that's the way it shall be - maybe it's time to talk to the sites that pretend that this sort of advertising is acceptable, so that people like me *don't have to run ad-blockers in the first place*. And the article also seems to ignore how many people don't run ad-blockers - because after one pop-up advert, they *never visit the site again*.

The quote also reads like someone's now upset that they've been getting away with unnacceptable practices and can't now generate the revenue that they *shouldn't have been generating in that manner to begin with*

Advertising is not selling!

[Gonoff]

There was a TV programme in the UK recently where some US 'expert' bemoaned how the internet is constantly selling us stuff and invading our privacy.

I don't know if this is some difference in language between the USA and the UK, but advertising is not selling! Advertising is trying to start the process of me thinking about buying something.

Bad, invasive and annoying browser advertising is actually a very useful guide about what not to buy.

Another kind of blocking?

[NorthWay]

Does anyone know of an alternative kind of ad blocker? I'm thinking of something that actually _does_ download the ad, but does not show it in the browser. Everyone happy?

I really hate ads

[Omnifarious]

I'm not saying that anybody who puts up ads is evil or immoral or anything of the sort. But advertising is a useless intrusion into my mental space, and the effort of trying to ignore them takes cognitive effort I'd rather be putting into other things.

My favorite model is the Slashdot model. If you pay for a subscription, you don't see ads. Every site that has a long-term relationship with its customers that has ads should have an option to pay not to see them. An honestly priced option that only recovers the revenue lost from the advertising they don't see.

Yes, I know the most valuable demographic to advertisers is likely the people who subscribe. Tough. If your product is any good, I'll certainly hear about it from a friend at some point or find it when I'm actively searching for a solution.

I don't buy things from ads

[Aurisor]

I have never deliberately clicked on a banner ad. I certainly have seen banner ads before, so it's impossible to say that they have had NO influence on me, but I can't remember ever seeing an ad for any of the companies that I actually buy things from (gibson, asus, newegg, amazon, etc). Even if I did, for anything other than commodity items with no practical difference between them (deodorant, cola), I would base my decision off of some research, not the contents of a banner ad. Honestly, if you make an ad that is really that good, I'll see it on youtube anyways (e.g. that Old Spice "now I'm on a horse" ad).

One could argue that I would generate impressions for the sites whose ads I view, but I would contribute no click-throughs, thus lowering the click-through rate. You then could reply by saying that I'm obligated to click some of the ads, to which I would respond 1) fuck you, no and 2) then that unless I actually purchase something, I'm just watering down the statistics again.

At the end of the day, advertising is about ROI, and inflating impressions or click-throughs doesn't make a damn bit of difference.

Plenty of companies (Amazon and Newegg) get plenty of my money over the internet, and if you can't figure out how to do that, then I'm comfortable with you going out of business.

Re:I don't buy things from ads

[Game_Ender]

Click throughs don't figure into they way they sell ads. They only sell impressions.

Re:I don't buy things from ads

[Aurisor]

My point is that if companies in general get fewer purchases per impression that's going to devalue an impression accordingly. If tomorrow the number of impressions doubled on all advertisements without a corresponding increase in purchases made, a single impression loses 50% of its value.

Re:I don't buy things from ads

[DrPizza]

But companies running large campaigns don't advertise just to get some clickthroughs, which is why they don't reward clickthroughs. They advertise to raise brand awareness.

"Disable advertising"

[SEWilco]

This discussion is on a site with a checkbox which invites me to disable advertising, and no option to ask Slashdot to stop nagging me to disable advertising.

Re:"Disable advertising"

[Legion303]

Yeah, I get that too. "As a long-time troll, you are eligible to disable advertising!" My response: "Slashdot has advertising?"

Benefit of Doubt

[cjeze]

Well Ars, I exclusively allowed pop-ups for your site. If it gets too intrusive I'll block it again. I trust you to deliver quality ads and not abuse this.

Re:Turn off Flash ads, and I'll turn off the ad bl

[wvmarle]

You should consider using Flashblock instead of AdblockPlus. That is doing exactly what you are asking for: block flash and flash alone (and if you do want to see the flash part after all: just click on it).

business is hard, let's go shopping!

[Tikkun]

Given that:

1. There is a huge surplus of places that write about technology news, many of them competing to post within minutes of developments. Most are "free" (from the perspective of the reader).
2. People interested in technology frequently hate ads and block them.
3. Ars tends to spend a lot of time and effort paying people to producing content (in comparison to other tech sites).

This makes the business model of Ars Technica less than ideal (I'm assuming that they're either losing money or aren't making enough for Conde Nast).

To solve this problem you can (among other things):

1. Stop spending as much time on producing content (The Register).
2. Post somewhat infrequently about topics that would cost other organizations a lot of money to do at a high level for readers that spend stupid amounts of money on what you're reviewing and advertising (Anandtech).
3. Post frequently about topics that aren't covered quickly in other sites about upcoming products from secretive consumer electronics manufacturers for readers that spend stupid amounts of money on what you're posting about and it's accessories (MacRumors).
4. Make some/much of the content free, but charge for a portion that isn't covered as quickly elsewhere for people that need the content to make money (The Wall Street Journal, Jane's).
5. Limit the content to people that are using locked down hardware and software (Kindle, iPad).
6. Charge for the content (Consumer Reports).

Breaking browsers with Adblock or posting about how they may lose their jobs if they can't get more ad revenue won't fix the underlying problem. They're in a crowded market and spend more money than many writing about topics that can be covered quickly and cheaply because companies *want* people to read about what they're doing.

Eh, you are to late

[SmallFurryCreature]

You are modded Funny, but this is EXACTLY what has been happening AND has been done with DVD already. VHS (and other tapes for the anal) used to have only a warning in front (which shows you roughly how content owners think, only people with legal copies are warned, which is like using a speed camera to record everyone travelling the legal limit and then sending them a reminder not to speed) and any ads at the end. Then they moved to the front, forcing you to fast-forward to the start of the movie.

With DVD, you can often no longer skip past them... and DVR's have been outfitted with methods for content owners to forbid their recording AND forced ad watching.

Ads have become so intrusive, so ever present that you have to block them to preserve your sanity. I no longer listen to radio, it is 5 minutes before an 5 minutes after and the ads are getting more inane every day.

And ars is full of it, it has got bloody annoying ads all the time for the longest time.

Ad blocking is an all or nothing affair. Once I have been pushed to install it, configure it etc, I am NOT going to switch it off to see if maybe this site is using decent low annoyance ads. Everything gets blocked.

And frankly, I don't care if they bankrupt because of it. You do NOT have the right to annoy me.

Re:Eh, you are to late

[morgan_greywolf]

In case you're monitoring this: DVD non-skip adds are a minor annoyance: with DVDs you can always rip the movie and then burn it without the ads.

Don't use facebook apps.

[Weezul]

You won't have this problem if you don't use facebook apps, just facebook itself. Any particularly annoying app gets blocked of course.

Why I block many ads on many sites.

[rnturn]

It's not that I hate seeing the ads. I block ads when viewing some sites when they detract from the content that I'm trying to read. Modern web site "designs" are shrinking the area devoted to content more and more. It wasn't so bad when the advertisements were limited to banner ads at the top and, sometimes, bottom of the web page. Some sites are displaying as much, if not more, advertising on the page as there is content, breaking stories up into paragraph-sized chunks to maximize the number of ads displays, and failing to include "printable format" buttons to allow one to view the content without all the ads. And it's more and more all animated advertisements. I block ads because, with all that the dancing bologna surrounding the main content, I find that I cannot concentrate on the reason why I visited the page in the first place. (Plus there are the sites that only seem to display the content after all the advertisements have been loaded. This is an especially ugly practice for those with low-bandwidth connections.)

Imagine if, instead of showing ads serially in groups periodically throughout the show as they do now, all TV shows limited the programming to the middle 50% of the screen and had advertisements blinking around the edges all during the program. People would be turning off their TVs in droves. (Even more than they probably have already in response to the increase in so-called "reality" shows. But that's another story.)

Flash Block

[Weezul]

I've found that FlashBlock under FireFox and ClickToFlash under Safari are extremely effective against the worst ads, without inconveniencing normal browsing and reasonable ads.

In particular, good sites like thepiratebay.org occasionally use ad servers banned by google for distributing malware. Google usually blocks the whole site when dangerous ads are loaded. If you use flash blockers, you instead see a few iframes populated by google's malware warning, but the site itself loads fine.

I'm sure all this will get far messier when advertisers start preferring HTML5 interactive video over Flash, but HTML5 likely won't pose quite the malware risks. Also, FireFox could still include a click feature, although Safari might prove more challenging.

I'll care when adverts care about anoying me.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

If you really want to stop people from adblocking... then simply make ads smaller, less intrusive, less anoying, less in your face... less flash, less evil.

Its really that simple. You cant ask people to put down their defenses when the industry of ad driven material is hell bent on basically taking over your computer and your browser.

I'm sorry. The defenses stay up... until you play fair.

Times change...

[FatSean]

Their business model may be going the way of the buggy makers. I've been subjected to far too much advertising online and in the real world lately. I'm tired of it. About 95% of the time the 'content' isn't worth the annoyance and irritation of advertising. So I'll keep blocking ads until your business dies, then I'll go on to do something else. Same with TV. DVR and fast forward.

Playing devil's advocate here

[SmallFurryCreature]

The TV station does not know whether you switch and neither does the advertiser, so the ad space is sold by viewer averages for the program/hour and any fall-off is just accepted as the way TV-ads work.

But on the net, you can measure eyeballs, and so advertisers have become obsessed with counting eyeballs.

When a tv ad goes out, the only way to measure its success is to see if the product sells, and of course those sales might be unrelated to the ad.

But when you run a internet ad, you CAN in real time track it, all the way from how many view it, from which sites to who arrives at your site. And this creates a drive in advertisers to attempt to maximize this in ways that they would not consider with tv-ads. Maybe it is also a budget thing, internet ads are typically low budget affairs. The Coca-cola's of this world don't bother with overly annoying ads because they got the resources to produce ads that people love to see.

But some cheapo company WANTS to see his conversion rates increase and hey, if they can't help but see it, they must click on it right?

Who perverted the Internet?

[thebian]

The businesses who see the Internet as a profit-making venture brought us much more than the ads.

They are turning the Internet into a giant shopping mall.

Microsoft and Apple and Intel and all those assemblers build commodities that are friendly to users and wide open to businesses that want to probe, prod and promote stuff to those happy consumer-users. Of course, they'd like to do something about the criminals who use the same techniques, but not if it gets in the way of their digital rights.

Condé Nast owns Ars; this is a company that would like to sell Vogue-like content to everyone. I get along with it. I'll get along without Ars Technica if it's necessary for them to make me watch gyrating office girls selling no-money-down mortgages and worthless college degrees.

Re:To them I say...

[DrPizza]

Except that plainly isn't true. He claims, for example, that it's only clicks on ads that matter. Not fucking true. Clicks matter for bargain basement Google ads. They're not what count for high profile advertising. Wladimir doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

Use FlashBlock

[Weezul]

Anyone who leaves tabs open needs a flash blocker, like FlashBlock under Safari and ClickToFlash under Safari, not necessarily an ad blocker. You can always still load desirable flash objects by clicking them.

Any advertiser could circumvent your ad blocker with flash ads hosted by the content distributor, that flash will still crash your browser. Heck, I've found that even intentional flash like games, youtube, and porn can crash the browser, so you need flash blocked whenever you hit reopen all windows from last session.

I'm quite happy leaving ads unblocked now that flash is blocked almost completely. Advertisers still get their impressions so long as those impressions are not flash. All web functionality is preserved. All for the small cost of clicking desirable flash games and videos.

Interesting

[Lomby]

I use an ad-blocker and the main reason is Ars!

I never used an ad-blocker, but their advertising was so intrusive that an ad-blocker was a necessity to be able to read their news on a netbook with a small screen.

Advertising = malware

[LihTox]

Most advertising is malware for the human brain: it attempts to exploit weaknesses in human psychology to get us to do things we would not otherwise do.

Not all advertising is like that-- announcements of new or poorly-known products or sites or services are certainly fair. But most advertising is not informational, it is manipulative.

Pay per Click

[saulot]

I was under the impression that the ads in a page were pay per click.
So if I visit the site but dont click the ad the site takes nil.
Thats why I use adblockers, beacuse I dont care for ads of any kind and the site takes nothing either way from my browsing

Re:You're correct on scripts: HOW & WHY, insid

[Neoprofin]

Why not take it a step further and ask him to pay you to read the site?

Same here

[Wee]

I can't read something that has big flashy colors pulsating near it.

The web is useless with the kinds of ads that Ars Technica has on its site (I just looked at it using IE; it's fucking terrible). I can't read their site without blocking ads. So if they go under due to ad blocking, what's the loss? I couldn't have viewed it anyway...

-B

Re:It's *their* CPU you're using

[cfalcon]

Your use of the word "freeloaders" to describe people who opt out of viewing useless bullshit pretty much betrays you, but briefly- yes, it's fine if people don't view ads. There's no reason that my machine should serve up and assault my eyes and brain with shit shoveled out of some deep dark asshole of manipulation. By definition these ads are there to lie to me, make me feel inadequate, prey upon some mental weakness we all share, or otherwise scare me into giving someone my money.

Fuck that. I have a moral responsibility to NOT look at ads.

Here's an answer: Arstechnica adbanners & viru

[Anonymous Coward]

Virus on the Man Page of Ars Technica -> Philip

http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=447008

Submitted by Philip on Wednesday January 02 2008, @03:00PM
internet

Philip writes "It looks like an add server that Ars Technica is using has a virus on it. When I go to Ars Technica my corporate antivirus MCafee reports that the site has a virus. Here is a copy of my log. I just wanted to get a waring out to all the tech sites. 1/2/2008 2:27:15 PM Script execution blocked iexplore.exe(http://arstechnica.com/index.ars) Script executed by iexplore.exe JS/Exploit-BO (Trojan)"

Link to Original Source

http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=447008

----

Americans Don't want targetted ads:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/10/01/1854214

Especially when arstechnica ads apparently are truly targetting them, for termination. See that 1st url below on that account.

----

Users Know Advertisers Watch Them, and Hate It:

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/04/02/0058247.shtml

We hate being served up viruses first though.

----

How Much Are Ad Servers Slowing the Web?

http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/07/08/17/1617259.shtml

A lot, and arstechnica appears to be "doing their part" in the URL above too (albeit by actually slowing others' machines at a local leve, not just online after arstechnica is done with their systems apparently).

Ars asked nicely

[sh3p]

Since Ars asked nicely I decided to whitelist their site from my ad blocker. I guess it doesn't really matter how I feel about internet advertising in general; if it's important to them, that's all that really matters, isn't it? I haven't been bothered by the ads in the mean time, so until that changes I'm willing to leave Ars whitelisted.

Like Pretentious Douchbag Daily Kos Message -

[gadlaw]

Every few months I forget about the Daily Kos screaming - "SUBSCRIBE! (or exclude from AdBlock)" thing that greets me if I happen to click on that site. NO, I'm not going to subscribe and give you money, NO I'm not going to turn off AdBlock so I can be assailed by your ads. Here's what I will do for you Daily KOS douchbags - I'll click away from your site altogether and find something to read somewhere else. How's about that? What a Pretentious message to put out there for someone to read, I wonder how many folks say - 'oh jeez, I'm going to immediately subscribe to this site and turn my AdBlock off cause I've been dressed down. If you all want us to not turn on the AdBlock then don't let all those annoying ads on the site. There are plenty of sites where I don't have the AdBlock turned on. In fact, if it's a site I like I do try to turn the AdBlock off and see what happens. Any site that tries to berate me gets nothing from me.

Lack of TV

[KlausBreuer]

Sorry, chaps - I've been blocking ads from the moment it was possible.

It's not just security. It's not just CPU speed loss thanks to Flash. It's not just the irritating distraction of bouncy whatevers making irritating sounds... it's adverts themselves.
See, I don't have a TV. Or a radio. Secondary reason is the lack of content (I *do* buy DVDs to watch on my largish monitors), but primarily it's the adverts. Always keep in mind that 50% of all humans are of sub-average intelligence. Add to this that many watch TV tired and with their minds turned off. The logical conclusion is to create adverts aimed at these people. Aimed at idiots.

Sounds massively arrogant, I know. Sorry. But over 95% of all adverts (TV, radio, newspapers, roadsigns, internet) seem to be aimed at people who do not ask any questions, who simply believe.

Mind you, I am quite willing to support a good web site. Their data is valuable to me, so you're actually welcome to make Google-like ads: a simple bold header text, followed by one, max. two (short) lines of text, complete with a link. Just text, no more. Does not desperately try to attract my attention, does not irritate me, does not distract me, does not eat up my screen space... go ahead. I might even sniff on them (yup, actually happened to me ;)

But any of this animated, colorful, flashy, noisy crap, and the adblock goes right up again... and if your survival depends on such crap, well, good bye then.

PS: So ars technica is complaining? Follow that forum link. Turn off the ad blocker. First thing you'll notice are two animated, very colorful ads at the top, which instantly caused me to loose the last drop of sorry I might have felt.

Re:Lack of TV

[Ash-Fox]

Mind you, I am quite willing to support a good web site.

Do you consider Ars a 'good web site' then and if so, have you bought a subscription?

How are they detecting Ab Blockers?

[MrSteveSD]

Are they somehow specifically detecting Ablock Plus or just detecting that some flash ad is not running on the user's browser?

Re:How are they detecting Ab Blockers?

[Osty]

They got ABP's easylist to add a rule for "arstechnica.com###ars-after-first-post" and then tagged the content of the article with that ID. ABP saw the rule, saw the div with the id, and killed it. Pretty easy to look at ABP's "blockable items" view, see that there's something pretty obviously not an ad being blocked, and remove that one filter.

The better question is, how did they get this into easylist in the first place?

Ars' problem with me

[Todd Knarr]

The problem Ars would have with me is that it's not Ars' ads at issue. It's the ads on hundreds of other sites that aren't as clean as Ars keeps theirs. I can't afford to hit one of those sites without ad blocking already on. By the time I can see the ads to make a decision, it's too late. If I can see the ads, my machine's already been hit with whatever payload they might be carrying. There's nothing Ars can do about this, they don't control other sites' advertising. So, I will arrive at Ars with an ad blocker running. All Ars can do is make it clear what I need to do to white-list them. Which, BTW, Ars didn't do. When I saw their pages, I saw no indication why the article wasn't appearing. I wrote it off as just more broken Javascript on their page causing a malfunction, and figured either it'd clear up in a day or two once enough users complained or it'd be permanent in which case I just wouldn't be reading Ars anymore. Since Ars gave no indication what they were doing, I had no reason to believe I needed to touch the ad blocker.

How about it CmdrTaco?

[nixkuroi]

I think people are intentionally missing the point.

Someone makes a website.
The time it took to make the site costs them money either directly or indirectly (they made it, or they paid someone to make it).
Someone is paying to keep the web server online in bandwidth, hardware, content upkeep or software costs.

The only way most people can make money from a website is to show ads. Ad companies can tell if their ads are displaying and pay less if their ads are blocked. The only way for people using this model to pay for content managers, bandwidth costs, faster servers, etc is through ad revenue. If site owners don't get paid, they can't pay for these things, so one or many of the things running the site don't work as well.

If you can't afford reliable content managers (or you yourself have to work a real job because you don't get paid enough), the content suffers. If you can't afford a lot of bandwidth, the site gets slow from throttling it. If you can't afford up to date anti-virus (or a good ops guy to manage your firewall), your site is easier to hack and take down. If you can't afford a new nic card (or F5 for large sites with server farms), your site goes offline with hardware issues.

If a large business owns a site and it doesn't make money, it simply takes it offline or invests less in the above mentioned maintenance costs until the value of the site is diminished to the point that it's better to read another site - or a magazine for that matter.

The thing the guy is trying to say is that if you like the current state of the site, it takes money to maintain. If it doesn't make enough money, he doesn't have to work for free. If you don't care if the site goes down or degrades in some way, go ahead and block the ads. If you take a "I wasn't going to pay for it anyway, but will if it's free and those ads are like a tax on my sanity so I block them" stance, what he's saying is that you're reducing his ability to make money from his site and by extension, lowering the overall experience for everyone.

I worked for a news site that made money with a per-view ad model and can tell you that it takes several million dollars a month to maintain a world class news site. The AP must be paid for content. Editors to moderate the AP must be paid. Production Operations guys, Test Operations guys, Developers, Release Engineers, Project Managers, Ad Operations, Managers for PM/Dev/Editorial/Test, Marketing, Sales...all have to be paid.

It's always a delicate balancing act with your corporate overlords who want to make a lot of money (to pay the bills, and appease THEIR corporate overlords) - while trying not to alienate your user. Big invasive ads make more money per impression than little ones that few people see. That you don't see giant ads on a given site all the time is a testament to their restraint or ability to ward off the bottom-lining execs.

I love free sites like Slashdot, but they're probably has high quality as they are because the majority of people let ads display. Sure, Slashdot would probably still be on the web if nobody viewed the ads, but it's unlikely to have a lot of the features that ad revenue paid to have developed.

I'd be interested to hear what Slashdot would be like if they made no ad revenue from CmdrTaco. Would they have been bought up by their corporate overlords? What would that have meant if they hadn't?

Re:How about it CmdrTaco?

[aaandre]

Slashdot high quality?

If there's quality, it comes from user comments, mostly as quality *entertainment*.

Like yours.

The articles are quite trollish and often misdirected.

Tough Shit...

[nataflux]

If you decide to create a website, or a blog with original content in it, you are not entitled to profit, consider yourself lucky if you even get any. The more annoying people make advertising the more intensive scripts will be made to ignore them, advertising companies and content creators need to realize that the popup add and sidebanners are becoming more and more obsolete in this day, people will not be buying random bullshit that they see in an ad on their internet browser, especially in this economy. The consumer knows what they want, and they will use the correct resources to make these purchases when the time comes (Google, Newegg, Amazon, etc). Ad companies need to realize that they are in an obsolete business and need to either adapt or die.

Re:How is this different than muting TV commercial

[dzfoo]

Except that ad-blocking is more than just not viewing ads; it's thwarting the attempts at invading your privacy by tracking your online behaviour. Thus, blocking the ad by not downloading it is part of the intended effect, much more than to just not "waste bandwidth in something you're not going to use."

        -dZ.

Yes

[Bragador]

Adblock Plus on Firefox blocks everything, but if you use Chrome it still loads the ad, but your browser hides it.

Ads are not a valid income source!

[Hurricane78]

The value of information is inversely proportional to the amount of people knowing it.
If they want money for their information, they
1. have to keep it a secret
2. have to have information that nobody else has
3. ask for money on first release (to X people)
and STFU as soon as it’s out. Because then it’s too late. They just split control with X people.

If they fail at one single of those points, they can not expect any money.
They might get it though... like the change you give someone who makes music in the streets. Or like a donation. Out of respect.
But they can not expect it. Let alone demand it.

Those are the laws of bitspace. And like the laws of physics (on which they are based), they won’t go away, if you don’t believe in them. :)

Re:Ads are not a valid income source!

[Game_Ender]

If ads are not a valid income source, then how has Ars existed for 12+ years?

Whitewash.

[Zadaz]

Except they didn't bring it up in a "tactful manner". They didn't run an "Experiment", they ran out the change secretly, everyone complained, they rolled it back.

Don't tell me this was a "12 hour experiment" when they had engineered rolling content ID's to thwart filters. You don't do that when you only plan to roll it out for 12 hours. What they did was a "12 hour mistake."

But what really pissed me off about the whole thing was the naked contempt for people who use ad blockers. After they secretly released this change there were article comments from visitors complaining that they couldn't see the content on the site. When one reader suspected that it was intentionally done to get people to whitelist the editors response was, in essence, "Ya think? *smirk*" and went on to pile on anyone who had a problem with their underhanded tactics. It's not like they had even -asked- users to whitelist. (This was a day before they posted TFA.)

And what is even worse is that they completely wiped all the comments to that article. All of the various editor's dickish comments, all of the various viewer responses, all gone. Then they post this article and everyone feels sorry for them.

Forget it. I'm not going to give those guys my time of day much less any ad revenue.

Don't forget to ask why

[meerling]

I didn't mind it when the ads were banner ads or sidebars.
I didn't mind when the showed up between articles.
Some of the animated ones were ok.

But the moment they got annoying, they had to go.
Popups are pure evile, popunders, even more so.
Ads with jarring animations or ads with bright distractions prevented enjoyment of the page and had to be killed.
Scripted ads that followed my mouse or stayed on screen at all times needed to be destroyed.
Ads with sound also had to be annihilated and silenced.
Those in the middle of articles needed to be (re)moved.

The advertisers started this war, and the websites may be in the crossfire of lost revenues, but there is no way in hell I'm going to give in to those evil marketing weasels.
Down them all and let the DNS server sort them out!

The moral of this story is that when you let someone tromp all over you and your readers/customers, you don't deserve to have the internet anymore...

I have a solution

[graft]

I haven't thought this out fully, since I just came up with it, but here's an interesting idea for a business:

My biggest problem with pay sites is that most of the time, I don't really want to read the thing regularly enough to make it worthwhile. Some people like to read the NY times ever day; I don't, I'd rather just read it once in a while when someone suggests a good article to me. Many other people - probably the majority on the web - fall into this category. For people running a site, as with most things on the web, they need a way to catch the Internet's famous long tail.

So why aren't there digital library sites instead? You pay them a small subscription fee (say, $10 a month), and in return get access to any paysite you want - the site negotiates a revenue-sharing model with each paysite and takes a modest cut of the subscription for itself. Everyone wins: I get to browse the internet for a minor fee without being assaulted by ads or having to sign up on every damn site I want to look at, content providers have a way to make money without cutting people out. The only downside seems to be that as usual there's a damn bootstrapping problem...

OK

[Quiet_Desperation]

All *I* ask is that the ads not be the visual equivalent of being in a box of cymbals bouncing down a flight of stairs. I don't block ads because they are ads- I block them because they are ANNOYING. Was it Ars or Wired that has those Intel ads recently where people walk across the content put put up an Intel logo? If you put ads on *top* of the content and gobble up *my* processor cycles to do it, then I have no sympathy for any fallout you suffer.

Your model is wrong

[tompaulco]

On TV, they pay for commercials regardless of whether anyone is watching them or not. Your advertisers need to pay you for every attempted served ad, regardless of whether it was blocked.
That being said, no business that I have ever seen could prove that their bottom line increased by advertising enough to pay for the advertising that was done. On the internet, it's even worse.
For example, I could pay $75 to run my ad for an available rent house on one day in our local paper. The end result of this in my experience will be zero calls. However, I can put a sign out in front of the house for free, and get half a dozen calls. Or I could post it for free on Craigslist and get a half dozen calls, but even if I got 0 from Craiglist, it is still worth the price of admission. I could also advertise on the radio. I'm sure a 30 second spot late at a time when someone might be listening would only cost a few thousand dollars, but would probably net me a renter, however, It would have still been cheaper to let the house sit empty for two years then to run the spot and fill the vacancy.
I'm not convince that Coca-Cola is able to improve their bottom line by billions of dollars a year due to match their advertising budget. I'm not convince that Red Bulls aggressive marketing is the reason it became so popular. I think it has all to do with the power of word-of-mouth amongst teenagers looking for a buzz.

Re:Your model is wrong

[wolffenrir]

The problem with advertising on the internet is that people who want to advertise are not considering customs. When people watch television, they expect to see commercials. It has become a part of social life. When we go to a movie theater, we expect film advertisements before the show but not during it. When we read a newspaper, we expect ads to be printed in a certain way. If we want to buy something online, we go to something like craigslist, Amazon, or we just search for it.

But it is not our social custom to just click on ads blinking on the screen when we are not looking for something to buy. Our brains just blocked it out. When advertisers realized that, they became increasingly aggressive. They even went as far to become malicious. Now peoples' perception of browsing is that they must do it safely. Because of all the malware propagated through ads and the methods these advertisers use, this kind of business is effectively dead.

Dear web sites: I'll make you a deal

[WidescreenFreak]

Tell you what. Stop making your advertisements obnoxious and overbearing and I'll stop blocking them.

Re:Dear web sites: I'll make you a deal

[Skapare]

They'd have to read the reader's feedback to be in a position to make this deal. Thus, it will never happen.

Re:Dear web sites: I'll make you a deal

[Game_Ender]

Have you even RTFA? The Ars staff have directly responded to hundreds of reader posts.

Re:Dear web sites: I'll make you a deal

[Game_Ender]

If you use Ad-block Plus you nuke all ads without first making that call. If you would visit Ars for a while with ads enabled you would see that the vast majority of ads are exactly not obnoxious or overbearing.

Stop the blinking and spinning!

[HooliganIntellectual]

My friends and I have run a popular news site for over a decade with no advertising. It's possible to run a site while relying on a non-advertising revenue model. It's not easy and our content could be better, but folks are ridiculous when they whine about people not looking at their ads.

I've run ad-blocking plug-ins on my Firefox browser for years. If a site like Ars Technica disabled my ability to see their site, I'd just get that news from elsewhere.

One of the main reasons why I start using ad-blocking software was because of the ads that animate, blink, and otherwise do anything other than being static. I can't read some damn article if ads are doing stuff in my peripheral vision. And if the moving ads are blocked, I can also tune out the other ads, until the time when I'm actually thinking about buying something.

Re:How is this different than muting TV commercial

[Ifni]

No, but the revenue paid to the content providers based on advertising might diminish, thus impacting the quality of programming. If you thought the reduction of quality due to network greed was bad, just wait until they had to deal with genuine financial issues as well.

Currently, advertising rates are calculated based on the expectation that a certain percentage of viewers will make a snack or hit the head during the commercial break. They perform studies to fine tune the percentage rates used for such calculations and it varies based on time slot and programing type. Chances are, if they could suddenly get an accurate count of actual commercials viewed, the revenue wouldn't change too much.

Will wget get them paid?

[justinchudgar]

Ok, my personal positions is that Ars has a point. I love some of their writers and visit them pretty much daily. I want to support them, but I do not have the cash to buy a subscription which would be the proper thing to do. I also really hate ads around my articles. Which leads me to the question: will a simple wget cronjob (i.e. wget -r -l 2 -o /dev/null -O /dev/null -U 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100214 Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Firefox/3.5.8' www.arstechnica.com) result in them getting paid for a few page views? Input on how to make this work would be most welcome.

Why the GQ ads, you ask?

[weaponsfree]

ArsTechnica was acquired by Conde Nast. Conde Nast also owns GQ.

Re:Why the GQ ads, you ask?

[PCM2]

And Wired.

Say what?

[Geminii]

"blocking ads can be devastating to the sites you love"

If a site decides not to show me content, it's not a site I love. I'm sorry, did Ars think there was brand loyalty on the internet? Please. Every site's userbase is two seconds and one Google search away from moving lock, stock and barrel to a competitor.

Know What You Block

[loox]

I just block Flash. Good advertising is welcome.

No You Don't -- Grow a Pair

[hduff]

Does that mean that there are the occasional intrusive ads, expanding this way and that? Yes, sometimes we have to accept those ads.

Have the courage of your convictions if you want credibility and never accept those ads. Otherwise, all I hear from you is "Blah, blah, ... adverts ..., blah, blah, ... more money ..., blah, blah, blah."

Re:How is this different than muting TV commercial

[tftp]

Websites have to pay bandwidth fees and the like.

If you use an ad blocker then you consume a ridiculously small amount of bandwidth, probably a couple of kB per page - compared to half a megabyte for an ad-infested page.

Re:Tough titties

[JSBiff]

Thank you for bravely taking it upon yourself to speak for everyone else. . .

"The people have spoken, we do not want ads."

I do. No, seriously, I do. I don't want ads that infect me with spyware, or play a sound or video clip (unless I specifically click a play button). I don't want ads that break the website, or contain content which is inapprorpriate (e.g., unless I'm browsing a porno site, I don't want ads for porno, or even ads for anything else that contain inappropriately clothed people - I mean, I might be surfing at work, or in a public place, or I might have friends or family over). I don't want ads that try to trick me into installing software with ominous looking fake "system warning" messages, or any other form of impersonation or fraud.

Also, I don't want a page where > 33% of the page area is covered in ads.

But, in the general case, I don't mind ads. I know that they help pay for content so I don't have to. They sometimes are entertaining, and sometimes let me know about products, events, or services I didn't previously know about.

I do wish I had more control over what ads I see, though. I don't particularly like seeing the same ad 50 times. I'm a single, 30-40 year old male, and don't really want to see ads for feminine hygiene or beauty products, or women's clothes, for example.

But, I don't mind *some* advertising. Sure, you and many others like you don't want any ads. But don't speak for me, please.

"Sorry you companies, businesses, and corporations havent figured it out yet, but ads dont work!"

Are you serious? You don't think ads work? The companies paying for advertising do so ONLY because it DOES WORK. Sure, for some companies it doesn't work, but for most co.s it does. Just ask Ford, Pizza Hut, Coke, Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch, Miller Brewing, Proctor and Gamble, Unilever, Con-Agra, Gillete, Frito-Lay, or any one of hundreds of other very large businesses that spend a lot of money on advertising, and have for around 100 years (maybe longer, not sure).

I don't block ads

[Skapare]

I don't block ads. I don't block arstechnica.com, either. Yet I don't see any ads on their site. Why is that? Because I block selected ad servers that have a history of serving abusive ads (including Flash). Apparently, they are using ad services that have less than stellar history.

What Ars Technica needs to do is simply use ad services that have no history of abusive ads (whether such ads ever showed on the Ars Technica site or not), or just serve the ads themselves from their own domain. Or they can arrange to have the ad serving company servers used for serving their ads to have a hostname in their own domain (only the A record matters for how I block ads, so the same server can also serve ads for other sites, too).

Oh, and while we're on the subject of how to improve the Ars Technica site, I also suggest, in addition to a link for logged in users leaving comments, also provide a link for non-logged in users (e.g. those that don't want to register for yet another online account somewhere) to leave comments that run through a moderation queue, as well as a link for leaving feedback to the author (e.g. won't be published) or management.

Wired.com pages do this for you already

[justthinkit]

Whatever you do, don't leave a bunch of Wired pages in your browser and leave for the weekend. You will be refreshing thosee pages every minute for the next three days. That annoys the yellow bodily fluids out of me.

Ruining it for the rest of us

[jmactacular]

Some of these advertisers are ruining a programmer's ability to create a modern web application. They abuse technology that freaks out users who then block it, and prevents legitimate sites and it's users from being able to leverage that technology.

First it was cookie blockers. Maintaining state is absolutely essential to every modern web application. According to REST architecture design patterns, you're not supposed to maintain state on the server side, so that leaves you with the client. And cookies are the only durable option.

Then it was pop-up blockers. There are times when you don't want the user to have to move to another page, and still be able to input or view a sub-set of data specific to that page, but there's no more room on the page. So you have to pop up a child window. Nowadays we create modals with hidden divs, and while that is a better user experience, it does add to the initial load time unless you embed an iframe.

Now some are disabling Javascript. Seriously, if you don't have javascript enabled, any sort of web application is rendered helpless entirely.

If we are to have any hope of building enterprise class applications on the web, we need a way for legitimate sites to be able to leverage the full depth and breadth of technology, without advertisers abusing our tools that causes end users to block the technology altogether.

Show me text only ads relevant to what I read

[melted]

Show me text only ads relevant to what I read. That's all I ask. Don't bombard me with BS I never click on. It's POINTLESS to show me those ads, and I'm pretty sure I'm saving at least someone money by not downloading them.

It depends...

[refactored]

Feed me a pop up or pop under and I instantly block.

If the page takes ages to load because it's waiting for the ad server. I block.

Feed me more content than crap, and I disable ad block on that site.

ps: I usually use "no script" because 99.99% of what I care about doesn't need JavaScript and 99.99% of what pisses me off does!

The problem with ads

[Flipao]

They've turned into obstacles.

We've all seen it happen....

[Reemi]

It can result in people losing their jobs, it can result in less content on any given site, and it definitely can affect the quality of content. It can also put sites into a real advertising death spin. As ad revenues go down, many sites are lured into running advertising of a truly questionable nature. We've all seen it happen.

O yes, I've seen it happen. Sites like yours killed my favorite independent magazine. They lost subscribers that were lured by the 'free' web sites. They had to increase their advertising volume and which drove away their last subscribers.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the problem but please don't try to make me feel guilty. You killed many more jobs than that you are now trying to protect. You're no different and that is just the free market we're living in. Accept it.

Until we get viable micropayments, adblock = ON

[atomic777]

I don't think I could have said it better, but I'll go a step further. The argument of TFA is fallacious

I'm waiting for the internet financing model to shift away from employing vast numbers of people in an entirely useless pursuit of harassing me into buying things I don't want or need, and towards building a comparatively simple micropayment infrastructure, where as I view sites that I enjoy and value, i can drop small (less than 1 cent) tips that contribute to the revenue of the site.

Compared to the typical effective value per thousand page views most sites get for ads, it would result in maybe $0.10 - $2 worth of tips you leave for every thousand pages you load (depending on the site)

Until that infrastructure is in place, my adblocker is still on, because im' not going to buy any useless crap based on a flash animation, so I only dilute the value of the advertising, and the extra cpu cycles my computer spends to render the ads is actually a net cost to me in power consumption.

I respect his position, however...

[peacefinder]

I like ad-supported sites, I really do. It's a good business model for making lots of content available free to the end user, and I think that goal is worth a certain amount of bother from advertisers. That's why - until very recently - I have not run ad blockers.

But two things have happened recently which have forced me into it. One, on my home Mac my kid started complaining about the sexualized content of ads on the otherwise benign sites he visits. Okay, kid, here's adblockplus for firefox.

Two, ads appear to have become a significant vector for windows malware. Yes it is silly that I have to use windows at all at work, but that said the fact remains: advertising systems do not vet their content well enough to be trustworthy. Therefore, purely as a matter of self defense, I am obliged to block ads on the Windows browser I use.

I would like to let arstechnica have all their ad revenue, I really would. They're a very fine publication. But unless they can demonstrate a chain of trust in their advertising, I can't whitelist them.

block is just too easy to do.

[OrangeTide]

It is way too easy for us to block ads these days. Asking nicely will likely have no long term affect on the whole ad blocking situation, and it won't go away by itself.

I have no idea how else you could make money, but if only a tiny fraction of your readership actually see the ads I fail to see how that is a sustainable business model. I suggest if ads are the only revenue model you have, that you adapt or perish.

Then again, Slashdot is way cooler than most

[PCM2]

I'm assuming most of you don't realize this -- obviously my Slashdot ID is pretty low, and I post a lot, which means I have a lot of Karma and "achievements" and all that -- but if you meet certain criteria (I don't know what the actual criteria are) Slashdot puts a little checkbox on every page that says "Ads Disabled." If you check it, you don't see ads on Slashdot. It's like they give you a free, permanent subscription. I must say it's a very classy move.

Re:Then again, Slashdot is way cooler than most

[DoninIN]

I don't post that much, and although I don't karma whore. I don't really post anything utterly irrelevant. Well this is as irrelevant a thing as I usually post, and I qualify for disabling ads as well. I think it's to do with how often you meta-moderate and moderate. I usually do these things when I have a minute. Although my /. isn't all that low.

Re:Then again, Slashdot is way cooler than most

[geminidomino]

I think it's to do with how often you meta-moderate and moderate. I usually do these things when I have a minute.

It can't be that. In 10 years I have never once gotten mod points, but I have the little ad-disabling clicky too.

Re:Then again, Slashdot is way cooler than most

[mikestew]

With my whopping seven digit UID, I still get the option to disable ads (even though I choose not to as a token show of support). I don't post all that much, but typically use all of my mod points. I don't know the criteria, but low ID # probably isn't it.

"I don't mind so-and-so ads, it's the others!"

[Spewns]

I can't relate to the bandwagon of "I don't mind ads that are X and Y, I just can't stand Z!" at all.

I despise X, Y, Z, A, B, C, and D ads. All of them. I resent the whole idea of modern marketing and advertising. The whole point of this article against adblocking is to evoke an emotional response. Brainwash your audience into feeling sympathetic and disabling their adblockers, and your ad revenue goes up. It isn't rocket science. They're a business - they exist to lie, cheat, manipulate, and steal to maximize profit. There's no sympathy to be had.

I started using Adblock Plus a long time ago, and it's amazing how one addon like that can completely revamp the entire web. I've tried browsing without it since and I really can't. The internet is a wasteland.

The internet is full of crap

[janwedekind]

Ultimately nobody needs advertising. And a lot of articles these days are "content" with the purpose of "generating" advertising revenue. There would still be plenty of stuff to read even if every internet user only wrote a single article about the most important thing in his/her life. The average quality might even benefit.

I can see at least five articles today about ad blocking. Each of them coming with advertising. It is insane. Everytime a "big" story comes up, hundreds of bloggers pick it up and run with it. And many of them seem to have no prior knowledge about what they are writing about.

I am only waiting for Ruppert Murdoch to join the debate at this point.

Very simple naivety

[myowntrueself]

Naive people don't block ads.

Naive people are more likely to respond positively to ads.

Enough said?

The ads ARE hitting their target market; naive people.

Re:How is this different than muting TV commercial

[don_bear_wilkinson]

a TV commercial won't give me a virus or steal my identity or make my TV almost unusable

The Bottom Line...

[Disz]

...is this; If you wanted to get rich, you should've finished your CS, instead of transferring into journalism. I don't exist to make you money, Ars. In fact, for being so arrogant as to try and illustrate the idea that I should be making you money, I'm blacklisting your entire fucking domain. Don't appreciate that? Eat a dick. Anandtech, Tom's Hardware...[H]ard|OCP...plenty of other sites out there that handle tech. Technophiles want hardware opinions and the math that backs them up - not a popup full of blinkenlights trying to sell them cock pills and hero worship. Learn your place or enjoy your obsolescence.

People lose their jobs if I don't..

[MikeFM]

I like to dump garbage on the ground and break things at the store. That way they'll have to hire more people to keep up with me.

Privacy vs Revelancy

[muphin]

well that's an oxymoron there, people all complain that they don't want to be tracked for their habits, but also complain they want more relevant ads, how is that going to happen unless the advertiser KNOWS what you like?
i am not opposed to advertisers tracking me cause i will then know there might be other things out there that might interest me, might even be better than something i come along off the street, remember the main goal is for them to sell you something you want.
With that said i block ads using Ad Blocker, one of the benefits with adblocker is the site can detect it and send you a little message on the site, thereby notifying the user, when sites do this i white list them, the main reason is, as everyone states, load times, it may be a bug or just slow servers but it always holds up the page, now everyone knows browsers aren't perfect but please.... if you do something to slow down a users browsing, u deserve to be ignored.

Re:Privacy vs Revelancy

[ATairov]

I don't actually complain about ad tracking. I data mine my sales data often enough.

FoxNews.com is the virus

[woolio]

Frankly, I simply cannot trust ANYONE anymore. Understand that I have seen infections start after people visited CNN.com, Foxnews.com, MSNBC.com, ESPN.com, Facebook, Amazon, and MANY MANY MANY other major news/social/other sites that serve banner ads from 3rd party vendors. (or from a poorly secured internal ad server)

I bet the people in question visited FoxNews.com first... It probably gave them a virus that made it appear as if the other websites (especially MSNBC.com) were serving viruses.

Block FoxNews.com in your DNS server and your worries will be done.

How about a mod system FOR THE ADS?

[macraig]

I don't know what other people do, but I tune my ad-blocking solutions for each site, using pattern matching and turning their own standardized HTML and CSS against them where needed. I sometimes use the same pattern matching to remove other page elements that simply aren't relevant to me.

My ability to remove the offensive and distracting ads and the irrelevant content actually works in favor of the sites I so modify, because it makes it more likely I will choose to visit repeatedly.

Why do this? In large part because there's no effective means to give feedback to each site about which ads or ad spaces are offensive and which ones aren't. Many sites now have systems in place for rating the actual content, but how many offer a system to "mod" the delivered advertising? NONE. Not a single one. Not even Slashdot nor ARS Technica. If the site operators knew statistically which ads were doing more harm than good, they in turn could tune their ad delivery to reduce the offensiveness. Apparently it's never occurred to anyone but ME to implement such a system?! Why? Is is because I'm that much of a genius? No. It's because they just don't give a flying fuck if the ads are offensive to their visitors or not. So instead of implementing a feedback system for the advertising, they implement "enforcement" schemes to thwart ad-blocking and try to make the ads even more attention-getting.

When you find a site that actually cares enough what its visitors think of its advertising to implement a feedback system for it, get back to me and we can have a more substantive discussion about the ethics of ad blocking.

Re:How about a mod system FOR THE ADS?

[yuhong]

but how many offer a system to "mod" the delivered advertising? NONE. Not a single one. Not even Slashdot nor ARS Technica.

I think it would be up to the ad system delivering the ads to be able to do this. So complain to Google/DoubleClick for example if you want this.

Re:How about a mod system FOR THE ADS?

[macraig]

I don't "want" this; I'm perfectly happy removing the undesirable ads (and content) myself. It should be THEY who want it, not me. I would happily go along with such a system and use it, if they bothered to provide it. Which they don't, and won't, because the motivations are exactly as I described.

Mod parent up

[ProteusQ]

My experience & sentiments exactly.

Ignore annoying ads, support good ads

[thetoadwarrior]

I always support sites with decent ads or as long as the majority of their ads aren't bad. Slashdot has given me the option to disable ads for which I can assume comes from the fact I do occasionally click on ads (minus the lame blu-ray ones awhile back) and quite frankly I rather just click on some ads than pay because paying means I should visit more often to get my money's worth and it becomes a chore or I don't visit and I throw money away.

How about a mod system FOR THE ADS?

[macraig]

I don't know what other people do, but I tune my ad-blocking solutions for each site, using pattern matching and turning their own standardized HTML and CSS against them where needed. I sometimes use the same pattern matching to remove other page elements that simply aren't relevant to me.

My ability to remove the offensive and distracting ads and the irrelevant content actually works in favor of the sites I so modify, because it makes it more likely I will choose to visit repeatedly.

Why do this? In large part because there's no effective means to give feedback to each site about which ads or ad spaces are offensive and which ones aren't. Many sites now have systems in place for rating the actual content, but how many offer a system to "mod" the delivered advertising? NONE. Not a single one. Not even Slashdot nor ARS Technica. If the site operators knew statistically which ads were doing more harm than good, they in turn could tune their ad delivery to reduce the offensiveness. Apparently it's never occurred to anyone but ME to implement such a system?! Why? Is is because I'm that much of a genius? No. It's because they just don't give a flying fuck if the ads are offensive to their visitors or not. So instead of implementing a feedback system for the advertising, they implement "enforcement" schemes to thwart ad-blocking and try to make the ads even more attention-getting.

When you find a site that actually cares enough what its visitors think of its advertising to implement a feedback system for it, get back to me and we can have a more substantive discussion about the ethics of ad blocking.

It's About Condé Nast Digital

[zx2c4]

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page of ars you see "Ars Technica © 2010 Condé Nast Digital. All rights reserved." Conde who? Googling reveals this site, and what do you know, GQ is listed. ...so most of their ads that make them precious money are actually for other websites they also own? Hmm...

Subject

[Legion303]

I read the first paragraph, and determined from there that since Ken's initial premise (that the web is there for people to make money) was completely wrong, then there was no point reading the rest of his argument. People are going to lose jobs because they decided to go into marketing and find innovative new ways to trick other people into seeing their ads? My heart bleeds for you, Ken.

They've jumped the shark for good

[Whuffo]

After a quick email exchange with the folks at Ars Technica I've made my decision.

I've considered the balance between their need to show ads and my need to protect my computer. So I'm going to change the configuration of my ad blocker - I'm going to add their whole domain to the block list. They can be self-important all they want but they can do it without me watching.

Back in the day...

[fortfive]

...content on the web was mostly generated by amateurs in their spare time. And it was way more informative, and way more entertaining. And the ads were few, far between, and for stuff I might actually buy. So there.

Ars is barking up the wrong tree

[tommy]

Ad blocking users will not magically start clicking ads because someone coerces them into disabling their ad blocker.

Content providers should really focus their efforts where there is at least the possibility they will benefit from the effort. In this case, not only will unblocking ads lower the overall "quality" of the eyeballs on the ads, but it will piss off consumers. Smart.

Aggregated subscription?

[CrashandDie]

It can result in people losing their jobs, it can result in less content on any given site, and it definitely can affect the quality of content.

Well, guess fucking what Ken: Ads can also affect the quality of content. I don't have an issue with having a few ads here and there, and I'm happy to support the websites I enjoy, however having to allow me eyeballs to be raped by stroboscope-like flashes, flash-ohsoslowness, and general latency due to overloaded ad servers isn't making the content any better.

The day editors stop putting stupidly short articles on 9 pages just to get more clicks, which forces me to go to the print version (which most of the time doesn't bring any ad clicks to the website anyway, or less at least) rather than the full website edition, I will reconsider using adblockers. You're shooting yourselves in the foot more than any adblock-user.

And if the amount of people using adblockers is large enough for you guys to run an experiment, and make /. front page, I'm guessing the numbers isn't low enough for you to keep ignoring it. You pride yourselves in listening to the community, maybe they've already sent the first message, and this wasn't the response they expected.

I don't mind paying for content -- however I'm not going to have a monthly payment going for every news website that I visit. How about a conglomerate of websites, bundled with OpenID. I pay once, and that gives me ad-free access to all the websites in the bundle. The model could be based on pay-per-view (you have an amount of credit which gives you x number of page views) or full-on subscriptions (you get unlimited views to website x, y, z. Price is based on the number of websites you want).

Considering I'm logged in with OpenID, you guys even get the luxury to blast me with 100% accurately targeted ads on the websites I haven't paid for.

How about the content-creation industry starts using their fucking heads rather than always using the ban hammer as soon as they lose profit?

I think you've got that a little screwed up.

[fyngyrz]

Somehow Internet has made people to forget that creating quality content costs money.

It really was that word "quality" that caught my attention. You can argue that you like that stuff, and I'll nod agreeably -- after all, that's your prerogative -- but I'll just laugh at you if you claim it's quality content. The vast, vast majority of everything ad-supported on the Internet and television is unmitigated crap.

I also decline to take seriously any argument that ad support is required for quality. As soon as you attempt to address the general public, the details disappear, the verbiage dumbs down, the explanations devolve into sound/text bites, and quality-wise, all is forgone in pursuit of head-counting. Which is what the advertisers are looking for. Ars Technica being a great example of this. Totally dumbed-down environment.

There is an inherent disconnect between quality content and advertising mechanisms precisely because any venue that attempts to cater to a swath of people that extends beyond those with expertise in the covered area, will inherently trade quality for headcount. Without high headcounts, advertising doesn't work (because advertising only results in a tiny percentage of hits, the advertisers need big traffic numbers for that tiny percentage of gullible clicks to turn in sustainable results.)

Television has been the technology with the most initial potential, and the very least fulfillment of that potential, that the world had ever seen. When television was taken by force from the people's hands and delivered wrapped up real pretty to the corporations for exploit, that was the killing blow.

The Internet is doing considerably better, with actual quality able to be found with a little inventive search engine prodding. I guarantee you that when you find it, the odds of it being advertiser supported are very low. The reason is because you can still get on the Internet and set up a website for almost nothing, and no regulating authority (yet) says this requires license and arbitrary fees. So you can find pages and data about many things that offer great depth, magnificent creativity and literacy, original art in numerous domains, work and data all across the technical and scientific spectrum. Very little of it with any ad support at all. Because quality isn't what the people, as a mass, are seeking. And the ads go where the people go.

Finally, just as an aside, "Shiny" and/or "Polished" does not equal "Quality." Unless you're a mental magpie.

A different answer: a Basic income

[Paul Fernhout]

Every person should have a right to draw from the industrial commons, and so be able to run such websites for free without ads (Alaska has a partial basic income with the Alaska Permanent Fund); see:
    http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
"""
A basic income is an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement. It is a form of minimum income guarantee that differs from those that now exist in various European countries in three important ways:
        * it is being paid to individuals rather than households;
        * it is paid irrespective of any income from other sources;
        * it is paid without requiring the performance of any work or the willingness to accept a job if offered.
Liberty and equality, efficiency and community, common ownership of the Earth and equal sharing in the benefits of technical progress, the flexibility of the labour market and the dignity of the poor, the fight against inhumane working conditions, against the desertification of the countryside and against interregional inequalities, the viability of cooperatives and the promotion of adult education, autonomy from bosses, husbands and bureaucrats, have all been invoked in its favour.
But it is the inability to tackle unemployment with conventional means that has led in the last decade or so to the idea being taken seriously throughout Europe by a growing number of scholars and organizations. Social policy and economic policy can no longer be conceived separately, and basic income is increasingly viewed as the only viable way of reconciling two of their respective central objectives: poverty relief and full employment.
There is a wide variety of proposals around. They differ according to the amounts involved, the source of funding, the nature and size of the reductions in other transfers, and along many other dimensions. As far as short-term proposals are concerned, however, the current discussion is focusing increasingly on so-called partial basic income schemes which would not be full substitutes for present guaranteed income schemes but would provide a low - and slowly increasing - basis to which other incomes, including the remaining social security benefits and means-tested guaranteed income supplements, could be added.
Many prominent European social scientists have now come out in favour of basic income - among them two Nobel laureates in economics. In a few countries some major politicians, including from parties in government, are also beginning to stick their necks out in support of it. At the same time, the relevant literature - on the economic, ethical, political and legal aspects - is gradually expanding and those promoting the idea, or just interested in it, in various European countries and across the world have started organizing into an active network.
"""

But if you wont be using the ads..?

[datakid23]

So what am I meant to do? I'm never going to click on an ad, ever, full stop. I just don't work like that. Don't feel special, internet, I similarly ignore ads in daily newspapers and magazines as well as on television. The truth is, I spend more time on the internet because my filtering system is better. I hear what you are saying Ars, but it presumes that ads are effective on all of your readers. They're not.

Re:But if you wont be using the ads..?

[Ash-Fox]

If you actually RTFA'd, you would have known that simply the impressions on the ads earn Ars money.

Re:Peter B: Arstech & adbanner viruses?

[DrPizza]

APK, what the hell are you talking about? Some /. submission (that never got posted to the front page) about someone's false positive from McAfee? Who cares?

Block only obnoxious ads

[Sivar]

Ad-block has a rather heavy handed policy of blocking every ad it possibly can, at least with the most common lists.
My proposed solution: Add a voting system, or some other means to detect when ads are very intrusive (like the flashing "You've Won!!!!" ads), and keep a list of ads or ad servers that follow that criteria.

Then, users can subscribe to an "obnoxious ad" list in adblock, eliminating the ones we all hate (discouraging their use at all), and allowing those which aren't bad, or are actually useful.

--Charles N. Burns

Invasive ads

[kimvette]

I never, ever ran adblockers until advertisers became so obnoxious that they insist on displaying their ads over content in floating flash objects, which don't always turn off when clicked, and when they started with the auto-playing video (with audio) crap. I was fine with banner and text ads and accepted them as the reality that content providers need to make a living too. However, by interfering with my web browser and making the very sites they are trying to advertise on completely useless by covering content, they crossed way over the line. So, I installed adblock and haven't looked back.

Fix your fucking advertisements then I might consider uninstalling adblock.

Re:Invasive ads

[^_^x]

Ads used to be additions (long banners.) Then they graduated to interruptions (banners everywhere.)
Now they're just another class of attacks (popups, popunders, auto-streaming video, FUI, interstitials, auto-changing browser homepage, installing toolbars, etc.)
Any sensible user protects their computer from attacks.

Re:Invasive ads

[kimvette]

Any sensible user protects their computer from attacks.

When you don't run Windows, you (generally) don't need to worry about anti spyware|antivirus|antimalware crud to slow down your computer. So, until the ads became totally obnoxious, it was a non-issue.

Awesome!

[JackAxe]

I'm OK with adds. If they bother me too much, I'll simply size my browser window to cover them. The only thing that ticks me off, are those BUBBLE ROLLOVERS, which can not be blocked. Anyways, much respect to Ars for this experiment.

No, it doesn't

[sdpinpdx]

Does that mean that there are the occasional intrusive ads, expanding this way and that? Yes, sometimes we have to accept those ads.

No, it doesn't.

The first popup, pop-behind, obnoxious animation (if it's annoying or turns the fan on in my laptop it's obnoxious), or sound of any kind will drive me to block that ad or switch to a news source that doesn't have it. I don't really feel the need to block text or still image ads.

Re:No, it doesn't

[JackAxe]

Mac user?

Ads make you miserable

[mutherhacker]

Unfortunately, the effect of ads is much worse than most people know.

The problem with ads is that they present you with an "image" of how your life should be. Shiny hair, pearly white teeth, a six-pack and a blond girlfriend with huge boobs. A big house, an SUV, lawn and 2 kids. They present an image of what "success" should be like or what a "man" should be like.. or more than the others what a woman should do, wear and think. Humans naturally wish to emulate stuff they are constantly exposed to. The human brain, watching stuff every day in ads, start to think that "Hey, everybody is like that so I should be too". So naturally you become miserable when you cannot be like them.

There's those who say "Ads do not affect me", and to those I say "O'RLY?". Think again.

I have submitted many stores about ads to slashdot which have been rejected. One of them is the following:

Today, a day which will live in infamy, I have created a filter which blocks all e-mail messages sent from Hotmail and iPhone devices. The reason? I don't like to read ads in my messages. The filter also sends the following message as a reply:

"YOUR MESSAGE TO me@somedomain HAS NOT BEEN READ, IT HAS BEEN AUTOMATICALLY DELETED!

Thank you for contacting me. In my ongoing fight against ads/commercial messages I have decided to block all messages that contain ad-like content. This includes messages from:

• * apple's iPhone that contain the line: "Sent from my iPhone" — I don't care where it has been sent from.
• * Microsoft's Hotmail service that append a short ad at the bottom of the message — I don't like to read ads.
• * ...probably more to come

If you wish to contact me please do so using a service that does not append ads or irrelevant information inside your e-mail message. I apologize for any inconvenience caused and I beg for your understanding."

Re:Ads have been shown to harbor malware too

[Epsillon]

"Ads are invasive, intrusive, annoying, and I don't want to see them. ever." - by Epsillon (608775) on Sunday March 07, @09:34AM (#31389634) Homepage

No, it bloody well isn't a quote from me. Try by mcelrath (8027) on Sunday March 07, @01:25.

No offence, mcelrath. I see nothing wrong or embarrassing about your post, just incorrect attribution really gets up my nose.

Make it worth your while to watch

[Nefarious Wheel]

Make it worth your while to watch the advertisements. Put beauty, art, and interesting creative themes in the advertisements. Make them a decent use of people's time and space to watch them.

Go back to the basics in advertising from it's heyday in the 1950's. Give us the equivalent of dancing Lucky Strike packages. Be bizarre.

Good advertising will have a large amount of bait for a tiny little hook. It doesn't take much to associate a good brand with a fun message, but you have to get past the recent habit of advertisers to think "annoying is good".

If there's a good bit of art and a smattering of wit to the advertisements, people will stop complaining about them. Make them so good that people who block adverts will be missing out. Appeal, people, not crowbars.

Re:My rant of the day.

[Ash-Fox]

Why don't you pay for a subscription then?

Do ads pay per view, or just per click?

[piojo]

Do all ads pay per click, nowadays? Because I think I've only clicked one ad in the past year, so I shouldn't feel guilty about bypassing ads.

On the other hand, if some ads still pay per page-view, then I might want to think about tweaking my ad-blocking so that I don't block ads on a domain until they do something that bothers me (ad with sound, ads that severly slow down a page, inappropriate ad, etc.)

Usability.

[Sunnz]

I don't use ad blockers, but I don't usually have javascript turned on and flash is not installed. If your ad doesn't work without scripting or flash, then your ad has usability problem, it is your ad that is inaccessible rather than me trying to cut your revenue.

Re:#1: PeterB - CSC dropout, & #2: I'm not thi

[FishWithAHammer]

I have. He's right. You're a tard.

communal brainwashing

[epine]

It's a common meme to speculate what features of life on planet earth will prove hard to explain to ET once we finally meet one. Communal brainwashing might rank right up there. I lived through the seventies, which were the height of communal brainwashing, because there wasn't much else to do, unless you *really* liked winter sports.

It helps to think clearly about prostitution. In addition to the risk of violence and being raped financially by your pimp, the customers don't necessarily have good hygiene, you don't know where they've been, and your guesses would likely be far too accurate.

Advertising is sweaty with greed. After a hundred thousand ad impressions, you're not the same person any more. You've lived too long in the gutter of commerce. You're mentally unclean.

My policy is to ignore the ads even if they are turned on. I have a method for discovering things I need to purchase. It's the old Al Gore, and it serves me well, in blood hound mode. I don't need sweaty businessmen tapping me on the visual shoulder with their idea of a great offer. I'm one of those people where nothing goes in my cart until I've read the label. I've said this several times before. Capitalism only exists when *both sides* of a transaction are making rational decisions. Any effort by one side to tilt the landscape through brainwashing techniques or emotional appeals is a degradation of capitalism. Mutually informed, rational decisions are the miraculous device that make markets honest.

I would leave the ads turned on to benefit sites such as Ars, despite the fact that I think this is a ludicrous social convention, except for one small problem: too many ads blink. Thinks that blink eat away at my attention something fierce. I'm like one of Temple Grandin's cows. The flickering flag drives me mad. In some ways I have some autistic markers. OTOH, I'm extremely perceptive to emotion, only not so much the surface emotion that everyone else picks up quickly (I'm often slow to process this); I tend to pick up the underlying cognitive state beneath the emotion, given enough time to triangulate. It's a bit like what Feynman says about depth of explanation (segment on magnetism). I wouldn't call myself autistic, until an ad starts to blink on my screen, cutting my reading speed/comprehension by half. Instant ad blocker. Am I going to sacrifice 50% of my capacity for 100% of the reason I'm visiting a site, just so Ars can make a few pennies per page view when I've already made a blood pact with Adam Smith not to purchase anything I haven't independently researched? Not in this lifetime.

Ads are a ludicrous substitute for a workable micro-payment system. If we hadn't first invented the 1970s, this would be obvious to everyone. Imagine if we had the micro-payment system first, and it worked, then some guy comes along with a business plan where "we distract the reader with emotionally charged images, impelling the viewer to buy a product they wouldn't have purchased on native intelligence, through the power of communal brainwashing". Would this plan find any takers?

The entire culture of ad-influence commerce is an affront to human dignity, allowing us to become so caught up in image, we forget the nature of value. Neither does prostitution do much for human dignity, on either side of the transaction.

It's too bad the majority is coddled into becoming gullible consumers. We'd all be a lot more empowered if consumers voted their dollars rationally. Everything good about markets would become better. Good products would rise to the top, crap would be driven out.

I think long and hard about what life on planet earth might be like if we collectively less gullible, if this cheap Jedi mind trick didn't work half so well. Maybe our gullibility to emotional persuasion is critical to our teetering social cohesion. How is it tha

Re:Answer a few questions won't you, PeterB?

[DrPizza]

1) We have no intrinsic purpose, so the question makes no sense.

2) See #1.

3) Ask my girlfriend.

4) Er, yes.

Re:Homosexual defective idiots don't deserve answe

[DrPizza]

Yeah, of course you're not. You just show the same writing style, insults, and preoccupation with homosexuality and what my parents think as he does. But you're not the same person, nuh uh.

http://web.archive.org/web/20010304194832/http://www.inkvine.fluff.org/~peter/download/apk.txt
http://web.archive.org/web/20010304195402/www.inkvine.fluff.org/~peter/download/apk2.txt
http://web.archive.org/web/20010304195402/www.inkvine.fluff.org/~peter/download/apk3.txt
http://web.archive.org/web/20010304195402/www.inkvine.fluff.org/~peter/download/apk4.txt

Any of the language there looking familiar to you?

I'm sure it's all an honest coincidence, no doubt.

I also have no fucking clue what you're trying to say about IRC. Perhaps you could elaborate?

Re:Answer a few questions won't you, PeterB?

[DrPizza]

1) Humans aren't _supposed_ to do anything. The only purpose in life is that which we choose for ourselves. You say men are not supposed to do this or that; why not? Says who?

2) See #1.

3) I'm not sure that her name is any of your damn business. I think she'd be surprised to learn that she's a man.

4) Again, claims of homosexuality would be a great surprise to my girlfriend. And even if I were gay, I doubt my parents would care. Why would they?

Re:Quit avoiding his questions (repeating them aga

[DrPizza]

1) If they want.

2) Homosexuals breed all the time. Homosexual doesn't mean sterile.

3) I wouldn't have said so, no.

4) Yes, of course.

re: IRC

Since I'm friends with the owners of the server, and since the Ars Technica IRC chanserv recognizes me and ops me on those channels that I moderate, and since this has been true since the early days of the IRC server, I haven't the faintest idea what you are talking about. Do you have any links that might provide elucidation?

I remember this incident: http://www.compatdb.org/support/topics/81050_good_old_apk.html#Post81050

But it does not contain the details that you claim. It's a bit hard to tell, of course, since all your posts seem to have been deleted (funny that).

My argument is simple - I control what's on my PC

[Peter (Professor) Fo]

I have the final say in what's shown on my computer.

Also, as an aside, sites that are funded by advertisers are not free to say what they want.

Contradiction in terms

[jandersen]

blocking ads can be devastating to the sites you love

A sites that forces me to watch adverts is by definition not one I want to use, let alone "one I love". To me the internet is a tool for finding information, nothing more. It is often very convenient, but I will not tolerate advertising, no more than I want to look at stupid adverts in my paper books. Does that make me strange? Well, I am strange, then.

in adblock plus you can whitelist a site

[jeanph01]

To "unblock" an ad-blocked site in ad-block plus, the technique is described here :
http://www.devcha.com/2007/08/how-to-disable-adblock-plus-or.html

I think it's fare so ask us to disable our ad blocking engine for specific site we visit often.

Infection

[elentiras]

I've refused to block ads for well over a decade. I want to support the sites I visit. I grumble, but endure the slow downs caused by hitting up ad servers. The ads on my girlfriend's site give us some extra money each month. However, twice in the past 6 months I've been infected with horrible viruses through someone's compromised ad network. Each time I was on a perfectly reputable site running third party ads from third party servers. So now I have ad block and no script and all of that. Sending slashdot a couple bucks isn't worth hours and hours of virus removal. (Yes I have a virus scanner. No it didn't stop it. Yes, I could run Linux, but my TV card isn't fully supported.)

Re:It's *their* CPU you're using

[Disfnord]

So, in other words, you agree with me. Ad blockers are a good thing.

Let's meet in the middle

[Ngarrang]

I will stop blocking ads, if you promise to make the ads less stupid.

1. Ban the use of ads with Audio/Video on them. They are stealing MY bandwidth.
2. If the ad uses animation, ban it.
3. If the ad uses Flash, ban it.
4. If the ad uses JavaScript, ban it.
5. If the ad jumps out and covers up my screen because my mouse scrolled over, ban it.

Take the ads back to single pic GIFs and JPGs, or simple text like Google and we will stop blocking them.

All of the above steal the bandwidth *I* am paying for. They slow down my browsing experience. They are often transports for malware (I'm looking at you Flash Player).

Not all ads are bad, but...

[Kintar1900]

I don't mind ads. They're much better than requiring me to subscribe for content that I only occasionally consume, and they actually bring useful/interesting items to my attention from time to time.

If, however, you run ads that pop-up over my screen, bother me with obnoxious sounds or "Congratulations, you've already won!" voices, or flicker and flash like they're trying to induce a seizure, I will block them. I will also be on the lookout for a competitor's site that can provide me with the information I'm seeking without treating me like an over-caffeinated ferret with attention deficit disorder, and drop you like a bad habit when I find them.

Oh, and that goes for breaking up a six-paragraph article over five pages, too.

Yes, the content you provide is valuable. Yes, I'm more than happy to bend to the necessities of capitalism so you can be paid for your work. But there are models that work and don't require being obnoxious to your readers/users.

Advertisement Security

[TheFlannelAvenger]

I got to this thread late, this may have been mentioned, but I wanted to explain my reason for adblocking websites. Ads come from a third party, usually. It's that simple. If I visit a site I know and trust, I enable scripting and active content on their page (No Script for Firefox). But, not for their advertising affiliates. I really have no idea where the ads are coming from. If the NY Times can get hit by rogue ad servers, anyone can. Yes, they are not a tech site, but they are a well established major web presence with security and policies on par with most others. ( Article here for that story http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10351460-83.html ). I agree there should be a balance somewhere, but when I visit a page, look at my No Script alert and see the page trying to load scripts from 15 websites aside from the one I'm at, I don't exactly feel inclined to add to their revenue stream.

ad blocking

[__aavqan3009]

Waaa.

No apologies.

[DeVilla]

If your ad is overly distracting, it's gone. (I want to read.)

If it obstructs the page, it's gone. (The same.)

If it wastes too much screen space, it's gone. (Screen space is precious.)

If it is larger than article, it's gone. (The same. I'm looking at the Slashdot rss feed in Google reader.

If it displays annoyingly incorrectly, it's gone. (It's an eye sore. Slashdot feed, that was you again.)

If it consumes enough CPU that I notice it, it's gone. (Computing power is precious. An ad does not require any.)

If it appears to implement tracking mechanisms, it's gone. (You don't get to put a tag on my ear.)

If your ads do not violate these rules, I'm willing let them display. Otherwise I will make them disappear using the easiest methods available to me.

Re:Quit avoiding his questions (repeating them aga

[DrPizza]

I am not avoiding any questions. I answered them all.

Who is talking about dalnet? Why are you banging on about that? You claim that you were talking about the Ars Technica IRC server. What does dalnet have to do with that?

1) Again you are talking about what people are "supposed" to do. According to what?

2) Gays can, and do, sleep with people of the opposite sex to produce offspring. Gay doesn't mean sterile.

3) I have never self-identified as such; you are projecting.

4) Define "normal".

Yes, sometimes we have to accept those ads.

[aaandre]

Yes, sometimes you "have" to accept those ads, choosing to put your readership's trust second to profit. And, sometimes your readers "have" to activate their ad blockers because the ads you accepted are unnecesserily distracting and infuriating. It's a simple equation in which you establish trust and don't sell out your relationship with your audience, and *then* request them to disable their ad blockers.

And maintain the trust.

If intrusive_ad_profit > loss_from_intrusive_ad_irritation is the only important thing for you, then, well, you're in it for the money only and you have no relationship. Your readers owe you nothing.

I'm an end user, not a theoretical accountant.

[^_^x]

I understand ads help a site out. If I use a site a lot, I'll even click a banner once in a while and click around a little before closing the window to register a clickthrough.
If false links or FUIs lead me off site, too bad. I will block your ads, and maybe even blacklist your advertisers in my HOSTS file.
If the article is buried in so many ads across the top, and cascading down both sides, doing everything short of prying my eyes open and shoving banners into it... tough - I will block them without remorse.

The fastest way to get me to block an ad though is to use Flash. The instant I see a video starting to stream where it shouldn't, it's blocked, and if that also blocks part of the real site, I will file tech support requests for the site not working and let them figure it out. They should be glad I don't bill them for my wasted bandwidth, or interference with the operation of my PC as its resources pool into showing me crap I don't care about. This is inexcusable and any time it happens, I lose all sympathy for the site owners - I don't care if they're starving and the site's about to go dark; there's at least one very good reason for that.

Ars Technica = ADWARE!!!!

[SirTreveyan]

It appears that Ken has a major case of sour grapes. I am a user of ad blockers. I use them not only to eliminate annoying ads, I use them to protect my privacy. I do not like the idea of personalized advertising based upon what websites I visit. I do not like the idea of advertisers downloading cookies on to MY computer just because I view a web page that contains one of their ads. What web sites I view, is between me and the web site I am viewing, not some advertiser. I view web ads as an infection, needing to be controlled. AD BLOCKERS PROVIDE THAT CONTROL!!!

Ken rants against Internet users who do not experience the Internet in the fashion that would render maximum profits to Ars Technica, stopping just short of calling them thieves. It is obvious that he cares not one iota about users privacy concerns. No where does he indicate that Ars takes any steps to ensure that ads do not place tracking cookies and the such. All he does is cry about ad blockers depriving him of profits! Ken obviously cares not about users privacy issues as long as ad revenues flow.

He also displaying some ignorance of the subject on which he is pontificating. For example when he is discussing the radio and television advertising model he states "advertisers in those mediums are paying for potential to reach audiences, and not for results." I am sorry but no company spends money for "potential to reach audiences". All companies spend advertising money with the expectation of results i.e. more business. If a company spends money on a particular form of advertising and it does not produce results, they do not continue throwing money away. They go to a different form of advertising. Ken also states "They have complex models which tell them if X number are watching, Y will likely see the ad." This is true. Radio and television have complex models because they take into consideration those who do not respond to advertising.

When he states "they really have no true idea who sees what ad, and that's why it's a medium based on potential and not provable results" he is making an assertion which is false. While it is true the advertisers have no idea WHO is seeing the ad, they do know how many people are exposed it. Neilsen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_ratings and several other rating companies provide rating services for both local and national broadcasting entities. The advertising rate for advertising during a broadcast is determined by the historical rating a broadcast has obtained. The higher the rating the higher the ad rate. Everyone remember the millions paid for a 30 second ad during the Super Bowl. Ken says that because the advertiser does not know WHO viewed the ad, there are no provable results. If that were true, why would a company spend MILLIONS on a single ad if there were no provable results? That just makes no sense.

Now Ken also states "on the Internet everything is 100% trackable and is billed and sold as such." Here Ken is indicating that either the Ars Technica's advertising department is being dishonest, selling clients the idea that 100% of Ars visitors will click through to the client's site or that Ars is willing to conspire with their clients to place adware of some form on each visitor's computer. Combined with Ken's stressing the exaggerated importance of knowing WHO views an ad, my guess is the later, since that is the ONLY way for Ars to guarantee 100% of anything getting to a client. Why else would ad blockers cause him such heartburn.

Either way...now that I know this about Ars...I will never visit that site again without an ad blocker of some kind.

First Internet Ad with sound

[Alari]

The first ad with sound that I encountered on the internet was an ad for some soda. (Coke or pepsi, don't know, don't care)

You get 1 guess what the sound effect was. :)

Yep, that's right. "KA-CHUNK. SLLLLLLLLLLLLUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPPP! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"
(wow even slashdot's posting filter thinks my TEXT rendition is annoying :)

You get 1 guess where I was when I encountered that ad. :)

Yep, that's right, at work. I had the sound turned up because I was listening to music that was quiet, too.

I installed Proxomitron that same day. I even wrote some custom filters for it. When that project died I switched to the hosts file everyone knows about. ( http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm - #3 on Google for "hosts")

To all sites: serious about getting viewers to see your ads?

First, don't make them so damn annoying. Don't allow crappy ads on your site, period.
Second, use your own ad server. If it's not in the hosts file, I don't block it unless it becomes an annoyance.

Killer App waiting to happen

[vanyel]

I am unwilling to put up with the intrusively annoying majority of ads, but would be happy to pay a reasonable small fee to read an article --- as long as that payment is also non-intrusive. The Killer App waiting to happen is a simple, easy, standard way to do that securely. They will be the next paypal.

Re:You're not fooling these people or myself even

[DrPizza]

Like I say, you'd have to ask my girlfriend about it.

Re:You shot your mouth off and messed up DrPizza

[DrPizza]

As such an IRC expert, you would know that only IRCops can k-line people, and further, as an undoubted master of IRC, you would know that I am not an IRCop on the Ars Technica server, and never have been. So how precisely would you suggest I k-line anyone?