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Fighting Ad Blockers With Captcha Ads
krou writes "Living in an ad-free internet thanks to ad blockers? That could be a thing of the past if software firm NuCaptcha has their way by making captchas into ads. 'Instead of the traditional squiggly word that users have to decipher, the new system shows them a video advert with a short message scrolling across it. The user has to identify and retype part of the message to proceed. Companies including Electronic Arts, Wrigley and Disney have already signed up.'"
Hooray for video captcha ads in expensive bandwidth countries!
You know its love when you memorize her IP address to skip DNS overhead.
If I see one of these, I think I'll just go somewhere else. It'd have to be something really compelling to make me endure that kind of abuse.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
You ever watched a Disney DVD or video? Their entire business is based around making you watch ads for their own products.
an advertisement is essentially a form of seduction. that's why sex figures so large in advertising. you are trying to entice someone into buying your product, to woo them to come hither
so when you intrusively force someone to view your ad, you've just completely destroyed the psychology of what makes any advertisement work
you have in fact performed a pavlovian experiment: you've force someone into an unpleasant experience, then associated that unpleasant experience with your brand name. much as with pavlov's dogs who started salivating whenever they heard a bell because you always played a bell before feeding them, forced viewing associates the unpleasurable feeling of coercion with your brand name and products
so all these idiots have done is perfected the art of anti-advertising, of driving people away from your product
just make the ad nonintrusive, and anyone who is predisposed to your product might click. that's the best you can do. anything more intrusive simply destroys your brand name with the pavlovian association as described above
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
How exactly are vision-impaired visitors supposed to read this scrolling message?
Ads mostly exist to put their brand name in front of your eyeballs.
Later on, when you're out buying some stuff, you need some $foo. You see two packages, brand X and brand Y. You have seen X before, but Y is entirely unfamiliar to you. So you buy X. What you don't remember at the moment is that only reason why X is familiar is because you've seen it in ads.
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
A *SHORT* Advert, meaning what?
A static image. A basic block of text. These will not be blocked by me. Jumping things. Blinking things. Moving things. Things that BLOCK the site I'm trying to read... those will go into the bit-bucket EVERY time.
Static images and blocks of text have actually led me to click them. Score 1 for tasteful advertisements.
Willie...
>> and are almost universally designed to mislead
Well the laugh is on you buddy, because I just bought a six-pack of Bud Light, and any minute now a bikini-clad model is going to show up at my house to have baby oil rubbed all over her chest.
ads don't make you buy stuff...your lack of self-control, willpower, and independent thought makes you buy stuff
It's not that simple. It has been scientifically proven that when seeing certain ads multiple times, even not consciously, can result in people having a positive opinion on a product. They forget the source of their opinion is actually an advertisement.
At first, I used ad blockers because of their distraction. Now, I use them mainly because I don't want marketeers pilfering in my mind.
Source: Hawks in sheep's clothing.
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I'm pretty sure I've said this at least one occasion before on /., but it bears repeating.
I wouldn't turn ads off if they weren't so idiotic, invasive, and everywhere.
Half of the websites I use are significantly faster because my browser isn't loading 8 flash instances for one page for all of the ads.
Then there's the ads that try and make themselves look like they're part of the site you're visiting to intentionally bait you into clicking on them.
Why not actually try and sell me shit I might actually want to buy, with tasteful or even funny ads that actually convey something about the product I might be interested in?
You ever watched a Disney DVD or video? Their entire business is based around making YOUR KIDS watch ads for their own products.
Fixed that for you.
Kids - the advertiser's force multiplier.
Still, as bad as Disney is, they're not as bad as the low-rent scum like Nickelodeon. Seriously - as kid's TV goes, PBS is tops, Disney is second, everything else is utter crap.
Not quite. Most consumers choose the smallest evil. It's not like you really have a choice anymore, what you really want rarely gets made.
Else everyone with half a brain would buy DVD players that let you skip ads or make digital copies of your DVDs. They don't exist. Why don't they exist, it's exactly what the customer wants.
It's because you're just the consumer. Not the customer.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.