Dealing With 'Advertising Pollution'

theodp writes: "Everyone gets that advertising is what powers the internet, and that our favorite sites wouldn't exist without it," writes longtime ad guy Ken Segall in The Relentless (and annoying) Pursuit of Eyeballs. "Unfortunately, for some this is simply license to abuse. Let's call it what it is: advertising pollution." CNN's in-your-face, your-video-will-play-in-00:25-seconds approach, once unthinkable, has become the norm. "Google," Segall adds, "is a leader in advertising pollution, with YouTube being a showcase for intrusive advertising. Many YouTube videos start with a mandatory ad, others start with an ad that can be dismissed only after the first 10 seconds. Even more annoying are the ad overlays that actually appear on top of the video you're trying to watch. It won't go away until you click the X. If you want to see the entire video unobstructed, you must drag the playhead back to start over. Annoying. And disrespectful." Google proposed using cap and trade penalties to penalize traditional polluters — how about for those who pollute the Internet?

Comments

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[Anonymous Coward]

I never watch forced ads. I've yet to see content that's worth it. Pages get reloaded to pass the ads a couple times, failing that I'm off to something else. Oh, and adblockers and outright hostname and IP blocking still works. I'm sure they'll figure out a way to be even more abusive, they're google after all. But even they need to learn that trying too hard easily causes a loss of those precious "eyeballs".

Re:Good point

[Anonymous Coward]

Use adblock, it gets rid of ALL the adds on youtube. And if it's not your device, just hit F5 and you should get something else.

use your tabs

[Todd Palin]

Mute the sound and go to another tab for however many seconds. You don't have to watch it or listen to it. Use ad blocker for the rest. You don't have to be bothered with ads if you don't choose to be bothered. There are some serious annoyances in this world, but internet ads aren't a big deal.

Re:Ads are good for the internet.

[Mr. Slippery]

Imagine you had to pay every time you wanted to watch a YouTube video? Like when you goto a movie, or order cable TV, I'll gladly wait 10sec & click skip...

If it takes 10 seconds of your time, then you're paying with your time.

If you're a professional making $50/hour, then 10 seconds of your time is worth $0.14. If you're a laborer making $10, then 10 seconds of your time is worth $0.03. That's just the time wasted, mind, not counting the fact that watching ads is essentially subjecting yourself to black magic, attempted mind control, and trying to put a value on your neurological integrity..

IMO, if ads stopped across all internet sites, or the online advertising industry completely collapsed. The internet as we know it, would be gone.

And since the Internet as we know it has become, thanks to scum-sucking advertizers, a hive of scum and villainy, little would be lost, and we could go about cleaning out the cruft and building something better. Fuck the online advertising industry with a rusty dildo.

Why I use...

[Karmashock]

Adblock
NoScript
CookieMonster
And Flashstop

Adblock removes most of the ads. I turn off for sites I want to support or that don't annoy me with obnoxious ads.

NoScript is on for any site I can use without javascript. Java slows a lot of sites down without providing me any useful functionality in most cases. Also most of the annoying things a site can do like throw pop ups at you is done in javascript. So I just keep it off for most things.

CookieMonster blocks cookies which I do anywhere the site I'm interacting with doesn't need me to have a cookie. If I'm not doing anything complicated on a site and there are no logins then there's no need for cookies.

Flashstop stops all those annoying flash animations and videos and audio files that otherwise would auto play when you load a site. Its even good with youtube because you can load up five or six different pages at once without them all auto playing.

This is how I interact with the web now. Come at me.

Re:No Advertising does not power the Internet.

[Applehu Akbar]

Advertising is also why the Internet has evolved far past Usenet discussions. Ads bring us current TV episodes and today's news. I'll take that over alt.whine.virginity any time.

Re:i'm glad to work for free

[tepples]

So? Plenty of people paid E. E. Cummings not to use the shift key.

You need

[ArchieBunker]

Youtube Center. I run that with Adblock and it automatically makes videos play in the larger window and always sets the volume to 10%. That is just a few things you can fix. The addon has tons of tweaks.