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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?
Most of Youtube is professionally produced videos where youtube shares the ad revenue with the creator. That's how people make money to be able to produce more videos.
you either get rid of advertising and pay to watch each video, or you put up with advertising. My account is enabled for revenue sharing, but i rarely upload anything and don't rely on it. but if took and produced videos and relied on ad revenue, i would stop very fast if i didn't get paid.
I sat down to watch Paddington Bear with my 19 month old son.
The advert that I couldn't skip was for a horror movie.
Thanks, youtube. That was *fantastic*.
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".
No Advertising does not power the Internet. Bogus assertion to begin the article. The internet ran fine before the ads. It would run fine without them. Advertising is one aspect of the internet. It does not power the internet in any way, shape or form.
I installed addblock because videos and streams I watched had add volume loudness so loud that it was a real problem. I often watch videos during the night and when the loudness jumps up for the adds it becomes annoying really fast. And that was the only reason.
I don't really mind adds and I know they run the content creators, but just that one small issue was enough for me.
When people say "internet", they mean content showing their favorite celebrities, mainstream news, and the same special-interest articles that used to appear in print manages. They don't mean a bunch of bearded, pasty-faced nerds discussing filk music and making obscure UNIX jokes on Usenet like the "internet that ran fine before the ads" that you are thinking of.
No. The internet was implemented by the federal government, funded by citizen taxes, and later extended as part of the communications infrastructure. The internet was not invented to serve businesses, it was invented to serve the citizens.
For those who voluntarily go to ad laden websites, you can't regulate self harm.
This is because most or all website revenue comes from advertising. CBS has ads, but Netflix doesn't. Books don't, and newspapers and magazines have a limited amount, because part of their revenue comes from selling their publications to consumers. (Without ads, a copy of something like National Geographic or Playboy would cost $20 or more.)
The problem is that we don't have a good way of buying small amounts of content online. You can subscribe to some sites by the month or year, or perhaps buy limited access via PayPal, but the cost tends to be $ or $$ or $$$, and nobody wants to subscribe to CNN or YouTube. They want to see that video now, with no registration and commitment. The answer is the great lost Internet opportunity of 15 years ago: micropayments. If there was an easy and universal system for paying (say) a few cents to watch a video, why not? It'd be trivial for viewers, but could add up to real money for sites.
If I were a huge content provider, I'd figure out a way to make it happen, perhaps through ISPs. Subsidize them to give every user maybe $10/month credit. Offer content providers a great deal to install a one-click "Read/Watch Now for 1 cent" buttons. Get people used to paying tiny amounts of money to view content. If something like this could get going, it'd benefit content providers of all sizes. E.g. a comedian who writes one joke a day could make a living with 10,000 readers paying 1 cent per day ($100/day = $36,500/year).
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
CNN's in-your-face, your-video-will-play-in-00:25-seconds approach, once unthinkable, has become the norm.
Why unthinkable? Why should free video be so very different from free TV?
I used the Internet, quite happily and successfully, for more than a decade, before HTTP (curse you, Tim Berners-Lee) began to intrude on the experience. I would be very happy to go back to those days. Throw in an IRC/FTP/RTP+RTSP "subscription" for content, and there's nothing I would miss.
The old adage about TV ("99 channels and nothing on") applies to the web, but with several orders more magnitude of noise to signal.
Ads are spam. Does spam power email? Do pirates power seafaring?
The Internet was vastly better then by any measure. It wasn't used to commit financial crimes, to dupe people, to invade privacy, or to spy on whole populations. It especially didn't destroy more jobs than it's created and eliminate whole industries, and cause the vast amounts of unemployment and underemployment that have resulted from its going mainstream.
What has made the Internet the cesspool it is today is advertising, corporatism, and the kind of control and attempted control that goes with the undereducated being turned loose on something shiny.
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.
I've never seen them, are you a non-tech type who doesn't use adblock, flashblock, and noscript?
I disagree with ads on a very fundamental level. they're manipulative and serve to change and circumvent logic and the decision making process. I don't appreciate anything or anyone that is intentionally trying to manipulate me.
I am still going to go to all the same web sites as I always have but you can bet I'm going to adblock as many ads as tectonically possible. The industry brought it upon themselves by pushing the intrusiveness way to far. I don't feel guilty in the slightest.
Do you remember the Internet before advertising? I do. It was mostly educational, and technical. It was also low bandwidth. The modern Internet is a lot of expensive to produce and deliver content. That money has to come from somewhere, and Universities are not financing it all like they used to.
There is a fuckton more content on the internet today than in 1998, so what worked before doesn't necessarily work today and vice versa. To take the YouTube example of the story author, we have two sides to it - those who post the content without having to worry about being hit by a massive bandwidth bill, and those who view the content without having to whip out a credit card to pay for it. In between those sides, we have Google who is paying the infrastructure bill and funding the means to pay that bill by showing ads.
People on here and other open forums regularly bitch about paywalls, so there are only really two other alternatives - find another way to pay the bill, or offer the content completely for free. Offering the content completely for free doesn't work for a lot of companies, because they are there to make money....
Yeah, just imagine. A micropayment system that worked. 25 cents for a video? 10 cents? 2 cents? I'd go for that in a heartbeat. Sure, have a choice - look at the ads or pay up. I suppose that some smart marketing folks have actually looked at this and decided it 's not worth it, but I for one would welcome our new micropayment overlords.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I've noticed a really annoying trend, where you're on a site for a 10-20 seconds reading their content, when this (presumably JavaScript) box pops in front of the content soliciting for your email address. This is really annoying, since it totally breaks the concentration on what you're reading. Since this apparently done with JavaScript provided by the hosting site, pop-up window blockers and cross-script blockers don't prevent it.
So here's a hint for web designers: THIS IS F***KING ANNOYING! STOP IT!
Thank you.
Ads and marketing in general have evolved from simple, respectful "hey, try this! It's good" into manipulative nonsense. Few people can see through it and the result has been devastating to them. It has shaped and certainly harmed the culture of the US and even results in violence in some extreme cases where people want things so badly they hurt and kill each other to get it. Though most will disagree exactly when things have gone "too far" few will disagree that they have.
The ones that get me are where you go to an ordinary (text) web page, probably news, and there is a flash add on the right side that starts playing instantly, video and sound. OK, bad enough. But to trying to turn it off I move my mouse over it, and the D*** thing expands to half the screen, blocking what I went there to read. And it won't go back to being small!
It is for this reason that I do not have Flash installed on my new notebook computer. Adobe Flash should give the user more power. How about a global option that says "Don't run anything until I click on it." That would be decent. Even door-to-door salesmen are required to knock on your door; they can't use bullhorns from out on the sidewalk, which is what Flash is used for.
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..
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.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
People seem to forget, the internet RUNS on advertising money. It's what pay's the "real" bills for servers, staff & redbull's.
People used to have their own web sites about their hobbies and interests.. they used to actually participate until mass media came along and turned the network into a TV set. It was standard practice to offer users personal home pages when they signed up for Internet service.
IMO, if ads stopped across all internet sites, or the online advertising industry completely collapsed. The internet as we know it, would be gone.
Good riddance.
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.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
...except, of course, for the ad companies selling it to companies who try to get sales. I'm not in marketing, but I got some insider information from people who are, and they all say that about 50% of all the money put into advertisement has basically the same effect on sales as burning it would have. The only reason it is wasted this way is that a) many customers don't know it and - more importantly - b) they don't know which 50%.
But, as in so many things, when something stops being effective, the first answer to the problem is to do more of it. The enemy has built bunkers against our bombs? Drop more bombs! The virus is becoming immune to our medicine? Raise the dosage. People have begun to ignore or block advertisement? Throw more ads their way.
Yes, it is pollution, the term is spot on.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Exactly you nailed it. For those that say that the ads have become manipulative, sorry but how are they different than old TV? Sure we have Tivo like apps but the reality is that commercials have always been in your face. It is just that on the Internet we have become used to non-invasive free Internet (as in free beer). The fact that this has changed does not surprise me in the least. Don't like it, do like the parent poster said, don't vist the site. Or better yet fork over money so that sites don't need ads.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
> It was also low bandwidth. The modern Internet is a lot of expensive to produce and deliver content.
Bandwidth costs have dropped exponentially since then.
We are looking at a 2000x drop in pricing from 1998 to the end of this year.
In 1998 it was $1200.00/Mbps by 2015 it will be $0.63/Mbps
What's even worse is when some insurance company publishes a scare article to Forbes' advertisement program, which publishes stories under the Forbes umbrella while vaguely disassociating themselves from the content. The content looks like it's Forbes. It's really sick. Here's an example.
For those that say that the ads have become manipulative, sorry but how are they different than old TV?
Well for one thing on old TV ads didn't pretend to be part of the show you were watching. Viewing them didn't turn your computer into a botnet, track your every move or adorn your sets control knobs and television cabinet with vendor advertising. TV ads also lack self awareness.
"Also, you don't have to go to the CNN site if you don't like their ads. No one actually forced you to read CNN. It is their media property, they can do what they wish."
Sure, just as it's our right to render on our screens only what we wish.
And we do that.
Really, I don't know what I'd do without them. Probably stop using the Internet as much as I do now, find some alternatives, or do a hell of a lot more bitching.
When running a fresh new installation of a web browser, the first ad I see immediately causes me to halt everything I'm doing and install those three plugins. Annoyingly, I usually don't even hit two consecutive websites before that happens--the wretched fucking things are literally everywhere. Video ads really fucking piss me off, and even more on Android, because the god damn things are *designed* to reduce your access to the system, which effectively prevents installing ad blocking software without gaining root.
I have actually in the past, when confronted with an ad while trying to watch a video, cranked the volume all the way down and turned the phone upside down. If I did happen to see what brand was advertising, I add them to my mental blacklist of products and services to AVOID. Yes, I am so against advertising, it has the exact *opposite* effect on me when it comes to buying things. I'm sorry, but I can think for myself, I can do my own research and come up with an educated conclusion as to what I want or need. I don't fucking need someone spewing bullshit, trying to force me to buy their junk.
These days? When I even come across ONE ad when attempting to watch YouTube, I have zero tolerance. I close it. It is not worth the hassle. If I want to watch something bad enough, it will be on a proper computer with the necessary extensions. Android is one of the worst platforms to visit web pages or watch videos on.
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.
Not everyone "gets" that advertising is needed. In fact, click-through revenue is so miniscule that it would be more cost-effective to not saturate the Internet with ads, or indeed have ads on the Internet at all. The Internet had no advertising at all until two Utah lawyers invented spam and made a fortune promoting their book on Internet advertising. That was around 5 years after the Internet was privatized.
Almost no site I give a damn about relies on advertising. As advertising on a site goes up, the time I spend there goes down. When in England, I watch BBC almost exclusively, ITV stuff is relegated to whenever it comes out on DVD. That has been the case for much of my life. When moving to the US, I abandoned television entirely simply because of the adverts.
Linux is one of the top Operating Systems and gained almost all of that reputation and awesomeness before IBM started their TV ads.
So if products don't need advertising, the Internet doesn't need advertising and users hate advertising, then who the hell is this "everyone" who "understands" the need?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You mean things like internet access and cable tv? those are expensive services and they're full of ads. It's gotten so bad that ads are displayed around the edges of content on tv shows, and sites want internet customers to use their limited bandwidth allocations to download fat flash ads and wait for them to play....on so called 'premium' services. Fuck that.
I have no sympathy for advertisers at this point.
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.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The Internet was vastly better then by any measure. It wasn't used to commit financial crimes, to dupe people, to invade privacy, or to spy on whole populations. It especially didn't destroy more jobs than it's created and eliminate whole industries
AOL introduced flat-rate monthly billing in the mid nineties - coincidental with flat-rate regional calling plans.
Going on-line had become affordable.
The typical Internet suite of that era had its arcane clients for e-mail, IRC chat, USENET, FTP, Gopher, Archie, Veronica, and maybe a primitive web browser, along with zip file compression and a graphics editor.
The AOL client pushed all the geek's beloved tech far into the background, and put an easy to use GUI up-front.
At that point, the only way the geek could have kept the" old Internet" as his private playground would have been by crippling the evolution of the "open" web browse - and praying there wouldn't be too many defections to the commercial online services.
Cable television (paid for monthly by the consumer) has been absolutely raped by advertisers, thus diminishing its value. It's even worse online where it can (and does) affect user's PCs with (at least) reduced battery life and (at worst) tracking mechanisms and malware.
Notice that the guy who said it is an advertising guy. That's his whole worldview. That's the way he thinks it is and the way he thinks it should be. Meanwhile for the rest of us, we have lots of alternatives. Paid sites, community-supported sites, ad-blocked sites, sites run by people who love what they are running a site about.
Basically this is a little advertiser wanting us to support clubbing a big advertiser, Google. He'd like us to get mad at his competition. What he wouldn't like is for us to start noticing just how much what he is advocating is in his self-interest.
I recommend we all switch to ad-block and screw them all. If some sites die or have to switch funding models, works great for me.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
You don't get to decide things you don't pay for. The people that pay for things gets to decide them.
If you ever feel the need to install an ad blocker, you're doing it wrong.
Hence why CNN doesn't get to decide whether their ads display on the computer I paid for or not.
There were many people producing their own content on the Internet before big business saw a profit in it. To frame them all as pasty-faced nerds is disingenuous and obviously false. These were ordinary people exchanging ideas and sharing whatever they felt was worth sharing. This was, and still is, the crux of the Internet's greatness.
The kind of content you mention is the kind of content that does not utilize the unique interpersonal capabilities of the Internet. That stuff is ordinary mass media content that has moved to the Internet only because the corporations producing it were losing their readership and revenue to the Internet (see previous paragraph.) They came here to fight for our eyeballs and our opinions because we chose to ignore them in favor of communicating with each other.
Advertising, as irritating as it can be, can help us to distinguish between content motivated by money (probably distributed by a giant corporation with an ulterior motive of keeping you suckling at their teat while feeding you politically slanted pseudo-news) and content motivated by some other impetus. For me, content that is laden with irritating advertisements practically screams "don't listen to me! I'm a scumbag!"
I'd much rather hear from ordinary people who have enough respect for me to tell their story without trying to monetize me. Lucky for us, plenty of those people still exist on the Internet.
(properly formatted this time)
The internet does not run on ads. It ran fine before ads and it would run fine afterwards.
Besides would it be that bad to pay for YouTube? I can't imagine they get more than a penny or two per view. If I had to pay around that much per view it'd probably be between a half and one dollar a day. Pay that for no ads AND support the content creators I enjoy? Heck yes!
See also the success of many popular youtubers with patreon and subbable and the like.
You would still get ads.
See, you get ads because most people are willing to put up with ads, not because content would be impossible without them. Remember when you just had ABC/CBS/NBC (and maybe FOX) and then cable came around? Oh, we were do dizzy with the promise.. we would subscribe to cable, that would pay for the content, and we could do without advertising, like those Brits and PBS watchers did!
Except that's not what happened. We paid for cable AND we got the ads. Because we were willing to.
Your entire post is wrong based simply on the fact that soap operas are a thing
That's in the USA. Adverts are confined to their own time slot in the UK, and when that comes around it is generally clearly recognisable. It is the point at which I flip through some other channels and watch the BBC news for a few minutes, or even cat videos (anything is better than ads, and there is a channel that's mostly pets doing funny things).
Funny, but in the UK soap operas are still called soap operas, but most people don't realise how the term originated.
Correction: The Internet as you know it would be gone. The actual Internet would be just fine. Universities, stores, hobby sites, government, and people generally interested in communicating with each other would pay their ISP bills and continue without interruption.
Did you just suggest I pay for something online? Damn, I've never been more offended in my entire life. I use Facebook for my corporate website, Gmail for my inbox, and YouTube to distribute my advertising. Why the hell would I pay for anything?!?
Sincerely,
(The reason we're here today)