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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*.
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.
Ads are spam. Does spam power email? Do pirates power seafaring?
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 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.
No, it really wasn't. .edu (as latter became) only.
The internet was invented to be an interesting communication protocol.
Later on, commercial entities and the general public got connected to it.
For a _long_ time, it was
Imagining that the internet was destined to win, and there were no alternatives is revisionist history.
The internet very nearly didn't win, avoiding being relegated to a communications experiment that died likely sometime around 2000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... - as an example of a competing service that lasted a long time, in the face of growing internet.
Aol, compuserv, and all of the other services didn't quite get joined up fast enough to make the internet irrelevant.
It was quite possible that this could have happened.
They decided that it was in their commercial interests to isolate their services, so that you couldn't email people on different networks.
This (amongst other similar issues) ended up killing them as other than ISPs when the internet took over this function.
If, for example, AOL, compuserv, Prodigy et al had gotten together and made it possible to email other services members, a prime reason for the explosion of the internet would have gone away.
Similarly, minitel could be a model of what the 'internet' might have looked like if the internet had not won.
It would be very, very different.
Network effects are _powerful_.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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)
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)