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Tucows Bans Pop-Up Ads, Goes Ad-Free (globenewswire.com)
HughPickens.com writes: Tucows began as a software downloads site nearly 25 years ago and has since evolved beyond that early core business and into domain names, mobile phone service and symmetrical gigabit fiber Internet in select towns and cities in the US. Now Tucows has announced that as a gesture of goodwill, Tucows has banned deceptive ads, hidden download buttons, pop-ups, flypaper, toolbars and other such Internet nastiness from the the nearly 40,000 software titles it hosts for users on it's download sites.
"On the Tucows downloads site today, you'll find no flashing ads. No toolbars. No pop-ups," says CEO Elliot Noss. "You might see a few plugs for other Tucows services, but nothing too egregious and certainly not anything that's pretending to be a download button." With Tucows' success in domain names, mobile phone service (Ting) and fiber Internet (Ting Internet), Tucows' revenue from downloads has become less relevant when looking at the balance sheet. "We don't lightly walk away from opportunities or revenue," says Noss. "In the end, though, we'd rather have the Tucows name associated with good; with a belief in the power of the Internet to affect positive change. An ad-heavy site that packages browser toolbars along with every download isn't something we want people to think of when they hear 'Tucows,'."
"On the Tucows downloads site today, you'll find no flashing ads. No toolbars. No pop-ups," says CEO Elliot Noss. "You might see a few plugs for other Tucows services, but nothing too egregious and certainly not anything that's pretending to be a download button." With Tucows' success in domain names, mobile phone service (Ting) and fiber Internet (Ting Internet), Tucows' revenue from downloads has become less relevant when looking at the balance sheet. "We don't lightly walk away from opportunities or revenue," says Noss. "In the end, though, we'd rather have the Tucows name associated with good; with a belief in the power of the Internet to affect positive change. An ad-heavy site that packages browser toolbars along with every download isn't something we want people to think of when they hear 'Tucows,'."
I've been here basically from the start, and was a religious Tucows user for a long time. I can't remember anyone having mentioned their name for 15 years.
Sometimes, getting rid of the ads you're not getting to show because you have almost zero traffic is worthwhile, if the tradeoff is that publications will write about you and raise awareness, getting your traffic back from "negligible" to "modest".
And then six months down the line, you quietly start reintroducing the ads and making your quotas.
There's no problem with having a lot of ads. People who don't like it will use adblock.
The key problem with sites like Tucows was the deliberate deception. There's a huge difference between advertising a product or service that might be relevant to the user and trying to make people click on an ad by tricking them. Having 16 buttons that pretend to be the download button is just stupid. I don't understand what advertiser would pay for that, unless they're also shonks.
I remember many years ago when Slashdot editors were almost apologetic about needing to include a banner ad in order to pay the bills. Nobody liked it, but it was a necessary evil. We got over it because the banner ads weren't tracking us across multiple sites, weren't being deceptive, and weren't serving up malware. We didn't like them, but they weren't that bad. I recall a similar level of advertising on Sourceforge.
Fast forward to today and noscript blocks numerous advertising scripts on Slashdot. Sourceforge is polluted with ads and, for awhile, bundled malware with some downloads. These ads are sometimes harmful to browser performance and often are deceptive.
On other sites, I've seen particularly distasteful tactics on mobile interfaces. Instead of the ads loading when the page initially loads, they load when you scroll to that point in the page. Ads appear where there once was text to try to trick users into clicking. Because those ads could potentially serve up malware, it's more than a minor annoyance.
Somehow, this is what we've come to. Because of the dangers of advertising, I won't click on any ad and I certainly won't be installing any toolbars or bundled software. I would be happy to go back to animated GIFs that are targeted to a website's audience. If I go to Slashdot, I see animated GIFs advertising tech products and services. If I go to ESPN, I'll see animated GIFs about products of interest to sports fans like bigger and better TVs or for sports bars. I have no problem with approximate geolocation based on my IP, though nothing else.
But this wasn't good enough. And for that reason, I block all ads except Hulu. I have no way of knowing what's safe and what isn't. I'm sorry, but Tucows, Sourceforge, and CNet have destroyed their reputations and won't earn my trust back. I'll never click any Forbes link ever again. Google and Facebook are highly evil, too. And all this greed has ensured I'll never click on any ad again. If I happen to see an interesting ad, I won't click it. I'll Google the business and look them up that way to avoid malware.
Just say no. Block all ads, and only whitelist a few sites that aren't deceptive. And don't give that trust back. Sites like Tucows, Sourceforge, and CNet don't deserve to be trusted again. Not for a long, long, long time.