If not, I challenge you to draw a real distinction between manually ignoring ads and automating the process with software.
Depends on how you're defining 'ignoring'. If it downloads and your eyes are simply trained to not see it? *shrugs* Fine with me. CPM is on my side. "Ignoring" by using automated software usually means you're actively blocking and preventing the advertisers from having a chance to get their message out, which is what they're paying me for. That's the freeloading part.
Unfortunately, I'm not going to bother rebutting any of your other responses, because reading through the other discussions here, there's really no argument against blind self-entitlement. I'll simply go as far as to say I disagree with you, as I'm sure at least 95% of other non-blog site developers/publishers would. Please stay off my site -- nothing personal.:)
There are a lot of generalizations in this entire discussion... - Not all ads are "Punch the Monkey" - Not all ads using Flash are bad - Not all of them invoke seizures. What if they're relevant to content? I run a gaming website, many game publishers have animated ads. Why is this block-worthy? - Not all websites do or want to display "Punch The Monkey" - With the exception of Google ads, which can vary widely since most of my content isn't blog-like or other editorial features, the ads I run on my site are rather appropriate for the demographic and interests of visitors. - Not all advertising is pay-per-click/-action. May I please have 16K of your bandwidth to create an ad impression in exchange for being able to keep my website running for you? I assure you my bandwidth costs are higher than yours; but your help in reaching that next 1,000 impression milestone (the 'M' in CPM) will help tremendously. - Not all websites are based on $5 hosting accounts - creating, maintaining, and most importantly *growing* a web presence is time-consuming and costly. It's not just about bandwidth. There's hardware, too. Sometimes you need people smarter than you to tackle problems, here comes some labor costs.
Why is it wrong to want to be able to cover costs, and god forbid, be able to pay for other things in life with it? Not everyone is trying to wade in a pool of money they can't even begin to spend; some of us just want to live a slightly better life by being rewarded for our efforts at entertaining others. My website's not my first job, but I wouldn't be in my current position without it, and I wouldn't have gotten that far without ad revenue paying the bills for the time when it was.
I think what scares me so much is the sheer generalization that people spout around. "ALL ads are bad".. "It's not my problem!" - It WILL be your problem when half your paycheck goes to viewing the number of sites you probably do now. Not to mention the impression you're leaving over people who don't normally think for themselves (quite a large set of the population - you're on Slashdot, you know what I mean).
Maybe things aren't quite that bleak, and I hope they aren't either.. but instead of instinctively fighting 'the man' (without even knowing who that may be), why not adopt an actual ad blocking strategy that others have suggested (i.e. allow ads until they pop up, play sound, overlay, etc)? Perhaps there's a way to open dialogue between content provider and end-user to communicate where their expectations are in terms of what ads they feel are appropriate and how they can make the experience better without having to resort to this 'arms race' you speak of. I'd much rather spend my development time on new content and features for my website than deal with that sort of thing. I should hope that most visitors would, too.
Nope - CPM isn't dead yet. Not all ads are Google ads (which is where you hear a lot about Cost-per-click or -per-Action)... some people still pay to simply have their message displayed.
It's funny. Nobody using an ad blocker was going to click the ads anyway. It seems like it just saves everyone some time and effort.
Three letters for you: CPM. Many advertisers work on Cost Per Thousand (Roman Numeral 'M') - the amount of money they pay you for every 1,000 impressions. It matters less that you may click it, it matters more than they have the opportunity to display it. Some people may genuinely be interested, some may see it but ignore it... spend enough time online and you train your brain to not even see it.
I'd say the vast majority of people are on a CPM agreement. Sure, the clicks help sustain the CPM model, but nobody's asking you to do anything but leave it alone and let it just display. If it's intentionally overbearing (spaz-ads, click the monkey), then block that site.
One thing I see is that most people aren't at war with ads, they're trying to battle 'bad ads'. However, by simply making this sweeping generalization that all advertising is going to harm their computer, throw 80 popups in their face, and possibly do unspeakable acts to their sisters - you're harming anyone who isn't a large company with the physical revenue to sustain it. Not everyone that has a website sells stuff, some people provide services in hopes that the only 'return' is that people will tell others of the site, and that ads are allowed to be seen so it can continue to thrive.
I understand that there are a lot of idiots who would rewrite the browsers so they can display whatever they want on your system - but you can't just assume that all advertising, or the sites that run advertising, are out to get you. Give'em a chance... at least until they claim you've won for being the 999,999th visitor.
Sorry, but removing or blocking content is not in the W3C spec - what the hell are you talking about, 'web standards'? What makes you think that I'm doing anything 'not within web standards and protocols'? IFrames serving text, image, or flash-based ads are well-within the web-standards.
Anyway, I wasn't 'whining' about anything. I was simply giving the viewpoint from someone who provides content. You quite obviously do not. As I mentioned in other posts, I'd love to hear how you cope when all websites are forced into a pay-per-view model. Not every domain is backed by large corporations.
I run a Community-oriented Xbox-related website. My primary service displays images based on a user's current game history and allows them to use these on just about any site - MySpace, forums, blogs, etc. It does this nearly 6 million times a day. (about 190 GB/day). Obviously, this generates no advertising revenue since there's nowhere to advertise.
My website contains a number of different additional features such as Leaderboards and Profiles that allow people to rank themselves among their friends. This also generates bandwidth, as well as incur hardware and resource costs (i.e. the big DB server that's crushing under its own load). This gives me an opportunity to cover my costs.
I'm just a gamer who has been lucky enough to provide a service that people enjoy. I don't have an 'evil media' agenda that you seem so ready to do battle with. Is it really that wrong of me to want these visitors to help out, simply by allowing the ads to display on the pages they view? Is it wrong of me to want to know where people come from, so I can go back and see how I was linked, in hopes of gaining insight to what features they might enjoy, so that I can build on them? Am I a jerk for wanting people to correctly register, with an email I can use to at least verify they're real? Of course, registration is optional on my website, and only grants additional perks -- you don't have to give us any of your information in order to view the main attractions.
I don't understand your logic here. I don't know what sites you visit, but for me, the days of the perpetual popup and the selling of my user information died off with the last dot-com bust. Many websites are just small-time guys trying to make a living - or at the very least, continue to be able to service
This b.s. is exactly analogous to the fears behind Network Neutrality (or lack thereof). Only corporations with large financial backing are going to be able to have a presence on the internet. When you start treating everyone like they're evil, only the evil will prevail.
Soooo... How should websites pay for providing content to you? Are you interested in having a subscription to every website you casually (or even regularly) visit? My gut instinct says you'll probably say no.
There's a huge difference between sending you unsolicited snail mail and displaying advertising on a website that you requested to view.
Because you're requesting information from their website!
As a website owner, I know exactly where these people are coming from (though I still recommend people use FF over IE). I've frequently had to explain the difference between the website hits my reporting tools tell me and the actual ad hits my advertisers see (or don't see, in this case)
I agree that there's "good" advertising and "bad" advertising. I'm very conscious about what types of ads display on my site. Text ads usually have fairly free roam, but when it comes to images or flash, it needs to be somewhat relevant. I have no qualms about telling my advertisers to pull an ad because it doesn't meet those standards.
However, if you're going to be part of obtaining content or information from my website, then there are costs that are incurred - bandwidth, processing, data storage. Thankfully, these can be soft costs as long as the user does their part by allowing the ad to display.
You can make all of the excuses you wish, such as "Well I'm not going to look at it or click on it anyway" -- That's a-ok, there's a beautiful advertising model called CPM, which pays me for each 1,000 (Roman Numeral M) impressions. Doesn't really matter too much if you know what it says or click on it, you're still helping me maintain my site by your browser physically requesting it.
I don't understand the big deal with ad blocking. Just block sites that abuse their right to advertise by running 'spaz-ads' or other intrusive campaigns, allow other people to provide the services you came there to use.
Then maybe you can tell me how to have an Analytics profile that conglomerates all of the data from my subdomains into an 'overall' format (i.e. Not just adding hits/users, but doing the math on unique users to the entire domain)
Anytime you see a games.slashdot.org article, copy the URL and simply replace 'games' with another section of your choosing. The subdomains only affect the skins and default sorting, not the actual content.:)
Am I wrong in thinking that this is the result of a typical non-compete (or equivalent)? I know I've had to sign some before. And to answer some other posts, it's not like telling a programmer he can't use whatever control structures he wants - these guys are specifically prevented from using information they gathered while working for a company in which that information is their entire business.
Well, at MyGamerCard.net, we host the Xbox 360 GamerScore Leaderboard in which you can see that some people are taking more achievements for themselves than others.
50 Achievements is still a lot. As other posters have mentioned, you're not going to get all of them for each game you play. Some require a lot of dedication, and some, like EA's early games, allow you to gain all of the Achievements with minimal work required.
Achievements are definitely popular. They help boost game sales without a doubt. Not necessarily for the better of the community, I'm sure -- I know many people who have sat through some truly horrible games just for the GamerScore, and that just encourages publishers to make more mediocre games.
I think part of it is the marketing aspect. People started hyping it to others, who hyped it to others, etc. But also, it's an ease-of-use aspect, too.
Its most popular aspect (or at least, what made it the most generally popular over the course of this year) is the no-BS landline (and cellphone, which will be grouped with 'landline' for this post) calling. There was this other service hyped either here or Engadget (or both?) that was supposed to be some Skype-killer, but it wasn't as free as they said it was (I don't think it was money, but you had to do *something* to get the free calling). Other ventures have applied a rate to it. Up until the end of the year, the outgoing calls are free, with no hitches. Just download and go.
After that, it's just a cyclic effect - people pimp Skype, so Skype gets easy third-party tools (such as specialized phones) which are co-branded, and only serve to strengthen the name.
I wasn't aware that TeamSpeak had an outgoing landline calling feature. I do PC-to-PC calling, but it's only to one or two people, and they just use Skype anyway. Most of my time with it has been for calling long-distance. I don't have an unlimited plan on my landline, and I don't get service inside my house with the cell. (And even then, daytime minutes aren't free)
So it's popular because I think it just kinda fell into place that way. If some other software comes along that does COMPLETELY free, no-bull landline calling, and can get some decent press-time, AND is just 'install and go' (i.e. no SIP configuration, etc) it'll eat away at Skype's market share.
And if you want that to happen, start revealing your big free-calling secrets now before the year is over.:)
Actually, I initially had problems with the shield bash, as well... however, I eventually learned (by chance) that it's the same as Wii Sports - It's not just what you do, but *how* you do it.
For example, I was having terrible trouble putting in the golf portion of Wii Sports. My stepfather (a non-gamer, but a golfer), noticed how I was trying to use the same motion for driving as I was for putting. The Wii seems to be more contextually aware than you would think.
In any case, digression aside, I found that it was more eager to register a shield bash if I actually acted like I was holding a shield. That is, hand grasping the nunchuck in a vertical position, like a shield handle. (Spatially, you'll be tilting the nunchuck back - analog stick pointed towards you instead of 'on top' as you would in normal handling).. Give that shot.
I agree, this happened to me, as well -- so thankfully, I signed up for Yahoo's Publisher Network (http://ypn.yahoo.com/). Still beta-ish, a little low on advertisers, and probably a lower revenue output than Google...... but it's been SOMETHING to help keep the bills paid.
Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo Profiles (http://profiles.yahoo.com/RandomUser - apologies to the Orange County resident) has been doing this for at least 10 years now.
Great. Buy it for the Xbox 360 then. .. Knock yourself out.
Resell it all you want (well, once, anyway)
If not, I challenge you to draw a real distinction between manually ignoring ads and automating the process with software.
:)
Depends on how you're defining 'ignoring'. If it downloads and your eyes are simply trained to not see it? *shrugs* Fine with me. CPM is on my side.
"Ignoring" by using automated software usually means you're actively blocking and preventing the advertisers from having a chance to get their message out, which is what they're paying me for. That's the freeloading part.
Unfortunately, I'm not going to bother rebutting any of your other responses, because reading through the other discussions here, there's really no argument against blind self-entitlement. I'll simply go as far as to say I disagree with you, as I'm sure at least 95% of other non-blog site developers/publishers would. Please stay off my site -- nothing personal.
Stealing? Doubtful
.. "It's not my problem!" - It WILL be your problem when half your paycheck goes to viewing the number of sites you probably do now. Not to mention the impression you're leaving over people who don't normally think for themselves (quite a large set of the population - you're on Slashdot, you know what I mean).
.. but instead of instinctively fighting 'the man' (without even knowing who that may be), why not adopt an actual ad blocking strategy that others have suggested (i.e. allow ads until they pop up, play sound, overlay, etc)?
Freeloading? Absolutely.
There are a lot of generalizations in this entire discussion...
- Not all ads are "Punch the Monkey"
- Not all ads using Flash are bad - Not all of them invoke seizures. What if they're relevant to content? I run a gaming website, many game publishers have animated ads. Why is this block-worthy?
- Not all websites do or want to display "Punch The Monkey" - With the exception of Google ads, which can vary widely since most of my content isn't blog-like or other editorial features, the ads I run on my site are rather appropriate for the demographic and interests of visitors.
- Not all advertising is pay-per-click/-action. May I please have 16K of your bandwidth to create an ad impression in exchange for being able to keep my website running for you? I assure you my bandwidth costs are higher than yours; but your help in reaching that next 1,000 impression milestone (the 'M' in CPM) will help tremendously.
- Not all websites are based on $5 hosting accounts - creating, maintaining, and most importantly *growing* a web presence is time-consuming and costly. It's not just about bandwidth. There's hardware, too. Sometimes you need people smarter than you to tackle problems, here comes some labor costs.
Why is it wrong to want to be able to cover costs, and god forbid, be able to pay for other things in life with it? Not everyone is trying to wade in a pool of money they can't even begin to spend; some of us just want to live a slightly better life by being rewarded for our efforts at entertaining others. My website's not my first job, but I wouldn't be in my current position without it, and I wouldn't have gotten that far without ad revenue paying the bills for the time when it was.
I think what scares me so much is the sheer generalization that people spout around. "ALL ads are bad"
Maybe things aren't quite that bleak, and I hope they aren't either
Perhaps there's a way to open dialogue between content provider and end-user to communicate where their expectations are in terms of what ads they feel are appropriate and how they can make the experience better without having to resort to this 'arms race' you speak of.
I'd much rather spend my development time on new content and features for my website than deal with that sort of thing. I should hope that most visitors would, too.
Nope - CPM isn't dead yet. Not all ads are Google ads (which is where you hear a lot about Cost-per-click or -per-Action)... some people still pay to simply have their message displayed.
It was intentional, at least in the way I meant it. In this particular case, it could go either way. :)
It's funny. Nobody using an ad blocker was going to click the ads anyway. It seems like it just saves everyone some time and effort.
... spend enough time online and you train your brain to not even see it.
... at least until they claim you've won for being the 999,999th visitor.
Three letters for you: CPM. Many advertisers work on Cost Per Thousand (Roman Numeral 'M') - the amount of money they pay you for every 1,000 impressions. It matters less that you may click it, it matters more than they have the opportunity to display it. Some people may genuinely be interested, some may see it but ignore it
I'd say the vast majority of people are on a CPM agreement. Sure, the clicks help sustain the CPM model, but nobody's asking you to do anything but leave it alone and let it just display. If it's intentionally overbearing (spaz-ads, click the monkey), then block that site.
One thing I see is that most people aren't at war with ads, they're trying to battle 'bad ads'. However, by simply making this sweeping generalization that all advertising is going to harm their computer, throw 80 popups in their face, and possibly do unspeakable acts to their sisters - you're harming anyone who isn't a large company with the physical revenue to sustain it. Not everyone that has a website sells stuff, some people provide services in hopes that the only 'return' is that people will tell others of the site, and that ads are allowed to be seen so it can continue to thrive.
I understand that there are a lot of idiots who would rewrite the browsers so they can display whatever they want on your system - but you can't just assume that all advertising, or the sites that run advertising, are out to get you. Give'em a chance
Sorry, but removing or blocking content is not in the W3C spec - what the hell are you talking about, 'web standards'? What makes you think that I'm doing anything 'not within web standards and protocols'? IFrames serving text, image, or flash-based ads are well-within the web-standards.
Anyway, I wasn't 'whining' about anything. I was simply giving the viewpoint from someone who provides content. You quite obviously do not. As I mentioned in other posts, I'd love to hear how you cope when all websites are forced into a pay-per-view model. Not every domain is backed by large corporations.
But not every website exists to 'do business' on.
Not every website is a business.
Not every site you visit is 'commercial'.
I run a Community-oriented Xbox-related website. My primary service displays images based on a user's current game history and allows them to use these on just about any site - MySpace, forums, blogs, etc. It does this nearly 6 million times a day. (about 190 GB/day). Obviously, this generates no advertising revenue since there's nowhere to advertise.
My website contains a number of different additional features such as Leaderboards and Profiles that allow people to rank themselves among their friends. This also generates bandwidth, as well as incur hardware and resource costs (i.e. the big DB server that's crushing under its own load). This gives me an opportunity to cover my costs.
I'm just a gamer who has been lucky enough to provide a service that people enjoy. I don't have an 'evil media' agenda that you seem so ready to do battle with.
Is it really that wrong of me to want these visitors to help out, simply by allowing the ads to display on the pages they view?
Is it wrong of me to want to know where people come from, so I can go back and see how I was linked, in hopes of gaining insight to what features they might enjoy, so that I can build on them?
Am I a jerk for wanting people to correctly register, with an email I can use to at least verify they're real? Of course, registration is optional on my website, and only grants additional perks -- you don't have to give us any of your information in order to view the main attractions.
I don't understand your logic here. I don't know what sites you visit, but for me, the days of the perpetual popup and the selling of my user information died off with the last dot-com bust.
Many websites are just small-time guys trying to make a living - or at the very least, continue to be able to service
This b.s. is exactly analogous to the fears behind Network Neutrality (or lack thereof). Only corporations with large financial backing are going to be able to have a presence on the internet.
When you start treating everyone like they're evil, only the evil will prevail.
Soooo... How should websites pay for providing content to you? Are you interested in having a subscription to every website you casually (or even regularly) visit?
My gut instinct says you'll probably say no.
There's a huge difference between sending you unsolicited snail mail and displaying advertising on a website that you requested to view.
Because you're requesting information from their website!
As a website owner, I know exactly where these people are coming from (though I still recommend people use FF over IE). I've frequently had to explain the difference between the website hits my reporting tools tell me and the actual ad hits my advertisers see (or don't see, in this case)
I agree that there's "good" advertising and "bad" advertising. I'm very conscious about what types of ads display on my site. Text ads usually have fairly free roam, but when it comes to images or flash, it needs to be somewhat relevant. I have no qualms about telling my advertisers to pull an ad because it doesn't meet those standards.
However, if you're going to be part of obtaining content or information from my website, then there are costs that are incurred - bandwidth, processing, data storage. Thankfully, these can be soft costs as long as the user does their part by allowing the ad to display.
You can make all of the excuses you wish, such as "Well I'm not going to look at it or click on it anyway" -- That's a-ok, there's a beautiful advertising model called CPM, which pays me for each 1,000 (Roman Numeral M) impressions. Doesn't really matter too much if you know what it says or click on it, you're still helping me maintain my site by your browser physically requesting it.
I don't understand the big deal with ad blocking. Just block sites that abuse their right to advertise by running 'spaz-ads' or other intrusive campaigns, allow other people to provide the services you came there to use.
Sorry, but this is music, therefore the RIAA.
Whoah, whoah.. careful now.
It's bad enough the organization thinks that music == RIAA, don't tell me you've been infected, too!
"Everything you need...."
Then maybe you can tell me how to have an Analytics profile that conglomerates all of the data from my subdomains into an 'overall' format (i.e. Not just adding hits/users, but doing the math on unique users to the entire domain)
So far, I've not been able to accomplish this..
Anytime you see a games.slashdot.org article, copy the URL and simply replace 'games' with another section of your choosing. The subdomains only affect the skins and default sorting, not the actual content. :)
Am I wrong in thinking that this is the result of a typical non-compete (or equivalent)? I know I've had to sign some before.
And to answer some other posts, it's not like telling a programmer he can't use whatever control structures he wants - these guys are specifically prevented from using information they gathered while working for a company in which that information is their entire business.
Well, at MyGamerCard.net, we host the Xbox 360 GamerScore Leaderboard in which you can see that some people are taking more achievements for themselves than others.
50 Achievements is still a lot. As other posters have mentioned, you're not going to get all of them for each game you play. Some require a lot of dedication, and some, like EA's early games, allow you to gain all of the Achievements with minimal work required.
Achievements are definitely popular. They help boost game sales without a doubt. Not necessarily for the better of the community, I'm sure -- I know many people who have sat through some truly horrible games just for the GamerScore, and that just encourages publishers to make more mediocre games.
I think part of it is the marketing aspect. People started hyping it to others, who hyped it to others, etc.
:)
But also, it's an ease-of-use aspect, too.
Its most popular aspect (or at least, what made it the most generally popular over the course of this year) is the no-BS landline (and cellphone, which will be grouped with 'landline' for this post) calling.
There was this other service hyped either here or Engadget (or both?) that was supposed to be some Skype-killer, but it wasn't as free as they said it was (I don't think it was money, but you had to do *something* to get the free calling). Other ventures have applied a rate to it.
Up until the end of the year, the outgoing calls are free, with no hitches. Just download and go.
After that, it's just a cyclic effect - people pimp Skype, so Skype gets easy third-party tools (such as specialized phones) which are co-branded, and only serve to strengthen the name.
I wasn't aware that TeamSpeak had an outgoing landline calling feature. I do PC-to-PC calling, but it's only to one or two people, and they just use Skype anyway. Most of my time with it has been for calling long-distance. I don't have an unlimited plan on my landline, and I don't get service inside my house with the cell. (And even then, daytime minutes aren't free)
So it's popular because I think it just kinda fell into place that way.
If some other software comes along that does COMPLETELY free, no-bull landline calling, and can get some decent press-time, AND is just 'install and go' (i.e. no SIP configuration, etc) it'll eat away at Skype's market share.
And if you want that to happen, start revealing your big free-calling secrets now before the year is over.
Actually, I initially had problems with the shield bash, as well... however, I eventually learned (by chance) that it's the same as Wii Sports - It's not just what you do, but *how* you do it.
For example, I was having terrible trouble putting in the golf portion of Wii Sports. My stepfather (a non-gamer, but a golfer), noticed how I was trying to use the same motion for driving as I was for putting. The Wii seems to be more contextually aware than you would think.
In any case, digression aside, I found that it was more eager to register a shield bash if I actually acted like I was holding a shield. That is, hand grasping the nunchuck in a vertical position, like a shield handle. (Spatially, you'll be tilting the nunchuck back - analog stick pointed towards you instead of 'on top' as you would in normal handling).. Give that shot.
Am I the only one who wants to view the verification video? Not to scrutinize it of course, but I want to see it!
Uhoh. Tell that to the pages upon pages of gamers listed on the GamerScore Leaderboard.
That'd actually be Kyle's mom.
I agree, this happened to me, as well -- so thankfully, I signed up for Yahoo's Publisher Network (http://ypn.yahoo.com/).
Still beta-ish, a little low on advertisers, and probably a lower revenue output than Google...... but it's been SOMETHING to help keep the bills paid.
Sorry m'friend./ nintendo-ds-bounty-008802.php :)
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment
Look at any DS type story around March '04 and you'll see the same
Its codename was 'Nitro'