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The Internet

Pop Up Advertising Continues to Suck 264

Posted by CmdrTaco from the and-not-in-a-good-way dept.
djchristensen sent us a link to a yahoo article detailing those obnoxious pop up ads from souless marketroids whose mothers don't love them any more. I own a ton of X10 stuff, but I'll never purchase another item from them. And thank god that the modern web browsers have helpful options like 'disable window.open for this domain' rendering this sort of torture harmless.
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Pop Up Advertising Continues to Suck More

Pop Up Advertising Continues to Suck

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  • How do you disable popups in mozilla? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does anyone know?

  • Re:Thank god for Konqueror. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Mozilla has been able to disable pop-unders and pop-overs since AT LEAST 0.9. There's just no UI for it. Add this to your user.js:

    user_pref("capability.policy.default.Window.open ", "noAccess");

    To allow specific sites:

    user_pref("capability.policy.allowpopups.sites",
    "http://www.mozilla.org http://bugzilla.mozilla.org");
    user_pref("capability.policy.allowpopups.Window. op en", "sameOrigin");

  • If only Mozilla had come up with something so nice, more people would be using it now...
    Indeed, but is anyone working on that? I hope?

    The site for one of my local newspapers has popup ads now. The front page also refreshes, so a new window pops up every 10 minutes. I accidentally left my system on that page for several hours, and was left with a pile of windows to close. Really annoying.
    --
  • Mozilla has no annoying "My whatevers" unless you count the "Personal Toolbar Folder" which may not actually be "personal". I think mine is extremely personal.


  • I control my own network (hey, three whole boxen ;-), and a local DNS service. x10.com has been added to my list of locally managed addresses, effectively blackholing [zgp.org] the entire shootin' match.

    That said, yes, Junkbuster is useful and effective as well. And I use it.

    What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?

  • Don't just render it harmless. Remove them. (Score:3)

    by oGMo ( 379 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @07:21PM (#2181343)

    After getting sick of some popup ads, I was pointed at The Internet Junkbuster [junkbuster.com] , which, as the name implies, gets rid of the junk. Completely. I haven't seen an ad since I installed it. It's free, it's GPL'd, it does the job, and it's easy to install. What more could you ask for?


    --

  • If you have window.open disabled and so never see the ads, how do they annoy you so much?
  • This subject has come to us, pre-flogged, like the dead horse it is, so I'll be brief.

    1) Block ads. Proxies. Junkbuster.

    2) Disable Java, disable JavaScript, whenever possible, disable, disable, disable.

    3) Avoid sites with annoying ads, wherever possible. Like those annoying OSDN sites... some even with banners on the top and the bottom!

    4) This is NEWS??

    5) oh... there is no five. I lost interest. Sorry. What was this about again?
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Things to do with Konqueror that you can't do with the others, at least in Linux:

    4. Add bookmarks to specific folders/submenus.

    Mozilla does this rather nicely, actually. I think this feature was added in one of the more recent milestones, so I can see why you might have thought it wasn't there. Mozilla is quite nice these days (and 0.9.3 just branched - woohoo!) - not to say that Konqueror isn't, of course.

  • Click on View->Sidebar and uncheck it.
  • On item #4... maybe I'm missing something (you're the second person to say that Mozilla does easy ads for some time now), but my 07/27 nightly does not have this feature, as far as I can see -- submenus do not have an add bookmark function at the top. What am I doing wrong?
    Ctrl-Shift-D then choose the directory. You can also drag the current URL into any folder on your personal toolbar (The toolbar drag and drop doesn't work as well as ole Navigator 4.x yet but I believe some good men and women are working on it) You can also drag the current URL into any folder in the sidebar bookmarks panel.

  • And as an evil content provider, I can also assure you that we wouldn't bother selling popunder space unless it did have a significant positive influence on the bottom line.

    Pop-unders have doubled my ad income, and we see about $2-$3 CPM for them. However, we use an ad provider that 1) only sends on pop-up per session and 2) doesn't send an individual user the same pop-up more than once per week.

    So we sell 10 or 20 times as many banners and pop-ups, but the pop-ups still make us about the same amount of income as banners.

    I'm hoping to lose popunders as soon as we can land an effective audio or video ad deal, but the market just isn't there yet.
  • Mozilla has those annoying "My whatever"s? Jeez, I might as well stay with IE.

    Just because I need to make a note of a URL doesn't mean that the site is a "Favorite" of mine, and if I'm using someone else's computer clicking on "My Computer" doesn't connect me to my computer.

    Why can't someone write a "cute" removing virus?

  • "...there is a small "X". Click this and viola!..."

    Maybe it gets *you* something that looks like a violin but bigger, but for most people it's "Voila, two more windows".

  • That's the way I like it, anyway. My opinion on javascript varies depending on usage from evil incarnate to merely useless and unecessary. I've yet to see a site that is "enhanced" by javascript. As such, I'd much prefer to just turn it on for those few sites that need it and I want to see enough to put up with JS.
  • Yes, sometimes you do need JavaScript (my bank is the same). I've found, however, that very few of my regular or semi-regular sites need Javascript, and those few I can easily add to the exception list for Mozilla.

    Most sites that require a login will work quite happily if you log in as usual and allow them to set a couple of cookies. Then you can turn everything off, and the site will continue to work fien everytime you go there, as long as you make sure to keep the cookies it set that first time.

    /Janne
  • Junkbusters and the like are pretty good, but this program called Proxomitron is a step above. It does all the normal rewrite features plus a few added features. http://spywaresucks.org/prox/ [spywaresucks.org] Rewrites html for both incoming and outgoing, rewrites headers, cookie control, ad control, full logging, and much more.. I currently use this with mozilla, and all ads say [AD] and no popups. Faster browsing, and a easy "Bypass" button for websites that bitch. One of the hacks I used it for was to rewrite java settings, so online games applets would read my settings. Also, you can make Mozilla report back to servers thats its IE5.5 in the headers. Or its default "Space Bison/0.02 [fu] (Win67; X; SK)"
  • I took proxomitron to work, and realized, that its a great proxy switcher. I was able to put the network proxy, production proxy and a 3rd proxy to a dmz. All I had to do was set my browser to localhost, and then click on proxomitron in the tool tray, and select the proxy i wanted. Another feature I just started to use, this program still amazes me.

  • Re:X10 Brandings (Score:3)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Tuesday July 31, 2001 @05:21AM (#2181362) Homepage
    Actually you should purchase from smarthome.com they give you the products without the X10 sticker over the real name. (and the home automation products that are X-10 (the protocol not the company, they are not related in any way) are actually superior quality from leviton instead of the crap sold at X10)

    X10 is a clearinghouse for crap.. they get products after the manufacturer has decided to offload them or has switched models.

  • Re:Pop-unders costing less than other ads? (Score:3)

    by Black Perl ( 12686 ) on Tuesday July 31, 2001 @04:21AM (#2181363)
    They don't seem to be aware how hated it's made them to do both the mass mailings and the pop-unders, and sites selling them need to know too.
    With results like this [jmm.com], they're not likely to realize this for quite some time.

    Of course, Media Metrix is treating every ad display as a page view, which really makes the statistics misleading.

  • I dig OmniWeb a LOT. It allows me to use regeps to blacklist ad servers. I haven't seen an ad from a given server a second time in over a month.

    These are the standard regeps all perlers know and love. I can also filter out all images that are not from the server I typed in, and all images that have file sizes common to ads.

    Sorry /., but your banner ads don't show up in my browser. BWAHahahahahaha!!! As a result, /. perfomance has incresed dramatically.

  • Payments (Score:4)

    by Frijoles ( 16015 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @07:12PM (#2181367)
    This was actually suggested by someone on Kuro5hin, but I think it's a good idea. The idea of paying for a web site with no ads doesn't usually generate much support, unfortunately. I myself am guilty of not donating money to sites I frequent. The idea suggested was to use something similar to MS's passport site.

    Why can't five or six different web sites get together that have common characteristics and charge one rate to access content on all these sites? I would gladly pay one overall bill to access five of my favorite sites rather than having to pay each one less. Say Slashdot gets X% of the total, Kuro5hin gets a slice, bluesnews, etc. Then those who do pay get the sites with no ads plus one general login account for all sites.

    Just a thought.
  • This is the premise behind Adultcheck, and there are mainstream media considering this a viable new option, according to inside sources.

  • That does it... (Score:5)

    by Mike Schiraldi ( 18296 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @07:19PM (#2181371) Homepage Journal
    A story on how Yahoo's testing pop-under advertising, and it's running on... Yahoo.

    That would like it if boycottadobe.com [boycottadobe.com] was made with Adobe products...

    <meta name="generator" content="Adobe GoLive 5">

    Oh, er, i mean...

  • In honor of this story... (Score:5)

    by joshwa ( 24288 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @07:20PM (#2181373) Homepage Journal
    ... I'll change my homepage from Sneakemail [sneakemail.com] to PopUp Killer [xfx.net]-- for those of us on Win32 who can't run Konquerer.

  • Huh? (Score:2)

    by delmoi ( 26744 )
    Asside from number 3, mozilla does have all of those features.

    What I'd really like to see would be a way to see what popups were trying to pop up, incase some site had used pop-up navigation
  • When the person ultimately in charge of something as big as Slashdot, who undoubtedly normally has to remain neutral for advertising sales purposes comes out and TRASHES a company, you know he's pissed...

    And you can bet that between NPR, Slashdot, the New York Times, etc covering X10, they're doing business like never before.

  • Acutally, you want to put that in your user.js file, becuase prefs.js will be overwritten when you change your preferences, or when Mozilla feels like it.

    --
    Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)

  • There is a real solution (Score:4)

    by joealba ( 36808 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @08:39PM (#2181385) Homepage
    I've clicked on more banner ads from Slashdot and oreilly.com than any other sites I currently visit. These sites cater directly to my demographic -- computer geeks who like toys and like to learn. Delivering such relevant advertising is worth lots of money to advertisers.

    Some people don't like to hear this solution, but I truly think it works better than anything else proposed.

    USER REGISTRATION

    Get web users to reveal some details about themselves. In return, offer them a quality web experience with non-intrusive advertisements that they may truly be interested in! And finally, give them an opportunity to change their profile easily, and allow them to opt-in (NOT OPT-OUT! Big difference) to other types of ads, like e-mails.

    Web advertising is supposed to accomplish 3 things:
    - Strengthen their brand recognition
    - Drive traffic
    - Drive Internet sales

    These goals cannot be met without targeting the people who may be interested in your product/service!

    If someone has an ad for a new Asus P4 motherboard with SDRAM support or a special deal on that new Acura RSX Type-S, damnit I WANT TO SEE IT! However, I DO NOT want to see ads for baby diapers or Retirement Monthly.

  • You make a great point. All these ads popups etc are only annoying to the people who are too stupid to do something about it. Like most sheeple on this planet they will use whatever browser came with their computer, set to whatever so called security settings it came with, and of course whatever home page was preset.

    We have to start realizing that the sheeple allow us to have free content. We certainly can avoid popups, banner ads, cookies, and whatever else we deem annoying or harmful. If everybody was able to install junkbusters or a re-write proxy or if everybody could download mozilla and install it then the providors would have to think of different ways to raise money.

    Let the ads get as annoying as they want to, they don't bother the smart people on the stupid have to look at them.
  • That's almost as bad as saying: locate case, reach down, press power button.

    Sure, it keeps ads from showing up, but it's also a big pain in the ass.

  • I don't see the problem (Score:3)

    by ffatTony ( 63354 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @07:20PM (#2181394)

    Edit>Preferences>Advanced>Enable JavaScript for Navigator = NO

    There, no more nasty pop-up ads (for Netscape/Mozilla) atleast.
    Bite me x10.

  • Re:Hmm. (Score:4)

    by aonifer ( 64619 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @08:32PM (#2181397)
    Not to mention that pop-overs can be closed as they are loading. Pop-unders require much more work. I think that's really why they were invented.

  • Re:Thank god for Konqueror. (Score:5)

    by aonifer ( 64619 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @08:29PM (#2181398)
    1. Disable pop-unders and pop-overs.

    Mozilla does this. In fact, it does it better than Konqueror (though there's no ui for it, yet).

    2. View the Web in anti-aliased fonts.

    I've found anti-aliased fonts to be over-rated. Crappy fonts still look crappy and good fonts don't really need anti-aliased.

    4. Add bookmarks to specific folders/submenus.

    Mozilla has been doing this for quite some time, now.

    5. Enjoy browsing the Web.

    I enjoy browsing the web more with Mozilla than with Konqueror, but YMMV.
  • You can also check out Worthington Distribution [worthdist.com] and Bass Home Electronics [basshome.com] for a couple of places for interesting stuff. Their web sites are not as polished as Smart Home, but the prices tend to be better and if you call them the personal service is much bettr.

    My name is not spam, it's patrick
  • Now, if they'll just get AA fonts

    Just a note that the Qt-port of mozilla already anti-aliases fonts. The port is not nearly usable yet, but if you want to try it:

    http://www.linux.ucla.edu/~dimator/qt-mozilla/ [ucla.edu]

    (PS:
    I have Mozilla 0.9.2 installed right now, and it's way slower...
    Really? On my machine, Mozilla takes less time to startup, and less time to load pages... I'll put up with the extra bloat that it does have for the best site rendering on *nix.)


    ---

  • Re:Thank god for Konqueror. (Score:3)

    by dimator ( 71399 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @09:34PM (#2181402) Homepage Journal
    This looks cool, but I'd like to have more granular control over javascript opening windows. In particular, I'd like to only dissallow Window.open calls when they are hooked up to BODY's event handlers (mainly, ONLOAD, and ONUNLOAD, which are the main one's used to trigger those damn popups).


    ---
  • Well, there are two useful utils to help combat ads.

    First one is AdExt [magenet.net] which blocks the ads right in the page. Best of all its GPL'd and I'm working on porting it to MacOS X and Linux so that everyone can enjoy it. This is also one of the few ad-removing tools I support/sponsor. Oh, it also kills the annoying shock ads like the shoot/punch/whack the monkey from TreeLoot.

    Second one is NoAds [firase.com], which kills the popup ads which AdExt didn't snag. Its also free and works quite well (no proxy mods like AdExt needs).
  • "All advertising is annoying to a certain extent, and the effectiveness of the pop-unders is driven by their ability to generate sales, not by their branding or traffic-driving effect," he said.

    This article misses a fundamental difference between tranditional ads (banner ads and interstitials) and pop-up ads. If a site is covered with banner ads, you can leave the site. If a television station shows 50% ads, you can change the channel. But with pop-up ads, you have to go through extra effort to close the advertisements. To make things worse, it's often difficult to find out which of the many windows you have open triggered the ad, so it's hard to avoid the ads in the future.

    That's why I'm trying to come up with a spec for Mozilla to block annoying pop-ups without breaking sites that use window.open for links, and without breaking bookmarklets. I threw this proposal around the mozilla newsgroups (n.p.m.security and n.p.m.ui) last week, and it met a mixed response, so I'm curious what the slashdot crowd thinks. The bug numbers referenced can be looked up on Bugzilla [mozilla.org].

    Most current browsers, including Mozilla, allow a class of profitable denial of service attacks. These attacks involve opening a large number of ad windows, or opening a new ad window each time the user tries to close an open one. Unlike most other forms of advertisement in any medium, these ads do not even give the user a chance to leave the site rather than view the ads, and cannot be ignored because they're in your way. Most of the sites using this type of DoS are adult sites, but there are are others, such as exitfuel.com partners (see bug 84749 for an example).

    Somewhat less annoying are ordinary pop-up and pop-under ads. Some users think of them as interstitials, no more annoying than television ads. Some users are confused by them because they're used to having only one browser window open at a time. Some users are annoyed by them to the point where they'll immediately stop visiting a site that uses them or advertises in them.

    The solution we come up with should:

    a. Not be vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks such as "hydras" and cascading pop-up ads, at least with the default settings.

    b. Not force Netscape to choose between (not being able to show pop-ups on netscape.com) and (being vulnerable to a widely exploited denial of service attack).

    c. Have a user-interface simple enough that mpt won't complain about the number of prefs added.

    d. Not break a large number of existing sites. Breaking a few sites is ok: pop-ups annoy a lot more people than browsers using alt text for tooltips, and we changed that at the expense of breaking more than several sites.

    e. Make it possible to use bookmarklets and benign javascript in web pages while disallowing pop-up ads.

    Here's my proposed plan:

    1. Provide a pref:

    Web pages may open new browser windows:
    ( ) Always
    (*) Only when I click on the page or select "open in new window"
    ( ) Only when I select "open in new window"

    See bug 55696 for some ideas about how the third option might work.

    2. If "Always" is selected, windows opened by javascript will require a click before they can call window.open anyway. This will let users kill "hydras" as easily as they can kill normal pop-up ads. However, after the user clicks, the window will revert to the "Always" setting, because the user may have started using the window as a normal browser window.

    3. Limit the number of consecutive window.opens to 3 or so. If a web page exceeds that limit, deny access to the last window.open call. This will break the "open selected links" bookmarklet , but bug 9274 will make up for that.

    4. Disallow window.open, alert, prompt, and confirm in and after the onunload event (bug 33448).

    5. Make sure a failed window.open call is reported to the user in some way (bug 47128, bug 83131).

    6. Perhaps allow holding Ctrl while a page loads to enable onload pop-ups.

    7. Allow power users to change the settings for specific sites or groups of sites using zone prefs (ui: bug 38966).

    8. Make it so that activating a bookmarklet counts as a click, and selecting "open bookmark in new window" on a bookmarklet works similarly to selecting "open link in new window".
  • I don't _want_ my web browser to have the job of filtering these things out. I've got other programs to do this and they do a much better job.

    An external program can't filter something like eval("wind" + "ow.op" + "en(...)"); without blocking all eval calls. It can't tell the difference between a web page using window.open because you surfed to that site, and a page using it because you clicked on something within the site. It can't tell the difference between a single window.open used as part of a link and while(1)window.open(); used in the same context.
    Well, maybe it could, but it would have to emulate most of your browser.
  • Because the pop-unders tend to form above, and then go below on linux, they are actually far more obtrusive, and that's part of why people hate them.

    Actually, the same thing happens on WinNT and Win98, at least with IE and Mozilla.

    Another way pop-unders can interrupt your chain of thought: the window.focus() that call that differentiates pop-unders from pop-ups causes the site that creates the pop-under to jump in front of whatever you were reading. So if you loaded about.com [about.com] in one window while reading Slashdot, you would see a pop-under appear, and then the about.com window would jump in front of the ad and in front of slashdot.
  • "souless marketroids whose mothers don't love them any more."

    Yeah, those horrible pieces of shit. They should all die for trying to find ways for people to actually pay their bandwidth bills, so that all those web sites you like to visit can actually afford to stay up, you arrogant, selfish piece of shit.

  • Re:How evil!!! (Score:3)

    by supabeast! ( 84658 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @07:43PM (#2181410)
    Not really, no. Taco doesn't have to worry about paying the bills, because VA Linux does it for him. If you check, VA Linux also constantly loses massive amounts of money, at least some of which must be due to the massive amount of bandwitdth used by the not-profitable OSDN and Slashdot.org.

    I however, have worked with numerous small web sites that have had a hard time paying the bills, and pop-up ads pay far better than any other time of advertising (Excluding hard core porn ads.).
  • You can do all sorts of neat things with Mozilla. Pity there isn't a pretty GUI for the straights to use to configure them. I'm running at home here with javascript pop-ups disabled and all animation turned off. It's amazing how much less obnoxious the web can be with just a few tweaks to your user prefs...

  • Re:Switch perspectives (Score:4)

    by sg3000 ( 87992 ) <<sg_public> <at> <mac.com>> on Tuesday July 31, 2001 @04:48AM (#2181414)

    Quick! Name a company that manufactures small web cams!

    Either you said "X10" or you thought "X10" and then tried to quickly come up with another company name because you hate X10's ads so much.

    As the token slashdot reader who works in marketing (Technical Marketing to be precise, but the sleeze travels by osmosis), I want to weigh in here.

    The point of advertising is name recognition, rather that to directly influence sales. That's the reason why it's so hard to quantify how successful an ad campaign has been: generally $x ad dollars does not equal $x increase in revenue. One can say that after an $x ad campaign went out, the company saw a $y increase in sales, but one cannot assume that the increase in sales was directly related to the ad campaign.

    So the idea is to get you to think of the brand name when you think of a product type. X10 is successfully doing that, although I don't condone the method. So for every person that refuses to buy X10's product on principle, there's probably 3-4 people that will recognize the product name but will forget the annoying context.

    Ads do work the way people think, assuming that the person thinking is a marketing person. You're right, Pepsi tastes better to you and no matter how Coke advertises you aren't going to switch (for me, it's the opposite, I prefer Coke, although I don't generally drink soft drinks). But taste is a psychological thing as well. Here's an example: have you ever taken a sip of something when you expected it to be something else? Maybe you were drinking Pepsi at a restaurant, but your waitperson gave you iced tea instead? That first taste is horrible because you were expecting Pepsi, but you got a completely different taste in your mouth.

    Coke and Pepsi advertising are trying to get you to associate a particular taste with a feeling. Most people drink the soft drink that they're used to -- something they drank when they were young. It's the psychological aspect that the companies are trying to define for you.


  • Re:Thank god for Konqueror. (Score:5)

    by bobwoodard ( 92257 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @07:34PM (#2181416)
    If only Mozilla had come up with something so nice, more people would be using it now...

    Be sure to check out...
    (take out that space after component)
    http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/component s/configPolicy.html

  • Try SmartHome.com [smarthome.com]. Lots of X10 stuff, no pop-up/pop-under ads or other obnoxious stuff. I've never ordered from them, but have been getting catalogs from them every few months for the last few years.
  • I've done business with Bass Home, and was very pleased with the service. They're able to get alarm system parts that are otherwise locked up by the alarm service cabal (ever notice how alarm device wholesalers don't do OTC business?).

  • Amen.

    There was some XML information related site that I stumbled into once that had pop-ups-the-wazoo.

    My curiosity about XML technology was quickly quenched and I ventured elsewhere in a hurry.

  • Everything i've bought from them hasn't worked right or as advertised...

    Hawkeye Motion Sensor: Detects motion about half of the time. Wall Switch Units: All of mine shorted out (yes, I can wire a wall switch) Compact Keychain remote: its huge! Remote Control+X10 sensor: Looses its code settings for the TV/VCR all the time. Firecracker Computer Controller: dosen't allow devices to pass thru like the website claims. Remote wall switch system (remote, lamp unit, reciever unit): every 1 out of 5 times the reciever dosen't catch the signal and you've gotta press it twice.

    ... not trolling, just my experiences.

  • Or, how about taking it from the other direction? That is, the users get together, rather than the websites.

    E.g., suppose 300 users with a common interest (let's use Everquest for this example) get together and agree to each donate $1.50 a month. That's $450/month. That's enough for a dedicated server with 10 GB/month bandwidth from rackspace.com [rackspace.com].

    These 300 users then find Everquest sites that they like, and offer to give those sites free hosting on their server, in exchange for premium access (e.g., no ads for the server owners).

  • Re:Actualy (Score:3)

    by John Miles ( 108215 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @10:05PM (#2181432) Homepage Journal
    Instead of redirecting ads.x10.com to localhost, redirect it to 208.233.99.162 (ak47.algebra.com). This server runs some sort of Javascript hack that automatically closes the window as soon as it appears.

    Ran across this gem on alt.marketing.online.ebay.

  • If you love X10 gear, but hate X10's sales division, you should look at some of the X10 licensees. They produce X10 compatible gear, but either cheaper clone versions or extravagently expensive $100 wall switches.

    You should check out SmartHome [smarthome.com], an enormous home automation site I am not affilited with in any way, or X10 Pro [x10pro.com], X10's slightly more serious professional division.

    --

  • Thats fine, if you only are blocking x10. But as pop-unders become more ubiquitous (and of course more annoying), then you wind up blocking more domains.

  • Re:tired old subject... (Score:3)

    by Ragin'Cajun ( 135704 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @07:36PM (#2181450) Homepage
    A lot of people don't seem to realize that a small annoyance for them (ads) might be the lifeblood of a struggling internet website. Often, a webmaster will put hundreds of hours into a site and pay hundreds of dollars in hosting and bandwidth charges. It is too much to ask for him/her to recoup a small amount of that by putting up banner ads?

    Apparently, it is. People would rather see their favourite sites go away than put up with a little popup that they can just close. In effect, you're pirating your viewing of the site. Many people rationalize downloading warez by saying that the big companies are making too much money anyway (and they may be right), but by blocking popups, you're hurting the bottom line of people just like us.

    When you watch TV, you put up with the ads. Or, you subscribe to some premium channels that don't have ads. Or you just don't watch TV. Same with printed magazines. Why screw over webmasters?

    Thanks to Davin and Eugene at StorageReview.com [storagereview.com] for making me aware of this issue.
    ---

  • A lot of people don't seem to realize that a small annoyance for them (ads) might be the lifeblood of a struggling internet website.

    I'll concede that. What I'd like to make certain you know though is that I am under no obligation to ensure that they make a profit, let alone basic costs.

    I have 3 domains that I actually do things with, plus 22 others that I use for mailing lists or other purposes that I don't need to get into. This year, for 25 domain transfers alone, it cost me $350. I own copies of Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and a whole bunch of other web/graphic tools. Total cost: somewhere in the neighborhood of $3000. Never mind the costs of computers involved. How many ads do I have? None. I've sold one cafepress.com T-shirt as a lark, and a couple of email address forwarders when people ask for one. Total profit: $26.00

    If the website wants to live, one of two conditions have to be met.

    1. The web site has to have a product that can be sold. I've purchased books, software, hardware, porn, domains, email addresses, food items, video tapes, and who knows what else online.
    2. The site owner has to want to produce the information on the site. Simple as that. My sites cost me money to setup, and money to keep online, and $26.00 is not enough to fund any of it. So in order to keep things going, I work and pay to keep things running.

    Now if a site wants to have ads, they're more than welcome to run them, and I'm more than welcome to run WebWasher and run NoPop. If the site goes away, so be it. If they want to charge for access to their site, if it's worth it, I'll pay. If not, I'll go somewhere else or do without.

    but by blocking popups, you're hurting the bottom line of people just like us.

    I'm not hurting your bottom line if you actually have something that's worth money to me. I hate ads. Ads are the "gateway drug" to "consume, reproduce, consume some more, die".

  • Re:Modern Browsers.... (Score:5)

    by Chester K ( 145560 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @07:23PM (#2181457) Homepage
    Hehe, can't seem to find that feature in IE or Netscape?

    In IE: Tools > Internet Options > Security > Restricted Sites > Sites
    Then add the offending site. Voila, no more annoying Javascript.

    If you're still using Netscape 4... well... popup ads should be bliss for you since you obviously like pain.

  • Pop-unders costing less than other ads? (Score:5)

    by btempleton ( 149110 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @07:14PM (#2181458) Homepage
    I must say I'm surprised to see that the sites are selling pop-unders for less than other forms like banners and large banners. Because the pop-unders tend to form above, and then go below on linux, they are actually far more obtrusive, and that's part of why people hate them.

    So the desperate web sites made a mistake selling a more annoying ad for less, and no wonder X10 wanted to capitalize on it.

    Not that anything would stop them. A couple of years ago I bought some X10 stuff from them directly (instead of via stores) and they started bombarding me with special offers at least once a day. Worse, every time I would write to get off, the mailing address I wrote from would get on the list, so soon I was getting 3-4 copies of their mailing each day. It took a while to get off, and of course I have not, and will not buy directly from X10 again.

    And I used their 30 day disable flag for the pop-under.

    They don't seem to be aware how hated it's made them to do both the mass mailings and the pop-unders, and sites selling them need to know too.

    Of course, there are two sides to this. Those who like the "free" web realize that the failure of banner advertising is endangering it, and mass resistance to the other forms (stupid as they may be) and ad blockers will only assure their failure, and the eventual loss of the free web.

    But I would rather pay for the content then get the linux pop-unders, which don't start on the bottom. I've noticed that in IE they are not so bothersome. Perhaps the ad sites should consider not providing them to linux netscape?

  • Can't wait to start seeing ads for this start to pop up...

  • Im digging the Omniweb vibe too. Nice browser. One of my favorite features is the javascript control to get rid of the pop-up/under ads. You can set it so omni will always allow a new window to pop open, will never allow one to pop open, or only allows a new window to open when you click a link requesting it. That way, you dont get the annoying ads, but you can still use sites that have pop-up windows for things like navigation and extra info
  • Oh yes..I was going to mention it, but it wasn't an X10 one, and it didn't come up for me on both computers, so it may be slightly random.

    And I used to like Yahoo.

  • Gripes about online advertising (Score:3)

    by proxima ( 165692 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @07:59PM (#2181468)
    One of my favorite sites for news and nicely displayed info (weather, stocks, news) was my.yahoo.com. Recently, Yahoo has been putting up these annoying pop-under ads on many news pages.

    As much as I love the "free web", I fully understand the need for these web companies to feed their bottom line. Ads just aren't cutting it. Affiliate networks aren't cutting it. Face it, to get good content you simply have to pay for it. Or at least pay for a good share of it. I, for one, am quite willing to pay a yearly fee so I can get ad-free (or button ad only) service. Granted, I'm not full of money, so it has to be affordable. Say, $20. Sure, it can have a banner ad on each page, but only one (like Slashdot), and definately no popups.

    I don't mind if Yahoo were to target their ads towards me, because good advertising can be just as useful as a good link or review (I can't tell you how many nifty Think Geek ads I have seen - if anyone who helped to make those happens to be reading - great job!). I'd rather they not keep each and every exact article I viewed and for how long, but a tally of sites is fine(for example, if it tallies how many tech and world news articles I've read vs. sports). Most importantly, my data cannot be sold, and I'd like to know as specifically as possible in their privacy policy what they do collect, and preferably for how long.

    My problem is, I have found absolutely no way to express to Yahoo management that I desire this feature. Unlike most web sites, I simply cannot find a feedback feature for the web site in general or for My Yahoo!. If anyone could point this out to me, I'd be very happy to send off a feature-request e-mail.

    On a related note, I'm off to try the Wall Street Journal Online Edition for 14 days. I've been a print subscriber for 3 years now, but I just let it cancel because it's expensive for non-students and generates a lot of paper. Instead, I'm going to try out the online version which includes all of the print articles plus other features for half the cost. They don't have to print and ship, I don't have to waste the paper and pay as much. This is why I love online content.

  • Ironically, tomorrow's Foxtrot is.. (Score:5)

    by proxima ( 165692 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @08:11PM (#2181469)
    Tuesday's Foxtrot [yahoo.com]. Not updated yet on the official Foxtrot page.

  • Yeah, those horrible pieces of shit. They should all die for trying to find ways for people to actually pay their bandwidth bills, so that all those web sites you like to visit can actually afford to stay up, you arrogant, selfish piece of shit.

    Uh.. I pay for my bandwitdth. Should I pay for yours? Your friends, those you know, those who like the sites I do, Chinese, Australians, Canadians, Cambodians? Come on, I pay for MY bandwidth. If a site cannot, or is incapable of sustaining its costs, it is either not getting the hits it needs, or providing the content people want. Mourn those who fall, praise those who dont.
  • But I have to give this a chance. We all bitch and complain about the amount of ads that are on the net. Do you people realize that the net is one of the mediums that have the least amount of advertising? (w/ exception of Top100 sites / hardcore porn, which seem to be all advertising, and exactly the same - but I digress)

    Newspapers are disgustingly filled with ads, I'm only 20 and I can barely read the news because it's stuck all the way in the top left of the page, waaay above the super big ads, and mind you, above my plate bowl as well, I have about 2.5 feet from nose to content, maybe more or less if you do the trigonometry etc.. but still all ads in between my plate and the content.
    ( I live in the portland, oregon area - meier and frank must own the newspaper- you want pics? - I'll send them to you, my email is on the top.)

    Radio is disgusting, with the exceptions of "rebel" radio or Public broadcasting. Hell - TV is easily 1/4 advertising, a half hour show actually lasts around 20 minutes, and forget long movies, who have 15 minute commercial breaks near the end.

    You can't ignore them either in most of these mediums - some newspaper ads easily take up 4/5ths of a page - or even 2 page spreads, tv and radio channels can be changed, but that's not much of a solution. Turning off the crap and inserting a CD is my typical way of dealing with it.

    And think of how many ads you are innundated with when you go downtown.
    Quit bitching about the net, we have it pretty good still. Pop ups are not as annoying as things are going to get.
    Oh. side note. Has anyone with an ad blocker had trouble with cnn's page (video section)? Anybody know why?

  • Re:Thank god for Konqueror. (Score:3)

    by sydb ( 176695 ) <[michael] [at] [wd21.co.uk]> on Tuesday July 31, 2001 @05:19AM (#2181483)
    For those who don't already know, Galeon [sourceforge.net] can:
    1. Disable pop-unders and pop-overs.
    3. Open n related pages in one split window. (I presume this is the same as Galeon's "tabbed browsing" feature - perhaps it's not, but tabbed browsing is still very cool
    4. Add bookmarks to specific folders/submenus.
    5. Enjoy browsing the Web.

    Galeon runs Mozillas rendering engine, Gecko, so the web looks just as good as it does in Mozilla, and all the netscape plugins work (although sometimes this can be an uphill struggle)

  • The dot coms are mostly going under these days. The only way for these companys to stay a float is to make banner ads that people really click on and buy there product.

    The pop ups don't bother me becuase konquoer is nice enough to provide a disabler for it. The new ads that piss me off are the flash ones. I don't like checking out a site and hearing a long advertisment on xyz. I do have banner ad blockers via squid, becuase I _hate_ seeing those damn monkeys. Instead of punching the monkey, I would rather punch its creator. Plus, it saves me on bandwidth :)

    I think the worst of the banner ads is still to come. Websites splash screens will soon be a 30 second ad before you can get to the site. Which will be VERY annoying. You watch, there on the way ...


    until (succeed) try { again(); }

  • I'm surprised with how annoyed people are at popunder ads. I find it quite easy to ignore them. (And I don't even use Junkbuster or Mozilla's blocking feature; I just don't read 'em.)

    To me, the ads are less annoying than the busy, animated, flashing ads I see all over the place, but I managed to train myself to ignore those ads, too. (And hey, look, there's one now at the top of this page, right now!)

    Am I missing something here--why are people having such trouble coping with these things?

  • Use Microsoft's litigation team! (Score:3)

    by Ratteau ( 183242 ) on Tuesday July 31, 2001 @06:05AM (#2181488) Homepage


    It also changed my Windows Media Player title bar to say "Windows Media Player Provided By X10 Media Player".

    I checked out your screenshots and would bet that Microsoft would be interested to see them as well. I dont know of any skins available for Media Player (I havent read the licence either) but I would bet that they wouldn't look favorably upon another company rebranding their software.

    M$ is obviously litigation-happy. Why don't we use it to our advantage for once?


    --------
  • I have no problems with just a single add or popup when visiting a site. However the sites with 3,4 or more popups every single damn page are the ones that I don't visit again. I mean you can't even SEE the site with freaking 4 or 5 adds, +the ones with no browser windows. Why would you do it? Is the question here whether pop-ups are bad full stop or should be limited?

  • I used to buy loads of X10 stuff and automated the hell out of my home, but with the current X10 popups in my face, I don't know if I want to buy from them again. Smarthome [smarthome.com] is a good alternative for your X10 needs and so much more. The patents are up on that tech, so plenty more companies are coming out with these devices and hopefully they all won't be spraying popups in our faces.

  • Someone complained about my mentioning the WebWasher product before, but I have to bring it up here since it's right on topic. WebWasher [webwasher.com] is a program that's free for personal use and available for Linux as well as Windows. It gets rids of cookies and all the other cruft, but most important of all, I don't get sprayed in the face with popups when I use my browser.

    The point is, if you avoid loading these ads, they become an ineffective method of advertising and as marketing sees decreased results from pouring money into them, they'll be less willing to use them. That, or they'll just increase the frequency of the pops so that other people will suffer. It doesn't matter to me because I don't see them and I'm not contributing to their revenue. In a sense, I wish that the banner market was still charging lots of $$$ for these so that they'd be wasting more money per ad campaign before realizing it was being filtered out.

    TO be balanced with the non-commercial products, I understand that this filtering can also be done with Squid [squid-cache.org] to be effective on a site-wide basis.

  • You bring up a good point. You can't. It is easier to simply disable all javascript and then explicitly allow it on sites that you trust with that stuff.
  • I especially like the home security ads with the "home security bunny" supermodels on them. If you're like me, I'm sure you'll be getting one of these. Now I can monitor my home from work, so when the supermodels in evening wear try to break in again, I'll catch them red-handed.
  • If you go to the following http://www.x10.com/x10ads.htm, they will set a cookie for 30-day that disables the pop-under. Opt-out...
  • In particular, I'd like to only dissallow Window.open calls when they are hooked up to BODY's event handlers (mainly, ONLOAD, and ONUNLOAD, which are the main one's used to trigger those damn popups).

    This wouldn't fix the problem though, because as soon as you do that, they'll just start putting the code in a regular JavaScript block on the page.

    We need a way to disable window.open in any instance where it will be done without any action required. ONLOAD, ONUNLOAD, and any time it appears outside of a conditional block or function. I think that would do it?
  • Just turn off javascript

    Ummm, no? I use many sites which require javascript for very valid purposes (mostly those which javascript was intended for). I'm more interested in stopping the occasional mis-use of it.

    and stop visiting sites that have popups and popunders.

    That is not a good solution. First of all, most of the sites that I run into with this are first-time sites that I've never seen before. You might as well say, "stop browsing the web." Secondly, some of the sites that use this are crucial to my work, or have content which I like to read. I'd rather just turn off their annoying ads. (I don't mind non-animated banner ads.)

    When those sites start losing traffic to the plain html sites, maybe they'll stop filling the sites with so much crap.



    Or when they start losing ad money because all of their ads are popups/unders instead of plain (non-annoying) banner ads, maybe they will switch back?
  • Nah, because then they can just put the open command inside any link on the page. So when you go to the main New York Times page from your bookmarks, you don't get any bookmarks. But each link has an onClick="open X10 window", so each time you read a story it pops up a new window.

    Good point. However, I don't know how many sites would resort to this tactic. But if they did, I'm sure further changes could be made. :)

    The only way to fix this is with Mozilla's solution -- block by site name.

    That is a decent way of doing it, but it's not enough for me. It's flat-out impossible to block most of the pop-ups/unders I see that happen this way. That's because most of the ones I see are for sites I've never been to before, and probably never will see again.

    I wish Mozilla was designed in such a way that people could write "security plugins," which others could download and install, without requiring an entirely different distribution of Moz...

  • Thank god for Konqueror. (Score:4)

    by aussersterne ( 212916 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @07:08PM (#2181507) Homepage
    Things to do with Konqueror that you can't do with the others, at least in Linux:

    1. Disable pop-unders and pop-overs.
    2. View the Web in anti-aliased fonts.
    3. Open n related pages in one split window.
    4. Add bookmarks to specific folders/submenus.
    5. Enjoy browsing the Web.

    If only Mozilla had come up with something so nice, more people would be using it now...
  • Block not just the advertisers but the sites that accept such advertising. When I see a pop-up (or under) ad appear, I send that site a message stating that I'm adding their domain to my hosts file pointing to 0.0.0.0 (and then that's exactly what I do). I offer them my email address and tell them that when the stop accepting pop-up and pop-under advertising to drop me a note because I'd be happy to remove them from my hosts file.

    Unfortunately, I'm now blocking myself from some fairly decent sites, but that's the price they pay for using the same slimy advertising techniques as spammers, pornographers, and fortune tellers.

    -S
  • even http!

    by using gopher exclusively you can't possibly get hit by these things.

  • Re:Thank god for Konqueror. (Score:3)

    by infiniti99 ( 219973 ) <justin@affinix.com> on Tuesday July 31, 2001 @04:12AM (#2181513) Homepage
    Konqueror in KDE2.2 has the option to prompt you before opening popups. This allows you to get the best of both worlds.
  • As an evil marketer who has looked into buying pop-under ads, I can safely say that they are certainly not less expensive than other forms of advertising. A typical 720x480 Flash-enabled pop-under goes for around $5 CPM untargeted in volume. On the other hand, 468x60 can be had for as little as $0.50 CPM untargeted on the same networks if you are buying leftovers... which is why I don't do pop-unders.

  • Re:Ads which annoy don't sell (Score:3)

    by datajosh ( 225740 ) <datajosh.gmail@com> on Monday July 30, 2001 @07:13PM (#2181517)
    And the "Zoom Zoom" kid is an improvement? ;)
  • The only problem with doing it in IE security is that you have to ad sites manually. One day after screaming "I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!", I went out and tried a bunch of programs that claim to kill pop ups. Only one that I tried seemed to do it right, it's called pop up killer. You can get it from http://software.xfx.net. The other good thing is sometimes there are popups you want, such as a radio station I listen to. Their site throws a popup that includes the media player and I could tell popup killer to back off, so this beats turning off popups wholesale in the browser as well. Oh ya, and the shotgun blast sound played everytime it blows away a popup sure gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. I'm usually annoyed by applications that play sound and instinctively turned it off ... but I turned it back on because it was much too gratifying to hear those pop up ads going to hell.

    Enjoy!

    Bill
    RateBeer.com
    http://www.ratebeer.com

    Beer for Nerds. Beer That Matters.

  • anti-endorsements (Score:4)

    by TWX_the_Linux_Zealot ( 227666 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @07:14PM (#2181521) Journal
    When the person ultimately in charge of something as big as Slashdot, who undoubtedly normally has to remain neutral for advertising sales purposes comes out and TRASHES a company, you know he's pissed...

    *grin*


    IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,

  • The problem ain't the pop-ups. (Score:3)

    by Tin Weasil ( 246885 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @07:31PM (#2181526) Homepage Journal
    Yes, I think we are all very tired of the countless "X10" camera ads that seem to be popping up everywhere. I can't take a stroll through anywhere in my company without seeing some poor sap whose closing those ads. But the problem really isn't the pop-up ads. The problem is that no one has really found a way to turn the web into a truly money-making medium... except for those selling porn of course. In the absence of real profits, the marketing geniuses of the world turn toward the one thing that they know: selling advertising time and space. And the reality is, this isn't that bad. Like many Americans, I watch my share of television. I have of watching the good old broadcast stations (NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, etc.), but I choose to pay for access to other channels via cable. I do not, however, pay for premium channels like HBO, Showtime or Playboy. That is my choice. And here is where it gets scary for the internet... we are headed toward the same direction. In the near future, the Internet is going to be segmented according to what content you are willing to pay for. Using AOL/Time Warner? You get access to what they want you to see. If you want more, you have to pay outside interests. Meanwhile, your buddy down the street is using @home and the two of you are lucky just to be able to email each other. You won't be able to game against each other or IRC together of anything because you will each be seperated by various firewalls that the service providers and content providers will have in place to make sure you pay your dues. And the "free" sites on the internet will be few and seldom used. They won't have the same glitz that the big sites will have. Now, I realize that I am tired. Looking over my rant, I'm not sure if any of it made any sense... and there ain't a drop of caffiene in the house. Hopefully, it will interest someone and add to the discussion, otherwise just mod me down. Karma is at 50... 45... 30... Warning Karma level is dropping rapidly, please change your rate of descent. 25... 20... 10...
  • Instead of looking for ways to become more obnoxious, the marketers would have to adopt practices that do not create resentment and technical countermeasures. Sadly, the marketers are pursuing pop-unders and Flash -- business suicide.

    The original concept of a banner ad is not all that bad; most people accept them as the cost of viewing the content. Unfortunately, we all ignore the ads because they are seldom tailored to our interests. After I see 1000 or so totally irrelevant ads, I am going to ignore that stupid box at the top of the screen.

    The advertisers are trying to track our preferences, but they are not very good at it. When they collect preference data, they sell "targeted" ads at a premium. This makes "untargeted" a relative bargain. It's cheaper to blast out the message to millions of people instead of looking for the subset of the population that actually wants "Herbal Viagara" -- ask any spammer. Contributing to the problem is the marketing mentality "Our target market is the person who doesn't even know they need Herbal Viagara! Anyone who hasn't opted-out in the past 30 days is a potential customer! How do the customers know they don't want it until we tell them about it?"

    IMHO, making the banner ads work would require precise targeting, based on the customer's preferences. Unfortunately, this will never happen. As an end user, I assume the marketing industry is looking for more ways to harrass me with obnoxious tactics. Therefore, I do everything in my power to conceal the data that might identify my preferences. After all, I want to avoid telemarketing, spam, and fraud. Since I do not control the data after I release it, my best bet is to supply only the most basic of information, and only when I am prepared to defeat the endless marketing. Ask for my e-mail address? Fine, here is a [quota exceeded] throwaway account. Want my home address? OK, your junk mail will be tossed in the order in which it was received. Want my home phone number? OK, but I'm on the state DNC list; $5,000 fine per violation. Put some crap on my screen? Click-close-byebye. Want to know if I have a lawnmower and if so, what brand? Sorry, data unavailable.

    The marketers big mistake is the erroneous assumption that the ad viewer's time is unlimited and free. Ultimately, there is a maximum amount of time any of us will tolerate advertising, and a lesser amount of time where we actually pay attention. I think we're it has become a zero-sum game. As more ads are sold, the audience for each is shrinking. Worse, the audience is pre-conditioned to ignore the ads and defend against obnoxious marketing tactics.

    With appropriate technology and business practices, the highly-targeted banner ad would be a sensible part of a profitable/enjoyable web experience. Too bad the marketing industry is so clueless.

  • " I uninstalled the software but this still didn't solve the problem. So I called the company and they said this is all in the license agreement. Well, I sent their product back and got my refund and used a registry editor to painfully remove all of the X10 brandings and subliminal messages."

    Good fucking lord. What COMPLETE assholes! This is an example of what happens when marketers are allowed to run things.

    So you can't buy and use their product without agreeing to an EULA that lets them turn your PC into a billboard for them? Do these idiots REALLY think that these kind of fascist marketing techniques work?
    I hope not... I was actually thinking about buying a couple of their products, as they DO sell some cool gadgets, but not now. No way.
  • "But I have to give this a chance. We all bitch and complain about the amount of ads that are on the net. Do you people realize that the net is one of the mediums that have the least amount of advertising? (w/ exception of Top100 sites / hardcore porn, which seem to be all advertising, and exactly the same - but I digress)"

    Not anymore. Almost any commerical site anymore starts throwing pop-ups at you as soon as you go there, and chunks even more windows at you when you try to close the window. I'm also highly pissed at the new, obstructive kinds of ads as well, particularly the flash ones. I wish there was more control of the Mozilla flash plugin that'd let you deactivate any flash display. But then, Macromedia is making money right now with marketers using their software. The crap that used to be resricted to pr0n sites now is mainstream.

    While a lot of the web is ad free, this is mostly the non-commercial, hobbyist web, which predated the dotcom companies and will still be there when the last dotcom has gone titsup.com.

    In many ways, the ad-and popup encrusted commerical sites is an opportuity for the hobbyists to regain control of the web.
  • I have to run Windows for some things, like, emm, Visual Studio for my work. The software for the product was also only supported under Windows. In any case, it's still bad form.

  • X10 Brandings (Score:5)

    by hyrdra ( 260687 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @09:58PM (#2181537) Homepage Journal
    I visited the X10 site and bought the Remote DVD package. The product is good, but the marketing this company uses is down right ruthless and in some cases counter-productive toward customers.

    Upon installing the support software, X10 overwrote all my shortcut icons (the little arrow which appears on all icons) with a tiny X-10 logo. It also changed my Windows Media Player title bar to say "Windows Media Player Provided By X10 Media Player". Also before previewing any movie files there is an X10 logo in the video, right before it begins playing.

    And if that wasn't enough, they put their logo in the General section of System Properties, such as OEMs do. And yes, my bookmarks in both Navigatior and IE have all kinds of X10 links.

    I uninstalled the software but this still didn't solve the problem. So I called the company and they said this is all in the license agreement. Well, I sent their product back and got my refund and used a registry editor to painfully remove all of the X10 brandings and subliminal messages.

    It really makes me mad when a company thinks they have the right to mess with your system. And no, they haven't stopped e-mailing me promotional stuff even after I unsubscribed (didn't know I ever actual subscribed in the first place) from their mailing lists. I am also starting to get stuff in the mail now too.

    For some pictures of the brandings, see:

    http://root.27south.com/x10.html [27south.com]

    I will never buy an X10 product again. Just shows how advertising can actually be bad.
  • I purchased a standard AdultCheck account once. Not the gold one, mind you. It's a fucking scam. I actually did an objective test, and out of 50 sites, 50 of them were teaser sites that gave you three pictures and THEN, oh wait! do you want the real porn in the VIP section? just buy the ADULTCHECK GOLD! I swear to god, it was so ridiculous. Very underhanded. I demanded my money back and got it. Of course, that was when i cared about porn.
  • Even more ironic was the popup that opened when I closed the window after visiting your link.


    "Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
  • Stop surfing for pr0n and you won't see 3 or 4 popping up. It's as simple as that.

  • Ads which annoy don't sell (Score:3)

    by MSBob ( 307239 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @07:10PM (#2181552)
    If I owned any YHOO stock I'd sell right away. This will just turn people away from the website. I can't remember if I ever bought anything where advertising annoyed the hell out of me. In fact I remember many times making a concious decision of NOT buying things that are marketed with annoying commercials. I even decided to buy a Mazda instead of a Honda because the stupid "Who let the dogs out" commercial was annoying me to no end. Take that Honda.
  • I can understand the need for aggresive advertising, in these harsh times, to fund the, otherwise, free Internet media. It makes sense.

    Every once in a while, though, I'll be reading an informative and interesting site, and a big huge flash advertisement will pop up right in front of my surfing material. I stop rationalising. It is times like these that a tremendous urge overtakes me. It is an urge to seek out and find, wherever they may be, the advertising execs who came up with such an idea, perhaps they'll be watching a movie, or reading the newspaper on a park bench. It is at just such a time that, I think to myself, I will sneak up behind them and, at whatever moment is most inconvenient, place a large, obnoxious poster for my employer between them and the medium they are currently enjoying. If I catch them in a particularly private bout of reading, burried deep in an article of Hustler or Playboy, for this medium I will place in front of them many posters at once, obstructing, sometimes, their entire view. Every time they get rid of one such ad, I will bring three or four more up to take its place. EVENTUALLY THEY WILL HAVE TO CRASH PLAYBOY AND REBOOT THEIR READING SESSION JUST TO GET RID OF ALL THE FRIGGING...but I've let myself get a little carried away...no matter. Revenge...will...come.

  • Switch perspectives (Score:3)

    by BIGJIMSLATE ( 314762 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @08:34PM (#2181557)
    Look at this from an Advertisers perspective. The pay money for ads (like ThinkGeek with Slashdot), but very few probably act on those ads, let alone notice them.

    POP-UPS (or pop-unders) get attention. No publicity is bad publicity. For every person who boycotts X10 because of this, some poor schmuck is going to go out and buy a cheap wireless camera (for who knows what), and they'll at least do better than they'd do with a 468x60 ad at the top of the page.

    They just want their ads to get noticed, that's all. Yeah, they piss me off to, and I close them, but I can see why they'd try this.

    Maybe the truth is the fact that advertising rarely works as well as they think it does. Think Pepsi made back the tens of millions they spent on that Britney Spears/Bob Dole ad in increased sales DIRECTLY RELATED to that ad (and the ads FOR the ad)? Hell no.

    Ads don't work as people think. Coke can spend billions of dollars a year, and I'll still drink Pepsi. And that has nothing to do with Pepsi's ads either. Just like the taste better. People will stick with two things. Best quality (in THEIR opinion), or cheapest. I know plenty of people who drink crap like "Adirondack Cola", which tastes like CRAP, but is DAMN cheap, and they live by it. :p

  • Re:How do you disable popups in mozilla? (Score:4)

    by Rytsarsky ( 319094 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @07:18PM (#2181563) Homepage
    Sure, put the following line in your prefs.js file:

    user_pref("capability.policy.default.Window.open", "noAccess");

    You can find more info in the release notes [mozilla.org].
  • I think that those big Flash ads embedded in the stories on ZDnet are actually a happy medium. They are almost exactly like magazine ads. We are all used to magazine ads (even after paying $5 for the privilege of reading them :-/ ), but nobody complains about them unless they are infused with perfume.

    Banner ads have always looked tacky and cheap. The ZDnet ads are often placed by reputable companies (IBM, Compaq, etc.) and have often have decent production values, so they usually don't bother me even with the animation. Most importantly, I don't have to spend 2 seconds and wear out my tendons closing the popunder window.

    OTOH, maybe I'm just weird. I've always appreciated high-quality ads; in fact I once payed good money for a video of nothing but old animated TV ads.

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