Non-banner Ads Coming to the Web 589
Masem writes "NYTimes has summary (CT:El Lamo free registration required) of how on-line advertizing is going to change in the near future. Banner ads have been found to be effectively ignored, so the next step is to visibly replace the content with ads for a brief period of time, as is currently done on radio and tv. The three methods described are pop up windows, redirect links that take you to an ad with the link to the final destination (aka "interstitials"), and a new technology that downloads the ad while you read the content, then displays the ad when you leave the page (aka "superstitials"). Unless you're running an ad blocker proxy, it's going to get really hard to ignore ads on the web soon."
Why I hate banner ads. (Score:2)
The only ads I tolerate are the ones on Slashdot and the hunger site (http://www.thehungersite.com/). When you click a button that says "donate free food", you are taken to a page that displays between five and nine small, static banner ads. The advertisers on the hunger site pay for basic food to feed the hungry in poor countries. These ads load quickly and also seem to cache well.
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Re:Rise of Proxies (Score:2)
These people are in the wrong business (Score:2)
But with spam and web advertising this doesn't apply. Spammers creatively alter subject lines to get past filters. Now really, does this make sense? People who get annoyed by spam are filtering it out, so are they really going to be receptive to you getting around filters by adding a comma after each letter? Much web advertising is the same way. Trickery like preventing use of the Back button and popups that appear when you leave a site is *annoying*. This is doubly true for people with modems--the majority of surfers. Having your connection grind to a halt because some stupid Java application is popping up windows and grabbing images is the worst negatively publicity you can imagine.
Okay, that's not true. Making modem users sit through animated ads before viewing a web page is even worse.
Re:Die, pop-up windows, die! (Score:2)
alt-f4
Dear Slashdot Editors: (Score:3)
And one other I forgot... (Score:2)
You are correct in your assessment though - I guess overall banner ads SUCK!
Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:You mean... (Score:2)
People put up with those annoying javascript popups because it gets them to compelling content. Pr0n.
Until the other sites provide some equally compelling content, pushing annoyances like javascript popus on their users will only chase the users away.
MSNBC? (Score:2)
I believe I may have seen something like this at MSNBC, a site which is notoriously hard to browse for users who've disabled cookies and blocked common ad sites such as Doubleclick. Recently I noticed that news URLs were being redirected through Doubleclick, apparently with an advertising payload attached (though this wasn't visible to me).
The article speaks of an acceptance of advertisements on TV and radio by many. Speak for yourself -- I find broadcast media ads intrusive to the extreme, listening exclusively to NPR at home, and tolerating commercial radio only in short stretches while driving with my fingers dancing over the pre-sets. The analog another poster made to Bradbury's 451 is apt -- I find ubiquitous advertising to be annoying and offensive in the extreme -- I am not a 24/7/365 marketing opportunity, thakyouverymuch, and will take my business away from venues in which I'm treated as such (Safeway, you listening?).
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Re:Rise of Proxies (Score:2)
Whenever consumers control programmable devices for displaying media, ads will get filtered. This is already happening with internet banner ads and the digital VCR's with 30 second fast forward buttons.
The only way the advertisers can survive is to make the ads part of the content. Ads on TV and the web will disappear, but there will be constant product placement and explicit references to sponsors. TV shows will effectively be long advertisements for a variety of products, with witty dialog and plots added. News will be the same thing.
Imagine: a "Friends" episode where they all agree to vote Democratic, except for some redneck loser in the coffee shop. A Simpsons episode where Lisa convinces Homer to drink Brand-X coffee "because the growers use ecologically sound practices - and it tastes better too!" Barney will start serving Bud instead of Fud. The CNN host will wear shirts with big GAP logos, and have a Folgers coffee mug on the desk. There will be Microsoft and Dell logos on the computer behind him. Web sites might end up being Flash only... and they will keep the format proprietary and protected by the DMCA so you can't reverse engineer it to filter the ads from the content.
Oh yeah. What a great world that will be.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
no more (Score:3)
Rise of Proxies (Score:2)
On the other hand, I haven't had much incentive to use proxies because I really don't find banner ads all that annoying. With this new scheme, I suspect that proxy use will skyrocket!
It wont be hard to ignore them (Score:3)
I'm already much more likely to avoid sites that I know have large amounts of annoying advertising on them. This isn't a deliberate decision, just that those sites are not worth the effort.
It will just make the sites less likely to be visited by the people they want to advertise to.
There's nothing new about any of those. (Score:3)
Not just Porn (Score:2)
Agree to Disagree (Score:2)
So lets try this on for size
Ad supported sites give me an option, I can use the free-to-me site plugged with banner ads and doubleclicks digital peeping tom software. The site remains free to me, albeit a little more obtrusive depending on the type of ads, and slashdot can still pay their OH.
Or, I sign up for some digital cash site that I pay into every month. When I visit slashdot, Im treated to a bannerless page that debits my account the amount that would have been generated by the banner ads (BTW, those of you that are guessing at $.02 are being WAY optimistic, think tenths of pennies). Of course the security implications are there, but these are the same concerns that we have had for every online transaction. This would be a huge thing for companys like ecash, not because they would see usage, but because they would create mindshare. Digital money will go nowhere until it gets its own killer app. This just might be it. Jason www.cyborgworkshop.com ...and the geek shall inherit the earth...
Do you want it ad supported or not? (Score:2)
Being ad supported means having Ads!
You can pay for net services by veiwing ads or you can pay for them out of your own wallet, but any net service that can't turn a profit is going to vanish.
Re:Hehe...I love the moderation (Score:2)
So what if someone thought your post wasn't worth the high mod, get over it. Calling names at anyone who thinks differently just makes *you* look like a kid.
Like I said it's a humor thing (i.e. Slashdot should cache mods for 30 minutes or something and then apply them) watching the social effect like that. I'm not karma whoring otherwise I wouldn't have posted my followup (which you replied to), however it's just fascinating!
Re:You don't get anything for free... (Score:2)
Risk, you ask? Why yes, I answer. (okay, nobody asked, but I thought I'd expand anyway)
Information and spin are just two sides of the same coin. Information is when you are empowered, spin is the same thing when the seller is empowered. Spin has much more appeal to sellers.
In an effort to expand the power of spin, I expect an even greater insinuation of corporations into the media (and into each other). This is nothing new, of course, but I think it will come to reach new heights as the media becomes increasingly monopolized. Like the "news" magazine TV shows that have the "inside looks" at new movies. Like the Mindcraft study. Only more so. Everywhere.
Of course, the skeptical few will still be able to figure it out. But while the masses are able to learn to ignore banner ads, spin is much harder to ignore because (when done well) you don't know it's there.
Re:What about other Applications For DeCSS (Score:2)
Not everyone wants to use it pirate DVD's
Granted and I apologize if I conveyed that. I think it's more a thought process that some people have. It's like rolling paper : Lots of people use it for legitimate purposes, but that doesn't mean it isn't assumed that you're rolling a big joint.
;-)
Empty-page proxy (Score:2)
#!/usr/bin/perl
/^\s*$/)
$PORT = 31337;
use Socket;
socket SOCKET, PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 6 or die "no socket: $!\n";
bind SOCKET, sockaddr_in($PORT, inet_aton("127.0.0.1")) or die "no bind: $!\n";
listen SOCKET, 5;
while (accept(CLIENT, SOCKET)) {
$timeout = time()+2;
$fd = "";
vec($fd,fileno(CLIENT),1) = 1;
1 while ((select(($x=$fd),undef,undef,1) != 1 || <CLIENT> !~
&& time() < $timeout);
select CLIENT;
$| = 1;
print "HTTP/1.0 200 Go away\015\012";
print "Content-Type: text/html\015\012\015\012 ";
close CLIENT;
}
--
BACKNEXTFINISHCANCEL
Re:You don't get anything for free... (Score:2)
You know when I was a bit younger I was a huge socialist. Here in Ontario I was a major fan of the NDP (a socialist party) and decried anything that "the man" did. I'm not saying that the perspective was juvenile, but rather that I'm not giving my perspective having grown up with the silver spoon because I most definitely didn't. (hehe...I have pictures of me having my bath in a big black barrell in my back yard when I was a kid)
Having said that most proposed systems that people advocate couple their perfectly envisioned,hypothetical system versus capitalism with all of its warts and scabs. It should be obvious which is going to appear superior. If anyone brings up examples of applied socialism (BTW: Capitalistic greed is responsible for most of the technical advances that you're talking about) then they will immediately be decried by the socialists as poor examples that didn't work because XYZ and XYZ...but if the world followed THEIR example...
It's a big world with nations all over the globe with varying systems and standards...yet where is the #1 area on the planet to live?
Re:What a bunch of idiots (Score:2)
//rdj
Flaw in the logic (Score:2)
Re:Webwasher & Linux (Score:2)
Yes, none of them are as consumer oriented as the Windows product, but then Linux users aren't average consumers. That doesn't invalidate my original point.
As for your suggestion that Windows applications are generally easier to install, that's pretty laughable. Windows installers require human interaction as a rule and perform very unpredictable changes to the system. RPM and other Linux package systems are much more efficient and easy to use.
Re:You don't get anything for free... (Score:2)
By avoiding ads, we're making the system inviable? So what? The system is not viable anyway. Advertising must always push the barrier between advertising and non-advertising, it must always encroach on real information, because people naturally (without even thinking of it) see advertising for what it mostly is: lies. Not always straight-out lies, but lies nonetheless. And so people filter it out. They will always filter it out, because the human mind is good at that. And so advertising is always on the edge of becoming useless. And so the advertisers push harder. This can only end in the destruction of the medium itself, or the destruction of the minds and will of the advertising victims. I'd rather see the medium destroyed.
And I see no reason to apologize for that.
Microsoft to the RESCUE!! (Score:2)
Think about it. How many times have you opened a "Free Pr0n" link and had it spawn half a dozen other windows like "CmdrTaco Nude!" "Hemos getting nailed!" et al. only to have your system Blue Screen of Death with a Page Fault.
Not even Joe Sixpack will stand for continual re-boots.
Yes people, the future is here, better living and less commercialization through crappy software.
"Microsoft: Where do you want to go today, Oh, I'm sorry, that page popped up two more windows and now I'm going to Page Fault. Enjoy our BSOD!"
Steven
Re:What a bunch of idiots (Score:2)
Perhaps it's just the accuracy of response rates (Score:2)
But, to be honest, I don't think I have ever bought anything as a result of a television or magazine advertisement in my life! I may have visited a store because of an advertised 'extreme sale' or somesuch, but only to browse and usually only to buy a loss-leader item and leave thereafter. [I am an extremely conscienctious consumer, dedicated to buying the best products at minimal cost.]
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man sig
Re:And if they do... (Score:2)
sig:
Re:Die, pop-up windows, die! (Score:2)
That doesn't mean it's good. It only means that people can't do anything about it and are forced to put up with it.
I don't deny you your right to watch ads if you want to. In fact, it's nice to be able to sift through ads -- when you want to -- to find something.
But give me a Tivo. Or said differently, when people do have a choice not to watch ads, or a technological solution, they'll take it. Too bad Tivo's aren't so cheap as to be considered a common accessory to television. Wonder what will happen when technology makes it cheap enough to buy Tivo-type devices for, say $99?
Anti Ad Circumvention (Score:2)
low-down, dirty, communist hackers.
Re:Rise of Proxies (Score:2)
Re:Wired tried this a long time ago. (Score:2)
I don't really disagree with most of your post, but I think we're talking about two different things. You're saying that banner ads are never going to work because the expectations are wrong (ie, not like magazine ads) and because they're poorly targeted. I'm talking about what will have to take place in order to get banner ads merely to the level of print ads, which can't be clicked at all (barring some demonic CueCat like device), and can only be targeted to general readership.
However, I do disagree with your claim that ads don't work because the web is like a big phone book. Parts of the web are like a phone book - much of the rest is like a magazine, and ads in magazines seem to work just fine. My point wasn't that people will never respond to ads on the web, no matter how well targeted, polite, and well crafted they are. I suspect that people will respond to ads once they improve that far, although never to the "click-through" level advertisers seem to be looking for. And for even that gain, it'll be likely to take a new generation of display technology - and restraint on the part of advertisers - to get us there.
Re:Dear Slashdot Editors: (Score:2)
Re:Mozilla patch (Score:2)
I was just adjusting my user preferences (some AC has been acting up again), and I saw that you could adjust the posting preferences -- the format for your post. There was HTML Formatted, Plain Text, and "Code". (There were a few others, too.)
I don't quite know what it does, perhaps you've already tried it. But I just wanted to point out that it does exist.
BTW, I'm going to give the code a try. Thanks.
Re:Mozilla patch (Score:2)
Oh, you don't have the time either? Quit lecturing.
sadly, web can't be free (Score:3)
Of course you can disable your browser. If you really hate graphical ads you can go to lynx and deal with text based ads. Do you really hate ads that much? If you watch TV or listen to the radio you are already dealing with ads. What makes the web different?
I think ppl will stop going to sites that use this (Score:2)
Re:no more (Score:2)
That way you can fine tune your preferances to a given site.
Re:Rich media advertising (in rich media itself) (Score:2)
I agree that flipping text into banners or popups are a big lose. Instead, advertising networks should be moving into audio and video ads in streaming media. That's going to be the only (halfway) reasonable way to present in-context advertising.
I understand that these people need to be reimbursed - but I think micropayment is a MUCH better option than intrusive, high-bandwidth ads.
Silly rabbits (Score:2)
Yahoo does this to a degree, but not to the degree they need to. Every single ad has to be relevant to every single piece of content.
I went to Yahoo and searched for "Eminem" and was rewarded with a banner ad for ink jet labels. Now see, that's wrong. About half of the searches I did turned up ads relevant to the content. That's good -- but not good enough. If I were in their shoes, and not beholden to the financial communities that they are surely beholden to, I would GIVE AWAY advertising until every single ad was relevant to the content. I find an asparagus wholesaler and give them ad space for searches for asparagus. It would increase the worth of the rest of Yahoo's ad space by more than double!
Here on /. the ads are the one thing that is not editorially controlled, i.e., the Slashdot community has no say as to what ads appear up there. Now see, that's wrong. Sure we understand the reason for it, and since advertisers here probably desperately want to appeal to the /. community, /. ads are better than 99% of the ads out there. But we are here for the community, and since the ads are not a part of the community, there is a significant disconnect going on.
Furthermore, interstitials and the like are part of the traditional media thinking -- again! -- that the web is like TV. Every single time they think like that, they fall flat on their faces.
Lastly, the value of sponsorship has not been explored. In the olden days of the US, every mom and pop store had a sign that was half theirs, half Coca-cola's. Fifty years later, those signs are almost all gone but they're still a cultural icon. Similarly, Nike should be spending a million bucks to sponsor kids' soccer league web sites. They could give away hosting space and the web tools needed to make such sites look good.
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Interstitials? (Score:2)
In a related press release, AOL (NYSE:AOL) today announced that all customers who visited their astrology forums would be automatically signed up for the superstitials.
BTW, a here's a better link [nytimes.com] to the article, without the annoying popup window ad.
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Death of an Internet Salesman (Score:2)
And they think TV ads aren't ignored? Bah! I ignore them all the time, including the money begging on (formerly non-commercial) public TV. The big difference here is that TV has totally saturated the mass market, and regular use of the Internet is still done mostly by the more intellectual, who don't succumb to these ads.
TV is also different in the sense that you intend to "participate" without any control. It's fed to you in time sequence, and a chance to take a bathroom break, or grab another cold one, is appreciated. The web lets you do those things any time you want. A banner and a couple boxes here and there don't bother anyone as they are easy to ignore. Popups will be bad, but only until everyone figures out how to prevent them (it won't be all that long, either).
Maybe it's time for sales people to realize they have to be kindler and gentler, or else it's just not going to work out for them. We will prevail.
The difference between a RADIO and a COMPUTER (Score:2)
I think that the way to handle this is just the way it's handled in print... Have you ever picked up a copy of the New York Times Magazine, the glossy insert they have on sundays, right? Okay, if you go look for the cover story which is usually about 10-12 pages long... Instead of being in one 12 page block, it's spread out in 1 or two page blocks, interspersed with the high-paying glossy two-page-spread ads for cars and expensive designer clothes, etc... If you want to follow the cover story from page to page, you have to thumb through multiple pages of ads, and to keep you from seeking to the correct page, the pages with ads are not numbered...
Some sites already do this, they will have an article split up into several pages of html with larger than banner ads in between sections of text, and it works fine. It's just like reading a magazine. Anything more intrusive or active than what's done in print will perminantly scare off users.
Unless a big site does it it will never work (Score:2)
"Rudely interrupted? Hey, we do that with radio, we do that with any serially served medium...It's accepted in other media because they grew up with it"
That's as may be for other media, especially where the technology involved is an on button and a volume control. But we haven't "grown up with it" on the web. In fact, advertising is generally so un-intrusive that it's ignored by most people. There are a number of usability and technical issues to be dealt with before intersitals become popular, let alone the standard method of advertising on the internet.
In the end it will come down to whether that kind of advertising becomes "accepted practice" like banner ads did. Some sites will try it, but unless big traffic sites (and I'm basically talking Yahoo and AOL here) start using them, so-called intersital advertising won't work.
Paying for the Ads (Score:2)
If they're going to try to use the TV metaphor here, then it should be pointed out that technically TV is free (just raise an antenna to get a signal), were as this strikes me more of the junk fax type thing.
Re:Webwasher (Score:3)
Web users will reject these. (Score:2)
Sure advertizers may entice web sites to try these types of approaches if they pay enough, but I think the result will be people staying away in droves. There's enough choice of information sources on the web, that no-one has the monopoly power to force users to put up with crappy ad-laden web sites.
Re:no more (Score:2)
I use Trusted for things like Slashdot, local sites from work, and other sites I need. If it doesn't match this, it falls into the Unknown zone which I have it prompt me for any JS/ActiveX stuff. That includes sites like CNN, NYT, etc... and that gets annoying when you read a lot of consecutive content on these sites, as you're prompted each time. I want the ability to add another zone, maybe "Untrusted" which I can add these sites to, and disable JS and stuff. Thus, sites that I visit often but don't want JS ever, it's an easy fix, while any new sites that I might encounter would get prompted.
But to the problem at hand, disabling JS will only turn off pop-up windows. Interstitials are easily done with standard HTTP commands, and from the description, superstitials are done by standard HTML as well using a trick done by some online comic sites: have calls to all the graphics for the 'next' page at the bottom of the page, but force the size to 1x1. Then, when you click on a URL going out of the site, you go first to the ad page, which then loads all the graphics from cache. Only if you want to catch ANY way of leaving the page (eg 'back') will disabling JS defeat this.
Ignored Ads (Score:2)
The other reason ads get ignored is because they are one of a dozen on a website. To kiss a little Slashdot ass here, at least their one banner ad per page pertains to the content and is the only one. I will never ever begrudge someone from making an honest living and support ads on websites so long as the website isn't one big billboard.
Why don't people click on banner ads? Because they have come to a website for the content and aren't interested in being sidetracked to a different site. If they are just surfing around, they might click on a banner ad but that also signifies they really aren't interested in making a purchase.
When I am shopping on the internet, I already know the sites I am comfortable buying from. Ads are more about awareness which is almost impossible to calculate the efficiency of. Just because I didn't click on the banner ad doesn't mean it didn't have an impact on me. When I started to explore tools for a professional content site, I recalled a banner ad for eGrail as seen here on Slashdot. I didn't originally click on the banner ad but only know about it because of the banner ad.
The same goes for many other banner ads I have seen.
Know, with that being said, I guarantee any website that superimposes ads on content or forces the surfer to click through the ad space to get to the content will suffer a dramatic decrease in traffic. Even if the content is golden, anything that complicates the now very simple process of getting that content now, will deter visitors.
The web is not TV. It is not a medium that gets fed to the people. Although it could be forced into that mold, it would be cutting off a significant portion of its potential. Because of that potential we must explore more passive ad placement, not more annoying ad placement.
Re:What about Audio? (Score:2)
<sarcasm> /dev/audio is constantly playing Sibelius' symphonies -- you mean I might
actually have been missing some audio adverts? God forbid that I use my soundcard
for anything other than what the webmaster intended!!
Whoa?? You mean all this time I've been missing content from ad-filled webpages?? No wonder I find no interest in returning to those sites! My
</sarcasm>
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Re:Webwasher (Score:2)
Actually, squid can do some (all?) of these things. My former company used to use a squid proxy, and they'd configured it to automatically remove popups from a number of well known annoying sites (Tripod, GeoCities, etc.)
Re:Die, pop-up windows, die! (Score:2)
Re:marketing, meet tech (Score:2)
Right now I will often video tape something, and do work, or play on the computer, just so I can zip through the comercials later, instead of being held captive by them. Alternatively I usually get a few pages read in whatever book I am reading, or I practice my flute, on the comercial breaks instead of watching them.
If I get a Tivo (which I have been concidering more and more each day), then I will only need to set it to pause for lets say ten minutes, and then watch it in a 'tape delayed' fasion where I can fast forward through the advertisements.
Right now TV advertisements have been getting more anoying and stupider with each passing year. The exceptions are usually sharp and funny, or at least considerable. How many people thought the Amazon.Com Acapella ad was cute the first time, but thats it? Now, how many would tune in the Snickers 'voting booth' ad that was a dead-on satire of both candidates and kept me laughing as much as Comedy Central's "InDecission 2000" election coverage?
Re:A field day for Bradbury (Score:5)
Its... "Wazzzzzzzzzzzzuuuuuuuuuup?"
Baz
Do your homework! (Score:3)
These people believed that, due to the few available options, they would gain some marketshare. Well.. The truth is that people seem to dislike ads. and this whole concept turned out to be a failure. Remember; here we are only talking 2 parties; one big (expensive) monopoly and one (cheap) firm who finances a lot with ads.
The Internet is a totally different story. When I go to Google [google.org] and search for something chances are that I get a "zillion" results (esp. with the more popular items which will function as a magnet for ads). In other words; much more competition. If one site would start this webspam and another won't then I think I know the outcome. So its either all or nothing, and I truly do not see that happening. Unless they completely band together but... on the Internet? I don't think so Tim ;-)
Re:Please Micropayments Please... (Score:2)
What to ignore (Score:2)
And really easy to stop visiting web sites that use obnoxious techniques for displaying ads. Once visitation metrics start plummeting, the ads causing this change in behavior will disappear.
Why is the web different from radio or TV in this respect? Because audience behavior is so easily quantified.
Re:Defeating the purpose (Score:2)
At least here in the good ol' United (Corporate) States of America...where the almighty dollar buys anything - even laws.
(No...I'm not bitter or anything
Re:Is This Bad? (Score:4)
Content is what keeps people coming back. It's what's made the 'Net so popular, and what has kept it going. It's what the 'Net was made to convey.
Now - if you start sucking up bandwidth and time with super-obtrusive ads that can't be ignored - not only will bandwidth usage skyrocket (inflating 'net access costs along the way) but people WILL NOT feel obligated to buy your product. They'll be pissed that it took them another 1-5 minutes (depending on connection type) to access what they wanted to see.
People keep saying that it's "just like TV" to do this - I hate to bust bubbles, but it isn't -- I can turn on the TV at 8:00 - watch until 8:10 - turn off the TV for 3.5 minutes (7 30 second ads) - turn it back on, and watch till 8:20 - lather, rinse, repeat - and avoid 90% of the ads (I realize that this isn't an EXACT schedule - I'm just using it as an example).
I could also flip the channels as soon as an ad comes on, and watch something else for a couple of minutes (that's how we originally found Iron Chef
What they're proposing for 'net ads are COMPLETELY different - they subvert focus from your browser window (in the case of popups) [TV analogy: I turn to Food Network, the TV goes to Ad Channel 4 instead, until I change the channel a SECOND time], keep you from closing your browser (in the case of on-exit scripts) [TV analogy: I turn my TV off, but it instead changes to Ad Channel 2 - I again try to turn it off, and it instead changes to Ad Channel 5, ad nauseum], or worse, force you to view the ad before seeing the content (in the case of "interstitials") [TV analogy: I turn my TV to the SciFi channel, and it instead turns to Ad Channel 8 for 2 minutes, then changes to my desired channel].
The more barriers there are to the content, the more people who will simply get fed up with it and go elsewhere. I'm one of those people. Companies who use these forms of ads won't get my eyeballs. They'll get my anger and resentment.
Of course, I can't simply bash the concept without offering an alternative. Micropayment CAN work - they just have to figure out a way to do it right. People wouldn't mind paying a TINY payment to download their mp3s or read commercial news articles.
I won't lie - Free (speech) sites would always come first - but I definitely wouldn't mind a small payment for decent content.
Re:Rise of Proxies (Score:2)
iCab [www.icab.de] has filtering built into the browser. It can filter images baed on size, url, server, etc. It can filter ECMAscript (Javascript) on a site-by-site basis, and for each site can subfilter to disallow things like popups while allowing other things to occur.
hmm.. (Score:2)
Re:Rise of Proxies (Score:3)
I'm not quite sure about that but I'm sure that someone will come up with a way to make a free, ad-based ad blocking service. Afterall this is the new economy, you don't have to make any sense to get funding.
_____________
Marketers should market smarter (Score:2)
[...] said Peter Petrusky, the director of new media at PricewaterhouseCoopers. But with some of these new ad formats, he said, "There's a level of intrusiveness that advertisers and publishers are going to have to manage."
Spoken like a true marketing type. How about the level of intrusiveness as it relates to the marketees? Marketing as it exists today is like feeding a city's population by dropping 1,000,000 lbs. of food all over their houses. The smart marketers of the future that actually want to make money will find a way to help them to the grocery store.
--
Back to basics was Re:When will they learn (Score:5)
Advertising is very tricky stuff, and it's easy to let the technicals get in the way of the underlying principles. The purpose of advertising is to help a business (or other interest) reach their intended market with information on why their goods or services will be of value to members of that market. For this to be effective, you have to:
Targeting an ad can be very difficult, and sometimes the placement of the ad can not only destroy the positive value of the ad -- it can make it negative. Examples that come to mind of unwise placements include beer commercials in the middle of a Mormon Christmas Special (not to say that non-Mormons wouldn't be watching it, but, still, you're hitting a market that's largely uninterested in your product -- a football game would be better), or ads for feminine hygiene products during the Super Bowl (which has happened).
Different media have a different nature when used for advertising. Print media have the options of display ads distributed through the content of the magazine or newspaper, or classified ads that are less expensive, more dense, and easier to search if you're seeking a specific kind of product or service, all of which are easily ignored by a determined reader, yet which can be very effective at putting the information you need in the hands of your potential market. Radio and TV ads replace the content of the station which are broadcasting them, providing a higher chance of attention to a given ad than in print, but facing hard limits on how much advertising can be done on a specific station.
The web is a different kind of place. It is inherently non-linear and unorganized (although it can be linearized in places, and is also organizable to some degree). Advertising models based in print have proven more applicable than radio/tv ads, because the web remains inherently a text/document based medium (albeit hypertext). Trying to ignore that nature isn't likely to prove all that effective -- in part, because of the technical work arounds which would inevitably pop up, and which are already being discussed around here.
I think it'd be helpful if web advertisers reviewed exactly what they're trying to accomplish in their advertising, and get more realistic about what is likely to happen. Putting an ad on a popular site isn't necessarily going to result in a boatload of hits from people in your potential market. And hits don't always turn into sales by any kind of linear relationship (where more hits means necessarily more sales). Ultimately, you have to view each advertisement as an opportunity, and you'll have to have a way to determine whether the cost of that opportunity is justified by its yeild or not. Very basic stuff, but it seems to be missing in the "put up an ad and get rich" expectations people are having.
The web is not inherently about business or business opportunities. It's about sharing information, some of which will be about business and products and services, and it's based in the idea of freedom for the web user. When people find that they can't get what they want on the web without having to go through advertising they don't wish to see, they will stop coming, and the value of the web will diminish. This is a goose laying golden eggs, friends -- let's please not kill it.
Rely on search engines DON'T advertise. (Score:3)
Their most effective techniques come from "The Triumph of Will" and other Nazi propaganda films by Lenni Rifenstahl. Those didn't sell anything, they grabbed you by your emotions and wrung your brain out until you'd swallow anything, including justification for euthenasia and genocide.
We REALLY have to improve search engines until their effectiveness can be demonstrated to be better than the noisy dross people are trying to full up our screens with. If the search engines are so desperate for revenue, and they are, why don't they try micro-payment adn set up an indexing service which would review pages and categorize them. I'd pay a nickel a search for the information I want and NOT what somebody wants to shove into my eyeballs.
The Web is a terrible place to advertise but until you can show something more effective, you're going to have these morons selling inappropriate use of the 'net and the web to other morons who are just reiterating their desperate efforts to perperuate themselves. (And annoying the crap out us all. in the process)
I stopped watching TV two years ago because I just couldn't be bothered to sit through 18 minutes of ads to be subjected to 42 minutes of product placement masquarading as content every hour.
I don't visit sites that carry advertising beyond my tolerance level. I no longer go to AltaVista, AskJeeves and several other sites because they're just junk, noise and dross.
Re:Talk about stupid (Score:4)
The story mentions a 12% clickthru rate on the TacoBell interstitial that ran for a while last year on some site or another. The story also mentions that Unicast requires a "close" button on every interstitial. Now imagine if you could "close" commercials and move right on to the remainder of your programming. Would you watch any commercials?
I daresay that their 12% clickthru rate will drop to 0.12% with the combination of proxies and user intervention. Web users are not TV-watching couch potatoes, as they become experienced, they become more interactive, not less. And the more advertising interferes with their browsing, the more they will "interact" by finding a way to filter the annoyance.
Heck, the remote control proved that was even true with couch potatoes. Advertizers had to force TV stations to synchronise their commercial breaks in order to guarantee revenue for the slots. And now there's Tivo...
As information technology improves, there's going to come a point where the user has enough control to avoid the advertising he or she doesn't want to see. The only advertising a user will see is that which he or she has subscribed to. Therefore, advertisers would be smart if they started now figuring out how to make advertising that we want to see, instead of forcing interruptions upon us. You'll know we're there when an advertiser sues for the right to force their message upon some audience or another...
Re:When will they learn (Score:3)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Should be a browser option (Score:5)
[X] - Always ask before opening a popup
"Question: This page is trying to open a new browser window, is this ok? [Yes,No,Always,Never]"
Perhaps the "Always" and "Never" options would be on a per-domain basis.
Just a thought.
-Justin
More shortsighted commercialism (Score:3)
Possibly true. But the Internet grew up just fine w/o much commercial support. There are sites out there that exist w/o it, and would continue to exist w/o any prospect of commercial support. Despite the success it has brought and can bring many businesses, money is not the only motivation for putting stuff on the web.
The point is lost on some people, but maybe that's OK. It seems likely that the non-commercial portion of the web will remain that way no matter what the current ad-fad is. Then the ad monstrosities can be avoided and people can start looking at real information and Twinkie experiments -- what the web is REALLY about!
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Re:Mozilla patch (Score:5)
Sorry if I've rambled endlessly; the mention of preventing pop-ups reminded of the list I have here...
Re:Need for better browsers (Score:3)
In the official source?
Mozilla development is paid for by Netscape+AOL+Time/Warner
Think about it.
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Re:Please Micropayments Please... (Score:3)
Die, pop-up windows, die! (Score:5)
And while I'm on a rant, don't check what resolution I'm running at, then resize my browser. Maybe I don't want to run my browser maximized.
Stop applying print and television metaphors to the web! It is a new medium. Break some ground! Do something interesting! Think out of your tiny little boxes! I don't want my browsing interrupted every three minutes for a one-minute advertisement, nor do I want only 21 minutes of content for every 30 minutes of air-time.
Webwasher (Score:5)
I like this product, and it's free for personal use, so I'll rant a minute:
One of the best tools for removing web advertising is Webwasher [webwasher.com]. Unfortunately, it's a Windows-only program, however it can serve as a proxy server, so you can still serve your Linux box.
Webwasher does some nice things which none of the 'nix tools yet do. It can filter out Javascript cued on opening/closing windows, remove pop-ups entirely, and reclaim space which would have been used by banner ads. It can even remove entire frames if it suspects that advertising was their only use. It also periodically updates its own block list if you allow it to.
As a plus, if you have a bizarre Microsoft Proxy Server in your office that isn't configured in a Linux-friendly manner, this is an excellent way of helping yourself out.
You mean... (Score:3)
That said, the biggest complaint that I have is that this invites dead links by the thousands to a web near you, as the ads get replaced and links to the rest of the content die. While we can't remove banner ads completely, destroying the ability to retrieve content is fundamentally against the spirit and character of the web.
Um...no (Score:4)
The popularity of this format among some sites will not, I don't think, add up to web-wide interupptions. This is to say nothing of what I believe to be an inevitable consumer outcry; I know I'd refuse to sites that did any such thing. MSNBC.com pulled that on me once 2 years ago, and I (no kidding) haven't been back since.
-Waldo
Mozilla patch (Score:5)
Would somebody who knows Mozilla be interested in writing a patch that eliminates the window.onload and window.onclose events and whacking the window.open function? Yeah, it'll break a couple of pages... w00p. Ideally, it'd be a pref. For extra bonus points, only allow window.open when it's in a javascript link that I clicked on, since the rare site does actually use that.
These simple measures would make the web a lot more pleasent to use.
As an unrelated comment... does the web really have the "usability" reserves to pull stunts like this? A normal user might not actually close windows, but allow them to float to the back. How are 'normal' users going to feel when they wonder why their computer is so sluggish while browsing, so they close the browser, only to discover 40 windows frantically flashing advertising and "special offers" at them? How many people will be chased away by these policies?
At least banners were more-or-less unobtrusive... of course, that's their main crime, isn't it? Not obtrusive enough. Sickening.
You don't get anything for free... (Score:5)
While I don't like banner ads, popup ads, or even advertising on television or the radio, the people who provide the content that you rely on (for example I have no problem with the banner ad on Slashdot here. If I had some moral objection I simply WOULDN'T COME TO SLASHDOT. It would be moral theft to use Slashdot's hardware and programming without allowing them a chance at financial returns) have to make money (hell most of them are begging only to make enough to not go under next month...let alone the idea of profit). Even if it's Jim Bob running a moderately successful fanzine co-location or a high speed connection doesn't come for free, neither does the hardware that he's running it on, neither does the electricity that it's using, etc. You may not like advertising but if you're looking for someone else for info, entertain, or enlighten you then stick to the .edu domains (where you're still paying for it through taxes) or realize that people have to survive.
It seems like an awful lot of people out there are of the mindset that they should be getting everything for nothing : The world owes them. Warez software while claiming that open source is the wave of the future, all the while giving pathetic excuses about how software companies make too much money anyways. Warez MP3z all the while talking about the evil music industry and how mainstream music sucks (What's that? Make your own music and provide it to the world for free? NO WAY MAN!). DeCSS DVD's while claiming that the evil movie empire makes crappy movies anyways (What's that? Make your own movies or actually watch independant "Free" movies? NO WAY MAN!).
Capitalism is a funny and remarkable thing and it's very unfortunate that it is put into such a bad light (usually by ignorant youth who have neither the experience nor the wisdom to have the slightest idea what they're talking about, but they're looking for some anti-mainstream platform to try to differentiate themselves). Instead of chickens and wheat being traded back and forth we pass around dollars. You do something that I want : I pay you for it. I do something you want : You pay me for it. There is nothing evil about that system, and in fact it is remarkably fair and workable quite frequently. Advertisers sort of confused the situation by saying "We'll pay for the service you want hoping to get you to buy our service over our competitors". That's how NBC, ABC, CBS, etc. work. Advertisers are trying to apply the same fundamentals to the web but unfortunately technology is denying them the value that they are paying for (again they are paying for a service that YOU are using), so they're trying to change the model. Makes sense to me for the free world to continue to exist.
Having said all that I really think a lot of the web will be reverting to a pay structure soon, and personally I'm looking forward to it. If I could pay a good, very high quality, good research technology paper $40 a year or whatever to have access to knowledgable articles that are up to date and frequently changed (there used to be lots of these but they're all finding that the advertiser supported model simply doesn't work on the web where there are so many cheats), I would do that in a minute. Of course a bunch of socialist, no-clue-what-they-talking about little fucks would undoubtably start ripping content and posting it somewhere else all the while talking about how the model doesn't work (which is akin to throwing firebombs into old age homes and saying that a non-police state just doesn't work). My company would pay $X a year to have corporate access to something like Deja news, or even something like Google. Again we realize that these things cost a lot of money to run, and they're providing us a great service, so if they need that model to survive then I would absolutely support them.
Or at least that's my take no things. The irony is that like government services, it all costs you in the end. Advertisers have to recoup the cost in their products for the services that they paid for for you so it's all the same anyways. Alas.
Please Micropayments Please... (Score:4)
Need for better browsers (Score:3)
I want at least
A way to disable animations,
A way to disable resizing, and
A way to disable pop-up windows
A way to disable any script when I exit the page
All of this configurable in general, and specifically for each site!
The Point (Score:5)
Sites are kept alive by advertising. (slashdot included.)
Advertisers will stop paying for banner ads.
Advertising isn't going away.
The suggestions made in this article may or may not work, but they miss the point:
Advertisers have to find a way of making advertising
Anyhow, its not going away
http://www.mp3.com/subatomicacorn
Re:There's nothing new about any of those. (Score:4)
Yes, the porn industry makes ample use of wide spreads.
Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.
Re:You don't get anything for free... (Score:5)
Not quite. The advertisers aren't trying to change the model, that's the problem. They're trying to change your behavior to force you into the old model they're used to. What they need to do is wise up and realize that people on the Web aren't looking for glitzy traditional advertisements, they're looking for information. Want to know the fastest way to sell me your product? Give me information about it, when I'm looking for that kind of product. Show me swimsuit-clad girls crawling all over a car when I'm looking for hard drives, I'm likely to file your company under 'clueless' and not do business with them. Show me the specs on your new hard drive, though, without making me wait through huge graphics and Flash animations, and you've likely just made a long-term customer out of me by demonstrating clue.
What a bunch of idiots (Score:3)
This thing you call the Internet, while yes, originally came about because of hackers and geeks, thrives today not only because of them, but because of invested capital in companies based upon projected profits from advertising. This is the case with not just e-commerce sites but many sites that you probably use daily and take for granted that they exist.
I'm so tired of people bitching about advertising on the internet. Yes, you can ignore it. You can turn off javascript, and outside banners, or whatever. That's fine and good, but it's also pretty damn inconsiderate when you realize that while it is an annoyance, it is what is driving the people (alot of the time) to keep the site running.
I run a site [half-empty.org] that has a very promising future. I posted an article on k5 about it, and it was completely bashed because the site has banner ads. I was shocked at how naive everyone was about the magnitute of revenue ads generate and their purpose. Bandwidth isn't free. Hardware isn't free. My ad revenue doesn't even get mailed to me, it gets mailed to my provider since they're DONATING bandwidth since they have so much faith in my site and are LOSING money because of it.
Once again, the geeks come out in droves and show me how spoiled they are. This Internet revolution is possible not only because of the software and design, but because of the money that's been dumped into it as well.
Not likely... (Score:3)
The argument could be made that this kind of advertising is an unauthorized use of your computing resources.
Until every site out there starts including a EULA stating that by entering their domain, you give your explicit permission for them to transmit and display ads in your browser. Blocking, or otherwise interfering with the transmission or display of such ads is illegal under the Digital Millenium Advertisers Revenue Protection Act, and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and fines of up to $25,000 per offense. Additionally, trafficking in programs designed to steal revenue from advertisers via blocking or otherwise interfering with the transmission or display of advertisements is illegal under section 12.4(b) of the DMARPA, and is punishable by up to 8 years in prison and fines of up to $75,000 per offense.
Anti-circumvention (Score:3)
Is it possible that we could see legislation that made "devices" that would disable web ads illegal? Like an EULA for a web page that specified that turning off ads constituted "circumvention", thereby making an ad proxy an "anti-circumvention device"?
I haven't heard anything to this effect, but I'd sure love to know if anyone in the e-commerce business knows if steps are being taken to fight ad blocking software.
Internet Explorer 5 for Windows will refuse to show many web pages if the banner ad's web site is redirected to localhost. Try it - set ad.doubleclick.net to 127.0.0.1 on a window's box's hosts file, then try to load yahoo. you get a blank page.
Re:Die, pop-up windows, die! (Score:4)
Re:Mozilla patch (Score:5)
It's marked help wanted so put your code where your mouth is and help us fix this issue.
I wonder... (Score:5)
Re:Die, pop-up windows, die! (Score:5)
It kills: pop-ups, browser-resizing, web-bugs, cookies, and in general mucks around with the HTML just as much as you please.
DISCLAIMER: I have no relationship to the Proxomitron other than that of a satisfied customer. It was even worth suffering through a Shonen Knife disc (don't ask.)
John
Unicast ok for slow connections (Score:4)
Comment removed (Score:5)
Re:And if they do... (Score:3)
Aha-that word, "some". Are there enough of your to support a business? It's been tried, and I don't think it's ever worked to a great extent.
ClariNet, Slate, and MSN have each learned this lesson. Slate was a pretty interesting case--they have more about it on their site [msn.com]. If you don't read it, notice this one line: "Ten to 15 people visit our free areas every month for each one paying subscriber."
The Wall Street Journal still sells subscriptions, but they have a different target audience, plus their content already has a strong offline brand and therefore has ingrained value. You might argue that AOL has a content subscription model, but I think more people use AOL for the Internet access than for the AOL-only content.
The fact remains that not enough people are willing to subscribe--they'll just surf to a "free" site with the same content, even if they do grumble about interstitials. Companies, therefore are taking the 80/20 approach--why waste resources on a small minority of people who object to the ads?
On a bigger-picture note, has anyone seen or heard of a revenue model, other than ads, that would work for a slashdot-style web site? I don't think so, unfortunately.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:Anything available for Unix? (Score:4)
A field day for Bradbury (Score:5)
The only careers you could make real money in were entertainment and advertising... But there was no different between them. This concept, frankly, terrifies me.
Wired tried this a long time ago. (Score:5)
Way back before Wired's online presence [hotwired.com] got bought out by Lycos [lycos.com], they experimented with this format. The interstitial ads were everywhere on the site, but were perhaps most annoying when trying to get to their "Threads" discussions (long since gone). There was an overwhelmingly negative response. One friend of mine went as far as to inject ads for his own nascent web design company into his posts on their discussion groups, then crow, "Let's see how you like it!"
The problem is that regardless of what streaming multimedia enthusiasts would have you believe, the web is most often used like a big phone book. Or a magazine. Sure, more often than not, the magazine is Hustler, but people are flipping through indexes (Yahoo, Google, Alta Vista, AskJeeves, MySimon) to find the content they really want (porn, home electronics, news, music). It's not like a TV where we expect a certain show to be on a certain channel at a certain time, which is exactly what makes television ads work. Banner ads are, in some sense, more appropriate than interstitial ones because they look more like magazine ads.
The only reason magazine-style ads don't work in the online world is because display technology has such a long way to go. Think about the number, density, and (comperable) quality of the quarter or half page ads in the average color glossy monthly publication. Think about putting something like on a single web page, so that you could get ad and content on the screen simultaneously, without compromising the readability or navigability of either. It's enough to give a web designer fits.
Ironically, it looks like Wired has gone back to interstitial ads on their Hotwired [hotwired.com] site. Pity. It's a long time since that site has been useful for anything (other than as a portal to Webmonkey [webmonkey.com], Wired [wired.com], or what appears to be their biggest advertiser [hp.com], but I remember when there was some pretty good political and social commentary on that site. Sigh.
Talk about stupid (Score:3)
Pop-up ads
Maybe these advertisers should take a lesson from Geocities: pop-up ads don't work. Nobody likes to go to a page, only to have a window with some flashing ad banner pop up. My reaction: close them and move on. Nowadays, I have Ad Filter [adfilter.com] (DISCLAIMER: Windows only) on my machine, which keeps the ads away from me.
Still, history has proven one thing: pop-ups simply don't work.
Interstitials and the such
Unless you're rich / at work or school / lucky, chances are, you're still stuck on a 56 K modem like the rest of us. Who wants to wait for some gigantic 2 MB Javascript ad to load, especially when you're putting along on a modem? It doesn't matter if it "quietly" loads in the background or not, it still sucks up the same amount of bandwidth. Not everybody has a cable modem or higher in their homes.
Conclusions
Why do advertisers think that big-ass Javascript ads are the way to go? Sure, we all grew up with ads on TV and the radio, but until around 1994 - 1995, the Internet was still commercial free. Not all of us grew up on a banner-filled Internet...and some of us who did grow up in one still don't like it.
PS: The channel [nytimes.com] link works. Neener.
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