Does Ad Blocking Affect Your Business? 99
yocto wonders: "From the individual's point of view we already know why you block adverts, but not from a business perspective. What is the impact on your business when your company's ads are blocked by using an ad blocker or a script blocker? How is your company's exposure or revenue affected by this? Is it still worth your effort to make use of online ads?"
I wouldn't worry (Score:5, Interesting)
Abandoning an online advertisement strategy because some people block them is like deciding against billboards because some people are blind.
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It's interesting to know that only a few short years ago, the usefullness of advertising, in a receptive sense for business, was non existant. There was only spam. People were clamoring how useless it is and how we must block it from corporate networks, etc.
Here today we praise this technology.
Now, with 'targeted' advertising, the exposure to an arra
I wouldn't worry-discrimmination. (Score:1, Interesting)
Since ad blocking software isn't that discerning. One can't say that they're not interested in what one is offering. Only that one is not interested in ads from a given url. This is a similiar problem to what software like nannywatch face. What is acceptable and what isn't and getting it right 100% of the time.
Re:I wouldn't worry-discrimmination. (Score:4, Interesting)
From a business point of view, its a non-issue since they weren't going to get that person anyway.
From the consumer point of view, they're not blocking specific types of ads, they're blocking ALL adds (or at least as many as they can) -- thats their goal, and adblock and the like are pretty good at it.
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It is of course rather non-selective, and I might miss some ads I'd like to have seen, but the overall annotance that ads cause is bigger then the slight advantage they provide that I am missing.
Annoyance? moving pictures, bright and ugly colors, slowdown of websites, slowdown of my browser.
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I did at some point 'go out of my way' to find a solution that works well and requires very little efford, but beyond that there is no 'going out of my way'.
As a matter of fact, most plugins (flash, java etc) require more efford to install.
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except if ad-blocking becomes a default feature (Score:1)
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For me the ads simply got in the way. It was like opening a newspaper, starting to read the news and the guy next to me slapped a flyer right into the newspaper over what I was trying to read and then held it there and wouldn't let me move it out of the way. If dead tree advertising intruded like on-line
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Host file (Score:1)
I just have a really large host file. That has the benefit of stripping out the trackers and counters aswell.
I do get the occasional ad which is served from the server I'm looking at, but I don't mind that as much since these are generally less obtrusive/objectionable
No impact at all! (Score:2)
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In 'Nintey-Four -- I Saw This and Braced for More (Score:2)
Subject: Green Card Lottery- Final One?
Newsgroups: alt.brother-jed, alt.pub.coffeehouse.amethyst
View: Complete Thread (4 articles) | Original Format
Date: 1994-04-12 00:40:42 PST
Green Card Lottery 1994 May Be The Last One!
THE DEADLINE HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED.
The Green Card Lottery is a completely legal program giving away a
certain annual allotment of Green Cards to persons born in certain
countries. The lottery program was scheduled to continue on a
permanent basis. However
Re:In 'Nintey-Four -- I Saw This and Braced for Mo (Score:2)
I entered this "lottery" with few spam-only accounts, just to monitor what kind of mail follows.
If I recall correctly, first response to the original "lottery" was request for nominal fee of $20 to cover the processing expenses
of mailing you your new green card.
Since the nominal fee wasn't paid instantly, they were kind enough to send 4-5 reminders that the fee is still unpaid.
After
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'though, entering it is free, no charges attached, and nobody can increase your chances by even a hair. Actually, my guess would be that your chances are better if you fill out the form yourself, that way you can be sure to actually participate and not end up in
It does not because almost nobody uses ad blockers (Score:5, Informative)
I run a small (~500,000 PV/month) website with a free language trainer. The business model (which does not work) is based on ads, so I was concerned if people would filter out the ads. All of the pages on the site show either google ads or a single standard size non-flash banner, which is trivial to filter out. Some of the banners are in iframes and come from other sites, some come from our server. And as far as I can tell from the logs, the number of pageviews roughly equals the number of banner views. Now maybe all our users use ad blockers that actually load the banner, but do not display it, but I doubt it. Most of the users are from German speaking countries, so there may be a cultural difference, but I don't see any different behavior from the English speaking users either.
So I assume that most users are like me: I block pop-ups, because they annoy the hell out of me. If a site uses flash to aggressively, I turn on the flash blocker, but usually I do not because it is to often required for display or navigation and I'm to lazy to switch it on on demand. I don't mind most of the ads, since I realize they finance the content I'm watching.
Here at slashdot it always seems like almost everybody is blocking ads, but I think that the slashdot crowd is very untypical, ad blocking (apart from pop up blocking, which all browsers support directly) is not a mainstream thing.
Re:It does not because almost nobody uses ad block (Score:2)
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All those content providers who provide the content you want an unpolluted view of provide the content in exchange for having your eyes on those ads. If you want to take the content and not the ads, then you're getting 'something' (content) for 'nothing' (nothing).
Personally, I'm inclined to agree. Banner ads are a shitty business model, and 'commerical breaks' are worse.
I'm waiting for the conten
Re:It does not because almost nobody uses bugmenot (Score:2)
As for the NYT articles, some people DON'T use bugmenot -- we actually PAY for the CONTENT WE WANT. Which is the whole point. The information is valuable enough to us that we're willing to pay to have it. We just want to pay with cash instead of paying by putting up with advertisements.
*I know, doesn't work that way, yada yada yada don't bother correcting it, its humor for those of you who didn't notice
Re:It does not because almost nobody uses bugmenot (Score:1, Interesting)
Is that why BugMeNot is so unpopular on slashdot? Every NYT article is GUARENTEED to have a BugMeNot link posted.
Uh, BugMeNot only provides login details for free websites. If they find any logins for paid accounts, they remove them.
Hint: the NYT does not charge for its articles. It merely demands personal information.
I have no objection to paying for things I buy. I do not see how not wanting to give (usually fake) p
Head On! (Score:1)
Apply directly to the forehead!
Re:It does not because almost nobody uses ad block (Score:2)
If ad blocking is ever "turned on" by default, I predict this balance would change dramatically. Advertisers would go out of their way to discover new ways to slide ads onto pages. I was actually surprised to see Firefox ship with a popup blocker that was enabled by default. I was not surprised to see Microsoft ship IE
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The difference between spam and ads is the amount I can throw at you. I can send you 10,000 spam mails each day, but I cannot put 10,000 ads on a webpage. So there is a natural limit, preventing ads from becoming as large a problem as spam. Also there is more diversity between sites, if a site shows too many ads, I can simply go somewhere else. In theory I could simply change my email address, but this is very inconvenient, therefore I cannot avoid the spam without a spam filter, but the ads without an ad b
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There are still concerns and problems with ads on webpages.
They're vectors for adware and spyware exploiting vulnerabilities to install themselves, and it can happen even if the owners of a website are pretty diligent in trying to screen the ads for security. (Example [slashdot.org].)
Too many rich media ads, or badly coded ones, on a webpage can use up way too much CPU power and affect the computer's performance.
In places where ISPs often have monthly bandwidth caps (I hear Australian surfers talk about those, for
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Quite a few webpages are so full of ads that they drown each other out, becoming nothing but incomprehensible mass of color and motion. 100 or 10,000, who can tell the difference ? 10,000 blinking ads in a webpage could propably even pass for modern art, especially if the HTML is shitty enough that they partially or completely overlay one another and/or the actual text of the page...
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I doubt ad blocking will ever be included and/or turned on by default, at least the type of ad blocking that Privoxy or Adblock/Adblock Plus do. (Opera and Firefox (and others) have "block images from here" capabilities, but they are rather simplistic and come with empty lists by default.) Advertising is legal and seen as a legitimate and accepted way of paying for "free" content, whereas spam is seen as invasive and offensive, and is currently illegal in most civilized places. Popups are a gray area, as
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Taking this from another perspective, allowing popups without question is a bug instead of a feature. As an example, open a webpage that recursivly opens popups - with Netscape 4.7. Best case scenario is that you have to take out a browser session (end task or kill -9) - worst case is Windows 95/98/ME running out of handles, taking out the system.
This can occurr because of bad programming, or over-zealous advert
Re:It does not because almost nobody uses ad block (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It does not because almost nobody uses ad block (Score:2)
I don't mind most of the ads, since I realize they finance the content I'm watching.
Ad's cost, they pay for nothing.
Ad's just mean you're paying twice over, once in time/attention to watch/avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
Personally, if I had my way I'd make it illegal, or at least tax, any advertising "supported" service that didn't offer a realistic pay alternative, signalling the cost of the service to the market rather than hiding it.
---
The maj
Re:It does not because almost nobody uses ad block (Score:2)
forced ad serves? (Score:4, Interesting)
With css or javascript/DOM you can even position the text/ads however you like regardsless of the order they are downloaded.
Obviously, one could write a browser plug-in that faked a banner ad request, but you've at least taken away the download-speedup incentive part of the motivation for ad-blocking.
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Most people who block ads already would still block those ones and feel somewhat irritated at the bandwidth waste, or they would just stop visiting the site.
Even if you could force those people to view ads, there'd be little marketing value thanks to the bad juju generated by doing so.
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Phil
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I block pretty much everything except google text ads, I do play the occasional online flash game, and I would not use pogo.com now that I know about their ad scheme. There are too many other places to get online games.
My theory is that most adblockers encountering pogo.com will either play anyway, but be annoyed and unlikely to be very receptive to advertising; or go play elsewhere.
Also, specifically trying to break ad-block software with s
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Re:forced ad serves? (Score:5, Insightful)
Needless to say, I left pretty quickly. Forcing me to view ads is only going to make me not want to buy the advertised products even more than I already don't want to.
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AdBlock (and derivatives) already has such functionality built-in. In the preferences, you can check a box that tells it to just hide the ads (in which case, they are still downloaded, just not rendered).
Yaz.
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You could set up a server that way, but it wouldn't work in browsers that expect to receive and parse the entire page before requesting any child content. Your server would go "I'm not sending you the rest of the page until you request some of the IMG links." and the browser would be going "I can't request anything from the page until I've parsed the entire page to know what's in it.".
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But your deadlock scenario is easy to deal with. After 5 seconds just let them have the rest of the html page.
Also it doesn't have to be enforced page by page...if they wander about the web site and never load any ads you can give them an interstitial or some text ads instead, or go ahead or start denying content after N ad-blocked pages. Maybe check that it's not a spider first!
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In what way, though? Sure, advertizers don't get the clicks, but they don't have to pay for the bandwitdth to upload the ad, either.
Would people who block ads actually buy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Answer = no. (Score:2)
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Stupid Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not ask CowboyNeal? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Yes, I went there.
taking care of business (Score:1)
Why to let ad-block work? (Score:4, Insightful)
If major ad-filled sites aren't following these trivial tricks, I'm pretty sure they don't see adblocking as a big problem. They probably think those 1% or 2% of geek visitors who block ads aren't statistically significant.
But if most people started using ad-blocked, be sure the above tricks would start being applied in a lot of places. And as a result ad-blocking development would become a field of research as much complicated, if not more, than spam blocking. It would reach a point where you would have to train a lot a filter for working in a given site, and deal with false positives and negative for a good amount of time, until that site you want ad-free was working as expected.
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The ultimate hard core pro-ad solution (Score:2)
If you can make a dynamic content Flash page, there'd be no escaping it.
Also, cut&paste is impossible, too.
also a clarification (Score:2)
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Lots of sites do just that, and they don't get a return visit from me. That's what Flashblock is for, since any page coded entirely in Flash usually doesn't have content worth looking at anyway.
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Another solution would be to slice the ad, as well as all other images in the site, into small pieces with arbitrary sizes, and aggregate them into something visible with CSS. It would be a nightmare to figure out which of those dozens or hundreds of GIFs, JPGs and PNGs are
ot-response (Score:1)
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A significant portion of the web population feels the ads have become too much of a hassle (intrusive, gawdy,malware exploits, etc.), otherwise ad blockers would not be deemed a worthy subject to be newsworthy.
Firefox, NoScript, Adblock (or Adblock+) with filterset, and flashblock (mainly Windows) are your friends on the internet, er...I mean tubes.
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That said, a lot of ads on the internet are pretty respectable now, except for the flash popups that fill your whole screen, but luckily they are pretty rare. Compared to TV ads, it's a heaven on the internet. I stopped watching the blockbuster movies o
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how blocking your ads affects your business (Score:2)
When did it become illegal to make a living? (Score:1, Troll)
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Working hard at pissing me off does not entitle you to either my attention or money.
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Anyhow, it's time we questioned at the "give it away free and make money on the ads" business model. People are waking the hell up and realizing how annoying it is. I gave up TV in large part because I hate ads more than I like the programs available. I could get a PVR, but even that's becoming an arms race between those who don't want to see the ads and the advertisers anyway. Same th
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Either I'm an idiot or the ad men are (Score:3, Insightful)
It therefore follows that they probably have even less interest in buying a specific product on the strength of its advert. So what's the point in even chasing such people?
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No, not always.
I don't mind ads that much. Even if they're stupid, flashy, click here now, I can still sweep them to the side and ignore them, and just read the page I went to. Example: this dictionary site [reference.com] has a few banners, but the list of meanings for "spoon" is still right in front of me to read.
What irks me and makes me go somewher
I block ads (Score:1)
Ads now take up so much screen real estate and are meant to annoy users by blinking and being animated, etc. Eventually, I just decided that ads irritated me to the point of install
Not entirely (Score:2)
For most like myself, we don't want to see "punch the money and win a **free Xbox-360 (**after subscribing to our paid services)" or ads for feminine hygeine products (when one is male) etc.
Same to spam. I subscribe to a few tech sites, because I want th
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I'm sure there is at least one Linux distribution which supplies ad-blocking extensions to Konqueror and/or Firefox, enabled by default.
If/when I ever get my own distro together, I know I will be doing so. (My solution will be a simple HTTP proxy server; which will also intercept requests to download certain popular closed source software and display a notice to the effect that an "i-tal" al
ads/telemarketing (Score:2)
Corollary to that are the "legal" but borderline abusive telemarketing practices like many sales-shrouded-as-surveys, political, tenuous "existing relationships", etc. Speaking USian here, if I'm on the national DNC list, and you think you can cold call me anyways because the law says you can, you're gonna get a *&^*&^% earful from me before I slam t
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