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Software The Internet

Norton Antivirus 2004 Ad Blocking - Tough Call? 858

Posted by Cliff from the pervasive-and-non-selective-blocking dept.
DaaZ asks: "I'm a webmaster (and more) for a small Internet company and discovered a neat feature in Symantec's Norton Antivirus 2004 that might shake some fragile nerves looking at diminished revenues outlook. This feature is an ad blocking tool that very successfully blocks banners on websites, based on a simple keyword identification. It seems to place itself between the download and render engines of Explorer (I haven't tried with other browsers yet, lack of time) and removes code based on a keyword query. We have a rotating banner code on our Web site and with ad blocking enabled, it's completely gone from the source, and so are all our images that link to an external site. It even strips images that are not advertising banners, but simply images that link to an external site! We all hate advertisements, but as with public TV, it's the reason we can get it for free (provided you buy the nice TV and the cables and the storage unit and the TiVo, and the..." Does NAV2004 have some kind of feature where certain sites can be exempt from ad blocking (in the case you do wish to support a site with ads)? I believe the choice to block banner ads belongs to the consumer, not Symantec, and it should be more than a "yes-or-no" choice. If banner ads fail, more and more sites will be forced into a pay model, and the days of the "Free Internet" will be almost over. Do you think banner ads are still an effective way to offset the cost of a website, or has their time passed? If so, what do we replace them with?

"Now of course this is a sensitive case as, like most sites around, we get most of our revenues from the banners we sell to advertisers. In fact, we get over 50% of our revenues from these banners and many other big sites, like Google, have an even bigger share of their revenues from the banners. Google's AdWords are not spared and, in fact, with ad blocking enabled, I can't even access our AdWords account as the link to access it is 'Advertise with us' on the main page, probably blocked because of the word 'advertise'.

Now, of course nobody likes banners, but for many sites it is a large part of or the only means of revenue and so there is a fragile balance that is at stake. I hate banners, but without them my company has much less revenues, both from less cashflow from advertisers as well as clients, as we depend a lot on Google's AdWords capacity to bring us clients who are specifically searching for what we sell.

Norton Antivirus 2004 now comes bundled with a lot of new PCs, and I saw the problem on many of our clients with new PCs as well as some of our sales representatives, who have a hard time selling a product our potential clients do not see advertised anywhere.

So I'm asking to all you webmasters around what's at stake here and the potential repercussions. I know that for us it will be disastrous if NAV 2004 gains too much popularity and its ad blocking software is used by millions of people. It would mean our corporate clients would not see our banners or ads, our consumer clients would not find us and would not see the banners of our corporate clients, who would then not pay us because they'd be paying for something too many people can't see. We already have some of our clients threatening us to cancel their contracts with us if we don't fix this.

This also brings, in my opinion, the subject of spam and general Internet advertising. While banners are not spam, they're almost as hated, especially those that pop right in our screens and move around with flashy graphics. But where does the limit stand between what we can do with the net and the user experience that we'd all like to have? Of course the Internet still has a lot of grounds to make, still being a mere teen, especially in the capacity of consumers spending money to buy something on a product they already spent a lot of money. Banners are the downside of having a lot of content for free as we pay for it by being annoyed by people who want to sell us stuff instead.

But what could be done instead if users are sufficiently annoyed by banners to request such a tool, as was probably the case considering that ad blocking is automatically enabled in NAV 2004? Web sites need revenues and the consumers are not ready to pay for it, largely because of the natural impoverishment imposed by increasing technologies. Buying a computer now means paying for the hardware, the software, the Internet connection, the gizmos, the subscriptions to sites and of course the upgrades, all of which were not expenses 20 years ago."
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Norton Antivirus 2004 Ad Blocking - Tough Call? More

Norton Antivirus 2004 Ad Blocking - Tough Call?

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  • WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MoxCamel ( 20484 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @06:56PM (#7401411)
    Does NAV2004 have some kind of feature where certain sites can be exempt from ad blocking (in the case you do wish to support a site with ads)

    So what, Slashdot is now Symantec technical support?

    • Re:WTF? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Tackhead ( 54550 )
      > > Does NAV2004 have some kind of feature where certain sites can be exempt from ad blocking (in the case you do wish to support a site with ads)
      >
      > So what, Slashdot is now Symantec technical support?

      Reading between the lines, it's even funnier: "So what, Slashdot is now the support mechanism for some webmaster who's pissed that his customers block ads?"

      Not just "What the fuck?", thats "What the fuck, what the fucking fuck fuck?"

  • Is this an ad for Norton? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bluelip ( 123578 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @06:56PM (#7401412) Homepage Journal
    This ability had been around for years with many products? What makes you think that specific product will revolutionize revenue generation on the net?

  • Free Market (Score:4, Insightful)

    by m0rph3us0 ( 549631 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @06:56PM (#7401413)
    If the ads are worth seeing people will disable the feature, if they aren't find a better revenue model. Provide a service worth paying for. Norton seems to have figured this idea out, instead of creating a ad sponsored anti-virus product they create a product people are willing to pay for.

    • The free market isn't always good (Score:5, Insightful)

      by s20451 ( 410424 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:18PM (#7401692) Journal
      The free market is a very successful system. However, it is imperfect: it assumes that everyone acting selfishly will accomplish the common good, which sets up prisoner's dilemma [brynmawr.edu] problems.

      In this case, nobody likes banner ads, and everyone selfishly wants to block them. If everyone did this, content on the web would be diminished, because fewer people could afford to produce web content full-time, and more content would go to subscriber-pay sites. (Or worse, the advertising will become more embedded and harder to filter out, even visually. For example, this sentence is brought to you by the good people at State Farm. Or every web comic would suddenly have a character named Cisco [cisco.com].) Yet if everyone co-operated by not blocking banner ads, free web content is made available to everyone.

      And don't give me a lot of crap about "someone will figure out a better business model", unless you can actually point to a particular website with that model, that is succeeding.

      All I'm saying is, think about the unintended consequences before you act selfishly, or praise others for doing so.

      Which leads me to another point: there's an appalling lack of ethical behavior on the internet. Just because you can do something, it doesn't mean it's a good idea to do so.

      [end rant]
      • Though your post makes some sense - I dont completely agree with the "this sentance brought to you by State Farm" I think that most ads will (are?) going to become really insidious - think about that targeting sound speaker they want to put into coke vending machines.

  • Banner blocking is bad (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Unregistered ( 584479 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @06:57PM (#7401421)
    Banners make the web work. they're unintrusive, small, and sometimes actually useful(especially if targeted). Banner support supports many web sites. Popups and such are a nusiscance and are bad, but i have no problem with banners on the sites i visit. In fact, i'm kinda glat to see them as i know the site has some funding. All in all, i think Norton is being irresponsible to block banners and all they will end up doing is making advertisers rely more on nuiscance ads, like popunder and flash ads(shudder).
    • Have you seriously _ever_ clicked on a banner?
      • Have you seriously _ever_ clicked on a banner?

        You don't have to have click-through on an ad banner for it to be effective marketing.

        There's no reason web advertising should be judged any differently than print advertising -- if people just look at it and end up with an increased awareness of the product or service being advertised, that ad is successful. The reason banner ads were so overvalued during the dot-com boom and subsequently declared a "failure" is that advertisers had dollar signs in their ey

    • Re:Banner blocking is bad (Score:4, Insightful)

      by pla ( 258480 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:30AM (#7404263) Journal
      Jesus, did the Slashdot editors go through and downmod all "screw the advertising" posts and mod up the "it sucks but we need it" posts?

      99% or posters on this topic have basically said "Advertising sucks, any site that can't live without it should cease to exist". Yet all the highest modded posts tell us to grin and bear it, with two or three dozen "what have you smoked today" responses.

      I don't often suspect the Slashdot editors of tampering with moderation, but this seems a tad too fishy...


      Just to stay on-topic...

      Once upon a time, I didn't bother blocking ads. When each site (not page) had a single, unobtrusive banner ad at the top of the main page, I dealt with it, and sometimes even clicked the banner.

      Now, every site has three or four ads per page, often in horribly garish colors, that flash and move around (and in many cases, try to outright trick unwary viewers into clicking by looking like a Windows dialog). Some even have sound that you can't just ignore. Some cover the actual text you want to view. Though I personally disabled popups over a year ago, this evening I had the joyous opportunity to browse without that feature on a friends PC, and it amazes me people can stand to visit the web at all with popups... Simply unbelievable how numerous and annoying they have gotten!

      Around the time X10 became a household joke among geeks, I set up a 50k hosts file. Now I also have a rather paranoid usercontent.css file.

      Many people have made a valid point - Advertisers and content providers have an uneasy alliance that allows both to survive. Both need to realize, however, that unlike TV where the advertisers have a captive audience, on the web we will block their crap if it annoys us too much. This means the advertising doesn't work, and the content providers go under. Bad for everyone involved.

      So I'll make a deal with advertisers (and those dependant on them) everywhere, right now - Go back to unobtrusive single-banner-per-main-page ads, and I'll view your annoyances. Piss me off with motion and sound and obscuring the actual content, though, and you guarantee that I'll do everything in my power to block your ads, up to and including never visiting an otherwise "cool" site again if I can't block the ads.

  • ads are one thing... external images though? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by happyfrogcow ( 708359 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:00PM (#7401453)
    what happens if i'm using this software, and slashdot has a separate server dedicated to serving up all their images? then all the beautiful slashdot artwork goes away.

    Then in essence this software is rewritting a copyrighted work without permission of the copyright holder, is it not?

    • Think about it more like not reading the articles in Playboy or turning down the sound in a Britney Spears film clip. It's more like selective viewing.

      These guys are selling Playboy that automatically covers all their revenue raising ads.
    • Then in essence this software is rewritting a copyrighted work without permission of the copyright holder, is it not?

      But you're allowed to do that, provided the modified work is for your own private enjoyment. It's not illegal to doodle in the margins of a book you've purchased, is it?

      This assumes a willful act on the part of the consumer to enact those modifications, though. If this software is pre-installed and activated, before the consumer ever gets to touch the computer, that could be a gray area.
  • Exchanging advertisements between businesses for mutual benefit is not a good way to ensure continued success anyway.

  • Webwasher been doing it for years (Score:4, Informative)

    by Codeala ( 235477 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:00PM (#7401458)
    Webwasher from http://www.webwasher.com/ has been doing it for years. It acts as a proxy between your browser (any browser) and the internet. It do pattern matching and image size matching then remove those elements from webpages before your browser get them.

    BTW For Mozilla/Firebird, the adblock extension is a more flexible solution then the "Block images from server" feature, as it can do pattern matching base on URL, more info from here: http://adblock.mozdev.org/

  • Firebird (Score:5, Informative)

    by mhlandrydotnet ( 677863 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:00PM (#7401459)
    I can't speak for Symantec, but I can speak for AdBlock [mozdev.org] - an extension for Mozilla Firebird. The content still gets downloaded, but you don't see it. In fact, you can chose to leave the empty space, or have it hide the empty space. It works with regular expressions, so you have complete and total control over what you see and what you block. _Complete_ (Oh yeah, and nothing gets blocked unless you ask it to block something.)
  • Google got it right. Inobtrusive text ads instead of highly annoying flash/animated gif nightmares. I believe you can serve ads on your site through Google too.

  • Why does the Consumer have to accept advertising? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Indianwells ( 661008 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:00PM (#7401468)
    I wonder why we as consumers have some kind of "responsiblity" for accepting the advertising that marketers foist upon us. I, for one (And I'm sure there are many here) remember the Internet before it was commercial, and before there were shysters trying to convince me that advertising is what creates the medium. That's just not true. Advertising is a parasite that sits on top of a succesfull communications medium, not a creator of such mediums. I would argue that marketing and advertising are naturally agnostic to the creation of new communications mediums ... deriding them as being "not up to snuff" until individuals make those mediums successfull .... which then tempts the advertising community to engage and use those mediums ... several years down the road attempting to state that it is advertising itself that makes those means of communications succesfull. When will it all end!
    • So, how do you propose to pay for web hosting and bandwidth?

      A good webhosting provider will run $1/month/100MB of space, and $1-$2/GB of transfer. If they're charging less, don't expect any sort of reliability.
    • So, whould you pay for slashdot? Or whould take their bandwith bill should OSDN decide it's becoming to expensive to support?

      You are right when you say that advertising does not create the medium, but you will either pay for the medium yourself or have the advertiser to pay for it. The choice is yours, but advertising is not a parasite, but has a normal place in the 'food-chain' of the internet.

      It's not really different from the other media. Want commercial free TV? Pay for it. Want free television, get

    • Content (Score:5, Insightful)

      by daviddennis ( 10926 ) <david@amazing.com> on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:31PM (#7401841) Homepage
      I, too, remember the Internet as it was. It wasn't nearly as comprehensive a resource as it is now, and people could not reasonably use it as their sole daily news source, as they can today.

      The fundamental problem is that people who create things on the net as their full-time jobs need to somehow get paid for the effort. Banner ads are not perfect, but so far nobody has found anythiing better to balance the needs of users with those of advertisers.

      Once the Internet becomes more than a purely amateur medium, it requires the elements of professional publication, and one of them is ads. It's either that or pay, and I think those who complain most vociferously about banner ads are the least likely to fork out real bucks for content.

      D

    • I, for one (And I'm sure there are many here) remember the Internet before it was commercial, and before there were shysters trying to convince me that advertising is what creates the medium.

      Advertising doesn't create the medium, nor the content, but it darn well supports them.

      I work for a web site that derives the bulk of its revenue from advertising? That salary goes to pay the salaries of about 30 employees and for the bandwidth from about 3 billion pageviews a year.

      The advertisers pay the couple of million dollars a year it costs to run our site.

      If you remove the advertising, you remove our site from the internet, because we're darn well not about to work full time for free, plus tap our wallets to pay for the bandwidth you're using.

      There is an implicit agreement between publishers and readers. We'll provide you content you deem valuable, and in return for that value, you'll view ads. You can gloss over them, don't even have to pay attention to them, but they have to pass in front of your eyeballs along with our content.

      If you pay for your net access and just want to e-mail with friends, chat on IRC, post messages on newsgroups, and access personal web sites, you should never ever have to see an ad. You're paying your ISP for the bandwidth and no one else is having to pay for the content you're enjoying.

      But if you want a free mail account with Hotmail or Yahoo, want to read content on professionally produced web sites, watch streaming video, etc., you must either be willing to pay subscription fees or suffer through some banners. For many sites, a subscription model doesn't work for any number of reasons.

      If you use blockers to remove banners from content it is costing someone else money to produce and deliver to you, it is not the advertising that is a parasite. You are the parasite.

      - Greg

  • Internet was free before banner ads (Score:5, Insightful)

    by flossie ( 135232 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:01PM (#7401479) Homepage
    The internet may be in its teens, but banner ads are younger still. Content on the net was free before the ads, it will be free after the ads. There may not be as much free content, but I sincerely doubt that the real quality stuff will disappear.
  • ever been to craigslist.com? why is this site so popular? because it's sparse, and doesn't look like a grahic arts student vomitted all over the webpage

    sorry, but the internet does evolve

    ad systems will still be around, they are never going away on the internet, but they will come to resemble google's ad model: sparse, text-only, straight to the point

    not stupid "hit the monkey on the head and get a free prize" carnival atmosphere flashing gifs and javacript

    it's nauseating and insults the user and they h

  • Not our problem -- it's yours (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Improv ( 2467 ) <pgunn01@gmail.com> on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:02PM (#7401487) Homepage Journal
    You run a website, it's your job to figure out the
    funding. Those of us who dislike ads (probably 98% of the planet) will do our best not to see them,
    and the more technically inclined among us WILL block your ad, and the business-savvy subset of
    those will sell that setup, in some form, to the rest. If websites can't live without it, tough.
    If they find another way to get funds, wonderful, but your funding is, to me, a black box that we shouldn't need to think about. I'm perfectly happy spending some time fiddling with Internet Junkbuster or Privoxy to cut out web ads, and tweaking my mail filters to remove advertisements from yahoo mailing lists if I get good results.
    • That link again for people who missed it is: Privoxy [privoxy.org]

      Can't recommend it strongly enough... nor agree with Improv more. 8)

    • Re:Not our problem -- it's yours (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tshak ( 173364 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @08:19PM (#7402343) Homepage
      Those of us who dislike ads (probably 98% of the planet) will do our best not to see them.

      First, I highly doubt the number is that high. If asked I'm sure most people would rather watch their favorite TV show with annoying commercials than have that TV show go off the air. Second, you make the choice not to visit the site if you think that their ads are too intrusive. However, if you block ads (other than potentially harmful ads like ActiveX or popups) then you are essentially stealing from the site. The site is, in good faith, giving you content for the price of viewing an ad. If people didn't click ads, then ads wouldn't exist. I do business with a website that makes a lot of money on ads, and their click-thru rates prove that people view ads. They spend a lot of money to provide people with content, assuming people accept the download of their advertisement. Again, why do you need to block ads? Why not just go to another site? Free loading is not the answer to a successful web.

      Personally, I wish banners didn't exist either. But I'm also a realist. I would never pay for slashdot, but I use it all the time. I use their bandwidth and CPU cycles on a daily basis. Their ads have gotten bigger over the last two years, and while I don't like it, I appreciate the reasons why they had to do it. If so many people blocked ads that slashdot was a forced subscription site, I would stop visiting. Heck, if that was bound to happen I'd work on some OSS project to thwart ad blockers. I don't want you freeloaders taking away my "free" content!
  • no, im not a linux zealot... i once installed redhat 8 on my sister's computer, but thats it.

    however, i just had to make the point that linux is free, and is not ad supported. you don't need ads to make money on a site.

    not that "be a subscriber!" (ahem, slashdot crew) is that much better, but imo a website should be a passion thing, not a money maker.

    i'm personally fine with ads though. there's nothng wrong with them unless they are popups. even clickthroughs are fine, as far as im concerned. hence
  • 'I believe the choice to block banner ads belongs to the consumer, not Symantec, and it should be more than a "yes-or-no" choice.'

    I think that settles the issue fairly well. If the spam filter sucks, then the majority (who are smart enough to turn it off) will turn it off. If it manages to satisfy the majority (doubtful but possible) then people will keep it on.

    • Re:You just answered your own question (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Carnildo ( 712617 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:16PM (#7401666) Homepage Journal
      I'm a computer programmer. I can assure you, the average computer user is a total blockhead.

      A few good assumptions to make when designing software:
      1) Set the defaults to something useful. 90% of users will never change them, and 75% don't even know what a "preferences" dialog is.
      2) Make clicking "Yes" the safe option. Users frequently don't read dialog boxes.
      3) Don't give users any decision more complicated than a three-way choice, and if possible, make it a binary (on-off) choice. Anything more complicated just increases tech support calls.

      Guess what? Most people won't even realize that the ad blocking is on, and even fewer will realize they can turn it off.

  • The consumer has made his choice (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AuMatar ( 183847 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:03PM (#7401503)
    By installing the ad blocking software. He doesn't want ads. Your buisness depends on them? Tough. It isn't his job to make your buisness model work. We hate it when the MPAA and RIAA try and force their buisness model on people, but slashdot editors think its somehow better when its on the internet? I don't think so.

    You want to make money on the web? Sell something the people want. Give them a reason to pay. Extra content, early access, better content. Sell t-shirts. But don't expect the consumer to support your buisness model when it fails. And advertising on the web has failed- its ineffective, it generates no revenue for the advertisers, and its just fucking annoying.
    • If you come to my site, you should accept my business model. If you don't like my business model, then don't come to my site. Sneaking on to a site to enjoy the "free" content without paying seems rather unfair.

      Site owners could make internet dark for Norton users. They could make it very hard for the blocked users to use a site by putting more of the content in off-site hosted images. This would make sites incompatible with Nortoned machines (a note or link would explain how to turn off the offendin

      • Re:The site owner has choices too... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AuMatar ( 183847 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:35PM (#7401879)
        No, I shouldn't. Thats like saying just because I go into Best Buy and do some window shopping, I'm required to give them money. Once again- it is not my job to enforce your buisness model. You are free, if you wish, to find a technical way to block those who do not view your ads. THat would be enforcing your buisness model. I don't think it would work, I think the vast majority of people would just find the service/information you supply elsewhere. But you're free to try.

        This is just like the Do Not Call list, or the "skipping commercials is theft" idiocy. We, the consumers, have the right to take steps with our own property (telephones, computers, bandwidth we pay for) to stop practices that annoy us. You do not have the right to stop us from doing so. You have the right to deny us your content if we do so, but you do not have the right to force your buisness model down our throats.

  • I don't have that (Score:3, Informative)

    by dswensen ( 252552 ) * on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:04PM (#7401511) Homepage
    Maybe I'm just not seeing it, but I'm running NAV 2004 and not only do I not have banner blocking, but there is certainly nothing in the options to enable or disable it, nor is there any mention of it in the options anywhere that I can find.

    Makes me curious if there was another version of the program featuring banner-blocking after I purchased mine -- which would of course be typical.
    • I have the ad-blocking, but then I've got the whole Norton internet security package installed. After seeing how much more stable my pc is with it, and the way in that on an average week it reports several script kiddies coming a-knocking (and this pc is only on for a few hours in the evenings), I'll say this:

      If you're running Windows, and you have broadband, you need a firewall.
      • I agree, I'm running ZoneAlarm personally. I've heard good and bad about it, but I tested it for a couple months and it seemed to work for me, so I kept it. My log of intrusion attempts at work is surprisingly large.

        (I learned the hard way -- had to get a trojan on my machine before realizing, oops, need a firewall.)
  • Linux, of Course.

    Norton Antivirus doesn't run on Linux!!

  • If banner ads fail, more and more sites will be forced into a pay model, and the days of the "Free Internet" will be almost over.

    First of all, when the internet started it was free. Advertising sleazed in years after the whole structure was in place. The internet didn't need it then, and it doesn't need it now. I know my inbox sure doesn't need any more "advertising".

    Second, not everybody uses Norton Antivirus. Or even Windows for that matter. And not only Norton blocks popups. You can do that y

  • as long as they aren't, like, on the right side of the page where my slashboxes are. Then, they deserve to be blocked.

    Seriously, they're fine with me, as long as they don't go nutso with the gifs and the flash. Bandwidth appears to be getting steadily cheaper, and the new google ad-targeting system appears to be working and generating revenue (at least based on the growing adoption of it.)

    As noted above, there are tons of ways to block ads, if you're so inclined. This is neither new nor unique.

  • Crazy (Score:2)

    by chill ( 34294 )
    I can't think of 2 people that -- honestly -- would NOT block ads and banners if it was just a click away.

    Adding the function to let certain ad banners through because you want to "support" that site is stupid. It should be nominated for the most unused feature of a software program right up there with the "please send more spam" button.

    I use the "block images from this server" in Mozilla on a regular basis. I block all cookies unless it breaks functionality on a site I want to access.

    When it was sugge
  • But this is going to ruin websites that link to central image databases (fairly common with guestbooks in particular, but is also popular with sites that sell backgrounds and clipart, as then they can go by the referer to limit who can use them).

    It's going to wreck any site that uses deep-linking, if the linking is done via server-side code, as any images in the linked-to page will obviously not appear (they're on a remote site!)

    However, I doubt anyone'll care too much if these people need to come up wi

  • Public vs. broadcast TV (Score:3, Interesting)

    by frdmfghtr ( 603968 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:08PM (#7401569)
    We all hate advertisement, but as with public TV, it's the reason we can get it for free...

    I'll assume theat you mean broadcast TV and not public TV. Broadcast TV is supported by ads; public TV (i.e. your local PBS station) is supported largely by pledges made by the public (hence the name), with underwriters of some shows.

    One may argue that acknowledging the underwriters at the end of a program counts as "advertising" but at least the shows aren't interrupted halfway through and the acknowledgement is generally less than 10 seconds per underwriter (about a minute or so per hour by my guestimate) instead of the 15-20 minutes of advertising per hour of broadcast TV. (http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/ratingsAds.html)
  • If banner ads fail, more and more sites will be forced into a pay model, and the days of the "Free Internet" will be almost over.

    the internet was free before you got here. stop acting like it's the end of the world if companies without a business model fail to survive on ad revenues. hell, I'd prefer to go back to the days of the text internet if it would only get rid of all the crap.
  • Trust a slashdot editor to expound their own (silly) views.

    If people are willing to PAY money for a product that runs on THEIR computer, then it is FINE if users GET an on/off switch. Some people actually like on/off switches rather than POSIX regex libraries.

    If the on/off is too clunky, and indeed breaks every image and link to other sites as the submitter claims, then people will get sick of it and turn it off. If it works as well as some of the banner and pop-up things folks pay for they will leave it
  • On one hand /. is upset that the TV industry takes offense at people FF through commercials.

    On the other hand, /. that people are blocking banner ads on the web.

    Now I'm confused. When is advertising good and when is advertising bad? I think I'll go home and FF through some commercials...
  • You say: ... the days of the "Free Internet" will be almost over ...

    What you neglect to say is that before banner ads, Gator, pop-unders, etc. there was a very thriving free Internet (excluding ISP charges).

    And, btw, it was just fine by me.

    In the early 90s I very happily found about the same amount of useful information and free products on the Internet as I do now.

    I don't need Amazon to exist to feel like I have a complete Internet experience.
  • What's next? People whining about Norton Antivirus 2004's spyware blocking features?

    People are *sick of the CRAP* on the internet. They're sick of the fact that the WWW is becoming a junk ridden flea market.
    They're sick of banner ads that go FLASH!FLASH!FLASH! at them and they're sick of misleading "System Error" messages that turn out to be banner ads.

    Quite obviously *someone* wants the features that NAV2004 has. Symantec didn't just put stuff in the application because some programmers had a bunch of fr

  • the internet was NOT free at any point. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by millia ( 35740 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:11PM (#7401608) Homepage
    before this rhetoric of 'it USED to be free' goes too much further, i would hasten to remind you that the internet was NEVER free.
    it costs money to run phone lines, buy routers, hire geeks, maintain hubs, etc.
    the fact that these costs were subsidized by the public and/or private universities, such that you never saw them, or were directly affected by them, does not remove this fact.
    now, i'm not going to argue that it wasn't nice before .com happened, and before the web happened, and especially before spam, popups, and even tasteful ads, but it was never free.

  • "Free Internet" does not require banner ads. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Distan ( 122159 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:14PM (#7401640)
    If banner ads fail, more and more sites will be forced into a pay model, and the days of the "Free Internet" will be almost over.

    The author must be new to the internet. If you go back to the good old days, for example when Yahoo used to be at yahoo.stanford.edu, there were no banner ads. Guess what, the internet was free then.

    To claim that the loss of banner ads will automatically lead to the loss of a non-free internet is to ignore history and to show a lack of imagination. Banner ads are only a 1994 invention, they aren't an intrinsic part of either the internet or the world wide web.
    • The internet was not then, and will never be, free. Somebody has to pay for all the servers and routers and wires, not to mention the dedicated writers and editors if you want quality content. In the early days of the net, the cost of operation was covered by donations from the government, universities, and large companies, supplemented by a lot of "stolen" labor time, under the management radar. The net has long since outgrown this mode of existence.

      That's not to say that advertising is a good or viabl

  • Look for more interstitials (Score:3, Informative)

    by Roblimo ( 357 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:16PM (#7401658) Homepage Journal
    "Interstitial" Web ads are ones you see when you click from the main page of a site to an article page and, instead, you see a whole-page ad you must click past to get to the page you wanted to see.

    This is one of many online ad styles you're likely to see becoming more popular if enough people start using ad blocking software to make a noticeable difference in commercial site ad revenues.

    Yahoo Hong Kong is already selling them: See what they look like here [yahoo.com].

    - Robin

  • I don't find banners in general annoying (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rmohr02 ( 208447 ) <mohr.42NO@SPAMosu.edu> on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:17PM (#7401673)
    But when a banner abuses it's animation capabilities or tries to become a popup, I draw the line. If a banner isn't animated, there's a chance I might even click on it.

  • How to avoid your banner ads being blocked (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Skapare ( 16644 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:20PM (#7401718) Homepage

    None of these methods are perfect, but they can help avoid your banner ads and other web site features from being blocked.

    • Put everything under the same hostname. Don't use a separate name like "ads.example.com". Best is to make all the image tag src fields relative to the current site (so it works with or without "www." being used).
    • Even if your ads are dynamically generated or selected, never use a query string. Make the URL look static (the CGI gets the rest of the URL after it's name in PATH_INFO). Make the CGI include a date on the image file well into the past. Avoid an expire, or make it reasonably into the future.
    • Rotate ad image by generating different URLs in the HTML being sent. Let the images be cached.
    • Hide external links under static HTML appearing links to your own site (same exact hostname, relative link, as above), which runs CGI that does a redirect. Hide the linked URLs via code numbers in the PATH_INFO part of the URL.
    • Avoid frames. It's too tempting to categorize output if you have frames.
    • One trick to add:

      Stream all images through a CGI/PHP/Response.BinaryWrite type method. Pass (in the PATH_INFO) a hashed key (for example) that represents that persons Session. You can then keep track of whether or not that session is downloading banners or not. If they use a program like Norton's, it will strip the IMG completely and therefore never hit your script. If the script is never hit, you can redirect the user to a page explaining that while they may not be interested in ads, you need them to

  • If you want to make money on the internet... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by analog_line ( 465182 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:22PM (#7401743)
    ...the only sure way to do it is to make people pay if they want to access your content.

    Plain and simple. Advertising has always been and will forever be a inherently unstable way to earn money. If you want to be sure you'll make money, you have to actually charge for something.

    ObStupidQuestion: So you think slashdot should just go pay only then? Depends on what the people running slashdot want to do. It's big enough on it's own, and part of a big enough family of properties, and the staff seems to be on the small end, so they can probably make do with ad-based stuff. And if this kind of ad blocking technology gets popular enough, the clever people that created the site are more than clever enough to get around ad blockers. And frankly, the quality index oof comments would jump through the roof if it was made pay only. Would I pay? Nope. I come here because it's free, and if it suddenly wasn't, I doubt my life would be any poorer for not surfing this place a few times a day.

  • Re: Norton Antivirus 2003 Ad Blocking - Tough Call (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Unominous Coward ( 651680 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:49PM (#7402041)
    Do you think banner ads are still an effective way to offset the cost of a website, or has their time passed? If so, what do we replace them with?

    I would recommend replacing them with 1x1 transparent GIFs.

    Seriously though, with squid, a redirector, and about 200 rules, I very rarely see banner ads and it keeps my bandwidth costs down.

    Sorry, but if I have to choose between a month of "supportive" web surfing and an extra 200MB of download/surfing/whatever, then it's not too hard to see which one I'd pick.

    Here is a list of the number of URL rewrites that have occurred since I installed this system:

    Feb 15302
    Mar 16581
    Apr 19221
    Jun 20333
    Jul 19294
    Aug 10320
    Sep 15912
    Oct 13705

    Now, every single one of those rewrites has spared me at the very minimum an HTTP request and a few hundred bytes. This applies only to non-banner objects (such as counters, which I also block). Ads are usually at least 3k with some extending far beyond that.

    I should probably remind those that need reminding, that I have a monthly download quota of 3000MB. The bandwidth savings are too significant for me to ignore.

    Flame away...

  • You need to rethink what you are doing. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by /dev/trash ( 182850 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @08:03PM (#7402199) Homepage Journal
    What are you selling? Okay, why isn't IT paying the bills? Having 50% of your revenues come from banner ads is not going to be viable forever.

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