There are millions of ad-free sites already -- they're called blogs. But you'll see that the more popular blogs almost always at least have Google ads or something. Even if the content producers aren't trying to make a living off the site, the hosting costs go up as you need more bandwidth for that traffic. It's very hard to make it on subscriptions or donations alone.
Long before the Internet took off, ad revenue was responsible for funding most of the content you would read. Hey, at least 90 percent of the income I've made in my career has come from ads. Before the Internet, people didn't get upset about the ads in newspapers and magazines, except for the occasional obnoxious one, because they could ignore them or not as they chose. So why do people get so upset about ads on the Internet which, except for the occasional obnoxious one, they are still perfectly free to ignore? It really does puzzle me, so I'd love to hear folks thoughts on this.
Ed
One is Web sites that gratuitously make ad banners load synchronously rather than asynchronously; otherwise you could just scroll down and read the content. Then the ad servers have an incentive to not be slow -- if they are, the ad is scrolled out of view before it's more than a blank rectangle on the screen, and never gets viewed! Instead, they presumably strong-arm site operators to use evil Javashit to make the page load pause until the banner is done loading or has aborted, and they then have no incentive to make their servers fast.
A bunch of related evil tactics, all using Javashit: * Disguising link destinations (Firefox has a setting to stop this) * Messing with the right click menu functionality (ditto) * Making shift-click selection not work (Firefox doesn't help here) * Popups (Firefox is a partial help; popups triggered by something other than page load aren't stopped, and neither are those fake popups that use flash or JS to draw directly to the framebuffer, and which have a nasty habit of making a page unreadable and unusable. Photobucket provides an example: get an account and upload an image. When you double click an item in the file chooser, there's a roughly 33% chance a new browser window opens and immediately goes to some full-screen ad page. Unfortunately I don't see how to avoid layer based popups and popups triggered by form filling/other user action without blocking desirable events, such as web forum links that open the link in a new window so you don't lose your place in the forum.) Of course, sites that abuse Javashit also tend to replace ordinary "a href=foo.html" links with "a href=# onClick=blahblah" gratuitously to punish people who disable Javashit; the site becomes unnavigable, even though there's nothing about the site that means it couldn't be made navigable with JS disabled. Even worse, some refuse to render any content at all if you turn off JS, just giving some bullshit about how JS is required. I know enough about computers and the Web to know that to display some text, some inline images (including ad banners), and some functioning links does not require JS in any way shape or form; they want to make you use it so they can spam you, pop up at you, slip you some spyware, try to extract your email address to spam, and so on. Firefox will protect you from most of these abuses, but it doesn't stop layer-based popups, popups triggered by filling in a form field (e.g. Photobucket's image upload form), or scripts that interfere with selecting and copying text off a page (have these arseholes not heard of "fair use", not to mention "resistance is futile, retard" and "It's my web browser and it's my computer!"? I will have my excerpt if I want it, over your javashit's dead body if necessary, also known as the stuff displayed by "View ... Page Source", so there's really NO FRIGGING POINT, it just ANNOYS ME!!! GRR!!!)
On the other hand, my experience blocking ads via hosts file is less than stellar. There are two problems: * When page loading is deliberately and gratuitously modified to pause until an ad finishes loading, the result is invariably very slow page loads, because it waits ages for the loopback connection to timeout on my stealth firewall. * When page loading is yadda yadda and an ad fails to load entirely, in some broken Web browsers (*cough*IE*cough*) the whole page load aborts. (This is fixed by using Firefox.) * The proliferation of zillions of redundant ad5838584654.357832486584.six-zillion-and-three.spammer.com ad servers means that to put a dent in it you'd need six zillion entries in your hosts file. And when you have six zillion entries in your hosts file, every name lookup takes six zillion hours, because Winblows is too stupid and brain-damaged to actually cache the fricking results of name lookups and uses bogo-sort somewhere in the code that reads the host file; meanwhile host file parsing and name lookup code are being overhauled with even more "necessary security checks" in Windows Vista betas while Madison Ave. execs pass more thick wads of C-notes to Bill G. under the table at the local pub after their weekly chummy 18 holes at Pebble Beach.
Ad blocking that stops the browser requesting the stupid crap in the first place is, IMO, the only solution; that and staying the hell away from the pre-lubed^H^H^H^H^Hinstalled MS rectum^H^H^H^H^H^Hbrowser, that is. (And their other orifices^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hnetwork tools too, particularly Outlook, the feature set of which Spamford and his ilk and companies like 180 solutions no doubt paid a pretty penny for...)
More generally, it's time to collectively wean ourselves off MS and all other corporate crap when it comes to software. Corporations that make software have split incentives these days and can't be trusted. More and more, the feature set of software and even of entertainment hardware (game consoles, video players, widescreen TVs) is being decided not by the wishes of customers but by big businesses with consumer-hostile agendas, from the RIAA and MPAA to advertisers and spyware vendors and the government and their cronies.
The decision we will face in the next decade is nothing less than whether the ultimate result of technological advance will be individual empowerment or the realization of Orwell's worst fears. Accelerating change and the disturbing trends in everything from DRM to MS Vista make it plain that we have at most 10 years to take back our computers, if that. At the end of that time, individuals will be empowered again in participatory democracy and economics ... or we will be permanent residents of the Matrix, existing only to serve a vast government-industrial machine that demands to be fed with ever more docile consumers whose only choice will be to buy from the "company store" and work for the company (there will, for all intents and purposes, be only the one) or to starve (or be labeled a "terrorist" and shot on sight by the FBI, the metro police, or some other law enforcement agency the corporation has purchased). Our current ability to walk out in the woods without being metered by the footstep, read books without paying by the page, pirate music without too much risk of a lawsuit, speak our minds and be heard, tape shows and fast-forward the commercials, block internet ads, uninstall things on our own computers, and so on will all disappear. If we make the wrong choice in the next ten years, then by 2040 there won't be an unowned place or person on the planet. A romance novel will cost you a dollar a page, and you'll have to pay every time you reread it. You won't be able to visit Yosemite Park; you will be able to pay an arm and a leg a day to look around a cheerily-redecorated, rubber-surfaced subset of something that vaguely resembles it but is named Disneywood Park West instead. Trying to borrow someone else's CD will get you ten to fifteen; actually burning a mix will get you the chair, on trumped-up terrorism charges as a grave threat to national security who tried to undermine the economy. Question official doctrine on 9/11 and your question mysteriously disappears; anywhere copies of it got, something deletes it, and everyone denies ever having read it. To do otherwise risks imprisonment, or at least being muted -- all your speech, writings, etc. made to disappear, past and future, thanks to Fritz chips mandated in all technology.
I don't want to see this happen. If it does, I'll wander off into the woods and say to hell with so-called civilization. When they sell the last bit of wilderness and show up demanding I pay back rent and have a Fritz chip implanted in my cerebrum so they can retroactively erase anything they don't want me remembering, such as that we were free once, I'll kill myself. I will not become an inmate of City 17.[ Parent | Reply to This ]
Use the NoScript plugin to Firefox to eliminate Javajunk problems with websites for good. The majority of informational websites work just fine without it, and you can turn scripting on for the current website with just one click. (It, in fact was what finally switched me to Firefox from IE.) This also cuts down on the most common place for Firefox vunrabilities, making it a lot less likely to get spyware.
Flash is a virus; it's only purpose is to create annoying valueless animations. I've never loaded it onto my systems and I never will. (I understand that it is going to come preloaded on Windows in the future - another good reason to stick with Windows 2000.) Any site that requires it is a site not worth visiting. Don't even *think* of having it in Firefox (leave it in IE if you have to use it occassionally; you'll remember you're going to the dark side).
To answer Ed's original question, the problem for me is slowness. CNN had some ad mechanism that made their pages take 20-40 seconds to load; that was interfering with reading the news. After I installed NoScript, that dropped to 5-10 seconds. There are still ads, but the obnoxious and slow ones are gone.
Google ads are just fine; even graphic ads are fine if they keep to a reasonable loading time. I'm used to ignoring that. But blasting popup pages in front of everything (like the Dilbert site did until I installed NoScript) is way beyond the pale. Randy. [ Parent | Reply to This ]
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Also, the resolution of a monitor is pretty limited compared to a magazine or newspaper. Since you can fit a lot less information on a screen, anything that takes up space is automatically irritating.
Relating to the InfoWorld emails with the ads taking more prominence than the story: would you read a newspaper if every article was interrupted every couple sentances by an ad?
Finally, I don't know if the Google ads produce much revenue, but those don't bother me in the least. Very unobtrusive.[ Parent | Reply to This ]
As far as just ignoring the ads, much of the trouble is that many ad delivery channels (not necessarily the advertisers themselves) go out of their way to force the ads to the center of your attention. I don't think I have to remind anyone about the ongoing struggles we have with popups, pop-unders, pop-overs, you name it. Some of the comics I read online even come up with full-page ads when I try to navigate between days.
I don't mind Google ads at all. Not one bit. They're unobtrusive and harmless. They're like print ads - they don't obscure the content you're trying to view, but they're quietly there if you want to view them too. Print ads don't move. This is not at all the state of most internet ads, which flash, beep, vibrate and even outright hide the content you're trying to get to. Neither do print ads take over your mailbox so that you get more and more of them every day, without leaving room for your real mail. (Recognizing of course that adware carries only a fraction of the advertising that goes on.)
Advertising does pay for much of our media content on and off the net, but advertisers need to realize their place and stop trying to constantly force their products into our immediate attention. They need to inform our buying decisions, not coerce us.
I don't mind responsible advertising, but nothing turns me off of a vendor faster than an ad that screams for my attention. [ Parent | Reply to This ]
1. Least annoying. Adds on the Gripelog are similar to the newspaper and can be easily ignored (sorry about that).
2. More annoying, some websites put pop-ups that obstruct what you are trying to read. On one add, when I pressed the "close" button, instead of closing it went into its song and dance.
3. Most annoying. Two years ago my daughters computer became totally unusable due to pop-up after pop-up ... Clearly they were hijacked; but by what website, I do not recall. I had to reload the operating system and all the application software to correct the problem (a wasted day of work).
Points 2&3 clearly demonstrate offensive marketing behavior. Companies have a right to advertise but there comes a point where it becomes aggravating. If "actions speak louder than words", companies that use offensive marketing practices clearly do not care about their customers and therefor do not deserve our business.[ Parent | Reply to This ]
TV ads are starting to get as bad as internet ads. Loud and flashy, etc. Worse, since most internet ads still don't have sound, thank God. They are sometimes 3 or 4 times as loud as the goddam show -- sometimes I have to turn my TV up to max volume to hear the dialogue, usually because it mysteriously gets real quiet just before the next ad break, and then KABLAM! It sounds like a jet is taking off in my living room, a jet whose engines mysteriously have the power of intelligible speech and want to sell me deodorant?
And the TV ads are getting deceptive. The practise currently galling me the most is when a TV ad intentionally begins with a sound cue a lot of people have come to associate with "the show is coming back on!". We have these gems as examples so far: * A cleaning-solution ad that begins with the first five or so notes of the James Bond theme. You think the movie's back on, or something cool is on, go to the TV, and it's a dumbass ad that isn't even targeted at the right demographic. The tune attracts people with Y chromosomes. No self-respecting such person buys the product they then try to peddle. What genius decides which appropriated tune to associate with which advertised product category? Not the somewhat-smart ones who decide which shows to interrupt with what product category, it seems. They don't interrupt actual Bond film airings with this shit -- it's always beer, fast cars, and girls during action flicks. Someone has their shit together at least. * A broom ad that begins with the same fanfare used by CTV News. Amazingly, rather than sue for trademark infringement, CTV itself actually airs this ad. I heard the fanfare from the ad and then from the start of the news half an hour later one time, without changing channel. They were identical. Doesn't trademark law cover this kind of misuse of characteristic sounds? Don't the legitimate owners of said trademarks care about dilution? * An ad for I don't remember what -- insurance? -- begins with one of those little guitar riffs that nominally indicate that Seinfeld has come back from ads or one scene's ended and another's begun. * Other examples I can't explicitly remember. The misused sounds are usually quite characteristic of some show, generally used when the show returns from a break, and generally therefore have a high salience to an audience that begins ignoring the TV for 3 minutes when ads begin and waits for such a cue to stop ignoring it. News fanfares are especially common. * A while back, when the movie The Day after Tomorrow was first showing up on TV, an ad aired frequently for a while that used a voice strongly resembling Quaid's and sound and visual effects to grab attention by resembling scenes from the latter half of the movie. This made it a deceptive attention-getter.
I only wish I knew what marketing geniuses think that pissing off potential customers is the best way to get good sales leads? Nobody likes being deceived; and the most likely reaction to "Argh, I've been had by the ad with the fake CTV News fanfare AGAIN!" is "I redouble my renewed resolve never to ever buy anything from these pricks"...The news fanfare misuse is especially irritating, because brief news updates are shown on CTV channels during show breaks and begin with the same fanfare, and the ad is shown on CTV channels too. You can no longer trust that it means you're going to hear a blurb about the latest weapon of mass destruction they didn't find in Iraq; more at 11. The others mostly only work during the same show they stole sound effects from, since if you're watching Star Trek and hear a Seinfeld noise you ignore it even if it tricks you into thinking it's something about the Seinfeld episode that's on later that evening.
The marketeers that generate spam and obnoxious Web ads are being similarly stupid; the more annoying and/or deceptive an ad is, the less likely I am to implicitly endorse it by going to the company's Web site, and the even less likely I am ever to actually *subsidize* their annoying ads by purchasing anything from them, knowing that for every dime I pay beyond the product's cost, they have another nickel to spend on spamming people online.
Not that I buy much anyway. Not at typical prices these days. Especially from the software or entertainment industries. As a member of a low income bracket I resent every penny above cost that I'm charged for anything, and when something is marked up 300% or even 10,000% above the marginal cost of reproduction, that's a lot of pennies. (The former applies to a lot of consumer products once the middlemen have added their bits to the price tag, and the provincial government its sales tax, and the federal government it's GST ... the latter applies to anything that comes on any kind of disc and carries a price tag of $10 or more.) [ Parent | Reply to This ]
I'd like to comment on the free content. Television is no longer free for 95% of us because of cable TV, and yet the television broadcasters are complaining when we use Tivo to bypass the advertising which they include with content (shows) that we are paying for! The advertising industry is becoming more and more intrusive into our daily lives and as a result many of us, including me, are making it a point to ignore that advertising when we make purchasing decisions.[ Parent | Reply to This ]
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