Showing ads for blocking ads



  • http://www.pcworld.com/article/2047480/adblock-launches-crowdfunding-campaign-to-create-ads-about-blocking-ads.html

    I do not know how Community Server works

    And a comment reply on YouTube from someone on the AdBlock team, replying to a content producer on YouTube:
    It broke



  • The real issue is "content creators" who plug a 30 seconds ad before their 25 seconds mildly funny shitting cat video. I'm pretty sure a lot of people give up immediately but the "Views" counter is still increased.

    If there were only a handful of text ads on a sidebar nobody would throw a fit over this; for years I've had this message in Slashdot that says that since I'm such an awesome person I can opt-out of ads for free, yet I never used that privilege because the ads are not intrusive. But on Youtube and other sites now it's pretty much in your face all the time and this is annoying.



  • Years ago I didn't use an ad blocker, because I just didn't mind them enough. That changed when I got a Flash popup that took over the whole system for about a minute - it followed the mouse around, so I couldn't click on anything, and there was no way I could close it without closing the browser itself. It floated around playing a video that sucked up a ton of bandwidth, complete with (quite loud) sound. The best part of it though was it was demanding I join the US Army - even though I was 15 and lived in Canada.



    These days, I don't get how anyone can stand to use the web without ad blocking. Ads have evolved from annoying flashing banners to privacy and security risks, thanks to data mining and drive-by downloads. They've also gotten much more annoying - popups, popunders, popup layers (rather than an easily closed separate window, now a layer on the page itself), sound and video are more common, and those annoying flashing banners are often several megabytes. It's pretty much chaos.



    As for AdBlock, they sold out a while back when they "partnered with" "media providers" to implement a function that allows "acceptable ads*" to slip through. I'm not certain what they're trying to accomplish now, but they have an extension, which can do pretty much anything, installed in hundreds of thousands of web browsers, which are a goldmine of personal information... it's not a stretch to imagine what they might do with that. It's interesting that they're crowd-funding this campaign instead of spending their own money on it (because that means they don't necessarily have to be making a profit), but mind that "crowd-funding" is also a buzzword that's often used just to make a company seem "cool" and modern.



    Will be interesting to see what happens from here.



  • /waits for the "Ad blockers are evil and people who use them are thieves who eat babies" crowd



  • @The_Assimilator said:

    /waits for the "Ad blockers are evil and people who use them are thieves who eat babies" crowd
     

    I think this absurdist move by Adblock has left them confused an unable to form a reply.



  • That website takes about 14 seconds to load but only 4.4 with Ghostery enabled. Just saying.



  • @anonymous235 said:

    That website takes about 14 seconds to load but only 4.4 with Ghostery enabled. Just saying.
     

    - Did you clear cache before retrying with Ghostery?

    - Websites that draw in lots of external sources have a larger chance of network hiccups.

    In other words, try again about 15-20 times with Ghostery on and off, and see if the time difference persists.



  • @lolwtf said:

    ... several megabytes...

    I can relate to this experience. When I went through a phase of playing numerous flash games I found myself often contending with other flash objects on the page (ads) which used up much of my system resources. I often ended up opening the browser console and deleting the iframe or flash object interfering with my computer. Eventually I think I used a plugin to block the urls generating the ads (usually doubleclick or whatever on the sites I visited). That solved the problem for the most part.

    I still don't object to ads in general, when they're targeted properly I appreciate being told "Cool new strategy game" (though the game mechanics will turn out to be surprisingly familiar... click to collect this, click to prevent that, click this thing or die), and looking at the pretty graphics, as long as they stay out of my fucking way.



  • The worst offenders in my mind are the download sites where all the ads are big green "Download Now" buttons and the real download button is a small text-only link near the bottom of the page. I've spent a fair amount of time clearing malware off people's computers because of that. With AdBlock the only download button you see is the real one.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

     I once tried to install AdBlock Plus, but I couldn't install it because of my adblocker.



  • @mott555 said:

    where all the ads are big green "Download Now" buttons and the real download button is a small text-only link
     

    There's this file browser that I think came up on this site that had their real download button and accompanying text styled exactly like a fake download banner.


  • Considered Harmful

    @dhromed said:

    @mott555 said:

    where all the ads are big green "Download Now" buttons and the real download button is a small text-only link
     

    There's this file browser that I think came up on this site that had their real download button and accompanying text styled exactly like a fake download banner.


    I think the fake download banner was styled after a real download button initially; but then it gets put on pages that don't style their buttons that way.
    Maybe you found the source.



  • @mott555 said:

    The worst offenders in my mind are the download sites where all the ads are big green "Download Now" buttons and the real download button is a small text-only link near the bottom of the page. I've spent a fair amount of time clearing malware off people's computers because of that.
     

    Unfortunately, this kind of content that feeds on the stupid or uncultured seems to be very prevalent, at least in my shitty European country (probably due to high amount of piracy and barely literate people):

    • Fake download buttons
    • Fake "you need to update Flash Player" or "you need to install a plugin to view this content" messages
    • Fake download sites for popular software (especially paid software) that appears as the first result on Google (I remember when eMule was popular, you had to scroll down past at least 10 bad results to find the real official site) 
    • "Speed up your PC" promises
    • "Answer this (incredibly easy) question and win a free iPad!"
    • Sites that impersonate other sites (I found a perfect replica of Mega a few days ago)
    • Etc.

    That usually lead to:

    • "Premium content" phone subscriptions (a legal scam where a company starts sending you tons of SMS and you get charged 3€ for each one).
    • Malware and adware
    • "For verification purposes, you need to send an SMS code to this number" (where they charge you 3€ again)


    Seriously this kind of thing is like a bad epidemic. Every computer I've seen was infected.


  • Considered Harmful

    @anonymous235 said:

    That usually lead to:

    • "Premium content" phone subscriptions (a legal scam where a company starts sending you tons of SMS and you get charged 3€ for each one).
    • Malware and adware
    • "For verification purposes, you need to send an SMS code to this number" (where they charge you 3€ again)


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @joe.edwards said:


    <font face="Comic Sans MS" size="10">I'LL FUCKING PUNCH YOU!!!!!!!</font>

     



  • I use a custom filter anyways rather than AdBlock, therefore it isn't affected. I suggest you too.



  • To change the topic slightly, if all ads were for legitimate products and/or services, would you still block them?



  • That depends on how intrusive they are.



  • @Ben L. said:

    To change the topic slightly, if all ads were for legitimate products and/or services, would you still block them?

    Most of them are, and yes I do. All of them, or at least as many as I can possibly get rid of. I do not need a bunch of overpaid rentiers creating spurious needs for me, thank you very much.



  • @Ben L. said:

    To change the topic slightly, if all ads were for legitimate products and/or services, would you still block them?
     

    If there would only be normal, non-flashy, non-noisemaking banners, for legitimate products and not malware drive-by downloads, and ads in YouTube videos would not be longer than most of the actual videos, I would definitely not block them, simply because they do not annoy me. 

    However, the reality is quite the opposite.

     

    By the way, I have to point out the difference between AdBlock and AdBlock Plus. As far as I can see, the former is the one initiating this campaign and seems to be run by a tyrannical autist who hates all ads everywhere all the time and does not want anyone to make any money at all ever. The other is actually open source and run by a community of people who do not particularly hate ads, but they hate intrusive and annoying ads, and are trying out an initiative to allow non-intrusive, helpful ads.

    Ie. AdBlock are just angry kids, while AdBlock Plus is actually trying to improve the internet for everyone.



  • @flabdablet said:

    creating spurious needs
     

    What if they're not spurious and created (like iPad marketing) but actually relevant (like that time I bought a scifi book because an ad told me it existed)?

    An unobtrusive ad that caters to my interests is perfectly fine.

    Right now I think it's up to the site owner to select ads that fit the target demographic.

    And it's up to the ad networks to NOT BE GODDAMN MONNEYGRUBBING BITCHES WHEN THEY ALLOW FLASH EXPANDO ADS AND THOSE "5 FOODS" ADS AND ALL KIND OF COMMUNICATIVE DETRITUS THAT WILL ONE DAY DESTROY US ALL.



  • @dhromed said:

    An unobtrusive ad that caters to my interests is perfectly fine.

    If I feel like having a need created where none existed a minute ago, I'm perfectly able to go look in a shop (online or local). Advertising that's carefully placed so that I'll see it as I go about other business is obtrusive by its very nature, from my point of view; I have no desire to see or hear it and will do everything I possibly can to minimize the amount of it I'm exposed to.

    Advertising encountered when I'm not specifically seeking out advertisements (e.g. reading the classifieds or visiting eBay or Craigslist etc) is just noise as far as I'm concerned, and I dislike being distracted by noise. If you want me to buy your stuff, you should know that waving it in front of me when I'm not looking for stuff (which is most of the time) and saying "Hey! Look at this!" is behaviour I find annoying enough to prompt a strong desire to avoid doing business with you. This fact has the perverse effect that if I inadvertently block your advertising along with everybody else's, I am actually increasing your chance of selling me something.

    The more you spend on advertising, the more likely you are to have annoyed me at some point and therefore the less likely you are to win my business. I generally prefer to deal with outfits that don't advertise, both because I appreciate their lack of contribution to the noise machine and because they generally offer noticeably better value, at least in part because they're not paying the aforementioned overpriced rentiers their counterproductive cut.

    I am fully aware that this attitude puts me in a very small minority of consumers; most people seem quite accepting of having needs thrust on them all day every day and don't even object to paying for that disservice. So I am in no way attempting to mount an argument that advertising is, in general, ineffective. But like any small minority, we are a legitimate niche market and there are plenty of suppliers who seem more than happy to cater to us. If every business in the world stopped spending money on advertising as of tomorrow, I would scarcely notice.



  • @flabdablet said:

    Advertising encountered when I'm not specifically seeking out advertisements (e.g. reading the classifieds or visiting eBay or Craigslist etc) is just noise as far as I'm concerned, and I dislike being distracted by noise. If you want me to buy your stuff, you should know that waving it in front of me when I'm not looking for stuff (which is most of the time) and saying "Hey! Look at this!" is behaviour I find annoying enough to prompt a strong desire to avoid doing business with you. This fact has the perverse effect that if I inadvertently block your advertising along with everybody else's, I am actually increasing your chance of selling me something.

    You have a simplistic view of ads (show->click->buy). Reality is a lot more complex.

    As an example, are you aware that there is a significant ratio of ads that are bought simply to prevent the competition from taking the space (like taking the Gmail address or Twitter account with your name to prevent someone else from using it)? Or that, by their nature, online ads are often bundled, forcing advertisers to adopt a "spray and pray" strategy? Ads are part of a system that is broken. Hate the game not the player.

    @flabdablet said:


    I am fully aware that this attitude puts me in a very small minority of consumers; most people seem quite accepting of having needs thrust on them all day every day and don't even object to paying for that disservice. So I am in no way attempting to mount an argument that advertising is, in general, ineffective. But like any small minority, we are a legitimate niche market and there are plenty of suppliers who seem more than happy to cater to us.

    What have we got here? A l33t consumer...

    Not only are you showing with this comment that you have no clue about how advertising works (and what a niche market is), you are also providing evidence to the fact that you are a big baby. You remind me of a single kid who was raised by parents who only believe in praise and was showered with undeserved rewards for even the most mundane achievements. Entitled cunt.

    @flabdablet said:

    If every business in the world stopped spending money on advertising as of tomorrow, I would scarcely notice.

    Of course you would notice, because your only shopping options would be Walmart and a few other big chains. But don't let that stop you. I suspect that you are the kind of genius who think that the government should cut taxes and increase subsidies and grants to help the economy, or that poor people should eat cake if they can't afford bread.



  •  @flabdablet said:

    If I feel like having a need created where none existed a minute ago, I'm perfectly able to go look in a shop (online or local). Advertising that's carefully placed so that I'll see it as I go about other business is obtrusive by its very nature, from my point of view; I have no desire to see or hear it and will do everything I possibly can to minimize the amount of it I'm exposed to.

    Advertising encountered when I'm not specifically seeking out advertisements (e.g. reading the classifieds or visiting eBay or Craigslist etc) is just noise as far as I'm concerned, and I dislike being distracted by noise. If you want me to buy your stuff, you should know that waving it in front of me when I'm not looking for stuff (which is most of the time) and saying "Hey! Look at this!" is behaviour I find annoying enough to prompt a strong desire to avoid doing business with you. This fact has the perverse effect that if I inadvertently block your advertising along with everybody else's, I am actually increasing your chance of selling me something.

    The more you spend on advertising, the more likely you are to have annoyed me at some point and therefore the less likely you are to win my business. I generally prefer to deal with outfits that don't advertise, both because I appreciate their lack of contribution to the noise machine and because they generally offer noticeably better value, at least in part because they're not paying the aforementioned overpriced rentiers their counterproductive cut.

    I am fully aware that this attitude puts me in a very small minority of consumers; most people seem quite accepting of having needs thrust on them all day every day and don't even object to paying for that disservice. So I am in no way attempting to mount an argument that advertising is, in general, ineffective. But like any small minority, we are a legitimate niche market and there are plenty of suppliers who seem more than happy to cater to us. If every business in the world stopped spending money on advertising as of tomorrow, I would scarcely notice.

    I definitely fit into this minority as well. If you want me to buy something you sell, hijacking my web browser, spamming my inbox, blowing the TV speakers out (because TV commercials are always like 10 dB louder than the show), or forcing me to watch a 30-second video of your ad before every YouTube video will most definitely not help. It's as if the general population gets abused into buying products. I wonder how many waterboarded terrorists at Guantanamo Bay decided to join the US Army.

     



  • @Ronald said:

    Of course you would notice, because your only shopping options would be Walmart and a few other big chains.
    What? There are other stores out there?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @flabdablet said:

    I am fully aware that this attitude puts me in a very small minority of consumers; most people seem quite accepting of having needs thrust on them all day every day and don't even object to paying for that disservice.

    I've never considered that ads create new needs for me. But they do increase my knowledge of what exists in the marketplace. Sometimes, I'll see something about which I had no knowledge of, and I may look into the subject (just like I often hear about, say, video games on this forum). And sometimes, they actually fulfill a need I have but didn't know that a solution existed.

    I suppose that ads for things like new movies or TV shows or books or other entertainment could be considered a need being created, but then, it would simply displace something else from my time / money budget for entertainment and relaxation. So it's not so much creating a new need as offering me alternatives in fulfilling something I already desired.



  • The problem with ads is that they create an arms race. If a competing company spends $10M advertising then I have to spend $10M myself or I'll be at a great disadvantage. This creates a very inefficient system if your goal is to let people know about solutions they didn't know about or alternative products.

    Browsing around for a while, less than 50% of the ads I see seem to be for smaller shops or companies (that not everyone already knows about). And maybe 1 in 500 show me something I hadn't seen before. Surely we can do better than that?


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

     I hate ads. But I sign up to have flyers, updates, etc sent to me by email.  They're opt-in, I read them (or ignore them) on my own terms and by their own merits.  They're with companies I have an established and non-adversarial relationship with.

    In other words: 



  • @boomzilla said:

    I've never considered that ads create new needs for me.
     

    Strong branding and aggressive marketing does almost nothing else than manufacturing demand. Coca Cola and Apple depend 100% on this reality-distortion effect for their bottom line. Luxury items cannot exist without this kind of advertising.

    @boomzilla said:

    But they do increase my knowledge of what exists in the marketplace.

    That's how it should be, but as you said yourself many times: things have unintended effects, such as the idiotic emergent behaviour of occupying ad space like Ronalds described. 



  • @dhromed said:

    @mott555 said:

    where all the ads are big green "Download Now" buttons and the real download button is a small text-only link
     

    There's this file browser that I think came up on this site that had their real download button and accompanying text styled exactly like a fake download banner.

    Was it CNet? I remember being quite cross after needing to clean a huge Babylon mess off a customer machine after what should have been a straightforward installation of I forget what from them. They did indeed have a big green Download Now button that got you their malware-augmented stub installer, right above an unobtrusive "direct download" link to the actual software you wanted.



  • When did Signature Guy get his own Signature Guy?



  • @Ronald said:

    by their nature, online ads are often bundled, forcing advertisers to adopt a "spray and pray" strategy? Ads are part of a system that is broken. Hate the game not the player.
    The players know that the game is broken. That makes them just as guilty.

     



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @Ronald said:

    by their nature, online ads are often bundled, forcing advertisers to adopt a "spray and pray" strategy? Ads are part of a system that is broken. Hate the game not the player.
    The players know that the game is broken. That makes them just as guilty.

     

    I was gonna say;

    The players make the game.

     



  • @dhromed said:

    @flabdablet said:
    creating spurious needs
    What if they're not spurious and created (like iPad marketing) but actually relevant (like that time I bought a scifi book because an ad told me it existed)?

    An unobtrusive ad that caters to my interests is perfectly fine.

    Right now I think it's up to the site owner to select ads that fit the target demographic.

    And it's up to the ad networks to NOT BE GODDAMN MONNEYGRUBBING BITCHES WHEN THEY ALLOW FLASH EXPANDO ADS AND THOSE "5 FOODS" ADS AND ALL KIND OF COMMUNICATIVE DETRITUS THAT WILL ONE DAY DESTROY US ALL.

    Some recent observations:  On a website devoted to providing serial numbers and activation hacks for pirated copies of Windows, there was a banner ad for Nissan (which played a video if you clicked on the ad).

    On a website devoted to pirated movies and TV shows, in order to download something you have to click on a link which shows you a 15 second commercial before giving you the download link. The commercials are all for mainstream well known products, such as Tide detergent.

    For some reason, I find this quite hilarious.

     



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @dhromed said:
    @flabdablet said:
    creating spurious needs
    What if they're not spurious and created (like iPad marketing) but actually relevant (like that time I bought a scifi book because an ad told me it existed)?

    An unobtrusive ad that caters to my interests is perfectly fine.

    Right now I think it's up to the site owner to select ads that fit the target demographic.

    And it's up to the ad networks to NOT BE GODDAMN MONNEYGRUBBING BITCHES WHEN THEY ALLOW FLASH EXPANDO ADS AND THOSE "5 FOODS" ADS AND ALL KIND OF COMMUNICATIVE DETRITUS THAT WILL ONE DAY DESTROY US ALL.

    Some recent observations:  On a website devoted to providing serial numbers and activation hacks for pirated copies of Windows, there was a banner ad for Nissan (which played a video if you clicked on the ad).

    On a website devoted to pirated movies and TV shows, in order to download something you have to click on a link which shows you a 15 second commercial before giving you the download link. The commercials are all for mainstream well known products, such as Tide detergent.

    For some reason, I find this quite hilarious.


    I've seen ads for a certain "free to play" MMORPG on the login screen for another "free to play" MMORPG.



  • @Ben L. said:

    I've seen ads for a certain "free to play" MMORPG on the login screen for another "free to play" MMORPG.



    Owned by the same company?

     



  • @Snooder said:

    @Ben L. said:

    I've seen ads for a certain "free to play" MMORPG on the login screen for another "free to play" MMORPG.



    Owned by the same company?

     


    Nope, the companies weren't even located on the same continent.



  • @Ben L. said:

    To change the topic slightly, if all ads were for legitimate products and/or services, would you still block them?
    Depends entirely on the ad. If it moves, it gets blocked (even if it's not an ad - I really hate distractions while I'm reading, and I block even stuff like news tickers some pages have). I normally browse in high contrast mode (dark background, grey text), since I find this easier on my eyes; when I'm browsing like this, I block any too bright image (a few tdwtf signatures are among the blocked).



  • @ender said:

    @Ben L. said:
    To change the topic slightly, if all ads were for legitimate products and/or services, would you still block them?
    Depends entirely on the ad. If it moves, it gets blocked (even if it's not an ad - I really hate distractions while I'm reading, and I block even stuff like news tickers some pages have). I normally browse in high contrast mode (dark background, grey text), since I find this easier on my eyes; when I'm browsing like this, I block any too bright image (a few tdwtf signatures are among the blocked).
    A couple of days ago I clicked on a link to read a news story.  I was taken to a page that contained 11, yes that's right FUCKING ELEVEN moving, flashing, animated ads on one page. To all the anti-adblocking people, I only have one thing to say.


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