Pop-Up Ads Lead to Consumer Revolt, Ad-Blocking 697
securitas writes "The New York Times' Saul Hansell reports on pop-up advertising and the consumer backlash against intrusive advertising. It's worth noting that pop-ups and pop-unders are the most effective, lucrative and annoying online advertising form. The article discusses the boom in ad-blocker software, with AOL, Yahoo and Google getting into the game. Microsoft says that it will include pop-up blocking in IE when it releases WinXP SP2. According to one pop-under ad agency, 20%-25% percent of Web users have pop-up blocking enabled, double the rate of a year ago - Earthlink's numbers bear that out, with 1 million of its 5 million customers using its ad-blocking software 18 months after release. DoubleClick says that it is 'developing technology that will enable pop-up ads to evade the blocking software.' Why isn't that surprising?"
Re:Not just pop-ups (Score:4, Informative)
Replaces flash with a box of same size with words "click to play".
Occasionally I tweak the entry it creates in userContent.css to have an opacity of 0.1 too.
Makes it even less obtrusive.
Feh (Score:5, Informative)
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
Bye bye Doubleclick ads...
Re:Not just pop-ups (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not just pop-ups (Score:5, Informative)
I use Mozilla Firebird and the excellent Flash click to view [mielczarek.org] extension, which only downloads and plays flash content once you've clicked on a message replacing the original content.
No more of those ugly beasts for me, and I still get to see all legit flash sites.
Re:Not just pop-ups (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed, and at the risk of Slashdotting a good guy's website, I'd highly recommend this flash blocker [mielczarek.org]. I installed it a couple of weeks ago and now I don't have any more Flash ads. Its improved my web surfing immeasurably. The trouble with Flash ads is they (usually) have so much animation in them that they draw the attention from the text of the article I'm trying to read. Some sites are now so Flash-ad heavy they're unusuable. Flash Click-to-View is a wonderful tool that lets you view only the Flash content you want to see. Let's hope they incorporate it into the main Mozilla build soon.
blocking ads at its source (Score:1, Informative)
Besides using browsers which allow popup blocking (like Mozilla) this is one of the best methods to ignore them all.
Install this good example of useful data and be happy
Not just browsers... (Score:5, Informative)
...but firewalls and AV software as well.
My hard drive blew up last week, and when rebuilding my system, I skipped ZoneAlarm and installed Kerio Personal Firewall [kerio.com] instead... an incredible piece of software if I do say so myself, but it also has built in ad blocking (and configurable to add more blocking).
Not that that matters too much since I am using FireBird, but a two pronged approach is better than one.
Its getting worse, Television AD's come to the web (Score:5, Informative)
Beginning tomorrow, more than a dozen Web sites, including MSN, ESPN, Lycos and iVillage, will run full-motion video commercials from Pepsi, AT&T, Honda, Vonage and Warner Brothers, in a six-week test that some analysts and online executives say could herald the start of a new era of Internet advertising.
The new ad technology, from Unicast, an advertising company based in New York, invisibly loads the commercial while unwitting users read a Web page, then displays the ad across the entire browser area when users click to a new page. The resulting ad is identical to TV, whether the user has a high- or low-speed connection. The company says the technology evades pop-up blockers, but the person can skip the ad by clicking a box.
thanks, no need to remind me to add your servers to the Hostfile Project
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Appalling... (Score:2, Informative)
Host File from Hell (Score:2, Informative)
it blocks over 62,000 different ad servers. So all I get is a blank space where an ad is suppost to be.
Enjoy!
Re:Feh (Score:3, Informative)
Here a couple that I have used:
mvps.org [mvps.org]
yoyo.org [yoyo.org]
AC
No pop-ups with Google Toolbar, Firebird/Mozilla (Score:2, Informative)
But I have not found a solution for Flash-overs, that is, flash monstrosities that overwhelm the content of a page.
It's so incredibily annoying I'm beginning to understand why we need to repeal the ban on automatic weapons in the workplace.
Anyway, how about a "disable Flash" button? Or just a STOP THE MOVEMENT button to make a freakin' page readible without needing Dramamine. If newspaper ads twirled, flipped, burped and gyrated I'd meet the paperboy with a full metal jacket each morning until it stopped.
.
.
.
.
Medication? Yes I took it this morning, why do you ask?
Evade Blocking Software (Score:2, Informative)
And on a completely unrelated note, DoubleClick's stock price dropped today, an astounding 53%.
It's sad, because they just don't get it (tm).
Re:Not just pop-ups (Score:5, Informative)
It also allows wildcarding, so instead of having to block every single fastclick server, you can just have "*fastclick*" in your preferences and you get 0 ads from fastclick (the one who serves the "1000 free smiley" ads).
Re:Not just pop-ups (Score:3, Informative)
So depending upon whether the sites u visit use which tags, the plug-in may or maynot work.
Re:Not just pop-ups (Score:5, Informative)
It also can block flash, iframe and java, javascript as well...
see mozdev [mozdev.org] for install.
DISCLAIMER: MS IE (l)users need not apply!
Re:Poor Windows XP users... (Score:3, Informative)
notepad c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Edit to your hearts content - then click on file, then save.
To close off notepad, click on the "X" in the upper right hand corner of the notepad window.
Much worse... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Flash Manager? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
On several windows 2000 boxes I ran into periodic CPU spikes to 100% by SERVICES.EXE (about once every 15 minutes).
Eventually I realized that I had allowed Spy-Bot Search & Destroy to install its hosts entries to block popups and other sites.
It seems windows was reprocessing that file (it was quite huge) every few minutes, and was having a hard time with it.
Not saying this will happen to everyone, but when i deleted that file and hand made a smaller one, the slowdowns went away.
Using stylesheets to block ads (Score:3, Informative)
*[src*='/ad/']
*[src*='/ads/'],
*[src*='/Ads/'],
*[src*='at
*[src*='doubleclick'],
*[src*='bluest
*[src*='us.a1.yimg.com'],
*[src*='ad
img[src^='http://images.slashdot.org/ba
display: none !important;
}
embed[type="application/x-shockwave-flash"][w
display: none !important;
visibility: hidden !important;
}
embed[type="application/x-shockwave-flash"][w
display: none !important;
visibility: hidden !important;
}
Re:Not just pop-ups (Score:3, Informative)
cLive ;-)
Remove Flash (Score:3, Informative)
The reason is testing issues not anything to do with third party SW per se.
One benefit is that I had to reinstall Flash. I didn't get around to doing it for a few days and I realized I could live happily without it.
Try it you might like it.
Re:Feh (Score:3, Informative)
Re:DNS level blocking? (Score:3, Informative)
I already do this. There's two components:
Yes, this can be bypassed by hard-coding IP addresses in, but if that starts becoming common I'll respond by adding firewall rules that return appropriate ICMP errors for the netblocks involved.
And the neat thing is that, while it takes a techie to set something like this up the first time, copying that setup onto a new LAN is utterly trivial.
Re:Not just pop-ups (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe we can condense this down to a reg expr.
[Adblock]
*.ad-flow.com/*
*.ad.*
*.advertisi
*.banner.*.*/*
*.bluestreak.com/*
*.fal
*.fastclick.net/*
*.instacontent.net/*
*.qksrv.net/*
*.ru4.com/*
*.spinbox.net/*
*.v
*/*.advertising.com/*
*/CurrentB
*/ad/*
*/ads.*
*/ads/*
*/adserver/*
*/advert*
*/banner.*.*/*
*/banner
*/bannerads/*
*/banners/*
*/marketing/*
*/q
*://*.*/*468x60.jpg
*_banner.gif
*a
*atdmt.com*
*banner.swf
*chkpt
*doubleclick.*
*i.i.com.com/cnwk
*mediaplex.com*
*tribalfusion.com*
ht
http://pagead2.goo
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?*
http://stats.cashring.com/ads?*
http://us.a1.yi
http://us.imdb.com/google/
http://www.distrowatch.com/images/kokoku/*.
http://www.resellerratings.com/price-direct-
ToolsInternet Options... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not just pop-ups (Score:5, Informative)
But for those of you that don't, or have applets popping up elsewhere (like AIM), I'm working on a java ad blocker that allows you to block specific classes from loading. So, if the JRE gets a request to load a class you don't want to load, it can be replaced with a null, or a junk applet, or any other class you like.
I'll put up my blocker (requires JDK 1.4 and the ability to set flags for your JDK -- anyone using the Windows Java Plugin should be fine) at http://tklancer.net/javablocker [tklancer.net] in the next few days. It's fairly basic right now -- just a class file, some preference files, and that's it. The process is pretty simple, though -- load a page, note that sucky annoying ad applet loaded, go through the log file I write to disk, and add the class name to the block file. Restart your JRE, and it should be blocked.
Re:Not just pop-ups (Score:5, Informative)
The rest of my filters are just various adservers like doubleclick, etc.
It should be noted that it is a good idea to consolidate these filter lists in AdBlock as much as possible due to the way the algorithm works. The longer your list, the slower the page will load.
Re:Not just pop-ups (Score:2, Informative)
Honest to god...it gives me a headache otherwise.
Re:Poor Windows XP users... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not just pop-ups (Score:1, Informative)
If adblocking gets too effective (Score:4, Informative)
For example, I recall once saying that I thought a feature of one of our ads was obnoxious and would certainly cost us sales. So, my boss said "let's test it", and we went over to the graphics department, I described the changes I wanted, an artist made them in a few minutes in Photoshop, and my boss purchased 25k impressions of the new banner. A couple hours later, we had complete stats on how this banner had done compared to other banners we'd run in the same time on the same sites, and knew by exacly how much my banner was worse than the others.
We constantly tweak our banners, measuring the results. It's very Darwinian.
What this means is that online advertising isn't like, say, TV ads, where if people skip the ads with Tivo, no one is really going to notice, because there is a lot of fuzziness between showing ads TV ads and getting more sales. If people use banner blockers, we'll notice right away, and be able to tell exactly how it is effecting our ads, and that will be reflected very quickly in what we are willing to pay to show banners, which will in turn very quickly be reflected in what the ad companies will pay websites for banner space.
There are a lot of useful sites that will simply go away if too many people start blocking ads.
Re:Does advertising have to be annoying? (Score:3, Informative)
Kills 90% of the stores out there. Then remove the terms once you're looking to buy again.
Re:Feh (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Does advertising have to be annoying? (Score:1, Informative)
Some pop businesses will buy a big load of product and act as "resellers". Once the product sold out, all the customers (pop viewers with spyware installed) saw the popup 100 times, any potential buyers where found. They start over with another product.
I know the spyware from Total Velocity [totalvelocity.com] does this (and a lot more).
The actual creator/distributor is "Santa Monica Networks" (smni.com).
They start by analyzing the most popular searches and web sites for the last few weeks or months, from the data accumulated through the spyware.
Then they find a related product, and make a "test run" of very few popups (~1000), not enough to create a wave of complaint. If sales are good they buy a big quantity for a good price. (Good is a 2% click on pops and 2% sale on clicks for clients recently searching or surfing for a similar product).
The Spyware, an autonomous EXE, opens a seperate IE process, so no embeded add-on pop-up blocker works!
Here is part of the term of use(from Kephyr spyware library) [kephyr.com] site:
"By using the Software, you may be exposed to contaminated files, computer viruses, eavesdropping, harassment, electronic trespassing, hacking and other harmful acts or consequences that might lead to unauthorized invasion of privacy, loss of data and other damages."
To add insult to injury, most of the soft. dev. done offshore in Estonia (www.smn.ee) and Lithuania (www.smn.lt), are involved (?) [www.smn.lv] in several "network" and "network security" groups and consulting partnership (like at CISCO [cisco.com]).
If you need to research them for your MBA or something, the business is:
Santa Monica Network Inc (SMNI.COM)
227 Broadway st. S.304
Santa Monica 90401
Lead Engineer:
Alex Karelin (original creator of the spyware)
alex@smni.com
Re:Not just pop-ups (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Some popup blockers are not implemented correct (Score:2, Informative)
You can thank the webmasters that won't serve pages unless the server thinks the user has accepted the pop-ups. Expect more of the same. If you have a real need to use popups, add a note to your content saying so. I myself would try to find a way to do what needs to be done without them, as this practice will only become more prevalent.
Web Learning and Similar Apps also affected (Score:2, Informative)
I work for a company that makes e-learning software. Our customers' biggest headache is popup blockers, because the specifications for standardized e-learning (such as SCORM [adlnet.org]) require that learning content pop up in a new window, separate from the student's list of e-courses.
There are, at last count, 103 different software programs, browsers, toolbars, and security applications that block popups. Many users don't even realize that they've got them turned on--McAfee or the Google toolbar just "did it for them." So we get calls when users can't run the certification courses they've paid hundreds of dollars for. And the cost of supporting 103 different popup block strategies is horrendous.
Popup windows had a legitimate use, that's why they were invented. Popup spammers and scammers destroyed that usefulness, and the popup blockers are causing some serious "collateral damage."
This stinks. I don't know the solution.