New Wave of Web Ads? 197
jdkane writes "This report from CNET news that "Internet marketers are promising a new generation of online advertising that's more effective and less annoying than some current methods, but they could have a hard time convincing jaded Web surfers they're for real."
It appears to be evolutionary but certainly not revolutionary. Apparently we all need less advertising, and just enough so that we find it acceptable. Sounds like the advertisers have to be running out of slants on this web advertising thing soon. Most of this is rehashing or reforumulating old ideas."
From TFA (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:From TFA (Score:1, Interesting)
Integration could also mean 'data'-heavy adverts, i.e. advertisements containing a lot of useful or entertaining content, e.g. the BMW short films.
Paid content isn't always bad or ad-heavy btw. Sometimes people pay to display on the idea that the exposure alone will generate enough sales to break even or profit, without needing a hard sell.
Content for adverts
Re:From TFA (Score:2)
At any rate, realize that advertisements are playing for your free web content. Too much of it is annoying, the right amount of it is quite fine (ie, I do not mind Slashdot's advertisements at all, they are there, but non intrusive. Google is e
Re:From TFA (Score:2)
It's good news for people who like making fun of people who use Windows.
Re:From TFA (Score:4, Informative)
The ad-killing features (popup blocking and the Adblock [mozdev.org] & Flashblock [mozdev.org] add-ons, specifically) in Mozilla work just as well with the Win32 version as they do with other versions.
Re:From TFA (Score:2)
I still use Proximitron... mainly because I've been using it for years, and I have many personal filter writen for it to override many annoying features I find in many websites I visit on a regular basis.
It not only blocks ads and other annoying crap, it lets me modify damn near anything sent to my browser. That is a -GOOD THING-.
Anyway, I would like to point out an ad based system that I go for all the time: Salon [salon.com]. I used to have a subscription to Salon, becuase I really like it, thought it was good,
Re:From TFA (Score:2)
It means funding for websites like Slashdot. Unless you'd prefer to make 'micropayments' as you browse.
Re:From TFA (Score:2)
Re:From TFA (Score:2)
The best ads (Score:5, Insightful)
Are the Google side-bar ones. Yet again, Google got it right. The ads are
Every other ad-system I've seen has fallen down on one of those. All hail Google.
Simon
Re:The best ads (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The best ads (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Open web business
2. Keep doing innocent things that make people think you're a GOOD company instead of an EVIL one
3. Start advertising
4. Profit!
Re:The best ads (Score:5, Insightful)
These ads are sucessful because the advert is the content of the site, and they are displayed to people who are actually interested in what they are advertising.
Re:The best ads (Score:1, Interesting)
Besides, I don't like the idea that a privately held company under U.S. law can track my way through the web. This was the primary reason DoubleClick was introduced to my hosts file and that's
Re:The best ads (Score:5, Interesting)
A year ago I was part of a .com that did advertising via Google AdWords and Overture's partner sites. For our advertising dollar, AdWords was the most effective search-engine. (There were other, more-effective forms, but I'm sticking with search engines for this discussion). We'd easily drop $2k/mo into Google's coffers. If we hadn't throttled our campaign, we would have gotten double that. The people who clicked on our ads a) were specifically looking for something that we offered and b) were fully aware of the fact that they were (gasp!) responding to a paid-for advertising.
What I cannot fathom is why marketing people seem to all believe that people have to be tricked. Ad agencies are tripping over themselves to come up with the next "killer" stealth technique. Why? Can someone please provide some insight into this? Why is more effort put into convincing a large audience that they need what you're selling instead of finding the people who are knowingly seeking your products/services?
Re:The best ads (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The best ads (Score:2)
Just curious... I've been playing with AdWords lately and have found lousy clickthrough rates even though I'm advertising on very specific keywords that only fit exactly my target market.
--D
Re:The best ads (Score:2)
Basically I was specifically looking to buy what I was searching for, and the links on the right provide an easy way to find stuff. It is a lot easier to sell me stuff when I am actually looking to buy it in the first place. The last time I can remember was when I bought a 9-in-1 SD/xD/CompactFlash/etc. drive for my computer. The important point to remember here is that I was actually looking for a place to buy it, not just randomly surfing.
In general, I think a lot of the advertising has it complete
Re:The best ads (Score:2)
I have often wondered about the same thing - my conclusion is that the biggest reason is the profit motive - especially for sales people who work on commission (where they are rated on number of items sold). Obviously, there is a tradeoff, do it too much (and get caught) and the repurcussions are there (just see he [google.com]
Re:The best ads (Score:2)
Well, speaking as someone in advertising/marketing, I can say we DON'T all believe this. I
Re:The best ads (Score:2, Insightful)
I think those should actually be outlawed. My wife has a mild seizure disorder and I had to make sure her computer is configured with NO flash enabled and animated GIFs turned off. Imagine what happens to epileptics who don't know how to shut that shit off upon seeing some god awful flashing animation. There's no reason for them other than to incite seizures IMHO.
Re:The best ads (Score:2)
I don't agree with you that they should be outlawed, but I do think creating an promoting a "seizure safe" guideline would be prudent. I'll tell you right now, as somebody who does animation for a living, I'd read it very carefully.
Re:The best ads (Score:2)
Good bye subscriptions (Score:2)
Then a little less than a month ago I decided to look into AdWords. I made quite a few pennies the first day. And the next and so on. My site isn't even that big or popular since I successfully hosed it with the subscriptions. I also completely overhauled the site shortly before trying AdSense which is
Re:The best ads (Score:2)
I frequently do this with regular non-flash banner ads if they're advertising something that looks interesting. I don't click on Flash ads, though, because I can't right-click to open them in a new tab. I can, however, use the menu that appears when I right-click to stop their playback.
Great example. (Score:2)
Look at that, they are listed right there with huge megacorps. Sounds like it is working pretty damn well to me.
Re:The best ads (Score:2)
Right... untill you start encrypting things, you should not consider anything you do onlien to be private.
Are you sure nobody's rights are trampled on? I know I can control whether my browser connects to Google's servers. But if I send email to you, how can I be sure my mail won't end up in Google'
Downloadable ads, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
If by "downloadable" they mean my browser might automatically download and install it if I don't configure my security settings correctly, I'm not going to download it.
If they mean it's just something I can manually download from their website if I so choose, I'm still not going to download it.
That takes care of me and pretty much every other tech-savvy surfer out there.
Now we just have to worry about that rather large chunk of population that constitutes "everyone else."
Re:Downloadable ads, eh? (Score:2)
Of course no one will want to visit the site with that requirement to begin with, but somehow I think that will be the requirement to get the 'content'.
Re:Downloadable ads, eh? (Score:2, Insightful)
And that's a very big twinkie! Think of all the comet cursors, toolbars and other parasitic junk that have been loading user PCs for years. It must be morbidly entertaining to run something like Ad-aware on some machines after a couple years of accumulated crud. (Less entertaining to run the scan a week later and clean the same stuff off again!)
We think you're stupid! Click here! *sigh*
Re:Downloadable ads, eh? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Downloadable ads, eh? (Score:2)
I've had to do that a few times on my niece's Windows98 system before she went off to college (god only knows what shit she's got on her new system there), but she went 3 years with no virus scanner and no spyware checking. She was always complaining about how slow her computer was so I popped on over and removed the 250+ spyware components installed on her computer, along with 7 vir
Re:Downloadable ads, eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
It was great fun seeing how much crap was on my sister's machine after only one year of use with completely ignoring my admonitions to never use IE or OE and to never install anything but let me do it. She let her virus scanner expire and "only" had 19 separate viruses and well over a hundred spyware items installed. Quite remarkable it still booted at all when I think about it.
Of
Re:Downloadable ads, eh? (Score:2)
Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Web Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
If webmasters suddenly lost the money they receive, and had to pay out of donations or their own pocket, I think you'd see many more sites simply going under.
I really hope that pop-ups and pop-unders dissapear (and it's likely this form of advertising will be smashed to bits by Microsoft's pop-up blocker going in to IE6 in XP SP2, like most people here I already have a browser that does this) but you're not going to get rid of them entirely. In an ideal world web space would be free and unlimited and we wouldn't need adverts, but the Internet is controlled and financed by corperations in capitalist economies, and as such there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Re:Web Advertising (Score:1)
I suddenly had the thought that if Microsoft were like the U.S. government, pop-up advertisers would be lobbying like crazy for them NOT to include a pop-up blocker in the new IE. Good thing Microsoft doesn't need to run for office.
Re:Web Advertising (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Web Advertising (Score:1)
Flashblock (Score:5, Interesting)
A combination of tab-usage (makes pop-ups easy to spot), plus image blocking and FlashBlock [mozdev.org] gets rid of the most offensive ones, for me.
Turning image animation off also makes the web far more usable.
Re:Flashblock (Score:2)
Re:Flashblock (Score:2)
If you're using Firefox, try Nuke Anything [mozdev.org] -- just right-click on the offending object, select "Remove This Object" and it disappears. Also very useful when dealing with badly designed pages where images and tables overlap the text.
Re:Flashblock (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Flashblock (Score:1)
AdBlock is probably the single most useful Mozilla extension.
Re:Flashblock (Score:2)
I had been using Squid for years with an ad-blocking [taz.net.au] add-on. After my home server's hard drive crashed, I reloaded Gentoo onto the replacement drive, but left off Squid and configured Adblock on my other computers (running a mix of WinXP, Linux, and Mac OS X). It's worked so well that I'll probably just keep things this way. It's especially handy for my notebook, as it saves me from having to switch proxy settings every time I move between
Re:Flashblock (Score:2)
Re:Flashblock (Score:1)
Re:Flashblock (Score:2)
Re:Flashblock (Score:2)
Re:Flashblock (Score:1)
Re:Flashblock (Score:2)
The inference I draw from your post is that you believe that it is somehow dishonest to block ads. Do you really believe that it is theft to go and make a cup of tea while the adverts are on TV, or have I just misunderstood you?
Re:Flashblock (Score:2)
I've absolutely no idea what in my post gave you that idea, but it does happen to be very true. I tend not to respond at all to advertising. In those few instances where advertisers manage to get a message through to me against my wishes - I actively boycott them. Simple.
Re:Flashblock (Score:2, Interesting)
Your suggestion would only work with honest people. Easy enough to make a browser that claimed to want advertising, even fetching the ads, running scripts, but never actually displaying anything on the screen. Short of
Re:Flashblock (Score:1)
Re:Flashblock (Score:2)
Okay, so to get around this I'd need a proxy that (1) identifies the interstitial ad (2) downloads it but does
Re:Flashblock (Score:2)
In other words.. most users on Slashdot are flame bait... hmm, could be true indeed.
Re:Flashblock (Score:2)
You are aware that Mozilla and IE can coexist on the same computer, right? You can keep using IE where you must (for me, it's only used for Windows Update and installing the Platform SDK) and start using Mozilla for everything else.
Nothing new here (Score:5, Insightful)
"Relevant" ads... (Score:5, Funny)
So, something more relevant than, say, ads for coitus when I'm browsing for male and female DB-25 connectors?
Or vice-versa? I mean, if I were browsing for DB-25 connectors, a relevant ad would be "What century are you from?"
On second thought... (Score:3, Funny)
Now that I think about it, some of those banana plugs are terribly terribly sexy. I might not mind them interrupting my double-headed-anal-dildo browsing experience.
Re:"Relevant" ads... (Score:2, Funny)
New wave of advertisements... (Score:5, Funny)
I can just see it now... "Man... I may be in my college's computer lab, but damn I feel like shampooing with Herbal Essences right now!!"
Just imagine the pornography ads.
Re:New wave of advertisements... (Score:2)
You need a signal beamed into your brain to want sex?
Product placement... (Score:5, Funny)
How much money is actually made with these ads? (Score:5, Interesting)
I for one... (Score:3, Insightful)
ugh
-G
Re:I for one... (Score:1)
We here at Microsoft agree (Score:4, Funny)
Buy Microsoft Products
AH go on, go on
You know you want to
Theres cocaine in them
Means just another instance of Action canceled and (Score:5, Informative)
Action canceled
Internet Explorer was unable to link to the Web page you requested.
The page might be temporarily unavailable.
and maybe a couple of addditions to my "restricted sites" list.
ho hum
Re:Means just another instance of Action canceled (Score:2)
Re:Means just another instance of Action canceled (Score:2, Funny)
Already seen it, annoyed by it (Score:2, Interesting)
One is downloading a "WM9" plug-in to play video and audio in a little 80x80 box. Nothing like having an advertisement for the movie about the kid and the porn star next door get everybody prairie-dogging at work.
Just as bad as the eyeblaster, pop-over, pop-under, scroll down, overlay, scroll-across, click-through, media-intercept, content diversion, pop-up, console, "content-rich" flash, flash, Java "shoot the monkey", roll-over, animated .GIF, and every other damn thing before it.
consumer-wise (Score:5, Interesting)
This is shown in animated push ads that gives the consumer no choice about viewing the ad. The ad downloads and begins to play. There is no way to stop it. There is no way to pause it. You must watch it. There is no analog to this intrusion in any other medium. On TV ads appear once in a while, and that is an opportunity for the viewer to take a break. The net is a much more interactive experience and not suitable for the intermittent viewing of tv.
We also see the crap about click through rates and viewing. This is also from television. Some fly by night company puts an ad on the TV and measures success from the number of viewers that call in. Again, the web is not TV. Most users are not as completely the mindless zombies of the TV. For one things, much of the web is still text based, and reading requires much processing (decoding/comprehending/analyzing) that watch tv.
Then there is the issue of pop-ups and third party servers being significant security risks. MS pushes these technologies, but MS has never put the security of the consumer over the bloat and ad-centric IE.
The ad model needs to be primarily based on print medium. Ads are sold in bulk and no guarantee is made about who will see the ad. Branding needs to be a primary purpose. Any animated ad must have a play button.
Also, like print ads, the advertisers must give away something of value in exchange for the click. As usability studies cite, the user must be told of the value of clicking or registering. It must not be assumed that the consumer is obligated to do these things. Once the user clicks, the promises must be met. One of the biggest problems is the fraud perpetrated by advertisers(which happens in the offline world, but online the reprecussions are swift and merciless).
SO COMPLAIN! We are not powerless here! (Score:2)
i recently contacted Saab because of an incredibly intrusive full-page 15-second ad on the NYTimes that I had to look at 10 or 20 times a day. Even though I could click through it, I was sick, sick, sick of that ad very quickly. I received a reply from Saab saying they were sorry I didn't like their ad, but NO ONE ELSE [emphasis mine] had complained about it.
So com
Amusing (Score:2)
says jdkane on ad-riddled Slashdot...
Re:Amusing (Score:1)
(Text-main page setting on
Re:Amusing (Score:2)
Re:Amusing (Score:3, Informative)
http://adblock.mozdev.org/
Makes the web a nicer place.
I still like ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Bigger.
More information.
Nice design.
Sounds Familiar (Score:2, Informative)
At least we should be able to find a way around it.
Re:Sounds Familiar (Score:2)
AdSense is pure, unadulterated evil (Score:5, Insightful)
Vibrant Media talks about how Motley Fool and other big-name sites are putting in these bogus links and hardly any readers complain, so no one else should worry about doing it.
Every publishers' and journalists' group in the world has an ethics code that prohibits mixing editorial and ad content.
To me, Vibrant Media's, "These well-known sites are doing it so it's okay," pitch is exactly backwards. Sites that use this ad method are sites that have decided their readers' trust is worthless. They're effectively saying they value a few short-term dollars more than they value long-term credibility with their audience.
We're just starting to see online media get a bit of credibility. This Vibrant Media nonsense will set that back if it spreads -- or perhaps it'll kill credibility only for sites that use their fake links, and serve as a "litmus test" for which news sites are putting out honest stories and which have whored themselves to the point where they can't be trusted.
As an honest reporter I couldn't work for a publisher that would pull this crap, but it seems that more and more managements are susceptible to short-term profit pressure at the expense of honesty. I suppose, sooner or later, I'll need to find another way to make a living and post my work to a blog I control myself instead of working full-time as a journalist. So it goes.
Re:AdSense is pure, unadulterated evil (Score:2)
To summarize TFA... (Score:2)
180solutions =~ GAIN
Vibrant Media, is making headway with a system that delivers ads through links attached to keywords in the text of news stories and other articles published on the Web.
Vibrant Media =~ TOPText
Less annoying than what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Less annoying than...
Reprogramming the browser's toolbar, sometimes even removing the back button.
Collecting private information without consent.
Slowing computers to a crawl, and sometimes even crashing them.
Making the users home (default page when starting) a bunch of advertising, and disabling ways for them to set it back to something desirable/useful like google or yahoo or whatever they originally had.
Detecting ads placed (and paid for) by the website authors, and intentionally displaying other competing ads on top of them.
Well, I supposed to get any MORE annoying, they'd have to do something like completely disable your whole computer until you scan in a receipt for one of their advertiser's products.
The article mentions they're planning to intentionally add hyperlinks to existing web pages as the browser displays them... similar to Microsoft's (abandoned) Smart Tags. But unlike Microsoft, which has the power to make those links visually distinct (the plan was a purple squiggle underline, visually similar to the red one under misspelled words in their word processor)... these slimey adware crooks are going to have to make their added links look exactly like legitimate links placed in the html by the author.
Yeah, that's less annoying than a wave a unstopped popups, expecially porn, drugs, mortgage and other commonly pitched crap. But not much less annoying to anyone who actually "surfs" around by clicking on links.
As a website author (who's put in a LOT of work on hundreds of pages for my own site over the years), I personally find it really annoying that someone visiting my site is going to see a bunch of links in MY html that I didn't write and I don't endorse. I put a lot of work in the site and there are many links to products and other sites... but I only make links when I know the remote site has good, valuable information or a solid product I can personally recommend. It really pisses me off that someone who's fallen victim to this new adware/spyware is going to have my intented links mixed in with a bunch of links to all the questional products and services that are willing to stoop to the lows of these slimey adware companies.
I hope someone sues them into oblivian over making unauthorized derivitive works (copyright), or maybe trademark violation, or maybe injury due to modifications interfering with business, or anything else. These slimey bastards deserve to be put down.
Is it still april 1st ? (Score:2)
Download an ad serving program ?
Re: downloadable (Score:2)
Google AdSense (Score:2)
AdWords are the only online advertising that I pay any attention to, mainly because the ads are targetted to the site I'm visiting. CatOfTheDay [catoftheday.com] has ads about cats. Not washer-dryers, credit cards, local car dealers, or prescription drugs. Cats. That's why I went there. So why shouldn't their ads reflect that?
Chip H.
Bring it on baby! (Score:3, Informative)
2. http://adzapper.sourceforge.net/#install [sourceforge.net]
3. http://martybugs.net/smoothwall/adzap.cgi [martybugs.net]
Get them. Do it.
Try all you like, you filthy, rotten marketeers, but you won't be peddling your wares in MY house...
Hahahahahahha!!!
I think the solution is simple. (Score:3, Funny)
If they give me that small, finite amount of cash, I'll watch their ads. And I promise I won't set up a network of computers all over the place that will also watch their ads, thereby giving me cash. I'd never even consider such a thing. *bats eyelashes innocently*
My perspective: ads are good (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My perspective: ads are good (Score:2)
Re:My perspective: ads are good (Score:2)
Have you ever heard of a book? Have you ever been to a library?
You act like all information in the world is expensive, and everyone must be forced to pay, over and over, to get bits of it.
Books are far more expensive than web content for two very important reasons. First, books are much more in-depth than any online content I've ever seen. Reading a book on
Too little, too late (Score:3, Insightful)
Best of luck to anyone trying something new, but by now the attitude is that online ads must die. I don't see there being a cease-fire at this point. Something marketing folks might want to keep in mind: Internet users are not the ones who started the war.
JR Gets The Word (Score:2)
Jim Rapoza of eWEEK has been hammering at these morons for quite some time, trying to get them to understand that no one can build up a business like this. His quote at the bottom here says it all. JR has the word.
Spyware Needs to Go
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1396972, 0 0.as p
More Than A Nuisance
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,113 0527,00.as p
Pop-up Ads: Bad for Business
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,154 2836,00.as p
Why a new wave? Because advertisers do not target. (Score:2)
The cardinal
Ads keeping the Internet free? @!*# (Score:2)
Two or three adds from one particular location maybe. This would still amount to several ads an hour. It's like when we were all in grade school and our teachers proudly said that they believed they should give each student 1 hour of homework each night, the problem being you had six other teachers who thought the same way. If it's true I'd only get a few ads a day, how will this be profitable for the ad company and partner? Oh, wait... it'll be pro
AMEX Ads (Score:2)
Maybe these people should stop trying to find the most insidious "integrated solution" and take a page from American Express.
Recently, the ugly stepsister of the credit card world has launched a campaign of web-only ads in which Jerry Seinfeld teams up with an amimated Superman. Link: here. [digisle.tv]
The thing is, these are indeed ads, but they have a few very unorthodox characteristics:
1. Amex lets the user decide whether they want to see the ad. As far as I know, you have to willingly point your browser to the
And this is why we have SpywareInfo.com. (Score:2)
And we don't have ads on our site. ^_^
Re:HOSTS file (Score:2, Informative)