Yahoo, Adobe To Serve Ads In PDFs 213
Placid writes to alert us to a new channel opening up between advertisers and our eyeballs: PDFs with context-sensitive text ads. The service is called "Ads for Adobe PDF Powered by Yahoo" and it goes into public beta today. The "ad-enabled" PDFs are served off of Adobe's servers. The article mentions viewing them in Acrobat or Reader but doesn't mention what happens when a non-Adobe PDF reader is used. The ads don't appear if the PDF is printed.
Ad "Enabled" (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah. Soon to be "Ad Disabled" once my proxy is updated.
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If the ads show there too, I am pretty sure there can be a way to disable them
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http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php [foxitsoftware.com]
"In the future all software will approach the condition of muzak"
Just what I need... (Score:2, Interesting)
What genius came up with this stellar idea?
Re:Just what I need... (Score:4, Insightful)
Adverts sure don't work for me. If there's something I want I will check for reviews and opinion, a brand and flashy adverts don't persuade me to part with my cash.
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I still find Google's services less cluttered and easier to navigate than Yahoo's. I hardly ever use Yahoo's prima
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Re:Just what I need... (Score:5, Informative)
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http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader_2/pricing.htm [foxitsoftware.com]
The foxit pdf reader is $39. per user. Hardly free.
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Commercial Usage
Generally Foxit PDF Reader is totally free for personal users worldwide for non-commercial use. But in commercial environment, we need you to send us answers to our questions listed below before we could respond to you.
Wonder why they would have those obvious pricing pages.....HMMM
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Not if you're using "Adobe Reader" (aka Acrobat), which is closer to half of a minute on a decent machine.
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Probably the same Genius that will sue Microsoft for "Monopolistic Practices" two years from now once people ditch Acrobat for a adware free alternative to Acrobat. (like XPS)
And Yes I know Foxit exists, but your assuming that Foxit Software still exists. I'm sure that same genius would sue Foxit out of existence before tackling MS.
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urgent need (Score:5, Funny)
Re:urgent need (Score:5, Funny)
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*skitter*
Because the consumer asked for it. (Score:5, Funny)
I wish some of these tech companies would take a hint from craigslist. You can make money and have happy customers.
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Re:Because the consumer asked for it. (Score:5, Insightful)
So yeah, their customers clamored for more ads.
That doesn't apply to Adobe (Score:4, Insightful)
However, Adobe has not been supported by ad revenue, at least not in a major way. They are now breaking into a new business model where they do have ad revenue, but that doesn't necessarily excuse any antagonization of the public just because "hey, now the public is the product, not the customer."
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PDFs are a medium, web pages are a medium.
Many academic conferences now charge for their articles, and as a poor grad student, I would rather deal with some ads than pay for a subscription. Sure, my school usually pays for me through their library, but I'll often come across journals that my school doesn't subscribe to. I'd happily deal with an ad to gain the convenience of accessing them online. At least, I'd like to have that option.
Re:Because the consumer asked for it. (Score:5, Funny)
"Nietzsche is God" - The dead, 1918
Re:Because the consumer asked for it. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Nietzsche is dead" - God, 1900
"He's dead, Jim" - Dr. McCoy
Re:Because the consumer asked for it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or eyeballs?
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)
This problem is no unique to pdf. The community swallowed the feature richness line and chose to ignore the old dictum, keep your data and your executables separate.
How would you like your XML? Would you like javascript as well? How about AJAX?
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This is an option _publishers_ of content will have. I think it's a great idea, actually. I'm quite happy looking at a few ads to get the content of Slashdot, the NYT, Washington Post, Gmail, Google search, practically the whole subscription-free part of the internet. If this model allows some publishers to put out stuff for free that they previously charged for, I think that's great
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Damn you to hell sir!
I'm sure there's someone out there just waiting for this kind of ironic statement so they can claim it is a requested feature.
Hmmmm.... Perhaps I should just shut up and patent the idea.
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Ten points and a hero bickie to anyone that can find a link to any details.
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I believe it has actually been tried - at the OS or video-driver level if I remember correctly.
My memory is vague and my googling poor but I seem to recall that it involved "reserving" X number of lines at the bottom or top of the screen which are "untouchable" and on which only ads would be served up. I seem to recall that it was in the mid to late nineties? Perhaps some other fossil around here remembers.
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Gee, what's next? (Score:2)
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Ya frickin hoo. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ya frickin hoo. (Score:5, Informative)
Explain how this is possible when the purpose of a pdf is to keep the original formatting of the document and be able to be printed and still retain that formatting. The ONLY problem I have ever encountered with pdf files is on a Lexmark printer where I had to set it to print pdfs as an image file. Other than that, no problems whatsoever.
For the record, my last job involved maintaining over 800 printers across the entire state with Lexmark and HP being the most common but also Xerox copiers/printers and Imagistic (ewwwww) multi-function machines thrown in.
My current job has 1/3 the number of printers yet we still encounter zero problems with pdf files.
If you have problems getting pdfs to print, there is something seriously wrong.
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Not everything fulfills its intended purpose. See: Vista.
I've seen all sorts of one-off issues with PDFs over the years. Just 'cause it's SUPPOSED to work doesn't mean it always DOES. See: Linux
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Bah, perhaps you have few problems getting vanilla PDFs to print from Windows. Try it from Linux. Acroread is a turd! xpdf opens almost every pdf we throw at it but since patrons expect acroread we keep it as the default in the patron lab. If (and I say IF) it is no certainty that it will print it. Ok, we aren't using HP printers anymore, and our Oki is not using an Adobe Postscript implemenation but we don't have many
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Explain how this is possible when the purpose of a pdf is to keep the original formatting of the document and be able to be printed and still retain that formatting.
Because the "purpose" of PDF has nothing to do with how software actually uses it. Hell, even Adobe's own reader doesn't format pages exactly the same when you print, vs. what you see on screen -- the default is to scale the pages to account for the printer's unprintable margin area. Which is a STUPID DEFAULT, because most documents ALREADY
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Uninstall Adobe's product and... (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php [foxitsoftware.com]
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I already use Foxit. It installs in the time it takes Adobe to load. If the ads are coming from Adobe's servers, then in theory the ads are in the reader. So get a different reader.
Adobe gives PDF a bad name, and that's saying something. Adobe, what do we hate about thee?
The invasive updater software. The amount of crap it puts on your Add/Remove Programs list in Windows (like every update). The other programs it nags you about installing whenever you update it (which is *way* too often if you
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I think Adobe is very smart to make this move; it'll make them lots of money for exactly the reason you cite here. Even though superior alternatives exist, the vast majority of people will continue to use Adobe's crappy PDF reader, and will see all these annoying ads.
If people are too dumb and lazy
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That's about as far as it goes.
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That's about as far as it goes.
That's exactly right, and that's why I don't see what's wrong with this. Adobe is just capitalizing on peoples' laziness and ignorance. If people don't like seeing ads in their bank statements, they shouldn't use Adobe's reader, but if they're too lazy to seek out an alternative with a simple Goo
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Oh, that's easy. Investors don't want you to just make "enough" money and make cool products; they want constant year-after-year growth in the stock price that's greater than the rest of the market. It's not enough to just have a strong, stable company making widgets, with happy well-paid employees, smooth
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My only gripe is their lack of a plugin for Firefox. Many of the PDFs that I encounter are online, and it's more convenient (for me, at least) to view them inside of the browser instead of launching the program externally.
Of course, given recent events [slashdot.org], no plugins may be a good thing...
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Actually FoxIt has become a pale copy of Acrobat Reader. All things that annoyed me in Reader (the button ad, the constant update reminders), are now fully implemented in FoxIt.
At this point, it was less of a pain to remove it and install back Reader.
Charming (Score:3, Insightful)
now with more annoyance (Score:3, Insightful)
Yahoo vs Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Yahoo, who doesn't seem to get it, simply finds ways to put ads where they haven't been before. Great for the ad revenue, bad for their users.
Is there really anyone who hasn't figured out why Google is such a majority favorite? If not for google, I suspect that flash based ads would still be the standard, and everyone would be experiementing with streaming video ads or some crap like that. Thank god google came along and showed their competition that the business model doesn't require large, annoying ads, but instead a huge volume of well placed ads that appeal instead of repel the user!
If yahoo wan't ad's in PDF's, so be it... all the more reason for me to stick with google.
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If yahoo wan't ad's in PDF's, so be it... all the more reason for me to stick with google.
It is up to the publishers whether they want the ads or not. If ads start showing up for you in PDFs blame the publisher of the PDF not Yahoo.
acroread gives the hint (javascript) (Score:4, Insightful)
it was also the last time I ran and installed acroread, too.
you listening adobe?
xpdf does the job just fine for me, now. are you happy, adobe? (I am!)
what is this going to do to corp america that often does NOT want anyone outside the company knowing that person A opened doc B? much less having outbound and inbound packets eat up your corp network b/w.
bright idea (not!).
then again, people DO seem to be running acroread (win or other version) and so maybe they just don't CARE that scripting and 'active things' happen just because they opened a doc.
Or how bout this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Somehow I don't see a professional document being very professional if adverts are included.
'So you see the fiscal outlook for this quarter were much larger than previous quarters this can be -what the?! Oh uhh, sorry folks, you'll have to bear with me. I clicked 'larger' and I'm being re-directed to a penis enlargement website. If everybody would please avert their eyes from the screen and maybe look at the non ad-laced budget forecast pri
Preview (Score:4, Interesting)
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I have a sneaking suspicion that this won't work in Preview in OS X. At least for a while 'til Apple can get revenue from it. Preview, for those not familiar with it, basically renders Adobe Reader pointless on a Mac, especially because it is about ten times faster than Reader. So for stuff that doesn't require Acrobat Pro, Preview rules.
Indeed, and the lack of the flashing ads that the Adobe reader has stupidly added to the reader is another huge boost for Preview and another hint that this insane scheme won't affect the Mac community.
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I've changed to Preview from Acrobat for viewing PDFs. If Apple is smart, they would announce "Preview for Windows." Put another notch in that halo.
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It's open source and allows:
- Adding and editing notes
- Highlighting important text
- Making "snapshots" for easy reference
- Interaction with LaTeX and PDFSync
- ...
I use it a lot in classes for taking notes.Re: (Score:2)
Preview does allow adding/editing annotations, plus limited text editing.
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Preview is not intended to be a full-featured replacement for Acrobat. It is intended to be a simple, fast, no-nonesense PDF viewer. It excels at the purpose for which it is intended. Of course there is still a place for Acrobat when dealing with complex documents, but to have a quick look at a PDF, or quickly turn a PostScript file into a PDF, or for viewing/printing/exporting
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Shooting the Moon! (Score:3, Funny)
Great. Now PDFs will be even slower and crappier (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, now they want to add ads to these things? I really don't know what to say. I already consider PDFs to be on the verge of being totally unusable. This should push them right over the edge.
Re:Great. Now PDFs will be even slower and crappie (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't with PDF in itself. PDF is perceived as a problem for two reasons:
1) Adobe Acrobat. Get rid of it, for goodness sake. Use something else. PDF isn't slow, Adobe's crappy reader is slow.
2) Web developers cannot resist putting TPPs on websites. What's a TPP, you ask? A Totally Pointless PDF. People: if you have a website, there's one way to get me to NEVER read your content. How? By putting it in PDF. The ONE exception is this: if you have a book or reference manual, then that is an appropriate use of PDF. But tell me that I am downloading a PDF. Don't disguise your PDF as another web page by just putting it behind a normal link. When I click a link, unless I am warned that it's a PDF, I expect an HTML page. PDF just interrupts the flow of the web. Don't believe me? The just google usability and PDF. You'll get lots of stuff like this: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030714.html [useit.com].
PDF is like other overused "web" technologies like flash: useful when used properly, and annoying as hell when overused.
off-topic, but re: sneaky links... Link Alert (Score:2)
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Re:Great. Now PDFs will be even slower and crappie (Score:2)
Also,do not open PDFs in the browser, open them in a PDF reader. One simple browser setting change and PDFs will be a LOT more usable.
The last time I saw the default PDF readers on Mac and Gnome systems, they were fast and had a good interface. I use KPDF (the default reader for KDE) and it is a lot better than reading a Word document - although not as good for readin
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The search box is so much better than the other readers, though, that I can't not use it.
Thanks for the suggestions (Score:2)
Re:Great. Now PDFs will be even slower and crappie (Score:2)
In firefox on windows, drill down through: Tools|options|content(tab)|manage...(button) Search (or scroll) for PDF and choose Change action. Then change it to open in acrobat reader (or whatever else you use) instead of the plugin.
It really annoys me that the default setting is to pretend it's a web page. Especially as the widgets don't map very well: you can't print from the browser's print, you have to print from the plugin, little thi
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Don't use any browser for viewing PDFs over ten pages. Save the PDF to the local drive, close the browser, and open the local copy.
Acrobat Reader as a browser plugin does not load the entire pdf, only the current page. As you scr
Open standards. (Score:3, Interesting)
Good! (Score:2)
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No, PDF is an excellent format. Adobe's Acrobat reader is bloated and shitty, but anyone dumb enough to be using that when there's so many great free alternatives available deserves to look at ads.
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PDF as an idea isn't bad. Sure, a lot of forms need to be preserved as close to the original as possible.
But, PDFs are heavily overused for information that can be better transmitted in more compact forms. For example, how many websites have documents that ought to be in a wiki format (not necessarily editable by the public) and instead are just saved as a series of gigantic PDF files? Some companies are absolutely addicted to putting everything in PDF.
The majority of people I know are not fond of PDF.
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As for overuse, it depends on how you intend to use the information. If it's meant to be viewed on the web only, then PDF really isn't the best format: what looks good on a printed page doesn't necessarily look good on a monitor. A wiki format is definitely better for ma
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The format isn't bloated and shitty (it's a subset of PostScript), it's Adobe's reader that's bloated and shitty, and they want to make it as shitty as possible. There are alternatives out there, like FoxIt [foxitsoftware.com].
PDF as a format isn't going anywhere, since it's becoming the de facto standard format in the print industry.
Good Idea (Score:2, Insightful)
May be a mixed blessing (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm a grad student, I do a lot of research for my classes online, and 90% of the papers I read are in PDF format. For the benefit being able to download these papers, I pay an annual fee for membership in IEEE & ACM to access their digital libraries. If they (ACM/IEEE) could recover their fees through showing ads in the pdfs, maybe I could forgo paying their membership fees and opt instead to download the ad-laden versio
Adobe & Yahoo - Making XPS look even better... (Score:2)
Adobe is actually handing the market to Microsoft.
XPS and Silverlight will become the choice because they are lighter, more featured, and now no freaking ads.
sigh (Score:2)
Dear content providers (Score:2)
From the F'ing Article: "People want content for free"...
I don't necessarily want content for free. I do want manuals for items I buy to be available from your website for free. I happen to also want these without have to hand over my life history. I am entirely okay with paying for your service, product, and content when the quality is worth the price you want to charge. Being smothered in ads and other marketing doesn't actually help you get my money when I have a choice in whe
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--Samuel Johnston
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While walking down the street 'security' cameras will perform face recognition on everybody walking by. The 'search space' problem will be solved by tracking you all day long, so it is a relatively small problem compared to recognizing a random face. Installed during the terrorism craze in the beginning of the century they now serve a different master. Once tracked you stay tracked. Then the advertising kicks in, small, weak laser based units will beam targeted advertising straight
How long until TI's latest chip gets ads? (Score:2)
How long until the first page of TI's latest chip spec gets inserted with an ad while downloading?
If they're gonna imbed advertising in the Virtual Machine [like the PDF* reader, or, God forbid, the Java/CLR/VMware VM's], then how long before some wiseass says, "Hey, let's embed the advertising stream in the silicon?"
[*I read somewhere that - while PostScript is Turing-complete - PDF is not Turing-complete.]
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Seriously, do we really need more ads on EVERYTHING?? I understand the need to get a product's info out into the brain's of all americans, but there is something to be said of plastering them everywhere that has the space.
At least there's always a way to block electronic ads. The meatspace ads are the ones that really tick me off.
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I don't need ads to tell me that there's something new out there. I don't care if there's something new out there. I care if there's something I need. If I need it, I already know I need it, and can find it on my own.
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Also, I think ads in PDF's are a bad idea. PDF's load too slowly as it is.
Correction: Adobe's Reader loads too slowly. The horrific meltdown which occurs when you open a PDF is not PDF's fault, but the software which processes it. PDF itself is a relatively simple data format, although it specifies a lot of features. If you are content to simply read well-formatted text and graphics, you could try a different reader like FoxIt or a free option like xpdf. You'll find that PDF is not a bloated, slow forma