We’re still in the slow news period, so let’s talk about something we discussed before: blocking advertisements on websites. Up until, well, today, I didn’t block ads – not because of some ethical objection or whatever, but simply because I couldn’t be bothered to setup AdBlock. Today, after taking a closer look at some of the websites I frequent, I decided to take the plunge and install AdBlock on all my machines. The following set of screenshots should pretty much explain why.
In the screenshots below, I’ve indicated the ratio between actual content and crap (ads, navigational nonsense, social media junk) on the story pages of several popular websites – including OSNews itself. Red is for advertising, blue for navigational elements, and green for actual content.
As you can see, there are several high-profile websites – such as Engadget and Ars Technica – which have almost no content available above the fold. Mind that I have a fairly large display, so the height of my browser window is 878 pixels (I don’t maximise windows). Since most people use displays with far lower resolutions than mine, this means that most people see even less content – if any at all.
One particular trend that’s been emerging as of late is to start stories off with large generic images that supposedly tell you something about the story at hand; Ars in particular has been very active in this department. While this looks nice on paper, the end result is that the stuff you actually want to see (content) is pushed below the fold in favour of some image that barely tells you anything and is supposedly funny but never really is. I didn’t label these types of images at all – I wanted to label them pitch black but I’m guessing some people may actually see this as content rather than crap.
I’ve got two good players as well. As much as I often disagree with John Gruber, his website is an oasis of common sense and peace. It has its UI weirdness (story titles are outgoing links, except on the longer items – arbitrary), but overall, it’s a beacon of light in the darkness that is the web.
Time to toot my own horn (a weird expression if you ask me, but alas); OSNews is looking pretty good here. We only have one large blue blob, which is our list of small news items. Technically, you could classify this as content, but since we’re talking story pages, it’s just navigational stuff.
All in all, when I saw this I realised I had no choice but to install the AdBlock extension on my Chrome installs. Can someone please create NavigationalCrapBlock? I want to get rid of most of the blue stuff as well.
On some sites there are more annoying popup scripts. I added http://noscript.net/ to firefox. It´s a little work in the beginning but now I´m glad to have it.
Basic plugin is “adblock plus”
Edited 2010-08-18 14:30 UTC
I’d really like to support OS news, so I usually have an exception for adblock on the site. But apparently IO forgot to add the exclusion on my last OS install. Sorry.
But now I’m running into a really annoying gnash bug. When pause mode is enabled by default the screen for the flash add is huge, covering most of the story. I can’t even see the subject line I just typed. Not OS news’ fault. Maybe I’ll have to disable the pause mode … Any other suggestions?
Update: The bug doesn’t have much to do with pause mode. It still happens when disabled, but not always. Not sure what that is.
Update #2: And suddenly the bug disappears altogether, regardless of pause mode. So, I can keep it disabled on the site!
Edited 2010-08-18 14:32 UTC
My suggestion to webmasters is to make the site unreadable when ads are blocked.
They better host some unique content, as otherwise I wouldn’t have any regrets in removing their website off my bookmark list.
If you are blocking ads, I am sure they would be glad to see you gone, since you cost them money every time you visit.
Not necessarily. If you link to the site from social media, other non ad blocking clients will visit, making them money than they would have gained from the ad blocker alone. But in general, you’re right you should do something to help the site owner prosper.
Add comments, share with friends, something.
But I’m not blocking the ad. The ad is blocking the content! As a consumer, I do believe that I have the right to protect my computer from malware. There have been several cases of malware delivery via ads. Therefore, I have no other choice but to block ads which could harm my computer.
Just ignore the fact that none of those malware programs were written for my Operating system. That’s besides the point.
And as a side note, you cannot tell weather an add is visible or invisible to the user. Any attempt to magically determine that on the webserver is usually doomed.
One thing you also have to get in account is that not anyone have broadband (this is one of the reasons Opera I think is popular in Russia) and removing ads may mean a big deal for reading some lines of text.
I had never used Ad Block until about 2 weeks. I actually got used to the web being littered with ads. Used to it enough that I could cope with it anyway.
What drove me over the edge to install Ad Block (and Flash Block) was the advertisers that started using audio in their ads. I’d go to a web page and be bombarded with loud music or an annoying radio-style advertisement. Sometimes I couldn’t even tell which ad was producing the offensive noise, with no noticeable volume/mute buttons and no animations which you’d expect to go with the sound.
This crossed my line of acceptance.
“couldn’t be bothered to setup AdBlock”
not that you have to work with it. it’s less than a few clicks to setup any adblock extensions.
“Can someone please create NavigationalCrapBlock?”
It’s called the Reader in Safari. Or you can do anything with Greasemonkey. There was also an addon for Firefox to hide different boxes (by tag, id/class) on a website. But is there anybody who uses it? It’s so unuseful to block site navigation.
Edited 2010-08-18 14:34 UTC
FYI, there’s also a Readability bookmarklet http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ as well as a Firefox add-on https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/46442/
And there is also a script to block Readability here: http://www.scriptol.com/how-to/safari5-reader.php
You may consider it interesting that Safari Reader is actually using the code from the “Readability” project.
This is awesome!
I use this firefox extension, RIP (Remove It Permanently) to remove blue navigation content or any other stuff that I don’t want to see ever.
Its pretty cool : http://rip.mozdev.org/
You could also use Adblock to hide just about anything. Alt+B will start the selection mode and then just click on the thing you want to hide and it will go away. Be careful not to hide something important! You can always go back into the extension’s block list and remove what you added, but it may be difficult if you have a long list of manually blocked items.
For Thom: you can do this, i.e. block (read “hide”) anything on any page, in Opera, using the “Block content” menu entry in the contextual menu, on a general basis or on a site per site basis. But I know how you feel about Opera…
For Firefox I use Remove It Permanently. This does just what it says: RIght click any object, choose remove. It’s gone. It will be gone the next time you come back to the page.
This is sufficient for my purposes since I don’t need to use it often.
Doesn’t adblock use subscriptions for blocked content? Should be easy enough to make one for navigational blocking to? No?
I like FlashBlock more than adBlock.
Some flash ADs made my PC like crash..
To get rid of the blue crap just use the RSS feeds (or similar)
Isn’t it enough???
..when nothing but stupid Psystar ads were showing up on the site.
I haven’t seen a Psystar ad in months. Right now, I’m really getting annoyed by the ads with rollovers (especially the MeeGo ad).
Yah… Adblock is turned off for osnews, but if that meego ad doesn’t go away soon (and those other stupid expand on mouseover ones as well) Adblock will be turned on for osnews.
OSNews is the only whilte-listed website in my adblock installation. Why? Because they asked kindly
I’ve used adblocking tools for most of the past 10 years now (I used a local filtering proxy back then). I hate advertisement.
Yep, David Adams (on behalf of OSNews) asked the readers this about a year ago: http://www.osnews.com/story/21476/A_Note_About_Ads
Never before or since have I seen such a polite request to voluntarily consider ads, and even to contribute.
Ars deserve to keep ads a lot more than OSNews in my opinion …
Flashblock, sure. Dialup, sure. Mobile browsers, sure but on your broadband-enabled desktop, it’s a bit of a dick move to deprive the sites you frequent of their largely exclusive source of income. Especially when, even if you don’t consider the content, you’re still leeching their bandwidth. I used adblock up until I actually thought it through. I use flashblock simply as a matter of necessity. I didn’t want to be the kind of hypocrite who groaned about paywalls popping up, when I helped to create the problem.
I also thought about that. However, if they don’t want to pay for their bandwidth why do they put up tons of content.
Yeah, I know they have to live from something and I disable Adblock on sites I visit regularly. What I really hate are flash ads and sites that have mainly advertisements without content. That’s why I like it. Stripping of advertisements makes it easier to find the actual content
On the long run I am afraid this will cause tons of advertisements in videos (and flash).
It’s really a pretty hard topic.
Oh, currently I have no adblock at all, because it doesn’t seem to work well using Firefox 4 beta. Most people install it when ads become really annoying. Sounds and movements when you want to read an article. That’s stupid!
“Mobile browsers, sure but on your broadband-enabled desktop, it’s a bit of a dick move to deprive the sites you frequent of their largely exclusive source of income.”
Not for old crotchety bastards, it ain’t. Those of us who were online in 1992 remember when no-one but ISPs made any money on the internet, and yet we still ran web sites (or, y’know, gopher…) and talked to each other and stuff. My internet’s never had any ads on it, thanks.
I provide the bandwidth and content for my blog myself, and offer it to everyone gratis. There’s no ads on it. Reciprocally, I’ll read your content the same way, ta. Works for everyone, in the end.
Until recently, I was using ClarkConnect (now ClearOS) on an old computer as a linux router; it has an adzapper feature which means any device on your LAN can browse ad free. I switched to eBox recently and there are instructions on their forums to do the same thing.
As for the navigation crud, there’s often a print button on articles which can basically get rid of everything including the 2 paragraphs per page that some sites use. It’s not automatic but it’s generally worth taking the time to click it. If you have nothing better to do, a simple greasemonkey script can probably click the button automatically.
I don’t block anything, I consider it a fair trade, like broadcast ads: content for a pair of eyes in front of an advertisement.
I subconsciously block them out anyway. If things get really annoying with sound or ads that burn up CPU on my laptop, I may consider some other solution, but it hasn’t been a problem for me yet.
An aside, I find the content on ArsTechnica is generally of quite high quality (not always, but nothing is perfect), and the actual ads on the page are pretty minimal, considering. Also, those big images that sometimes lead stories are pretty well composed, and often hilarious, I wouldn’t want to trade them out.
In the end: I’d rather have a site with less optimal layout and excellent content than a site with a high content/space ratio where the content itself is of low quality.
Agree, I really laughed when Thom compared OSnews, site that rips other sites news and rewrites it with opinions like BLOG, to Engadget which EMPLOYES atleast 3-5 people and makes original reportages. So yes they have more ads because everything costs more to them, but atleast they benefit economy.
No, I don’t use adblocker because last thing I want to see is amount of news sources to get smaller and smaller. So maybe next time you see original article in OSnews, Engadget or any damn site turn off your adblock and give something back to them, support the hungry journalist.
I’m extremely tolerant when it comes to these things, but at some point, a limit is reached. When my web browser shows NO content above the fold, then something’s wrong. Plain and simple. It’d be like going to the movies, and have 3/4 of the screen permanently covered in advertisements. You’d be pretty pissed, right?
I simply draw the line here. Good sites will be unblocked, obviously.
Nonsensical comparison. Engadget isn’t a small endeavour contrary to OSNews, Engadget is part of a rather large company, owned by AOL, with boatloads of funds on their side. The same goes for Ars Technica.
You’re basically comparing the local bakery (us) to WalMart (Engadget/Ars).
I’d like to mention that you, Thom, were a bit fast with your blue color on the OSnews screenshot. 🙂
http://www.osnews.com/img/23698/osnews_edit.png
In my opinion, the right side of the screen, titled “News”, would deserve a green colour, or maybe green/blue striped. Allow me to explain: As there is no “Read More” that leads to more content extending the few lines short summary on the main page, the right side is the content (which gets enriched by the comments section when selected); maybe it’s just secondary content (in opposite to primary content that you coloured green), but still, it’s much more than navigational elements.
I furthermore may express that I agree with the amount of navigational content stupidly integrated with the main content. Where is this for? To substitute the browser’s navigational functionalities which often are much better? For example, when publishing pictures, what’s the deal of NOT just opening the picture (as if you typed the picture’s address into the address bar directly)? Why does there have to be a stupid animation slowing everything down, taking exclusivity (blocking everything else), showing a “waiting time entertainment object” (jumping ball, spinning wheel, whatever), and then finally loading the picture in a sized-down version, preventing the “go back” functionality of the browser? Today’s browsers do handle such basic navigational things much better than the built-in stuff in some web pages – and depending on the browser, customized keyboard or mouse actions are allowed.
How about not just going those sites, instead of ripping them!
FFS these analogies, firstly Wall Mart is a fucking store not bakery but that’s not important. Are you just silly or blind? Engadget might be part of big company but it’s valued as individual part, make no profit and they are cut out.
Going to the movies cost you money.
Watching the free channels on TV usually do get your screen 100% covered in ads from time to time tho
(I also use adblock btw)
I really hate ads that popup wherever and whenever they like, ads that blink like police lights, ads that block the whole page.
If these ads were removed from the web I would gladly turn adblock off. Until that day comes, adblock will accompany me every moment of my browsing time.
I like when you mark up the screenshots with colors. The way everything is laid out, the ads and navigational crap all blur together in my mind. (I use NoScript on Firefox, so I usually see a lot less junk, but it’s still bad enough.)
I also hadn’t consciously noticed how big and prevalent those supposedly humorous topical images have become. I think you might need a fourth color for pseudo-content, because they are far too large to be ignored.
Minor language point:
Actually, the correct expression is “toot my own horn”, which makes a little more sense. (“Toot” means to blow a horn or other wind instrument, typically in short bursts.)
Oblig: http://xkcd.com/757/
Yes! You don’t know how many times I’ve wished I had an air horn on my person.
I use CSS / AdBlock / NoScript for several reasons, not related to advertising.
* Security: Letting any site include third party Flash / JavaScript is insane. The web has a fundamentally broken security model and NoScript is the only fix at the moment
* Speed: Bad web design practices can cripple the speed of a website when relying on third party sites. With blocking the speed is noticeably better
* CPU / RAM: Same. Flash is horribly slow, wastes CPU, wastes battery and cripples the browsing experience on an Atom processor
* Content: Too many websites have too much crowd-spam, social-junk and utter worthless UI. http://camendesign.com/art/if-i-designed-engadget
My site is my haven for content-only and none of the crap that plagues other sites.
OSn5 will massively improve on OSn4 when it comes to a focus on the actual content and none of this stupid fluff that plagues most sites.
Fully agree on the security and speed.
Also I would like to add, I don’t want to be tracked by all these idiot companies:
http://www.osnews.com/post?n=23698
I specifically don’t use Facebook, etc. because of this.
I don’t mind if you collect some statistics, but don’t go combining every source of information like that.
Many months ago there was an ad on osnews which was sending ‘AJAX’-requests every 15 or 30 seconds to track how long you where on the page.
Enough is enough, I really don’t want this.
Edited 2010-08-18 15:49 UTC
There even exist software products that enable a content provider to obtain statistics about your mouse movements (giving hints to your reading habits) when you visit their sites equipped with such technology. I’m not sure, but I believe there is a market existing for implementations of such (and even more!) concepts that “watch” the visitors of web pages in order to get information that can be turned into individually “taylored” advertising content later on.
The FireFox Ghostery plugin is supposed to allow the user to block that stuff.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9609/
What? The hell froze over?
I thought Thom was a strong anti-adblock advocate because ads are the only revenue stream for news websites.
I’m sure this sort of analysis has been done before, but is worth repeating. Although the Ars and Engadget intro images are definitely too large, I do enjoy images thrown into stories. As I’ve found in my own design excursions, my minimalist text-based tendencies just get a bit boring. For example, I think the intro images on jubakpicks.com definitely add something.
Personally, I use flashblock because of flash being annoying, but I let other ads go because, like others have said, it is a way of supporting the sites I use. As long as a site keeps the ads tasteful I’m okay with it, and in general I browse very professional sites so it isn’t a problem. What I would like disabled are those stupid tooltip ads because they often pop up not when I intentionally hover over them but when my mouse is simply passing over on the way to something else.
Oh yes, these are the true plague in my web browsing experience.
I’m not afraid to use Adblock on sites with really annoying ads. With that said lately there’s been this annoying hover ad on OSNews that covers content sometimes and I’ve never been able to click it off. So I’ve been tempted…
But OSNews is actually one of the better examples of a site that put’s it’s readers before annoying ads. I haven’t found half the annoying crap I’ve seen on other news sites and blogs. (hover text/keyword ads, video ads with the sound on by default, hover ads that move across the screen, page redirect ads “skip to content” etc.)
I always see it as the webmaster/siteowners job to make sure the reader isn’t annoyed by the ads. If they fail me badly enough I have no qualms about using adblock to reading another site altogether.
AdBlock for Chrome lets you interactively block sections of pages. Begin by pressing Ctrl-Shift-K. There is a slider for choosing how much or little you want to block. You can also go into Extensions and click on AdBlock’s “Options” to see or edit the list of what you have blocked.
I always thought the expression was to toot one’s own horn, as in to play one’s own theme, sing one’s own praises. Touting one’s own horn does make much more sense if you are a horn maker who is proud of his work 🙂
Every notice how ‘lately’ people start to create more content as a video instead of text ?
I know people here already complain about the podcast, but that is just extra content.
But when you start moving the real content into a video that is so much worse.
I completely agree with you. They even do it for things that makes much more sense if it was just done in text.
Sometimes I need to look up something, for example how to do something in Lisp, and I can only find a video.
Not only is it anoying because I don’t have flash (and gnash isn’t there yet) Also the 10 minute video contains only a paragraph of information, you can’t really skim it, and it can’t be indexed by any search page.
On topic:
The web is really starting to look like crap. (Altough remeber the geocities pages). I have a filtering/concentration disablity and that used to be no problem, now it’s extremely tiresome to browse the web.
I am starting to move to Links as my webbrowser more
and more, not because it looks cool (it does
) but because AdBlock/FlashBlock and NoScript don’t cut it anymore.
Links really ? that is just sad that it has come to this.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that one myself. Screencasts might be a good way to show how something works, but they’re also often overkill – some text and screenshots will do almost as good a job, without forcing the visitor to spend time watching the video.
For a content only experience you need to install the readability redux plugin for Chrome. It gets rid of navigation bar, side bars, footers, headers, etc so you focus on content only.
I have 3 extensions on Chrome; Adblock, FlashBlock and Readability Redux.
Personally I use GlimmerBlocker for ad blocking. Works great and isn’t just tied to one browser.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Chrome’s version of AdBlock only hides ads; it doesn’t actually block them. Well, at least that’s how the add-on worked in said browser when I last tried both (that’s around 8 or so months ago).
The one for Firefox, on the other hand, has always blocked and hidden ads. Have things changed recently?
A feature was added to webkit to allow blocking the download of content now – so I believe the current (or upcoming?) version of AdBlock does indeed support blocking of ads entirely.
Personally, I’ve been using AdThwart, since it also blocks youtube ads allegedly (I haven’t really tested this theory), and also worked better at the time that I chose.
I pay an annual fee to have no ads on OSNews. I wouldn’t mind doing the same on some other sites. They could even band together and creat a “premium” ticket that allows you you visit a whole group of sites with no ads. I’m just saying.
On a similar vein – Slashdot for example provides a complimentary “Ad-free” mode once you’ve “contributed” (moderated, commented, submitted stories, etc.) – I think this is a nice idea for sites who are largely driven by user-generated content.
I’m pretty laid back with ad block/flash block.
I love Safari Reader, as it lets me “get all the ads” yet still read the article in relative peace, when it works.
My current #1 on my hate scale are “rollover ads”. OSNews is most guilty of this right now with this Mee Go ad (or whatever). If by dumb luck your mouse floats over the top banner ad, it happily expands, obliterating the content until you hunt down and find, and hit, the close button. These are just awful.
I used to run a flash blocker, now I simply tolerate it. Flash block used to be enough simply because it got rid of the most annoying ads, especially those with sound.
But with the rise of HTML 5 ads, Flash blockers will become less and less effective.
Eventually I may go back to the /etc/host ad death list. That always seemed to work best if a bit brute force.
Taking Thom’s examples, I think some sites deserve to get paid. I’m an Ars Technica Subscriber and see no ads there. Their content looks even better without ads and they give you some extras like access to the PDF library and the ability to see articles in a single page.
I think that’s the better solution for me as I’m not into installing AdBlok and blocking advertisements.
Some sites look so bad this days due to advertising that I don’t visit them at all.
Also, Safari Reader is great for relaxing and reading because text is really big and you can lean on your chair and read from a greater distance.
Listen, paywalls are NOT the answer. Like it or not, ad based revenue bringing you the content you want is the best arrangement anyone has thought up yet. You do NOT get to filter out the advertising you feel like ignoring when it is that website’s only means of generating income. It’s theft, plain and simple. If you use adblock/script block you are a no good, filthy, scummy thief. Don’t dance around it, call it what it is.
The fact that this got voted down 4x just goes to show that the internet generation is a generation of sociopaths. Sorry to hear that your comfort is infringed on by having to deal with some ads. There is no sense of personal integrity, no sense of responsibility, no sense of community in the majority of the under 30 crowd. Sad.
Seeing as many ads work on a pay-per-click basis, wouldn’t I have to click on all of them to really avoid being a sociopathic thief?
I’m just going to ignore your rant about viewing ads, since that was already cleared up by righard and Gullible Jones.
I am so sick of hearing this. Every generation for the past 100 years or more has been complaining about those young whipper-snappers, how they are so entitled, so ungrateful, etc. Yet if anything, the general population has become more educated and responsible over time. I guess it’s human nature to think that your generation is somehow better than the generations younger than you, but that doesn’t mean that it’s true.
Feeding the troll…
first of all: As the dictionary defines stealing: To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
If I go to some site and read it without downloading there virus ridden ads, I do not take that text, the text is still there when I leave so I haven’t stolen anything.
Secondly, Most times I use Links as a browser, it does not display images, Am I a filthy scummy thief for using a different browser?
Thirdly; I once got a can promotional soda when walking in a city, I drank it but didn’t really look at the can, or any of their advertisements (It could’ve been poison
. Did I steal that can? Are you calling the police? … I bit cliche but never mind that; Am I stealing when going to the toilet during commercial breaks?
Lastly; As already noted here, most ads a payed by click, must I click all the ads to not be labeled a thief? And if not,… Must I read and look at all the ads because if not why not just block them.
Many sites run on the income made of advertisement, jolly good for them. This system is however not full proof, I can get the content without downloading those ads and there is not a law that can stop me doing so. It’s fully legal, and if the content providers don’t like that they should have found another business-model.
I have white listed a handful of sites (adblock on chromium). But does that help the sites? Do sites get paid from clicks or views? I never ever click on ads so is white listing helpful at all?
Actually a better blocker I’ve found is AdThwart for Chrome. While with firefox I’ve been a longtime user of adblock I’ve found AdThwart to be much more reliable, check it out.
… and is the reason why I never bought into Google’s browser – it was lacking proxy setting for too long.
Also running No Script on FF, as well as Google Sharing for anon search, Better Privacy to delete Flash-cookies and Ghostery for blocking otherwise invisible crap.
I am not sure though why Thom makes a news item out of the fact that he personally awoke to something a decade late that quite frankly is the most standard thing for anyone using the intertubes… well, good for him, better late than never
I think this is an article, because Thom always said we should support the website-builders, because they need adrevenue to run the site.
Those annoying roll down ad’s are still showing up FYI…
Fixed the OSNews screenshot for you…
http://twitpic.com/2fy3yc
I admit OSNews is better then most though
I don’t really mind ads (unless they are the in your face mouse over kind) but the main reason I install Ad-Block at home is for the security. For every Warcraft account you have heard of being hacked (Blizzard has said it is around 1/3rd of the player base) the biggest reason is that the people is just looking at a normal site but there was a bad ad on the website. Of course some would say it is the persons fault for not having the latest flash… but still someone could come up with a new hack that flash hasn’t fixed yet.
At work we are allowed to look at website (I work for a US government subsidiary btw) and I got a virus from an ad… I wasn’t looking at a ‘bad site’ it just happened to be a fake company was able to purchase an ad through Google adsense and it was bad… You know how slow the government is to do things (including updating computers)… but to me that is the biggest problem with flash at the moment.
I’ve used Opt-out before it went on to become the foundations for Adblock (and/or was it Ad-aware?). The point is I could never stand the advertising that even in 1998 already was excessive, with all the blinking and the fashionable scrolling banners etc.
I recently tried Chromium. With a hosts file only and no ad blocker installed I hardly saw any advertising at all.
Some of the ads I hate most (because they tell nothing but lies and try to brainwash you):
1)Newsmax
2)Scientology
Of course I block them both. That means that I have to block all of Google AdSense.
Sorry Google, be more selective.
Are there ads that aren’t full of lies and brainwashing?
That is true, but there are various degrees
If they are trying to sell you something, I don’t find it too bad.
But if they try to change your life with their false ideology, that goes too far for me.
Edited 2010-08-18 19:11 UTC
I keep adblock off for OSnews and other sites I frequent that do not have an obscene amount of ads or pop up flash ads. But “if” OSnews or any of the other sites I have whitelisted start going overboard like so many sites I’ll turn it back on.
I don’t have a problem with ads unless they go way overboard which many sites do. This is also a major reason why I no long subscribe to Cable or Sat TV nor magazines. The constant in your face ads makes any use of the medium useless.
Edited 2010-08-18 21:08 UTC
I like to support the sites I visit frequently – mainly Ars Technica and OSNews, so I whitelist them.
However, I am seriously considering blocking ads on OSNews. Why? Rollovers.
The MeeGo ad is especially annoying. You just move your mouse down the page, and suddenly, the ad is covering half the screen, including some of the content.
I have no problem with discreet, well layed-out ads. But I’m tired of advertisers thinking that their junk is more important than the content I want to see.
Honestly, I have never bought, or even considered buying, something I saw on an Internet ad. That’s the fundamental problem with advertisements: they try to get people to buy things they don’t need. I know what I need. If I don’t have something that I need, I go buy it. Therefore, ads will nearly always show me things that I don’t need or already have.
I don’t mind ads IF they take up less than 25% of the width of the screen.
I don’t mind ads IF they are not animated.
I don’t mind ads IF they don’t try to steal information from me (meaning anything I don’t explicitly say they can know about me.
I don’t mind ads IF they don’t cause something to pop up on the screen.
I don’t mind ads IF they don’t block any content for even a millisecond.
If you have a website and it meets all the above, then I don’t mind ads and I don’t block ads on your website. If you web site does NOT meet all the above, then I DO block ads on your website.
It’s as simple as that.
PS: I also use the Safari Reader so that I have a clean experience when reading articles.
If the ads meet my criteria and are actually possibly something I would be interested in, I will click on them. But not if they don’t meet all the above.
“I don’t mind ads IF they take up less than 25% of the width of the screen.”
What the hell is “25% of the screen”? I would think that would vary widely based on the aspect ratio, size, and resolution of a given screen… never mind the fact that some people (myself included) never maximize windows any more, due to the increased overall resolution of modern displays and the advantages of having different windows in different locations of the screen for easy switching.
Small or not, ads still get in my way. Period. They’re all blocked, have been for years, and will likely be blocked for as long as there are ads. In other words, as long as I’m using the Internet, since they’re likely to only get worse.
And what if they start taking up 25% of the vertical space of the screen (once again, whatever that is…)
Edited 2010-08-19 02:01 UTC
So, according to your list, you would like advertisement that
* take up less than 25% of the width of the screen,
* are not animated,
* don’t try to steal information from you,
* don’t cause something to pop up on the screen, and
* don’t block any content for even a millisecond.
But what would that be, then? Real content? 🙂
Honestly: All the things you described are essential (any maybe neccessary) elements of advertising – without them, it would not work. Gaining attention is the main goal. Obtaining information is a means to get the right “attention inductor” for every person. And it needs to be annoying, exclusive, aggressive.
Totally agree here, except that I may say that I experience less advertising than the average user as I have removed “Flash” (as the main carrier method of advertising) from my system.
Keep in mind: “Flash” is today what animated GIFs were in the past, enriched with sound and forced interactivity. 🙂
Also agree here. Sometimes, maybe in 1 / 1000 cases, there really might be something that is interesting enough to really deserve exclusive attention – and maybe even lead to an actual product buy.
I’d like the ability to block everything about Microsoft on websites including all variations of their product names. Now that Yahoo is basically part of Microsoft, I also want to block everything about Yahoo and their products also.
Any ideas? I don’t buy or use their stuff so why should I have to see articles about them or their products?
Edited 2010-08-18 21:57 UTC
For me it’s the contrary. I used to run AdBlock since I knew about it (I think it was in firefox 1.5’s days), but some months ago I decided to stop running it.
Why ? Because…
1/Using AdBlock is stealing money from the website’s income.
2/It can (rarely) accidentally block legit content or damage a page’s visual structure.
3/When I use AdBlock, I have a false opinion of websites which use ad. I only judging them by their content, not by things like the kind of ads which they allow. Now, if a website is so full of ads that it is unreadable, I just leave it. Much better this way.
Edited 2010-08-18 22:50 UTC
I get so bloody tired of this “it’s stealing”, what a bunch of horse crap. Same logic could be applied to ads ares “stealing” my bandwidth that “I” pay for.
Not if one uses a decent adblocker and isn’t too aggressive. The only real hammer I use personally is use my host file to block domains like doubleclick, the malware it’s pushed is way too overboard.
The obsessive use of ads on most websites today is the reason why adblock is so popular. Just like most mainstream magazines and broadcast media renders their content useless with the shear amount of extreme ads they saturate their content with. They went overboard and adblocking is the result of their greed.
I run a site and I have zero ads other than a couple of causes I champion. But it’s small, unobtrusive, unlike in your face flash garbage.
Well, if some media are so greedy that they don’t care about they customers, they just deserve one less user in my opinion.
This is one of the reasons why I almost never listen to the radio or watch TV. Though the “mute” button of the TV was a great invention in that regard.
About magazines and newspapers, those I read have again a reasonable amount of ads…
If everyone considered things this way, it would like as a mean of natural selection : only those who have a reasonable ad policy would survive.
Oh please, every other week now some site I go to decides to add more crap like intelitext or some massive box that is impossible to close as the close button scrolls with the page and is visible for such a short amount that a Quake twitcher hooped up on enough caffeine to kill an entire herd of moose couldn’t click it.
It’s better to use a scorched earth policy to the ads and judge them by actual content and community. If the greedy site owners want to get butthurt about adblock they are welcome to block adblock users in return if we really are leeching them of sooo much money.
It would have never become a problem if they had any sense about it they wouldn’t have gotten the ire of anyone that has figured out hoe to google “advertisement blocking”, what makes them think anyone on say HardOCP would care about an ad for Tide on a motherboard review page? Fun fact, this is what you actually get there.
If they want something less stupid they could use the IP address and the page content to find the product or equivalent competing products and their prices from shops that ship to the country that your IP is allocated to.
I hate advertisements, especially on web sites. I don’t care what the revenue stream means to the web site proprietor. I started blocking such nonsense years ago when the pop-up phenomenon started hitting IE on Windows. Naturally when I switched to Mozilla Firefox, ad-blocking became easy and much more sophisticated thanks to Firefox’s built in pop-up blocking and third party add-ons. Many advertisements treat the reader like an idiot. Most adverts are obnoxious, in-your-face annoying, and usually peddling something most users don’t need or don’t want. To adapt an old Lesley Gore song: “It’s my computer and I’ll block ads if I want to…”
Because on this very site on this very forums their an ad that takes up half the page everytime I mistakenly roll over it. I think you need a mirror. At least Ars ads are out of the way and they have rules about how ads behave on their site. Fix you shit first then talk shit about other sites.
Opera has had fairly good ad blocking capabilities for a while now. Throw in Gestures and a host of other features and well. Here I am.
Those ads shown on your example pics Thom are disgraceful. Taking up almost half the screen real-estate. Welcome to the blocking crowd.
Oh and I also hated those flashing adverts that would distract my attention whilst I’m trying to read something.
Yes, ‘Im happily using Opera for many years now. Its built-in (!) ability to open pop-ups in the background (new tab, no switching) was a great feature for many years. Sadly, pop-ups are more and more moved into the web site itself – not requiring a new tab, but instead covering the content one wants to read, and even moving along with the content when scrolled. Still, Opera (with no “Flash” installed) can turn unviewable articles into something one can read; the functionality “author mode / user mode” can also help here very much (e. g. by removing all pictures and CSS attributes, leaving the text one is interested in).
And just imagine the “fun” if you’re on a real small screen! 🙂
Simplest psychology, very basal behavioural control.
I don’t recall whether Chrome has an equivalent but under the Linux version of Firefox/Iceweasel/Icecat you can go to edit -> preferences -> content then uncheck the box next to “load images automatically.” You’ll still get important things like search and login boxes as those are rarely presented as images. Plus, you could just switch to lynx, links, etc. to use from your favorite terminal.
-Gary
the only ads that annoy me are the ones that CONTINUOUSLY pop over text as i read, i mouse over text as i read. and sites with in-text ads are impossible to use. for example vibrant media, can’t use the site. have to block vibrantmedia.
I went in the opposite direction. Early on I started with adblock. Then I killed gif animations, then any “marquee” scrolling text, then flashblock followed by noscript. After reading an article on here I was motivated to uninstall adblock.
At that point I realized that the ads weren’t what bothered me, but all the stupid crap that grossly tried to get my attention…all the animation.
I do see thom’s point though. On some pages the size of the ads gets in the way of getting to the information I want to really see.
I used to love the WWW 10 years ago when it was plain HTML – it was quite readable – http://web.archive.org/web/19990429045044/http://www.gnu.org/
Those guys, however, are still trying to keeping it simple. Nowadays, I can’t imaging browsing without AdBlock and FlashBlock …
How about those annoying flash ads that stretch over the content without an exit button even covering the text? It normally happens when you accidentally hover the mouse over the ad. I’d put these in the same category as those annoying hidden audio ads.
Edited 2010-08-19 10:40 UTC
For a broadband connexion, why not keeping everyone happy ?
Creating a plugin that only Hides ads from screen – exactly what my brains does anyway – but letting website believe that it is downloaded and displayed ?
is it that impossible ?
If only AdBlock existed in real world too (and a spamassassin in may paper mailbox)
I believe that is exactly how AdBlock for Chrome works. Chrome has no mechanism for extensions to prevent things from downloading, so it just hides the ads.
Wrong. AdBlock from Chrome doesn’t download them any more.
Do you know of any extension that does download them? Because I have plenty of bandwidth, and I wouldn’t feel so bad about blocking ads on OSNews if I knew that the advertisers had no way of knowing (since I never click on ads anyway).
I can’t remember when it was, but it wasn’t too long ago that Thom was asking everyone to not use ad-blocking software on this site. I mean as I am writing this, there is a huge ad above this comment block for Jimmy Johns. And OSnews is making money off of it. Granted, OSnews isn’t banking a million a day, but it’s helping OSNews pay for the server costs. So, I am really not meaning to be a troll or even trying to be spiteful, but if you feel that way, take the ads off of OSNews.
Having said that, you may argue, “OK, but OSNews doesn’t have as many ads as Engadget or Gizmodo.” My response to that (and again, not in a spiteful way) would be, “OK, but I don’t think OSNews is generating the same kind of traffic that Engadget or Gizmodo is.” So, more traffic+more server load+more bandwidth used=more $$costs$$.
The weird thing about writing this is, I hate ads. I don’t know why all of a sudden I am coming to the defense of those sites with all those Ads. Because at the end of the day, I do agree with Thom that the content of these sites are getting mixed in too much with ads.
However, if the content is still visible to the best of a web designers ability, do I mind having ads that do not block the content from me and that support the content providers without my personal financial contribution (i.e. enjoying the content for free)? No. I will gladly have Ads on the page so I can enjoy the content for free and still help the content provider gain some type of financial contribution from a 3rd party. And I understand the more high-traffic sites I vist, the more ads.
There used to be a time where you couldn’t enjoy content for free…you had to buy the newspaper or a magazine AND it still had ads. Having ads on a site is a good alternative to paying for internet content. I agree with Thom that it sucks, but I don’t think we should just shut down the ads. Maybe, we just need to let those sites know, “Hey, stop showing me ads of XXXXXXXX.”.
I run Firefox with NoScript in Private Browsing mode with animations turned off without Adobe Flash. I still see ads, which I don’t mind, but I refuse to put up with moving, popping up, animated crap.
Thom, would you please caption the images so we can see what site they come from? The color layer makes it hard to read (at least on my monitor), and I don’t recognize a single one of them.
You can click on them.
On the other hand, you need to fill a web page with something 🙂 ……..
Let’s active adblock for OSNews too, and let it die by having no revenue anymore …
Somebody said their internet has never had ads and neither has mine. I block ’em all and let God sort them out.
Forget this notion that we have some obligation, moral or otherwise, to view ads. The content providers publish their content with ads. We did not ask for the content, and have no right to demand the content, it is published solely at the will of the publisher/creator.
We have the right to use our eyes, bandwidth and computer in any manner we choose. If we want to tape paper over the screen to keep from seeing parts of content provided by publishers/creators or use some more technical means, that is our right.
Once more, they get the choice to not publish or publish in any form they wish. We get the right to not view or view in any form we wish. Any of those choices of actions have consequences that must be borne by the party choosing the action.
I’m willing to deal with the potential consequences of my actions. But seriously, quit telling me, essentially, that by viewing content I have entered some quid pro quo arrangement with the provider that obligates me to look at ads. This is sheer fantasy.
And by the way, get the heck off my lawn.
Edited 2010-08-20 18:09 UTC
Too bad, I can only vote you up.
Too bad, that common sense is thrown out when people get on the ‘net.
And too bad, that clear headed, reasonable statements like yours have become a rarity on the ‘net.
Again, you don’t deserve just a “+1”, your comment should actually be shown as ending statement of this article.
Almost all “news” websites that have ads exist for the ads profits and not the “news”