I hate ads

[dan2see]

I was reading The Queen's "article" >** Fade effect when hovering over ads**
and I thought my comment needs a new title, so here it is.

I hate ads.

This is not some new pet peeve. I've been bombarded by ads in every medium since Kraft Velveeta. That means I used to visit my neighbour who was the only household in walking distance, who had a TV with a tower antenna, not rabbit ears.
"Bombarded" is how I think of my reaction to the continual on-slaught of short snappy interesting (ha ha) messages.

So over the years, I have developed tricks and strategies to shield myself from the polution. With TV I click the mute button, and look at the birdies outside the window. Newspapers use a slightly different format for the ads, so it's easy enough to scan for content.

Online, I use AdBlock. When any ad becomes more noticable than, say, your purple line, I can actively block the ad at the HTML level. Usually I will block the entire ad supplier.
For example, the HTML link:
http://ad.doubleclick.net/adi/N4406.613086.TRAVORAMEDIAGROUP/B6550352.2;sz=300x250;click0=http://ad.doubleclick.n ... (it goes on)
I will block:
http://ad.doubleclick.net/^

That's pretty severe, it neutralizes an entire ad-agency's account.

Any audio, any sound at all, will get the instant chop. I hate logos that move. If it's just a multi-phase JPEG, I can hit my escape key and move on. But if it's more graphic and persistent, like the "fat" ad that shows the rolling tummy, it gets the chop. Air Canada has a series of ads where an airplane glides across the graphic. I've blocked that series, as well as every ad that the ad supplier can create. Gone! I have the power!

I don't block everything. Any ad that is less noticeable than, say, your purple line, is acceptable. Although I'm getting good at scanning right past it.

So you've got a problem with folks like me. Or rather, your advertisers have a problem.

I don't know what a good solution for the polution might be. Maybe your advertisers can try to promote more "direct" methods. That might actually work, because I for one don't mind subscribing to web-sites that interest me.

Anyway, I'm very happy to see DaniWeb back online! You might be able to measure my happiness, in the same way your ad suppliers measure their hits. So I hope Your Majesty finds plenty of "success" here, too!

• Daniel

[JorgeM]

Fortuantely, this site provides its members with the ability to disable ads. Just check your profile. Either way, you do realize that running a website is not free. Either this site has to charge for it or have ads to generate revenue.

I am actually surprised at how this site gives its members (non paying) the option to turn them off. This is why I really like this site. The ads are not in your face all of the time.

The other option for those that do not like ads is either to implement some of the measures you mentioned, or just not visit sites that have ads.

[Dani]

Hi,

Thank you for your feedback :) Firstly, however, what "purple line" do you keep referring to?

What a lot of people fail to realize is that advertisers and publishers don't mind most ad blockers.

Most advertisers pay either each time someone clicks on their ad or each time someone views their ad. If you are the type of person who hates ads with a passion, and there's no way you would be interested in looking at it or clicking on it, advertisers paying per view would rather you use an ad blocker so they don't have to waste money on showing it to you if there's no way you would turn into a customer for them. They'd rather save all of the ad views they paid for to only be seen by people who would be swayed by them.

From the publishers side, an important statistic for us is click-thru rate, which is the percentage of people who click on an ad out of all those who have viewed it. This is a performance statistic that is used as a metric to determine the quality of advertising on the publisher's site. Of course, every publisher wants to be able to boast high performing ad units to their advertisers, especially when those advertisers are paying per view. For us publishers, showing ads to people who wouldn't ever click on them is just going to lower our overall performance statistics, and make our ad inventory worth less.

Now here is the big issue that both advertisers and publishers have. Most ad blocking software out these days simply works by suppressing the ads from being displayed. The ad servers still get contacted and register a view of the ad, even though the end-user doesn't see anything. This is bad for three reasons:

• It doesn't really massively speed up the pages for the end-user, since the ad servers are still being contacted
• Advertisers are paying for ad views that are never seen
• Click-thru rate is lowered because ad views are being counted when there's no possible opportunity for them to be clicked on

What DaniWeb attempts to do to counteract these problems is offer all registered members the ability to block advertising from within their control panel. This does it a very clean way ...... The HTML blocks where the ads would normally be placed are entirely removed. First posts in a thread are expanded and no longer smaller to make room for the ads. (Not something you'd be able to accomplish with a third-party ad blocker.) The ad servers are not referenced at all anywhere. And the Javascript to do the fading effect isn't even referenced.

If you just don't like ads and there's no way you would be swayed by them, both publisher and advertiser would rather you be eliminated from the equation.

[adam_k]

I hate ads in TV or the radio, as it feels to me that every 2 mins of movie or show I get 5 mins of ads.
I sometime watch them just to see what marketers are thinking to create new "needs" to the people and then wonder if I'm the only one reading between the lines.
Daniweb is one of those sites that I don't mind seeing ads. There are a couple of banners and a couple of text ads, no pop ups or pop unders, "Congratulations you've won" audios playing in every page I visit or any crapy cheap tricks. I totally understand that every site has expenses and needs revenue, especially if it has turned into full-time job for some people.
Although I can disable ads, I choose to let them be there and generate hits or I'll even click on something either because I find it interesting or I feel bored and there are no new threads for me to reply to.
I appretiate the option to disable the ads and thank Dani for offering it to us, but I can live with this type of ads for now.

[JorgeM]

If you just don't like ads and there's no way you would be swayed by them, both publisher and advertiser would rather you be eliminated from the equation.

brilliant. makes perfect sense.

[dan2see]

Now here is the big issue that both advertisers and publishers have. Most ad blocking software out these days simply works by suppressing the ads from being displayed. The ad servers still get contacted and register a view of the ad, even though the end-user doesn't see anything. This is bad for three reasons:

Hey thanks for that insight, O Illustrious Monarch!

I use AdBlock, which only works on the Firefox browser. It keeps my list of web-sites to ignore, and the user (that's me) manages the list. That part is easy.

I believe it blocks the link action by finding each link in my list, after Firefox has downloaded the HTML page, while Firefox is scanning the content, looking for links to load. When a listed link is to be downloaded, it simply isn't. No online action is taken, and the local HTML interpreter simply leaves the element unloaded and un-displayed. The HTML element attributes are there already, so the browser can display an empty box, the correct size and alignment, even style and alt are correct, but the ad contents is never downloaded at all.

No click, no pop, no access to the advertiser's web-site.

I didn't know about the Dani option to block ads. But I don't mean to block ALL ads -- just the ones that annoy me. Anyway the AdBlock works across all web-sites and apps, so if it blocks Air Canada from Facebook, it also blocks from RockClimbing.com, Netbeans.org, FineArtAmerica.com, and Daniweb.com

[Dani]

As far as I know, as of a year or so ago, the FF ad blocker does contact the ad server and just suppresses its output.

Quick way to test ...

Browse a handful of DaniWeb pages with our ad blocker enabled in your control panel. Then, reenable ads and browse DaniWeb with the FF ad blocker, and see if there's a noticeable increase in page load times.

[~s.o.s~]

At least Ad Blocker Plus doesn't load the page before blocking it, that would be a bad way of "disabling ads" I think. From the Adblock Plus FAQ:

How does Adblock Plus block addresses?

The hard work here is actually done by Gecko, the engine on top of which Firefox, Thunderbird and other applications are built. It allows something called "content policies". A content policy is simply a JavaScript (or C++) object that gets called whenever the browser needs to load something. It can then look at the address that should be loaded and some other data and decide whether it should be allowed. [snip]

[Dani]

At least Ad Blocker Plus doesn't load the page before blocking it, that would be a bad way of "disabling ads" I think.

It's a VERY bad way of disabling ads. In fact, it's the only method that advertisers/publishers have an issue with, and end-users should have an issue with it too!

[edwest]

What's all the rant about?
Just install AdBlock. No more ads on this site or any other site. Problem solved.