I don't think the ads are really funny any more. It's all just game-related stuff or general services like insurance for the most part, and you don't get the off the wall stuff sneaking in there to make threads hilarious like you did a couple years back.
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Do we 'owe' it to game websites to not use Adblockers?
- Thread starter Lord_Nergal
- Start date
I don't think the ads are really funny any more. It's all just game-related stuff or general services like insurance for the most part, and you don't get the off the wall stuff sneaking in there to make threads hilarious like you did a couple years back.
The whole impressions system is flawed by design, placing the blame on users is very short-sighted.
If a user uses ad blockers, it means that user dislike the ads and is much less likely to be positively affected by viewing them, much less clicking on them. This mean that user's "impression" has much lower value. The fact ad-block exists could be used to increase the value of non-blocked impressions.
It's also well known that the demographics that tends towards adblockers is the same that is the hardest to reach through internet ads: tech-savvy young / young-adult males, specially the ones who work in IT. They are known to strongly filter out ads visually and almost never click them.
I used to ad block more a few years ago when flash ads were everywhere. In my entire internet life, I only followed an ad (either clicked on it or googled about the advertised subject) about five times. In three times, they were ads related to my work, in technical sites related to my work. One time it was due to the sheer outlandish claim in the ad and I felt morbidly curious to see it. Only one time I truly clicked an ad out of genuine personal interest in the product/service being advertised. I then decided it wasn't worth subjecting myself to the utter annoyance of the ads I was being subject to and started blocking.
Nowadays I don't bother too much because it seems many ads became tamer. When using Opera, however, I set plugins to manual load, so any flash ad will not play unless I click on them. I also use ghosthery on Firefox because the amount of cross site tracking is getting too disturbing.
What's next? Owing to devs to buy IAP in F2P games?
If a user uses ad blockers, it means that user dislike the ads and is much less likely to be positively affected by viewing them, much less clicking on them. This mean that user's "impression" has much lower value. The fact ad-block exists could be used to increase the value of non-blocked impressions.
It's also well known that the demographics that tends towards adblockers is the same that is the hardest to reach through internet ads: tech-savvy young / young-adult males, specially the ones who work in IT. They are known to strongly filter out ads visually and almost never click them.
I used to ad block more a few years ago when flash ads were everywhere. In my entire internet life, I only followed an ad (either clicked on it or googled about the advertised subject) about five times. In three times, they were ads related to my work, in technical sites related to my work. One time it was due to the sheer outlandish claim in the ad and I felt morbidly curious to see it. Only one time I truly clicked an ad out of genuine personal interest in the product/service being advertised. I then decided it wasn't worth subjecting myself to the utter annoyance of the ads I was being subject to and started blocking.
Nowadays I don't bother too much because it seems many ads became tamer. When using Opera, however, I set plugins to manual load, so any flash ad will not play unless I click on them. I also use ghosthery on Firefox because the amount of cross site tracking is getting too disturbing.
What's next? Owing to devs to buy IAP in F2P games?
ComputerMKII
Banned
I don't use AdBlock and this is what I get 
Beermeister
Banned
Sorry GAF, but ads are a common vector for malware, especially 0-day malware, so I use it all the time.
It does strike me that this argument is basically justifying gaming the system. Is it not the case that if the models appear to be returning incorrect results, they will get modified to take into account all the skippers?
Moral Panic
Member
Another factor is people wholesale ripping off articles. Why bother doing actual journalism when people will just copy and paste your entire work and you get 0 hits from that.
Angelus Errare
Banned
GAF is one of the few sites in which I don't block. I plan to keep it that way, I don't owe any of these developers anything. I'm browsing their content, they need to learn about ad placement that isn't intruding and flat out annoying. This isn't TV in which we have to tolerate anything they throw at us. You don't want people blocking your ads? Stop using shitty adds that detract from your website. Not to mention how many ads come with horrible malware. You got java installed and get hit with one? lol you're already dead. Imagine if TV ads could corrupt your TV/DVR data. People would be utterly pissed and there would be quick reforms put in place. Why should we treat it any different in cyberspace? Yea sorry but fuck that logic.
Clean up the malware shit that infests a good 90% of ads, drop the intruding eye popping ads and you might see less people with adblockers.
Clean up the malware shit that infests a good 90% of ads, drop the intruding eye popping ads and you might see less people with adblockers.
Baleoce
Member
I tend to base it on how obnoxious or intrusive the ads are. Example: Sites that have a centered body for content, and either side of that will be the main ad that you almost can't help but click (especially with me, as I tend to click on the browser to refocus it (multiple monitors, so sometimes I don't have to alt-tab), in order to then use the mouse wheel to scroll up/down). So lo and behold, I tend to click the sides, so any site that plasters ads there, gets the adblock boot.
As a broader answer: No, we don't 'owe' them directly. However, we ought to appreciate our role in the monetisation of the internet, for better or for worse. Consider this: If funding a site via ads becomes untenable, what's the next step, and more importantly: Will that be better or worse than currently?
I strongly dislike product placement in television series, but it's an entirely logical next step if people stop watching the ads.
I strongly dislike product placement in television series, but it's an entirely logical next step if people stop watching the ads.
I don't quite see it that way.
This episode is a bit funny in my head because I don't use any adbloker anywhere. But if I were to use one, I'd universally block ads and then add exceptions to sites that I like to visit (because the content is good), because me running ads may help bring those websites some revenue.
That's it, it's a matter of my personal volition rather than some implied contract in a social sense that I feel I "owe" them the ad money. The problem with these twitter journalists is that instead of being happy (I don't mean this in a dismissive way) that there are people who don't block ads (some of whom do so specifically to support the site), they want to whine that they're not getting what's their rightful due.
It's an awful lot like piracy arguments from publishers. They'd rather say they were denied X number of sales than say they sold Y copies.
Baleoce
Member
Is it possible to write an adblocker where they still load, but just don't appear? I have no problem with monetizing a site, it's just that some sites do not know how to do it properly, and make it a hazard zone for clicking. I'm pretty sure there would be a market for people who never click ads placed on a site, but still want the site to get the page-view fee.
This is my issue with ads. Stop tracking me you bastards! I hate that I have to disable adblock on neogaf, but I do it anyway because I love this community and want it to continue to exist. But other than Neogaf ads can go fuck themselves. I also block google-analytics, and anything remotely like that, directly in my DNS server.
I'm not surprised he never responded to this.
Theonik
Member
They haven't died out yet though. Some fairly large sites also use the ad page + skip after 3 seconds type ads to this day. Blocking ads on all sites except ones you trust seems like the only sane way to browse the internet still, both in terms of security and in terms of usability.
Lord_Nergal
Member
Would someone explain what day 0 malware is?
Theonik
Member
In a nutshell it's an umbrella term referring to a new mslicious piece of software for which there is no data.
I have had people tell me that I'm being whiny and entitled for complaining about SWTOR's scummy F2P model.
oneils
Member
Which websites shut down?
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
1up, Gamespy, Ugo
I use Adblock for the security aspects. because Ive had viruses pushed through ads, and misclicking on ads. I understand their argument, I don't disagree with any specific part of it. However, I think the security issues trump it.
Slightly off topic. I think its a little stupid to choose a crappy business model, then blame the consumer for your failure. If youre running a business you cannot afford to be that out of touch with reality. Expecting people to turn off adblock for you is the height of narcissism, isn't it?
Slightly off topic. I think its a little stupid to choose a crappy business model, then blame the consumer for your failure. If youre running a business you cannot afford to be that out of touch with reality. Expecting people to turn off adblock for you is the height of narcissism, isn't it?
I hate video ads, and I pretty much only want to block those. It was even worse back when my Internet was super crappy, 'cause it'd take forever to load the video ad, then once that was done, there was problems loading the video I actually wanted to see, then I had to refresh and load the video ad again... dumb endless cycle.
I think it's especially dumb to have a video ad in front of a trailer, which is essentially just another ad. An ad in front of an ad. What.
I think it's especially dumb to have a video ad in front of a trailer, which is essentially just another ad. An ad in front of an ad. What.
Mithos
Member
TaroYamada
Member
I use adblock on all sites by default, but have it disabled on sites that offer services/content I enjoy. I believe blocking it on sites you like is kind of disrespectful/hypocritical, if you like the content enough to regularly come and read it you should have adblock disabled on that site.
edit: There is one site specifically where I dislike one writer in particular and because he continually makes an ass out of himself and is rude to readers when they disagree, I leave adblock on for this site. Whenever he begins to act cordially or is fired I'll turn adblock off for that site.
edit: There is one site specifically where I dislike one writer in particular and because he continually makes an ass out of himself and is rude to readers when they disagree, I leave adblock on for this site. Whenever he begins to act cordially or is fired I'll turn adblock off for that site.
Lord_Nergal
Member
Übermatik;48075222 said:
Stealing this gif.
Adblocking is a difficult subject, I'm all for websites being able to unobtrusively monetize themselves - but a lot of sites either don't get the 'unobtrusive' part or don't have enough control over the adverts they are showing.
I've had to adblock sites in the past because they had banners with "Hot girls in my area" (while browsing at work) or because some sneaky ad company plants some super intrusive pop-over thing on a site which often seems to take the actual owners of the site by complete surprise (I guess they disable their own ads?).
I think it's morally wrong to enable it by default, but sometimes turning it on is fully warranted.
I've had to adblock sites in the past because they had banners with "Hot girls in my area" (while browsing at work) or because some sneaky ad company plants some super intrusive pop-over thing on a site which often seems to take the actual owners of the site by complete surprise (I guess they disable their own ads?).
I think it's morally wrong to enable it by default, but sometimes turning it on is fully warranted.
michaelius
Banned
I'm adblocking everything by default and only disable it for few of my favourite sites like GAF.
How many do you have?
Koroviev
Member
I was oblivious to ad blockers until I became a member of the Escapist a few years ago. Really obnoxious advertising all over the place. I have no issue white listing sites that respect my screen real estate, but making me watch the same stupid 30 second ad before every single video will result in the site being ad blocked.
Punkster_NY
Member
I only block sites that have annoying ads but for the most part I don't block sites, especially gaming site! These good people work hard to bring us that necessary & addictive info everyday and they deserve to get paid for that hard work.
Like others I default block everything, and if it's a site I like to support (like GAF or Reddit) I'll unblock it.
Question: I have my browser set so that flash player runs only if I click on it (which I highly recommend if you aren't doing it - make your browser run a lot faster). Do those get tallied in the banner count?
Question: I have my browser set so that flash player runs only if I click on it (which I highly recommend if you aren't doing it - make your browser run a lot faster). Do those get tallied in the banner count?
Ok, so it was a lie.
Since ad blockers use auto updated lists, couldn't there be some interest in a more lenient list that doesn't block confirmed safe/unobtrusive ads? Or is such a thing not feasible?
OldJadedGamer
Banned
I couldn't live without FlashBlock installed.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
That's already the default on all major adblockers; AdBlock Plus has a default set that allows unobtrusive ads, Adblock for Chrome allows text ads, etc. But ultimately there's always going to be a tension because what an advertiser considers intrusive and what a user considers intrusive is going to differ.
When was the last time you actually encountered a talking ad? Because I don't use adblock and never had one. There are some that play a small video but those usually have a "click here if you want sound" button.
It's mine, hands off.