Vigilant Gambit
Member
Funny chicken and egg problem there.
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Eurogamer's new Ads Policy
- Thread starter Yautja_Warrior
- Start date
Funny chicken and egg problem there.
diablos991
Can’t stump the diablos
Blocking ads doesn't mean I don't want to be a customer. I will gladly pay for what I see value in.
Them forcing me to expose my PC to harm and to inconvenience me by showing ads to me where more meaningful content could be isn't a way to increase that value. It's a strong arm tactic.
Instead of adjusting the business model to meet the realities of your consumer base just force them to conform to the existing structure... doesn't sound very consumer oriented in my book. Sounds like a short term plan that could cost them in the long run.
Though, if the company has no short term without the strong arm proposition then I guess they have little choice as they have to exist long enough to have any chance in the long term.
SeeNoWeevil
Member
Oh no, what a colossal hardship the poor reader must endure.
Azure Phoenix
Member
I feel like companies are missing one key problem here when they start blaming and blocking people who use adblock: it's basic web safety to install one nowadays. We're past the era of installing one just to stop seeing the annoying fly buzzing adverts and it's certainly not because we want websites to lose revenue, it's because of the rampant abuse of pop-unders to forcibly take you to fishy sites infected with god knows what crap.
Sure, I can whitelist your website if you beg and promise me that you're adhering to all these standards, but every time I've done that my trust has then betrayed a few months later when some seriously nasty adverts get added into the rotation and stay there for weeks. I would rather pay a small subscription fee than keep feeding these ad companies that show no intention of cleaning up their act.
Sure, I can whitelist your website if you beg and promise me that you're adhering to all these standards, but every time I've done that my trust has then betrayed a few months later when some seriously nasty adverts get added into the rotation and stay there for weeks. I would rather pay a small subscription fee than keep feeding these ad companies that show no intention of cleaning up their act.
Liamario
Banned
It's not great, but they're running a business and this is their model. If you don't like it enough to not want to engage with the site any further, there are thankfully many other options.
Surely not engaging with the site or using Adblock has the same result. They want you to engage with the site, just not while using Adblock. That's what needs to be solved. Why are people using Adblock and how can we get them to stop willingly.
Just to add... there was a time when ads didn't bother people. Adblock wasn't really necessary. What changed?
This seems like a shortsighted bet on a business model that doesn't work all that well anymore. Like many have said in this thread, forcing this onto their readers without offering an alternative that let's you pay to get rid of possibly harmful adds will probably do more harm than good for the size of their readership.
I like Eurogamer and wouldn't mind supporting what they do with a reasonable monthly subscription or Patreon, same with GAF btw. Times have changed thanks to Kickstarter, Patreon and co. Readers are more aware of the harm add-blocking does and many sites & channels have already implemented better solutions for readers without forcing them to potentially harm their security.
edit: I'm sure they know that though, so maybe this is just step one so we appreciate their content more before they offer such a service?
I like Eurogamer and wouldn't mind supporting what they do with a reasonable monthly subscription or Patreon, same with GAF btw. Times have changed thanks to Kickstarter, Patreon and co. Readers are more aware of the harm add-blocking does and many sites & channels have already implemented better solutions for readers without forcing them to potentially harm their security.
edit: I'm sure they know that though, so maybe this is just step one so we appreciate their content more before they offer such a service?
Maybe I'm not old enough to remember that time. My early memories of the internet involve lots of screaming smileys and pop ups.
gingerbeardman
Member
Content owners became lazy and/or greedy.
In other news, I just used my adblocker to block their nag window.
I'm not a regular Eurogamer visitor, so I don't mind blocking their crap for the odd time I do end up on their site.
You can't know what type of ads a site contains before you visit it.
s_mirage
Member
People weren't clicking them enough so the ads became more and more intrusive and seemingly less and less curated. The advertisers/adhosts started this escalation. The online ad industry still seems to be the wild west where no-one is held responsible for anything. We need a sheriff.
Ads weren't so bad for most of the 90s (mostly just banners) then in late 90s/early 00s pop-ups were everywhere and it was all downhill from there. Click-throughs on ads have always been terrible so at least some things never change.
It does not, using adblock still costs them bandwith, while not engaging costs the hosts nothing.
What will happen eventually is all the decent sites will have pay walls. Look at the printed press online, that is where it will go with gaming sites if folk ad block. Then there will be even more moaning about how it's unfair.
Sites which have subscription models to remove ads are trying to give people the option and they should be supported directly. Heck, most offer a month of ad free for the price of a coffee which is more than reasonable.
I do think most gamers think it's easy to run a site but it's really not. There are constant technical hurdles to overcome, Google SEO work which constantly changes, trying to get the business to get solid game relevant ads which takes time and money, paying staff writers and more. It's a business just like everything else.
Folk pay Netflix Sky or HBO subs because they want access to that content, and even some of those still have ads.
Gamers need to grow up and stop thinking everyone is out to infect their PCs, reputable sites try damn hard to keep ads clean and these are the ones that should be directly financially supported by their regular readers.
The least folk can do is whitelist the sites they use and trust and not use the excuse of "oh no I might at some point get a bad ad" or "that ad is relevant to me", as if they care anyway.
Support the sites you like.
Sites which have subscription models to remove ads are trying to give people the option and they should be supported directly. Heck, most offer a month of ad free for the price of a coffee which is more than reasonable.
I do think most gamers think it's easy to run a site but it's really not. There are constant technical hurdles to overcome, Google SEO work which constantly changes, trying to get the business to get solid game relevant ads which takes time and money, paying staff writers and more. It's a business just like everything else.
Folk pay Netflix Sky or HBO subs because they want access to that content, and even some of those still have ads.
Gamers need to grow up and stop thinking everyone is out to infect their PCs, reputable sites try damn hard to keep ads clean and these are the ones that should be directly financially supported by their regular readers.
The least folk can do is whitelist the sites they use and trust and not use the excuse of "oh no I might at some point get a bad ad" or "that ad is relevant to me", as if they care anyway.
Support the sites you like.
Pop-ups, popunders, automatically playing videos, ads with sound, ads that capture your mouse cursor, ads that spoof messages from your OS or ISP, ads that expand to cover the entire page if your mouse gets close, various kinds of malware, etc.
Notice that modern browsers often include a popup blocker that is built in and turned on BY DEFAULT. There's a reason for that.
Head.spawn
Junior Member
Do you want a subscription based website or something?
1- Even if sites work hard to keep ads clean (most don't) stuff gets through. It only takes one miss to infect your machine.
2- Most sites use more of your bandwidth for ads than actual content, killing data usage and battery on mobile devices. They are actively costing us money.
The Verge's web sucks
3- Trying to paint this issue as something "immature gamers" care about is disingenuous and flat out stupid.
Living Proof
Member
It's somewhat amusing that, while trying to read this thread, GAF ads are auto-directing me to random "you've won!!!!11" sites that endlessly vibrate my phone.
I know people have been complaining about that shit in that OT thread for a long time now, but it's honestly only started happening consistently to me in the past week or so.
I know people have been complaining about that shit in that OT thread for a long time now, but it's honestly only started happening consistently to me in the past week or so.
Demigod Mac
Member
Good thing for Anti-Adblock Killer. Trashy clickbait ads are the worst.
We've moved from flat images and text reviewed for legitimacy and appropriateness, to auto-auctioned messes of unreviewed advertiser-written scripting. Which leads to even legit sites like GAF popping up unescapable scam loops on the regular, and a whole lot of drive-by malware attacks from even sites like the BBC and NY Times.
People will begrudge shit like the IGN McGriddles takeover because it's cringey and visually ugly, but it's a tradeoff that can be made. Early Google ads, with all the scripting Google's and the advertisers providing only flat text and images, had some weird implications about user tracking but most were willing to accept it.
But the current state of internet security is such that even the most legitimate sources can become vectors for malware that will cause home users hundreds of dollars and hours or days of heartache and quite possibly shutter businesses.
It's like running an ecommerce business that asks users to email in their credit card number.
There is no doubt ads are heavier now. But take this into account. Nearly all of the time it's the game publishers and their marketing departments that are wanting this. They are the ones wanting ads with video and all the fancy stuff. It's not the sites, it's game publishers marketing departments.
Knowing that, would you boycott one of their games that you really wanted to play because their ad campaign used more bandwidth or was slightly more intrusive? I seriously doubt it.
If there is anyone at fault it's the game publishers themselves. It's something I battle with week in week out and sites should not be blamed for it. In order to survive, sites need to work with the publishers just to help a site stay online.
Game publishers want their marketing to be seen and so this is why ads are heavier now.
There is no solution to this problem, it's not going to go away. So if you like a site then support it and then they will be able to have more sway on what ads they have to accept from the publishers pushing these ads. Help sites financially and they will be empowered to help change the current state of the ad market.
As for painting gamers as immature, that's not what I am saying, but the amount of moaning about ads that they are blocking anyway is just silly. It's happened both inside and outside of gaming. It's a reality of the Internet. Folk have to deal with it. Sticking two fingers up to the site you love reading is what's crazy. Work with them, not against them.
As for GAF. There is no need for GAF to have intrusive ads. There is a stack of traffic here that could be serving relevant premium campaigns. Obviously there is no sales team in place here to do that or monitor the quality.
Knowing that, would you boycott one of their games that you really wanted to play because their ad campaign used more bandwidth or was slightly more intrusive? I seriously doubt it.
If there is anyone at fault it's the game publishers themselves. It's something I battle with week in week out and sites should not be blamed for it. In order to survive, sites need to work with the publishers just to help a site stay online.
Game publishers want their marketing to be seen and so this is why ads are heavier now.
There is no solution to this problem, it's not going to go away. So if you like a site then support it and then they will be able to have more sway on what ads they have to accept from the publishers pushing these ads. Help sites financially and they will be empowered to help change the current state of the ad market.
As for painting gamers as immature, that's not what I am saying, but the amount of moaning about ads that they are blocking anyway is just silly. It's happened both inside and outside of gaming. It's a reality of the Internet. Folk have to deal with it. Sticking two fingers up to the site you love reading is what's crazy. Work with them, not against them.
As for GAF. There is no need for GAF to have intrusive ads. There is a stack of traffic here that could be serving relevant premium campaigns. Obviously there is no sales team in place here to do that or monitor the quality.
And the most annoying part is that people will still go "lol blocking ads is stealing just go to other sites and don't be an immature GAMER" at this. It's a legitimate problem plaguing a vast majority of the internet.
Uh, no? Non gaming sites have ads too, and Eurogamer has a lot of ads entirely unrelated to games.
LoveCake
Member
The sites I use all the time I have whitelisted, I don't use Eurogamer very often at all so it would get it's adverts blocked as a default.
The issue is mute if you are a regular as you should have it whitelisted, but for somebody going their for the first time it is off putting, quite often I see a link on a site and think hat looks interesting and I get to the site and the first thing that pops up is a banner saying that I have to whitelist the site before I can view anything, I have never been to the site before so I don't know how bad or intrusive the adverts are, I just click off the site and google the text in the link (or whatever the story was about) and go somewhere else to read it, because I have in the past given them the benefit of doubt only to have auto-playing videos and those floating about adverts, I just click on the 'contact us' link and email them about my expedience and that I wont be visiting their site again.
Aggressive 'do not block' can turn people off and away from sites I tend to think.
The issue is mute if you are a regular as you should have it whitelisted, but for somebody going their for the first time it is off putting, quite often I see a link on a site and think hat looks interesting and I get to the site and the first thing that pops up is a banner saying that I have to whitelist the site before I can view anything, I have never been to the site before so I don't know how bad or intrusive the adverts are, I just click off the site and google the text in the link (or whatever the story was about) and go somewhere else to read it, because I have in the past given them the benefit of doubt only to have auto-playing videos and those floating about adverts, I just click on the 'contact us' link and email them about my expedience and that I wont be visiting their site again.
Aggressive 'do not block' can turn people off and away from sites I tend to think.
Internet advertisers have a lobby in the form of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), which seems bent on not regulating practices. If they won't do it, though, I agree, someone needs to step in on this, particularly the FTC. Ads would be seen in a much better light if they were regulated better.
But the damage is done now, ads are unacceptable by their existence online, there's no trust in them.
It's getting to a point where the only way out from under the spectre of ads is to go to subscription models, but that poses its own challenges, mainly the heavy resistance to paying for things that people have on the internet.
With regards to non gaming ads on Eurogamer That depends on what region you are in, All ads are geo-targetted. Being a UK site, a lot of ads are booked in the UK under the provision they are not shown outside of that geo region. This has become stricter in recent years and that's why folk see a lot more programmatic ads delivered through Google and ad exchanges. Again, any intrusive ads can be removed by Eurogamrer's ad ops.
In other words, the sales team needs to try and fill 100% of the inventory for all global regions to avoid these programmatic ads. For large sites this is incredibly hard to do which is why sometimes you get ads that are not 100% relevant.
It is more unlikely folk will get malicious ads from well-managed sites, usually the larger sites.
In other words, the sales team needs to try and fill 100% of the inventory for all global regions to avoid these programmatic ads. For large sites this is incredibly hard to do which is why sometimes you get ads that are not 100% relevant.
It is more unlikely folk will get malicious ads from well-managed sites, usually the larger sites.
diablos991
Can’t stump the diablos
That's not my problem to figure out. I'm not the one running a business on the internet.
I don't have a lot of sympathy for companies that would rather strong-arm than innovate though. The internet has been a disruptive technology for businesses for a while now. There are plenty of bright people out there who can evolve a business model.
Either fix the ads or move away from them as a revenue stream.
It's also kind of an unescapable implication of auctioned ads without extremely severe vetting and restrictions which most advertisers aren't interested in - by definition "ads" for a product which, say, 60% of viewers will purchase (a Windows Chrome 0-day) will have unheard of conversion rates and attract far higher bids than legitimate products. The only way to avoid it is to move to far less lucrative vs. effort to attract directly-negotiated and site-hosted campaigns - and even then they're far less lucrative and there's no guarantee that a site won't suddenly change its policy.
The shakeout will be long and bloody but at this point it's unavoidable.
Beyond that, many sites use multiple ad providers and usually only one of them is content-relevant. I just pulled up a EG article, and have 7 major ads on the page, only one of them gaming relevant. Tried a different page, same result. I'm in the US. I also used to run a site that has ads, btw. Like you said, even content-relevant ad providers only provide relevant ads about 80% of the time at most.
Regardless, this has little to do with publisher pressure (those usually come in the form of sponsored content or site-customized ads) and more with the site trying to increase ad clickthrough by offering ads relevant to its content. It's the site wanting to make more money.
I mean, Patreon shows that there's an audience for this and it can be really successful when done right.
I don't disagree. But the resistance to that change is going to be UGLY.
Patreon doesn't mandate all consumers of content pay for it, and that's likely a part of its success. It's PayPal donation collection for the modern era. But that doesn't work for every business model, and even Patreon creates some bizarre ugliness around it. Just ask Jim Sterling. Patreon also works for niche offerings, primarily because people who enjoy such niche offerings know that they likely wouldn't get them without paying directly for them.
There are more people like myself who are willing to pay for what they enjoy every day, but that number isn't as high as it needs to be, and that's due to how we were conditioned to perceive the internet at its inception.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
If I am being exposed to a million real-world ads in a 6 month period I would qualify that as somewhere between pollution and abuse. If my glasses had an adblocking option I would use that too. I can't legally vote in the country where I live but if I could I would vote for any councilman that was willing to prohibit public advertisement (the São Paulo model ideally) or de-zone billboards. And yes, one of the reasons why I generally no longer do IRL shopping is because I'm fed up with ads and retail psychology stuff.
Now that I've established that I don't like real world advertising either, am I allowed to be bothered that the internet has tried to subject me to 1.1 million advertisements in the last six months on one of my three computers and excluding the no doubt thousands of ads that I still see online? And excluding sponsored content which doesn't get blocked? And excluding my entire mobile phone browsing usage?
Campaigns booked directly into sites are a LOT more lucrative and pay very well.but they are usually only booked into very high trafficked sites or networks dominated by the likes of Gamespot and IGN. These are well known brands that publishers and their marketing departments have confidence in.
Again, it's up to each site to work at securing these campaigns if they have enough traffic and it takes a LOT of work. It can also be expensive.
For example, many networks have to wine and dine marketing departments at publishers. This is no exaggeration, I know of one network that flew a load of marketing folk out to the Caribbean for the weekend just to secure their advertising budget.
After E3 is over the summer the game releases slow down so there are less campaigns around to benefit from so expect to see less direct campaigns.
Again, it's up to each site to work at securing these campaigns if they have enough traffic and it takes a LOT of work. It can also be expensive.
For example, many networks have to wine and dine marketing departments at publishers. This is no exaggeration, I know of one network that flew a load of marketing folk out to the Caribbean for the weekend just to secure their advertising budget.
After E3 is over the summer the game releases slow down so there are less campaigns around to benefit from so expect to see less direct campaigns.
If sites would self host/self admin their ads, the issue would disappear because most ad blockers are mostly set up to block the huge spiderweb of third party ad networks.
Self hosting ads also means the sites have total control over what appears (no "this hidden trick" ads or annoying audio ads) and you would never have the issue of malicious ads "sneaking by".
Self hosting ads also means the sites have total control over what appears (no "this hidden trick" ads or annoying audio ads) and you would never have the issue of malicious ads "sneaking by".
Yep you are right to an extent. However, publishers want flashy looking ads even if you direct host them and some folk don't like heavier ads. It gets rid of the dodgy ads though.
Also see my previous post, this is only possible if you have a lot of traffic. No advertiser will book ads onto a site with a medium or smallish sized audience. It;s not worth their time or effort.
This doesn't make any sense. People who block ads aren't helping to keep them alive. So blocking these people isn't hurting them.
With EuroGamer, they just needs better Ad Partners, Revcontent is just one of them but they turn the website into a trashy clickbait playground, I mean here's one example that appears on the bottom of one article BEFORE the Ad Sense style stuff and ads related to buying games from various online stores:
Dreams-Visions
Member
It's fair. If the site is worth it to you, disable the AdBlock. If it isn't, bounce. That's what I do.
paragonpro
Banned
I understand sites need them to stay afloat, but fuck any ad that forces me into the appstore with an invisible trigger when on mobile, its shite and guess what i probably wont ever go to your site again if it happens even once. Funnily enough the corporations pushing these ads feel like they are in a war of attrition with the very people they want to buy there products, this ad isnt working? Up the scummyness and force them to look at our app.
s_mirage
Member
Sadly this isn't new, it's an extension of the thinking that had TV advertisers boosting the volume of their ads way above the average programme level. "If it's louder, they'll pay more attention to it" - hits mute button. That practise thankfully got banned in the UK, but I don't know about elsewhere. Similarly, online ads are in dire need of regulation.
Vincent Grayson
Member
Was there? I don't know how old you are/how long you've been on the internet, but I'm old enough to remember the shift from ads basically not existing on the internet to a lot of pages switching to being ad-supported, and people flipped the fuck out when that happened.
s_mirage
Member
I wasn't around for the really early days, but how I remember it is that they were largely tolerated until pop-ups became so obnoxious and common that browsers had to start blocking them. The problem then escalated with the proliferation of flash ads. I don't remember anyone really caring about the presence of simple banner ads.
Because this is a losing strategy. Their users are only going to leave. They're already struggling.
They could get ad block users back by making better choices than forcing potential customers to all the shit we've already gone over in this thread. Lot of sites that try this drop it because it doesn't work out.
Tal Shiar Agent
Banned
That shit annoyed me for so long I feel bad even just putting a single text or image only ad banner under the footer of my website.
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