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Advertising is devastating to my well-being

briancarper.net

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Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#91

Post by colah »

You know, I'd like to not block adds. I really don't want to. But some sites make me.

I didn't block them until a few months a go. But there were some adds that were just so obnoxious. The worst were these ones that played really loud sounds -- they made me keep my speakers mute, because I didn't want my computer to spontaneously start playing music and wake people up.

One day I was just utterly fed up. I went to Mozilla's site, downloaded an add-blocker, set it to the default settings, and voila! Everything was much nicer.

I'm going to reinstall my OS soon -- I find using apt-get to upgrade break things -- and I'll use the Internet without an add-blocker for a few days. If things are as bad as they were, I'll use one again. Maybe try and find a list that only blocks obnoxious adds, though.

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#92

Post by doron »

greghines wrote: post #86
doron wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would consider subscribing to Ars technica if the offer me an ad free experience as well as their pdf formatting etc...

That's exactly what you get when you subscribe to Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/ You also get full-text RSS feeds and the occasional bit of content exclusive to subscribers, as well as some other (less noteworthy) perks. (Disclosure: I'm under contract with Ars Technica, working on a projected unrelated to any of this.)

This seems to imply that ads are not served only on the forums. i don't care about the forums. or rather, i want an ad free option on the entire content of the site, not a segment.

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#93

Post by jfager »

petercooper wrote: post #41

Stop making the world a garish and hideous place to live by flooding it with ads. There are people so soft that they consider the world a "hideous place to live" because of some advertising? There are people who can barely eat each day without getting so offended by a few commercials. It so happens that advertisements are devastating to my well-being. This is crazy talk. Is it even possible to argue against someone w…

When was the last time animal crackers flashed an almost pornographic image at you while your boss or your kids were standing over your shoulder?

When was the last time animal crackers told your daughter she was fat, or wasn't wearing enough makeup, or wasn't dressing slutty enough?

When was the last time animal crackers tried to take advantage of a person who had financial problems, by trying to convince them that they needed another high-interest credit card, a floating-rate mortgage, or 'debt consolidation'?

Should I keep going?

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#94

Post by ramit »

doron wrote: post #92
greghines wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what you get when you subscribe to Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/ You also get full-text RSS feeds and the occasional bit of content exclusive to subscribers, as well as some other (less noteworthy) perks. (Disclosure: I'm under contract with Ars Technica, working on a projected unrelated to any of this.)

This seems to imply that ads are not served only on the forums. i don't care about the forums. or rather, i want an ad free option on the entire content of the site, not a segment.

Are you sure? On the same page, they say:

"Banner-free browsing on Ars Technica means no distractions, just content. Better yet, the ad-free pages are optimized so there are no "holes" where ads used to be. It's a tighter experience."

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#95

Post by mrkurt »

doron wrote: post #92
greghines wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what you get when you subscribe to Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/ You also get full-text RSS feeds and the occasional bit of content exclusive to subscribers, as well as some other (less noteworthy) perks. (Disclosure: I'm under contract with Ars Technica, working on a projected unrelated to any of this.)

This seems to imply that ads are not served only on the forums. i don't care about the forums. or rather, i want an ad free option on the entire content of the site, not a segment.

No ads anywhere on the site. It's fantastic. :)

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#96

Post by mrkurt »

doron wrote: post #79
Tichy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Again, if you'd read Ars' post, you would know that they are paid on impressions, not conversion rate." I read that, but as I said, if they have a higher conversion rate, they should be able to negotiate a higher fee for the ads anyway. On the other aspects, I guess we just disagree (why is it worse to screw advertisers than ad pushing people)?

revenue from impressions is a speculative hogwash remnant of the print medium and needs to go The idea one makes money from ads simply by having it displayed is copying a highly speculative advertising model of print (where the effect can hardly be measured) to the web (where you can measure it be by actual clicks) put simply its vaporware of the worst kind, and a business that hedges its revenue on this model is hed…

I almost agree with you about the speculative nature of CPM based ads, but there's value in running branding campaigns, particularly for the kinds of companies that advertise on our site (I work for Ars).

It's awfully hard to measure that value in any kind of meaningful way, but brand awareness is worth spending money on in many cases.

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#97

Post by natrius »

metamemetics wrote: post #82
natrius wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inform sites which you enjoy of this opinion. If you don't, you're just reducing the probability of sites you like existing in the future, which is stupid.

I won't need to, technology will naturally evolve this way. Sites will just make a simple technology switch and host ads from their own domain rather than from 3rd party ad servers in the same manner as they host content. -The sites will make more money as there is no way to block the ads. -The sites will make more money as they will not allow low click through spam. -The viewers will have a more pleasant experience.…

It's amazing the lengths people will go to in order to justify their actions. If you actually believe passively blocking ads is increasing the probability that content you enjoy will be produced in the future, you're delusional. Sharing your feelings with the sites you enjoy would clearly be a much better thing to do.

You are a programmer. If you have so much faith in the model you're suggesting, build and sell software that will allow publishers to do it.

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#98

Post by zaphar »

fexl wrote: post #52
justinph wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with the sentiment, that's a whole heck of a love of evolution to work against. Nature (think of life on the Serengeti) is all about screwing over one creature for the benefit of another.

Human survival and wealth depend on voluntary production and trade. That is already baked into the evolutionary cake. If human behavior ever became "all about screwing over" other people, initiating force, and taking property without consent, then the human race would die out. Of course, a small portion of humans can and do live that way, but that is an aberration. If it ever becomes the norm, misery, illness, povert…

While cooperation makes logical sense. The statistics and study of human behaviour indicate that far from being an aberration "red in tooth and claw" is far more the norm.

Don't mistake culture and societal norms for the norms of natrual human behavior.

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#99

Post by zaphar »

metamemetics wrote: post #29
natrius wrote: post #26

It's painful to see so many intelligent people unable or unwilling to analyze the effects their actions cause. If you block ads on sites you enjoy without communicating with the producers of that site, you are lowering the probability that sites you enjoy will continue to be produced. There are several ways to mitigate this effect if you don't like ads: 1) Pay for a subscription. 2) If no subscription is offered, ask…

3rd party javascript ads hosted on ad servers should be blocked. The majority of them disrespect web site viewers, so it is a rational decision for web site viewers to block them. If a site is running ads that they don't mind being associated with and are worthy of reader's attention, they shouldnt mind hosting them directly from their webserver as content.

How does hosting the ad from their own website increase the chance an ad won't disrespect web site viewers? Just because the ad is hosted elsewhere doesn't mean the ads will be any better.

If thy host them themselves then the website has to develop trusted analytics on the who saw the ad. Who clicked on the ad. Who bought something using the ad.

All of these analytics are what make internet advertising worth it. Without it most companies wouldn't bother. And that just increases the cost for the content producer. Now instead of just being a content producer he has to be an advertising analytics expert. What you suggest is not a solution it's a step backward.

People seem to want to have their cake and eat it too whenever this comes up. The fact is your favorite site has to make money in 99% of the cases. It has only 2 potentially viable ways to do this. And of the 2 only 1 has been shown to be consistently viable in almost every place it's tried. That 1 is advertising. Subscriptions and micropayments have only worked in few outlier cases.

So if you like your favorite site and want to use it then suck it up and live with the fact that they have to advertise in order to be there.

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#100

Post by metamemetics »

natrius wrote: post #97
metamemetics wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't need to, technology will naturally evolve this way. Sites will just make a simple technology switch and host ads from their own domain rather than from 3rd party ad servers in the same manner as they host content. -The sites will make more money as there is no way to block the ads. -The sites will make more money as they will not allow low click through spam. -The viewers will have a more pleasant experience.…

It's amazing the lengths people will go to in order to justify their actions. If you actually believe passively blocking ads is increasing the probability that content you enjoy will be produced in the future, you're delusional. Sharing your feelings with the sites you enjoy would clearly be a much better thing to do. You are a programmer. If you have so much faith in the model you're suggesting, build and sell softw…

already working on the design doc ;)
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