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LA Times and ads

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141–150 of 192 posts

Re: LA Times and ads

#141
I visited the article he mentioned had had no issues. Ads and videos and everything from third-party sites were blocked and all I had was the text of the article. I think the author has got to tune his ad blocking tech.

Edit: uBlock Origin blocked 20 third-party domains. Totally typical of web sites these days.

Re: LA Times and ads

#142
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not beat around the bush: some publishers do that kind of thing because they are scumbags.

I don't really agree. I don't think that's fair.

It's presenting your audience with misinformation, false hope, and scams. It's incredibly scummy. Those type of ads prey on people's desperation and gullibility, and there are actually people who will fall for them and waste time and money in the process.

Re: LA Times and ads

#143
post #51

I develop software used by newspapers. This is a problem with the whole industry. It's amazing how much crap they load. These sites all use a third party "tag manager" (Google Tag Manager, Tealium, Piwik etc.) to manage the scripts they load: ads, analytics, trackers etc. The people who use the tag manager typically aren't techies, so they don't understand that adding another tag will cause the page to slow down. Typ…

This might be worst in the news industry, but it is not uncommon on other sites too. And even without a tag manager, as a web developer, I still get requests to blindly add all sorts of scripts. Often they're requested by a marketing partner of the client, or because the client has seen something at a conference that they believe they must have. Wherever possible, I make it clear that this cruft comes at a cost, but…

So true it hurts. All of your comment.

That's why I am thinking actively about starting my own small business lately. Or simply refuse to do web development at all and go into data science / A.I. / pattern extraction areas.

It seems like either of those would be excruciatingly hard to transition to (work inertia can be a blessing and a curse) but I want to do either -- or both -- because web development is in my eyes in its worst decline ever. I don't buy the optimistic BS from inexperienced JS devs or the promises of new tech. People still have to use user agent sniffing for their website to work best. Just lol.

Re: LA Times and ads

#144
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots would if it weren't so inconvenient. I am not really sure about that. About 10 % of all Internet users are currently using an ad blocker. So 90 % are okay with ads or don't care or whatever. Further I would estimate that users would have to pay between $5 and $10 per month to pay for the content they consume to provide an income for sites comparable to that of ads. Maybe 1 % of the ad blocker users - number pull…

That would be a ~$30 million a year business in the United States alone which would be worthwhile if it was creating revenue out of previously non paying Adblock users. Numbers: Population: 300,000,00 million Percent internet users: 84%

It would be $30 millions for all sites combined, only a small fraction of that for each site. And every site would have to invest some money to integrate with such an offering. And you probably need quite a few site to make this work, nobody will pay much if it only gets you access to a hand full of sites. And this number hinges on the assumption of 1 % of the ad blocker user willing to pay which might be wildly optimistic. If it turns out to be only 0.1 %, you are down to $3 million for all sites combined. And there is of course the huge problem of bootstrapping this. Nobody will pay if you have no content to offer, nobody will invest into a solution without customers willing to pay.

Re: LA Times and ads

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in IT for TRONC (parent company of LA Times), and can vouch for this. Some of the ad scripts are horrendously bad. Open firebug or chrome dev tools and load the page, watch all those errors pour in. We pay very close attention to our own code, but all those js bugs that are happening are related to external ad networks with terrible javascript. We have something in the neighborhood of 30+ ad partners. Some of…

The LA Times popup says: "To read today's stories, please turn off your ad blocker or subscribe". That "or" implies a subscription should allow you to browse ad-free. Is that intended to be true? I actually purchased a subscription because I do want to support the paper but not deal with the nightmarish ads that make the site basically unusable. However after logging in, the site immediately demands that I disable bl…

One data point to the contrary; I subscribed, and I can now view the site without ads. ObDetails: I use ghostery, and I don't block Google Analytics. All other trackers blocked, according to Ghostery. I do see Ad Council ads.. things like Smokey the Bear. I don't find those problematic.

Re: LA Times and ads

#146
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds great, but the problem I see with the n-address approach is when you do actually want to search for a received email but you don't want to remember what inbox it went to. I can see workarounds - like feed them all to a gmail box and filter them into their own folders. Or load them all into a native email client as separate accounts. I felt that way about using a password manager and generating random pass…

I store aliases (+ info about the service I provided them to) in the database and use simple PHP script to manipulate the db from the web. On the mail server side, I have postfix set up to read the database and deliver everything for a valid address to a single mailbox. It should be workable with any service that will allow you to setup aliases for a single mailbox. If they allow to set it using API, that would allow…

Ditto, except that I just use postfix's 'virtual' mechanism. Simple additional hack to simplify address creation; all my legal addresses begin with a particular 4-char sequence, and by default, all email addressed to a uid beginning with these 4 chars gets through unless explicitly blocked. This means I can make up addrs on the fly, without having to add them to the back-end on a per-address basis.

Re: LA Times and ads

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently (past year) bit the bullet and began ad blocking myself. My primary concern is the recent proliferation of malicious content through the common ad networks. Supporting websites is great, but not at the expense of your own security.

Maybe we need smarter ad blockers. Publications right now have little incentive to improve their ads with regards to security, readers' resources or quality – because if the LA Times motivates you to install an ad blocker, the NYT is getting hit as well. The tragedy of the commoners, so to speak. If ad blockers would aggressively judge each publisher, ad network and/or advertiser and rewarded good behaviour by showin…

> Maybe we need smarter ad blockers.

And maybe we ad purveyors who don't suck.

I occasionally do tech support on relative's computers and am appalled by how slow they are without an ad blocker.

I'll go even more extreme, if my browsing experience on your site invokes more than your domain and a single CDN domain, you FAIL.

If you want to serve ads, you should have to put your resources and the reputation of your domain at risk to serve them.

Re: LA Times and ads

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I should be willing to trade for seeing their ads. So did you spend time looking at them ads on purpose of guilt???

I think maybe you're reading too much into it. I made no mention of "guilt". I merely stated that I was willing to trade seeing ads (not explicitly taking time to look at them or click them) for free access to content...when those ads were much less intrusive and privacy-invading and bandwidth intensive than they are now. Ad networks have since convinced me that was a mistake, but I feel no guilt about using an ad bl…

> I think maybe you're reading too much into it.

how could I make that more clear than using ???

OTOH, you use the word trade which does imply guild on both sides

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