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LA Times and ads

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Re: LA Times and ads

#161

Post by pdimitar »

Klover wrote: post #154
pdimitar wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very grateful that you're honest and open. I'd give you a respectful bow in person on that basis alone. That being said, I believe the media companies should start accepting the inevitable fact that people don't care about their financial struggles or hardships in finding ways to monetize content. As long as the said content is visibly free (even if it comes with strings attached as invisible tracking) then the…

You are writing a lot of stuff about wanting to pay for good journalism. Why not just simply subscribe to the Economist? Nobody's going to track you when you're reading a PDF. Probably especially not when you go completely offline. You could also listen to the ad free CDs. There's also still physical newspapers. You could go up to your nearest little shop and, for just a few dollars really, try out a couple of the ne…

You know, I am actively considering it for a while now. I'll definitely try out several -- but as another sub-poster adequately put it, I don't want to put myself in a bubble.

Re: LA Times and ads

#162

Post by Neliquat »

eli wrote: post #127
anigbrowl wrote: post #102

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.

And I think people who condone that stuff are shitheads. Its not fair, but it is almost always true.

Re: LA Times and ads

#163

Post by JustSomeNobody »

anigbrowl wrote: post #102
eli wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It made me sad when boingboing put one of those ad boxes on the site. I work in digital media. I get why publishers do it. But, sheesh, if you're resorting these ads that insult your audience in exchange for pennies, I think you need to reexamine your approach.

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

Probably some exec is standing in the middle of the war room screaming at the top of his lungs that revenue is down and so people get desperate not to lose their jobs and start sticking this crap at the bottom of the page. Some money is better than no money they think.

Re: LA Times and ads

#164

Post by NelsonMinar »

padseeker wrote: post #121
lobster_johnson wrote: post #22

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…

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…

Thank you for replying. I'm the author of the article and have felt bad sniping at the engineers at the LA Times. It helps to know you understand the technical problem. It must be very frustrating to see the ad networks' code wrecking your website.

Your ad sales and IT team are killing your company. They are taking your good product, the journalism and your well written Javascript, and they are smearing a thick paste of shit all over it. Some of this shit is visible, like the grocery circular popover and the auto-loading video ads. Some of it is invisible, like the 10 megabytes/minute I blogged about. But that shit has a smell. Readers don't like getting shit on their hands when reading the newspaper. They don't like smelling shit. They will stop going to your website.

The ROI on cleaning up the ads tech mess will not be immediate. It will probably be negative in the short term. But in the long term it's the only way to save the newspaper. I'm anxious about the future of the newspaper business too and don't know what the solution is. But I'm sure it's not this ad escalation.

Re: LA Times and ads

#165

Post by NelsonMinar »

intrasight wrote: post #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.

I use uBlock Origin too, and the LA Times definitely detects I'm using it and puts a big uncloseable popup demanding I turn it off. I think it only does this after repeated visits though, not the first.

Re: LA Times and ads

#166

Post by jurassic »

symlinkk wrote: post #156
jurassic wrote: post #49

Garbage like this is one of the many reasons I've gone back to print to a large extent. Printed magazines are amazing things, a superior experience and product in almost every way to reading online outlets. This whole ethical conflict over how to deal with invasive advertising while supporting the work goes away when you bought and paid already before you even start to read. Daily news doesn't fit into this philosoph…

you can buy digital subscriptions to many newspapers, including the LA Times

I don't know about LA Times specifically but the digital product often still includes invasive user-tracking bandwidth-intensive advertising, just toned down to what people consider "acceptable" levels. For example, the NYT digital sub that I pay nearly $200/year for still serves me advertising. So ponying up the cash doesn't do much to address the concerns that are being raised all throughout this thread.

Re: LA Times and ads

#167

Post by intrasight »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #165
intrasight wrote: post #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.

I use uBlock Origin too, and the LA Times definitely detects I'm using it and puts a big uncloseable popup demanding I turn it off. I think it only does this after repeated visits though, not the first.

Do you block all third-party resources?

Re: LA Times and ads

#168

Post by NelsonMinar »

intrasight wrote: post #167
NelsonMinar wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use uBlock Origin too, and the LA Times definitely detects I'm using it and puts a big uncloseable popup demanding I turn it off. I think it only does this after repeated visits though, not the first.

Do you block all third-party resources?

I don't think so. I have not extensively reconfigured uBlock Origin. What setting are you thinking is relevant?

BTW, this custom filter rule seems to work around the LA Times blocker blocker. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13567527

Re: LA Times and ads

#169

Post by matt4077 »

bigbugbag wrote: post #159
matt4077 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In other parts of the world they would find who is making those ads and who is in charge of those and burn their houses down or chop them with machetes. Suddenly the number of people willing to produce ads for clients and said clients is dramatically reduced. I'm not suggesting this kind of extreme response, my point is there's no punishment for putting up those ads so there's no incentive to behave correctly and we'…

Those are some pretty racist stereotypes you have of wherever you think people are going around chopping each other with machetes.

Re: LA Times and ads

#170

Post by artursapek »

kristianc wrote: post #131
artursapek wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chumbox Had no idea there was a name for this shit! But of course there is. It's really sad that the most rotten apples have spoiled it for everybody. I was thinking recently about trying to set up a passive income website that makes money on Adsense, but got discouraged when I remembered that Adblockers are a thing.

You're decrying the amount of crap on the internet and then saying that it impedes your ability to set up a 'passive income' site whose sole purpose is to make money through Adsense?

Yeah, Adsense ads are generally very tolerable, but they are blocked by adblockers that are adopted by people to get rid of "Chumboxes". There's a big difference.
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