Live data from Hacker News

The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques

nngroup.com

81–90 of 93 posts

Re: The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques

#81
post #5

Be interesting to compare with how prevalent the different ad types actually are, how effective they are, and how much money they typically cost. Preroll video may be more "annoying" than Related Links ad units, but they also pay a LOT more and are probably more effective any way you measure it.

That comparison would have been great. Annoying ads is one thing, but how effective are they? Modal ads can be really annoying, but some marketers claim that they are highly effective, especially for building a mailingist. Or do we hate some ad types because they are very effective?

They may be effective to artificially increase mailing list registrations because people who don't know better sign up just to get rid of the ad.

Do you know any very effective ad type ? I don't even know an effective commercial ad (maybe the 30 seconds TV spot?).

Re: The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques

#82
post #5

Be interesting to compare with how prevalent the different ad types actually are, how effective they are, and how much money they typically cost. Preroll video may be more "annoying" than Related Links ad units, but they also pay a LOT more and are probably more effective any way you measure it.

Preroll video pays more because it's usually not blocked by adblocker and unskippable, hence more effective than a blocked or skipped video.

Re: The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques

#83
post #5

Be interesting to compare with how prevalent the different ad types actually are, how effective they are, and how much money they typically cost. Preroll video may be more "annoying" than Related Links ad units, but they also pay a LOT more and are probably more effective any way you measure it.

Speaking as a developer. You may be paid by the impressions but how much you are paid depends on the CTRs. Nothing works for CTRs like targeting. The more data you can share about users, the better it is for you. All this other stuff probably contributes to user churn as much it does to your bottom line. This is one of the reasons that a lot of apps ask you for location permissions even when they don't need it.

And hopefully developers / website owner engaging in breaching user privacy and collecting user data to give away to third party will be accountable before court.

Or maybe we could sugarface and kneecap them for being satan's little helpers.

Re: The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques

#84
post #31

Not affiliated to the author, but can recommend 'Behind the Curtain' chrome extension [1] that lets you dispense with overlay popups using a keyboard shortcut. Saves having to move the mouse around and hunt for the magic [x]. Combined with ublock origin[2] to get rid of the payload of those pop-ups, can also reduce bandwidth / lag / frustration. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/behindtheoverlay/l... [2]…

Well chrome is not exactly free of tracking and advertising, let's not forget that it's a "free" product of the largest online advertising network intended to help them track users and do more advertising.

Re: The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques

#85

My most hated at the moment? Those ads that hijack page scrolling and don't let go until you've scrolled the ad past. Wouldn't be a huge problem if it didn't totally fuck up my browser's scrolling functionality and lag things out.

Disable scripting, use wallabag to read the content (or a similar readability service), just leave the site and let them rot or find the contact info and tell them why you hate them now.

Re: The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques

#86

When I hit a page with these kinds of ads, there's a good chance I will immediately close the tab and never read the content. I hope this shows up in the site metrics.

I usually do the same, except I take extra measure to never appear in any metrics unmasked.

Re: The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques

#87

Sadly hated != ineffective, so they're here to stay

Advertising, especially online advertising is highly inefficient. Pop-up window ads (and pop under) were hated too and they're gone, not because advertisers chose so but because browser implemented pop-up blocking measures.

Re: The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques

#88
post #20

One new technique that's notably missing, and egregiously abusable, is browser notifications. Several times a day now I'll go to a web site that immediately pops up a browser-native non-modal notification asking for permission to use the browser's built-in notifications system.

What is browser notifications ? What's the use for that ?

Never seen it in any browser I use (firefox, waterfox, pale moon, opera 12, vivaldi, otter, qupzilla, netsurf, seamonkey, uzbl, and a few more)

Re: The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3. The modal window is too big which pushes the tiny close button outside the screen and makes it impossible to close.

Try using your escape key, disabling script and reloading page, using wallabag[1] to read the page, editing the DOM to remove the popup. [1]: https://wallabag.org/en and https://wallabag.it/en

No. I Just go away. This happens mostly on my phone anyway.
Post reply on HN