81–90 of 174 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know Google Adsense pays out a bit for "impressions", just displaying their ad on the page. I'm not sure how much revenue this really generates for very small sites though.
Google Adsense doesn't pay at all for impressions ... at least I haven't ever received money from them just for impressions.
On one hand, I applaud this. Ads aren't evil, and rewarding ads that play nice would benefit everyone involved. And, it's just an option that can be disabled. All that being said, I see this ending badly for ABP. It won't be long until someone creates a version that blocks all ads again by default.
"It won't be long until someone creates a version that blocks all ads again by default." This version will still be able to block all ads. By does it matter if it's by default?
One of the "non-intrusive" ads on the whitelist are ads on sedo domain-squatter pages. That really says about all I need to know about how thoroughly he's vetted the "non-intrusiveness" of these ads.
And I think it is clear he made a deal with Google, with or without monetary compensation I do not know. Please slap me with proof that I'm wrong, I so wish to be wrong.
Google's text ads certainly aren't intrusive.
1) Does AdBlock developers get, directly or indirectly, any benefits from a third party because of this change? (Including, but not exclusively, money/donation/jobs/whatever by an entity supported by ads like Google, continued inclusion in the Chrome store, etc.)? Or any negative consequences if the change wasn’t implemented?
Wladimir Palant: I don't think that we get anything yet but we indeed hope to get some income this way to make the project sustainable. This doesn't mean that paying us is the requirement to be added to the exceptions list - the requirements a formulated here and they will probably become more precise as we gain experience (suggestions are welcome). As to Google: no, they have nothing to do with it. We didn't talk to Google, we didn't take money from them, there is no conspiracy here. We did look at Google Ads as a typical example (unblocking them is the most common request we get yet most people lack the knowledge for that) but they don't meet our requirements at the moment. Google's search ads are a different thing and they can meet our requirements depending on how the website configures them - and we did add an exception for them on one particular website.
2) If the goal is to allow people who would like to see ads to see them, why not have asked if people wanted to see them (ie, neutral “yes/no” question), rather than pushing a default setting which shows those “non intrusive” ads?
Wladimir Palant: We made some bad experience when asking people to make a decision, quite frequently people would ignore the question on the first-run page for one reason or another and then wonder why Adblock Plus "isn't working". In fact, that's the reason why the first-run page was reworked - rather than asking, we now subscribe people to a filter list automatically and allow them to revert the decision easily (simplifying Filter Preferences dialog was an important requirement for that). It's the same with "acceptable ads" - asking people to make a decision when it might be a wrong time, when they don't know what we are asking about (I tried to keep the explanation page short but it certainly isn't) etc. isn't going to work well. Instead we focused on making opt-out as simple as possible at any time.
I suspect most people who install adblock plus, aren't the kind of people who click on ads. So I suspect, even if (theoretically speaking) blocking ads was made impossible, the net impact would be much smaller than imagined. This will just impact those people who had it installed for them, and who happen to update. I doubt that will be the saviour of many small sites - if adblock plus was killing them in the first pl…
This is about money.
One of the "non-intrusive" ads on the whitelist are ads on sedo domain-squatter pages. That really says about all I need to know about how thoroughly he's vetted the "non-intrusiveness" of these ads.
And I think it is clear he made a deal with Google, with or without monetary compensation I do not know. Please slap me with proof that I'm wrong, I so wish to be wrong.
It should've been neither an opt-out nor an opt-in. Since it's a one-time notification, it should've explained the rationale behind this feature and asked for a decision. That would mean treating users as intelligent adults. Pre-selecting a good-deed option for them is annoying and insulting. I know that I don't like a good Samaritan behavior stuffed down my throat, so I would've gone and disabled this feature just a…
> Since it's a one-time notification, it should've explained the rationale behind this feature and asked for a decision. That would mean treating users as intelligent adults. I disagree. This is the cowardly and helpless solution to the problem: When in doubt, throw Yet Another Dialog or installation wizard page in the user's face. Programs should confidently do Something Sensible by default, and instead let the 25%…
From their FAQ on the subject: >Starting with Adblock Plus 2.0 you can allow some of the advertising that is considered not annoying. By doing this you support websites that rely on advertising but choose to do it in a non-intrusive way. And you give these websites an advantage over their competition which encourages other websites to use non-intrusive advertising as well. In the long term the web will become a bette…
Why does there have to be a compromise? Please don't take this as some sort of flame bait. Instead it is a serious question about why some advertising must exist and be tolerated.
Running a website costs money. Some people also want to make profit, but that's beside the point. Micropayment solutions at present are sadly lacking - especially for international audiences. Don't forget also that you and I are a technical audience; I know at first my mother thought that websites got a split of her ISP bill when she viewed their pages. So advertising bridges a lot of these gaps.
Instead it is a serious question about why some advertising must exist and be tolerated.
I don't believe anyone is saying that you must tolerate advertising :-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that AdBlock Plus is becoming popular. Advertisers are noticing it too. And it will become a whac-a-mole game, in which advertisers will come up with creative ways to get around ADP or publishers will just block users with ADP enabled, or just setup a paywall. We are indeed tired of intrusive advertising. But some websites are good citizens and shouldn't be punished for the mistakes of others. It would…
* It's not becoming popular. It's about 1% of users. * It's trivial to get around. Other options would be for webmasters to give Adblocking users a watered down version or just serve them up crapply encoded videos/images etc If adblock ever became popular, webmasters would quickly work around it, and you'd have an arms race, with the webmasters winning. * Adblock probably blocks 50% of adverts. The other 50% people d…
The problem is that this 1% aren't evenly distributed -- some websites are inevitably going to have more Adblock users than others, and I wouldn't be surprised to find that some large sites (reddit?) are hitting 20%.
It's trivial to get around.
Being hostile to their users/customers doesn't seem to be working all that well for the music industry, and just adds to a general feeling of resentment. It is not clear that the result would be any different in another content industry.