I upvoted this so I'd remember to take a look later. Now I kinda wish I hadn't.
Massacre Gmail Ads with These Two Sentences (and Some Tragic Words)
41–50 of 61 posts
Re: Massacre Gmail Ads with These Two Sentences (and Some Tragic Words)
#42On a related topic: what do people think about ad blocking technology from an ethical viewpoint? For me, I think I use the same screwy morality that I use when I'm downloading music...I don't mind stealing from wildly successful artists/businesses, but I'll gladly pay full price for a CD or click on an ad for someone who's just trying to pay the bills.
I block flash ads on my solaris box -- the z ordering is all screwed up with flash, and it gets in the way of content. Also, it makes firefox (by its own fault or by the plugin) crash, often.
On other machines, only those ads with movement get blocked. Look, if you can't get a message that's interesting in text while I'm already reading, then you don't have a product I'd want to buy.
Re: Massacre Gmail Ads with These Two Sentences (and Some Tragic Words)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the ads only pay if people click on them. I don't click on ads, EVER. I never have, and have never even been close to. Some people do click them, obviously. Since I'm not clicking them, anyway - me using an ad blocker only saves the advertiser bandwidth money.
You're not the internet. If nobody clicked on those ads, they certainly wouldn't exist.
[deleted]
Re: Massacre Gmail Ads with These Two Sentences (and Some Tragic Words)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the ads only pay if people click on them. I don't click on ads, EVER. I never have, and have never even been close to. Some people do click them, obviously. Since I'm not clicking them, anyway - me using an ad blocker only saves the advertiser bandwidth money.
You're not the internet. If nobody clicked on those ads, they certainly wouldn't exist.
I explicitly said "there are people that click on those ads". Those people don't have Ad Blockers. I don't click on those ads, so I have an Ad Blocker. All I was saying was that it doesn't present an ethical problem.
Re: Massacre Gmail Ads with These Two Sentences (and Some Tragic Words)
#45On a related topic: what do people think about ad blocking technology from an ethical viewpoint? For me, I think I use the same screwy morality that I use when I'm downloading music...I don't mind stealing from wildly successful artists/businesses, but I'll gladly pay full price for a CD or click on an ad for someone who's just trying to pay the bills.
I don't think I have any ethical responsibility to help make sites I go to profitable. I also don't like looking at ads.
In the case of Gmail, Google can easily absorb the cost of my not seeing ads. If they don't want to do that, they shouldn't provide free webmail.
Re: Massacre Gmail Ads with These Two Sentences (and Some Tragic Words)
#46A better hack might be to do the tragic words in a different language, like chinese.
Re: Massacre Gmail Ads with These Two Sentences (and Some Tragic Words)
#47I think most of us are missing the point. The author is not implying that he discovered a "hack" or "secret code", it's that Google consciously chooses to not match advertisements to text such as this. You can rephrase the sentences all you'd like, and Google will still not render ads.
Re: Massacre Gmail Ads with These Two Sentences (and Some Tragic Words)
#48I was asked a related question during an interview at Google. As an example, the interviewer told me of a time their ads drew an especially vile reaction: they had placed luggage ads on a news story about a serial killer who chopped up his victims bodies and stuffed them into suitcases. The interviewer said they'd be happy to just not show any ads on such pages and asked me how I'd go about detecting them. Apparently…
Mod parent up! (slashdot ref).
Re: Massacre Gmail Ads with These Two Sentences (and Some Tragic Words)
#49The ads help pay for the service. If they are that intrusive choose something else.
this is an interesting ethics question. if you never click on ads, then why not disable them?
Not all ads are paid-per-click, some are paid-per-view. And even for those that are paid-per-click you can often get into better ad programs if you have more ad views.
Re: Massacre Gmail Ads with These Two Sentences (and Some Tragic Words)
#50On a related topic: what do people think about ad blocking technology from an ethical viewpoint? For me, I think I use the same screwy morality that I use when I'm downloading music...I don't mind stealing from wildly successful artists/businesses, but I'll gladly pay full price for a CD or click on an ad for someone who's just trying to pay the bills.
On a related topic: what do people think about ad blocking technology from an ethical viewpoint? I don't think I've clicked an ad since I was first introduced to the internet at around age ~5 (maybe with a few exceptions for accidental misclicks), and I don't intend to click on one in the future either. As a result, I am saving them bandwidth by blocking their ads. Activating an ad-blocking device is equivalent to st…
Cost-per-impression isn't that rare. We have a nice deal that does just that. In fact that whole network does only cost-per-impression.
But even for cost-per-click views matter. If you have more views, you can get into better programs.
But most of all, you deprive the site and the advertiser of the opportunity to make money of off you. If you don't click a specific advertisement: fine. Then it's the publisher's job or the advertiser's job to find ads that do get them value out of your visit. If you "opt-out" of ads, they don't have that opportunity and you've become worthless to them. A freeloader with no potential of ever being worth something. The site would be better of by blocking you...