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What the ad blocker debate reveals

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Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#131

Post by eli »

jacquesm wrote: post #36
eli wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not the best example: http://i.imgur.com/0mgT0AR.jpg

Not how up to the .com bust the newspapers were actually making more money than before. The collapse of the market took a heavy toll, both on newly minted online media as well as on established media that had made the jump to online.

The downturn in revenue also coincides with the rapid expansion of Craigslist, which devoured the previously pretty reliable classifieds revenue.

But print readership was going down for a while before then. TV news was on the rise. I think it was a lot of factors at once.

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#132

Post by hamax »

anc84 wrote: post #114
Killswitch wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except if it came down to it, everyone would be in an uproar about having to pay monthly fee to visit every site on the net.. I'm willing to bet half the people in this thread who say if people want to be paid for their content, to charge for it, not use ads, don't donate to Wikipedia. It absolutely flabbergasts me the amount of people in the tech world who don't realize to run a top site delivering content to you co…

I doubt that you are making a site 5$ per month. Does anyone know reasonable numbers what a single recurring visitor can make you?

I don't know about a single visitor, but for the top sites revenue per 1000 visits is on average around $10. For recurring visitors it's probably more since advertisers have more info about them.

There are a lot of factors that determine the value of a visit so take this info with a grain of salt.

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#133

Post by Lawtonfogle »

luso_brazilian wrote: post #12
bpodgursky wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Simple" doesn't mean correct. In practice cutting out ads probably makes you a more valuable customer because you've spent 10x the time most people spend looking at ads inspecting them while cutting. (and don't give any BS about "oh I actively avoid brands that advertise" -- brand advertising works, deal with it) The better analogy is, you cut out the ads, reprint the paper, and redistribute it to other customers. I…

An even more apt analogy would be if a third party made an easy to use glass overlay that, when placed over a magazine page, obscured all the ads leaving only the content visible. Considering that is applied voluntarily and "client side" and no redistribution takes place I'm not sure that would be illegal considering current laws. Despite of that I believe publishing companies would be lobbying for laws to curb that…

All of the analogies given miss some major issues.

Visual adds aren't the problem. Audio adds, adds that consume massive bandwidth that is limited, and add that track are all the problem. Normal visual adds can sometimes be nice, letting me know about products that I didn't previous know about that I might actually want to buy. But being tracked? Nope. Blocked!

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#134

Post by TeMPOraL »

moron4hire wrote: post #129
TeMPOraL wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do a Show HN. Post it on Reddit. Just keep honest - "I'm working on this thing, my aim is to make it do This Cool Thing; right now it does this-and-that. Check it out at http://mysite , I'd appreciate feedback.".

The poster I was replying to said he doesn't consider any form of advertising as "acceptable". So according to him, either posting a Show HN is not advertising, or it's not acceptable. I don't see how it could be consider anything other than advertising.

The poster wrote that he accepts "the best way to do this is to build something awesome, show it to people, and have them be so excited about how much it helped them that they jump at the chance to show others". Show HN is a way of doing exactly that.

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#135

Post by alyandon »

From another thread (still relevant I think):

uBlock, NoScript and RequestPolicy are my tools to control the content my web browser displays. My general rule is that I'll only disable ad blocking on a few trusted sites and never on a site that uses a third-party advertising network.

Most advertising networks have intrusive or annoying ads that actually block my ability to read a site by using pop-overs if my mouse cursor accidentally touches a keyword, divs that obscure content until I've paid sufficient attention to locate and click the "X", auto-playing sounds/videos, etc. If the UX wasn't bad enough, these third-party networks also present a security risk and have been used in the past as delivery vehicles for malware.

In the end if a web site relies solely on intrusive advertising for support and they plead with me to disable adblocking, I'll most likely choose to stop reading/participating on the website rather than make an exception for them.

I really wish the ability to make micropayments to publishers was a thing.

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#136

Post by Gankro »

moron4hire wrote: post #121
JoshTriplett wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, that's not fair. There is no such thing as "if you build it, they will come". If you are building a thing and you want people to come and use it, you have to advertise in some form. I stand by my statement: the best way to do this is to build something awesome, show it to people, and have them be so excited about how much it helped them that they jump at the chance to show others. Bonus if you build something…

How do you show it to those people in the first place? I'm working on VR software. None of my friends care about games that much, say nothing about even know what an Oculus Rift is.

Maybe use https://dodistribute.com/ ?

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#137

Post by norea-armozel »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #120
fridek wrote: post #83

It's funny how people saying ads should be replaced with a subscription model in different threads are going completely bananas about paywalled articles. Couple of web newspapers in my country switched recently to 10 articles a month for free and then asking for a subscription. It's awful, it makes me read less and I would prefer to see some ads I'm used to ignoring anyway. Usually I don't know if I like the content…

Let me show you a model of a decent web news paper that could get by with ads and no paywall: |----------------------------------| | MY AWESOME NEWSPAPER | |----------------------------------| | category | links | cool | topics | |----------------------------------| | Article Title | Ads | | | | | Article content arti | A bunch | | cle content article | of static| | content. | not | | | annoying | | |---------------|…

This is the basic format that I wish web designers would follow. Also, I wish ad networks wouldn't be sleazy and allow anyone to use their services (scammers, malware producers, and the like should be categorically banned from an ad network). If the latter was fixed then the former would be possible.

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#138

Post by JoshTriplett »

moron4hire wrote: post #129
TeMPOraL wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do a Show HN. Post it on Reddit. Just keep honest - "I'm working on this thing, my aim is to make it do This Cool Thing; right now it does this-and-that. Check it out at http://mysite , I'd appreciate feedback.".

The poster I was replying to said he doesn't consider any form of advertising as "acceptable". So according to him, either posting a Show HN is not advertising, or it's not acceptable. I don't see how it could be consider anything other than advertising.

I'd meant that as a description of what subset of things people normally considered "ads" were acceptable, in the same sense that Adblock Plus started using the term "acceptable ads", so I was referring specifically to online advertisements of the form anyone might consider objectionable in the first place. Almost anything that doesn't involve paying to get your stuff in front of unwilling eyes and ears seems fine.

Word of mouth and genuine self-promotion of a useful product is indeed the best form of advertising, and of course Show HN would be a good example of that. You could certainly call that a form of advertising or marketing, but I can't imagine someone finding it objectionable. Not least of which because you can't game it with money; it'll succeed or fail based on how much people like what you built.

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#139

Post by chmike »

Could the push functionality of HTTP/2 worsen the problem ? Ad block could limit the downloaded data by selecting it. With the push capability it won't be possible anymore. Network bandwidth could be wasted with the ads. Thebrowser could still filter its display though.

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#140

Post by JoshTriplett »

moron4hire wrote: post #130
JoshTriplett wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few ideas off the top of my head: Go to a gaming conference and show it to people there. Talk to some of the well-respected (note: that's not the same thing as popular) gaming folks on YouTube or Twitch, and let them try it. Find well-respected gaming bloggers/reviewers and show it to them. If what you're building is VR but not exclusive to gaming, talk to people in the field it applies to. Go to a technology confe…

I agree that these are good things to do, and I actually do most of them already. But how can you consider these things "not advertising", such that you find them acceptable? These are forms of advertising. These tasks aren't managing the project, they are certainly not building the project. That pretty much just leaves marketing the project.

They're certainly a form of advertising or marketing, but the result isn't "an ad", which is what this discussion was originally talking about. You're not paying to get something in front of unwilling eyes and ears, distracting them from what they actually wanted. Every one of the approaches I mentioned will only work if you've built something people want to use and talk about.

Also, out of curiosity, which of the items on that list aren't you already doing?

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