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The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

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Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#161

Post by jhall1468 »

Karunamon wrote: post #156
jhall1468 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly this kind of attitude that is going to lead to paywalls for virtually every type of content on the Internet. And the people that use the most heavy-handed approaches with ad-blocking are going to be the same people that are screaming "NOT MY PROBLEM" while the ship goes down. Their business model doesn't require changes to reality. Their business model requires the end-user to accept reality for what it…

If it can't survive without abusing is readers attention, privacy, and security, then I guess the ship needs to go down like the titanic already.

And be replaced with what, exactly?

The call to arms over privacy, attention and security is getting old. Not because its wrong, but because it's never accompanied with an actual solution.

But that's moot because the ship isn't going to sink. Enough people will not use adblock to ensure that companies like Google and Facebook will always make some money off advertising.

So rest assured, the Titanic's will continue to float along. You are simply guaranteeing anything smaller won't. Including any potential competition for the Titanic's.

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#162

Post by bigbugbag »

jhall1468 wrote: post #150
raddad wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world did fine prior to the advertisements and the world will be fine after the advertisements fail. Simply because somebody asks you to become a sheeple doesn't mean you are required to become one. No need to fall into lock step and comply.

Modern advertising began in 1836. Why has it become vogue to call someone "sheeple" because they think there's a happy medium between the "all ads are bad" and the "giving you a seizure with my ad is okay" approaches. You aren't an underground revolution fighting the man. You installed a browser plugin.

There cannot be such a happy medium as long as ads are increasingly "targeted" and "third party". "Targeted ads" means surveillance, profiling, tracking, massive privacy invasion. "Third party" means poorer performance and having no control on your main source of revenue (see the stories about google censoring content on google ads based websites).

Duckduckgo makes a good case for non-targeted ads while still being profitable.

The issue here has two sides: on the practical side it is much easier to block all ads than to maintain a white list while on the attitude style a website that tells its visitors "I could not care less about your privacy and your browsing experience" by showing ads and running third partu tracking scripts should not be surprised when a growing portion of visitors return the favor "we don't care about your failed business model, we do care about our privacy and browsing experience though" by blocking said ads.

If adblocking wasn't a game changer revolution, we wouldn't be reading the IAB telling us "we messed up. As technologists, tasked with delivering content and services to users, we lost track of the user experience." http://www.iab.com/news/lean/

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#163

Post by njharman »

jhall1468 wrote: post #118
njharman wrote: post #84

If your business model requires changes to reality, then your business model is probably dead. [If you have lobbying power, you can extend your business model for awhile, perhaps indefinitely ala content industry and copyright.] In other words, adapt your business model to change or die. It's not up to "reality", us, to change to support your business model. If there is demand for whatever you produce, someone will c…

It's exactly this kind of attitude that is going to lead to paywalls for virtually every type of content on the Internet. And the people that use the most heavy-handed approaches with ad-blocking are going to be the same people that are screaming "NOT MY PROBLEM" while the ship goes down. Their business model doesn't require changes to reality. Their business model requires the end-user to accept reality for what it…

That's fine. If paywalls is the business model that works (I don't think it is for most content (it's really just not worth anything even ad eyeball time)) then that is how it will be.

I'm not a huge "free-market" proponent. But markets exist, and they aren't magic. They smove to solution(s) that the market wants / willing to "pay" for. Pay in broadest sense, money, eyeballs, time, etc. As a business you can fight a losing battle against the tide. Or you can ride it. Hoping the tide doesn't exist or doesn't apply to you, is delusional.

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#164

Post by lazyjones »

jhall1468 wrote: post #155
lazyjones wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's exactly this kind of attitude that is going to lead to paywalls for virtually every type of content on the Internet. If you think this is going to happen as a result, you must presume that it would be a good - i.e. acceptable and viable - solution. Why do you simultaneously try to use it as a threatening outlook? If enough people perceive it as a threat or discover later that paywalls are even less convenient…

> If you think this is going to happen as a result, you must presume that it would be a good - i.e. acceptable and viable - solution. What kind of logic are you following? I think dropping a bomb on Paris is going to kill a whole lot of people. How does it follow that because I think that, it stands to reason that I think it's "good". > some other solution will have to be found Because we already have a solution. Uno…

> What kind of logic are you following? I think dropping a bomb on Paris is going to kill a whole lot of people. How does it follow that because I think that, it stands to reason that I think it's "good".

It's good for the majority of publishers if they accept it as their preferred solution as you wrote. Unless you think they ought to be driven by other motives than making sound business decisions - like cruelty or whatever you were trying to insinuate with your slanted rhetoric.

> I'm not defending advertising to the death here. The main reason ad-blockers exist is because fools with decision-making powers and no critical-thinking skills decided to make ads obtrusive.

Not really - fools like me already worked around ads almost 20 years ago because they wasted bandwidth (proof: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/nino/websearch.html - no longer functional though amazingly still online). Piggyback ads are an anomaly and people will always try to avoid them, whether they're text (to be confused with valid search results) like Google's or flashy, crashy animations.

> Yet, the argument from the "zero tolerance for ads" group is "come up with a better model". We have another model. You pull out your wallet, and enter your credit card.

Well, go ahead and use it then. What's holding you back? Altruism and the urge to save users from the consequences of their personal choices? Oh, please...

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#165

Post by [deleted] »

DanBC wrote: post #95
JupiterMoon wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike like spam and adverts in roughly equal measure and I've never heard of this Boulder Pledge. > But people the people who created those early spam filters - they all signed the Boulder Pledge. They all agreed that not only would they block spam, but they would also never ever buy a product promoted with spam. And people that use spam filters on a daily basis just like the fact that they don't get as much spam…

> I dislike like spam and adverts in roughly equal measure and I've never heard of this Boulder Pledge. How old are you? How long have you been using the Internet? Do you remember the time before commercial use of the WWW?

[deleted]

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#166

Post by tomjen3 »

intrasight wrote: post #113

I use uBlock Origin. I don't block ads - I block 3rd party requests. People that complain about ad blocking are indeed missing the mark. I'm fine with ads - really. But if you want them seen, you are going to have to serve them yourself. There is no going backwards - for reasons spelled out by others in this thread. So if your business depends on ads, then you are in the ad business. Web sites are going to have to be…

That won't work for small sites that aren't going to have a million monthly views, which means you are effectively chocking of new websites, or forcing them to proxy the request through their own site, thus pointlessly driving up the cost.

I get that some people don't want to be tracked (I don't mind as long as I can selectively turn it of), but please at least be honest about what you don't like.

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#167

Post by jhall1468 »

bigbugbag wrote: post #162
jhall1468 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern advertising began in 1836. Why has it become vogue to call someone "sheeple" because they think there's a happy medium between the "all ads are bad" and the "giving you a seizure with my ad is okay" approaches. You aren't an underground revolution fighting the man. You installed a browser plugin.

There cannot be such a happy medium as long as ads are increasingly "targeted" and "third party". "Targeted ads" means surveillance, profiling, tracking, massive privacy invasion. "Third party" means poorer performance and having no control on your main source of revenue (see the stories about google censoring content on google ads based websites). Duckduckgo makes a good case for non-targeted ads while still being p…

> Duckduckgo makes a good case for non-targeted ads while stille being profitable.

So there is a happy medium and, in your opinion, it's non-targeted ads. Yet uBlock and uBlock Origin and the millions of people that use them are blocking DuckDuckGo ads.

piwik is an open-source, locally installed, piece of analytic's software that is blocked by default in the above AND in adblock.

So you are making an argument that is presently being implemented and still being blocked.

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#168

Post by proactivesvcs »

It's getting tiresome doing this.

"We understand perfectly that some of you might find ads annoying" "Our pledge: we do not serve intrusive ads like pop-downs/pop-ups and takeovers."

From one page load of www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/guru3d-rig-of-the-month-october-2015,1.html this list excludes the dozen or so trackers and adverts that I don't have record of serving malware.

googletagservices.com (Angler, Neutrino exploit kits, to mention just the most recent)

doubleclick.net (Angler, Neutrino exploit kits, to mention just the most recent)

adnxs.com (Angler exploit kit, Flash 0-days on MSN.com)

openx.net (don't get me started on the cesspit of openx)

serving-sys.com

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#169

Post by bigbugbag »

jhall1468 wrote: post #157
bigbugbag wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's exactly this kind of attitude that is going to lead to paywalls for virtually every type of content on the Internet. Except this won't free us from ads, actually the contrary as explained here: http://zen.lk/2015/07/19/Why-you-will-never-escape-ads-by-pa... > The reality is, ad-blocking will be the absolute death of currency-free content. The reality is that it's not too late to ditch the ad-based business mod…

> The reality is that it's not too late to ditch the ad-based business model and build a better web The article is a 10-page document on why "surveillance" (tracking) is evil and effectively offers no solution outside of (maybe) micro-payments as a means to compensate, which directly counters the first argument you made that paying will never free us from ads. So which is it?

Had you read the argument about paying for content not freeing us from being targeted by advertisers, you would have noticed it is based on showing buying power, something micro payment is not really doing.

If you want solutions you can look at patreon, flattr, crowdfunded websites, wikipedia,…

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#170

Post by RyanZAG »

jhall1468 wrote: post #161
Karunamon wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it can't survive without abusing is readers attention, privacy, and security, then I guess the ship needs to go down like the titanic already.

And be replaced with what, exactly? The call to arms over privacy, attention and security is getting old. Not because its wrong, but because it's never accompanied with an actual solution. But that's moot because the ship isn't going to sink. Enough people will not use adblock to ensure that companies like Google and Facebook will always make some money off advertising. So rest assured, the Titanic's will continue to…

Maybe with nothing? There isn't some god-given requirement for there to be all these reviews about 3D cards. If readers refuse to receive ads and refuse to pay, then the site will go out of business and the content will go away. That's honestly fine - if people won't pay in time or by viewing ads, the content is simply not valuable enough to enough people for it to exist.

Less content is not the end of the world. Probably some hobbyist will spend his own time and money to publish it in some form anyway. Or Guru3D will find some other way to survive? They've added a donation link - maybe people will be happy to pay after all.

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