41–50 of 60 posts
In a perfect world, web adverts will be back to the print media style - non-clickable non-targeted images.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't disagree with you, but just from a devil's advocate point of view, some would argue that by using ads to pay for the content, it allows the content to get to those people who couldn't have afforded to pay for it themselves.
Or, niche topics that can't draw enough support to stay afloat. Thus leading to an increasing sameness and banality. Call it the tyranny of popularity.
This isn't specific to adverts and applies to every industry/endeavour that depends on voluntary engagement for funding. Name one thing that does not require a minimum level of popularity to be self-sustaining
I was quite happy with ads, then our local paper www.bathchronicle.co.uk became impossible to use and I "chose" to install adblock specifically because of their 45+ ads on one page. I noticed a similar issue with other www.localworld.co.uk paper sites. I get they need to make money but to make articles unreadable is not the way to go. One option I'm guessing is to have a blacklist adblock approach that only kicks in…
My local paper's site, the Denver Post, started to look like a whore with all the ads, and auto-replicated stories on the same page, years ago. I stopped visiting before I ever installed my first ad blocker.
People using ad blockers are a small proportion of the market. Shitty click-through rates are just inevitable as consumers learn new ad behavior and grow a blindness to it. Do a focus group study and I bet most people won't even be able to recall that they even saw an ad, let alone what it was for. In other words, if you choose a business model that requires placement ads, you're doomed. You made a bad decision. Sorr…
Up to 25% of the population in some countries: http://blog.pagefair.com/2014/adblocking-report/
If you produce content, no one is willing to pay for it and your only source of income for it is adverts then I say your business model is flawed and good riddance to you.
Most larger websites produce two or three articles a month that I'm interested in. Smaller websites may only produce one or two articles a year that I'm interested in reading. There is no way I'm going to sign up for 100+ websites in order to read sporadic content. But this sporadic content is what does exist and needs to exist in order to get a well rounded web. So it's not realistic to say to a smaller niche blog to produce "better" and more frequent content that appeals to everyone. That's part of the beauty of thousands of niche web sites over, for example, dozens of niche magazines of the past.
So, there is a fundamental problem that needs to be addressed. There needs to be a way to aggregate all these sites into a single payment system. You pay for a year and get access to the sites you like. Then this payment processing company takes care of allocating the money based on various factors like how many people access each article.
Finally, in order to maximize revenue to content providers, this company should be setup not to take a fixed percent of each transaction but only take what it needs to sustain itself. In other words, at the end of each week/month/whatever the company totals up it's expenses and take their percentage only up sustainability (which includes growth factors). No more middle man leaches!
> no one wants to give away money from their own pockets in order to sustain their website. Interestingly, some of the best content on the web (in my opinion) can be found on websites that do not have ads. They are maintained by people genuinely interested in a topic and have a passion for sharing knowledge. I'm not saying that gift economy works for everyone, but there certainly are people that are willing to pay fr…
> We fear that in the near future many websites will start to disappear just because their maintenance will no longer be profitable, and no one wants to give away money from their own pockets in order to sustain their website. I hear that since Webwasher. And today, with better AdBlocking tools, additional costs for hosts, the Internet is still there. From time to time even I get weak and think about the way I block…
At work I only use IE for internal sites and apps. Everything external I use Firefox with uBO, Disconnect and Ghostery. I don't want to be responsible for bringing something heinous into my employer's network. I don't know why adblockers aren't mandatory inside corporations.
I'm not even allowed to run FF, Chrome, etc. We bypass this by using Waterfox because it seems to be the .exe Files that are blocked.
It's a horrible risk since people are doing research on their IE going down to private peoples pages and blogs (not all of them though since wordpress-hosted blogs are blocked...).
Actually, I disagree. This is 2015. If I want to start a website on a certain topic, say about cars or electronics, I can find some really good free hosts who will support me without any sneazy catches. As a real example, I go to blogger.com, setup a new blog with my own custom theme, (with all the attribution to blogger removed if I want to) and start producing content. Not cool with blogspot? Then, how about Github pages? Not so technical? How about using a free shared web host (there are plenty, Google them)?
If your objective is to spread information and knowledge, you will do that no matter what. It is when your objective is guised as spreading information when you really want to make money and scale up doing so, then you run into a problem. The problem with this kind of appeal against ad-blocking is the same old argument of "How much is too much?"
"We need money to support our website to keep it up and running". But, never do these authors disclose how much they really need as long as they're making a killer profit.
The problem with mixing ads with content is that introduces a conflict of interest - Are you writing that content because you like writing, or are you writing that content to get more eyeballs to serve your advertisers? And it's very hard to convince your readers that you don't intend to make money from them although you have ads on your site.
For your reference, I do own a blog myself without any ads whatsoever and I think this is the future we're heading towards. I am a proud user of adblock software and I refused to be shamed for that. As would any user, I am concerned about the content first, which is the logical reason why I go to a site. But, if the site tries hard to ruin my experience to make it difficult for me to consume that content, then of course, I'll find a way to circumvent it. But, that doesn't mean I don't support the authors of the site, just that as everyone else, I have my own way of supporting them. Just like how I've been donating to Wikipedia all these years.
There have been too many sites abusing the slogan of "We need to place ads so we can support ads" to buy back our lost trust. Sure, there will be a lot of content weeded out because they can't support themselves, but I am confident that the ones whose objectives are to spread information will do so no matter what.
We built the internet ourselves when no one gave us ads to support our efforts back then. And we'll find a way to do it again. Just takes time and patience.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not flawed, it's just not simple. Or, it's a happy accident that people figured out how to be middlemen between advertisers and news consumers (the classic example). In the paper newspaper days I didn't mind ads at all. And I probably wouldn't have paid the full cost of subscription if the advertisers weren't the real source of income. Now, as someone in another said, advertisers are stalkers. I mind that.
Have you seen a weekend local paper in the U.S. recently? There are whole ad sections that I drop straight in the trash. It's often at least 50% of the paper by weight. There may be deals for supermarket meat etc. but in general it seems like a total waste.