Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

guru3d.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 334 posts

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

#61

Post by fauigerzigerk »

rewqfdsa wrote: post #36
cm2187 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertisers just have to accept that when a customer walk through their door, they will not have access to his/her bank statements, sexual preferences, list of acquaintances, medical records, gps locations for the last two years, etc. What information one can get from someone's browsing history is awfully invasive.

> Advertisers just have to accept Advertisers will adapt. What you have to accept is more annoying advertising coupled with increasingly error-prone code in both ad-blockers and ad-blocker-blockers. The only one that wins is Moloch; everyone else is worse off. > What information one can get from someone's browsing history is awfully invasive. Is it? Advertisers don't get some kind of toast on their phones saying "Joe…

>Advertisers don't get some kind of toast on their phones saying "Joe, 34 from Topeka with a toaster fetish, has just visited your site!"

But the likes of Google and Facebook know exactly that. They have it stored somewhere and it's only a matter of time until it gets stolen by organised criminals, religious fanatics or oppressive governments.

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

#62

Post by Jweb_Guru »

hannob wrote: post #22

This is so common for the many anti-adblock texts you see these days - they all avoid to talk about the major issues here. (I say that with the background that a significant part of my income comes from ad-financed news pages.) That is: * Security risk through ads (malvertising, ad networks not supporting https etc.). * Ads killing performance (70% CPU for a flash ad is not uncommon). * Privacy (Ad vendors having mos…

This strikes me as pretty similar to the usual "record labels are evil" defense for pirating music, in that it's a rationalization for something people were going to do anyway. While your points are true ones, they're not the reasons most people are using ad blockers (for instance, I am quite confident that most people have no idea about the security risks involved in simply loading an advertisement).

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

#63

Post by SixSigma »

hcon wrote: post #57
SixSigma wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much in $ terms is that worth to you? Work it out and send guru3d a payment

Obviously nobody does that. My favorite example is when you see a popular github repository with a donate button (Flattr, Bitcoin address, etc) only to realize they've made a whole $14 in the past year. Wow, thanks world! It turns out that ads worked because the user didn't actually have to do anything. They didn't have to get their credit card out of their wallet, something they rarely do on the internet. And when t…

You say "nobody" but I know that's not true because I am "somebody" who donates.

Ad blockers mean one isn't prepared to pay for your product. Personally when I am prevented from viewing content because my Privoxy has been detected I tend to just go elsewhere. I find ads a significant burden on my concentration and well being.

Yet in print media I don't mind. Often I read trade mags specifically for the ads, they are great market research.

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

#64

Post by Jweb_Guru »

jensen123 wrote: post #56
ufo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin stores every single transaction that ever happens in a public ledger. Not only is it not private but it also will not scale for microtransactions on a massive scale.

> Bitcoin stores every single transaction that ever happens in a public ledger. Ok, I admit I'm not a Bitcoin expert. But if I buy Bitcoin with cash, or mine some myself, is this really a problem?

Yes. It's unrelated to how you acquire the Bitcoin, there's a soft limit of something like seven transactions per second across the entire ledger (it's not exactly that because the difficulty of mining a block is set based on the current hash rate, but it's set so that on average a block is mined every ten minutes; in practice, it will usually be much lower, since that figure assumes only minimum-sized transactions are used and the block is full, which is rarely the case).

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

#65

Post by InclinedPlane »

hannob wrote: post #22

This is so common for the many anti-adblock texts you see these days - they all avoid to talk about the major issues here. (I say that with the background that a significant part of my income comes from ad-financed news pages.) That is: * Security risk through ads (malvertising, ad networks not supporting https etc.). * Ads killing performance (70% CPU for a flash ad is not uncommon). * Privacy (Ad vendors having mos…

Additionally, visitors don't sign a contract to agree to view ads in exchange for content, content-makers don't own their visitors' eyes or attention and can't expect to just sell them off willy-nilly.

I'm very sorry for content-makers who've hitched their financial wagons to ads, I wish things were easier for you, I really do, but I'm not going to view ads, nor am I going to feel bad about it. No more so than if you had made the poor choice of relying on spam for financial support.

Look, a lot of this ad revenue was bullshit anyway. Online ads have not been very effective historically, but people were still willing to pay for them and that pumped a lot of money into any site with a lot of traffic, regardless of whether or not the ads on that site actually worked. It turns out that visitors have started blocking ads before people started figuring out how crappy the RoI on those ads actually were, but that money was likely to dry up one way or the other eventually.

There are plenty of non-obnoxious ways to do product reviews and endorsements that can still bring in revenue (that's the laziest option) but there are also a ton of excellent options out there for content-creators to gain financial support without relying on ads. It's easier than it's ever been to earn a living without ads and it's only getting easier over time. If you're a web-focused content creator in 2015 and you don't have something for sale on your site (even just "brand" merch), don't have patreon set up, and don't have plans for crowd funded projects then you're making a huge mistake and leaving a crap-ton of money on the table.

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

#66

Post by DanBC »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #65
hannob wrote: post #22

This is so common for the many anti-adblock texts you see these days - they all avoid to talk about the major issues here. (I say that with the background that a significant part of my income comes from ad-financed news pages.) That is: * Security risk through ads (malvertising, ad networks not supporting https etc.). * Ads killing performance (70% CPU for a flash ad is not uncommon). * Privacy (Ad vendors having mos…

Additionally, visitors don't sign a contract to agree to view ads in exchange for content, content-makers don't own their visitors' eyes or attention and can't expect to just sell them off willy-nilly. I'm very sorry for content-makers who've hitched their financial wagons to ads, I wish things were easier for you, I really do, but I'm not going to view ads, nor am I going to feel bad about it. No more so than if you…

> I'm very sorry for content-makers who've hitched their financial wagons to ads, I wish things were easier for you, I really do, but I'm not going to view ads, nor am I going to feel bad about. No more so than if you had made the poor choice of relying on spam for financial support.

People who hated spam signed the Boulder Pledge.

People who hate ads tend to say fuck you, I'm blocking the ads but taking the bandwidth anyway.

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

#67

Post by InclinedPlane »

DanBC wrote: post #66
InclinedPlane wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, visitors don't sign a contract to agree to view ads in exchange for content, content-makers don't own their visitors' eyes or attention and can't expect to just sell them off willy-nilly. I'm very sorry for content-makers who've hitched their financial wagons to ads, I wish things were easier for you, I really do, but I'm not going to view ads, nor am I going to feel bad about it. No more so than if you…

> I'm very sorry for content-makers who've hitched their financial wagons to ads, I wish things were easier for you, I really do, but I'm not going to view ads, nor am I going to feel bad about. No more so than if you had made the poor choice of relying on spam for financial support. People who hated spam signed the Boulder Pledge. People who hate ads tend to say fuck you, I'm blocking the ads but taking the bandwidt…

You're living in a fantasy world. Nearly everyone universally hates spam, and nearly everyone uses a mail system that automatically filters it. They don't sign a pledge, they just use tools that help then avoid spam. They mark spam they get in their inbox to help others avoid it automatically. And they have no compunction about using a site that relies on spam, they merely find it annoying.

And as I mentioned there's no formal system in place where users agree to see ads in exchange for access to content. Nor is there a moral obligation to do so.

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

#68

Post by Yuioup »

I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you want some of my money you need to get it from the people who charge me every month for accesing you web page: My ISP.

They are the ones making money off the fact that I want to get on the internet and access content.

Too bad there is no reliable, independent mechanism for taking some of that money and putting it in a large pool to be ditributed to content creators. The amount you get is based on how popular your site is. The ISPs know exactly how popular your site is.

(Too bad I'm late to the thread. Nobody is going to read this)

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

#69

Post by yomism »

teddyh wrote: post #39
hannob wrote: post #22

This is so common for the many anti-adblock texts you see these days - they all avoid to talk about the major issues here. (I say that with the background that a significant part of my income comes from ad-financed news pages.) That is: * Security risk through ads (malvertising, ad networks not supporting https etc.). * Ads killing performance (70% CPU for a flash ad is not uncommon). * Privacy (Ad vendors having mos…

Those are all valid reasons, but they are not the reason I first started to block ads: • They impose a surprisingly huge cognitive load. Even if you (like most people nowadays) are used to them and hence “do not notice them”, that very habit of ignoring them actually takes more brain power than you’d think.

And everybody knows that if you deplete your brain power before going to sleep your brain explodes...

On a serious note, your brain will be ok, it is a fine pattern matching machines with adaptative filters to discard uninteresting data (did you notice that sound of blood heartbeating in your ears?... that's filtering doing its work).

And also visually our brain is very good at ignoring data, search for the gorilla suit experiment.

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

#70

Post by yomism »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #65
hannob wrote: post #22

This is so common for the many anti-adblock texts you see these days - they all avoid to talk about the major issues here. (I say that with the background that a significant part of my income comes from ad-financed news pages.) That is: * Security risk through ads (malvertising, ad networks not supporting https etc.). * Ads killing performance (70% CPU for a flash ad is not uncommon). * Privacy (Ad vendors having mos…

Additionally, visitors don't sign a contract to agree to view ads in exchange for content, content-makers don't own their visitors' eyes or attention and can't expect to just sell them off willy-nilly. I'm very sorry for content-makers who've hitched their financial wagons to ads, I wish things were easier for you, I really do, but I'm not going to view ads, nor am I going to feel bad about it. No more so than if you…

Are you going to donate to the pages you visit?
Post reply on HN