71 replies to this topic

[VicHockeyFan]

What I don't care for is the 15 second commercial at the start of a UTube video. I also don't care for the 2-5 second ads that have been popping up in the corner of the television screen while viewing programs like Gracepoint.

 

Those are not going to go away any time soon.  That's their answer to PVRs and downloading.  

[pherthyl]

Rare for me to agree with Mike K on anything, but in this case I do.   Ad blockers are convenient, but by running them you are essentially screwing over the websites that you want to visit.   No wonder the news media has gone downhill so badly if everyone wants free high quality news but no one wants to pay and no one wants to see ads.  

I stopped using ad blockers a few years ago for that reason.  If I encounter a site with very obnoxious ads I just leave and never come back.  

 

How about this for an approach to ad blockers?  Detect them, and if it is a logged in user who has been using the site for a while, display a small message something like "Looks like you're using an adblocker.  VV depends on advertising revenue to maintain this forum and we'd really appreciate if you whitelisted us. We hate obnoxious ads as much as you do, and we are careful not to run them on our site."    

Edited by pherthyl, 28 November 2014 - 08:30 AM.

[lanforod]

Ad blockers are getting quite sophisticated. Harder and harder to detect.

[Mike K.]

Rare for me to agree with Mike K on anything, but in this case I do.   Ad blockers are convenient, but by running them you are essentially screwing over the websites that you want to visit.   No wonder the news media has gone downhill so badly if everyone wants free high quality news but no one wants to pay and no one wants to see ads.  

I stopped using ad blockers a few years ago for that reason.  If I encounter a site with very obnoxious ads I just leave and never come back.  

 

How about this for an approach to ad blockers?  Detect them, and if it is a logged in user who has been using the site for a while, display a small message something like "Looks like you're using an adblocker.  VV depends on advertising revenue to maintain this forum and we'd really appreciate if you whitelisted us. We hate obnoxious ads as much as you do, and we are careful not to run them on our site."    

 

Yeah, you know that may be a good idea. Something simple and unobtrusive. That's interesting that you decided to remove an ad blocker. Not many would consider that or ponder over the effects of destroying a business model that created the very Internet we all take for granted. If that business model collapses and websites are forced to seek payment from visitors in order to keep the lights on we'll look back on today and wonder why the good stuff disappeared and why the Internet became what cable television is.

 

VV is a relatively small site, all things considered, and the motivator behind this resource is not profit, but our other projects are and that's where we really feel the effects of ad blockers.

 

@Lanforod, and therein is another issue. Ad blockers also have an anti-corporate, anti-$$$ component to them. It's not just a means of removing annoying pop-ups and pop-unders, it's also a political/social statement that is often brought up when people talk about the Internet being "free" and "unregulated." Of course neither of those things are reality as the Internet is most certainly not free and is regulated (we just don't notice or care for the regulation that is already in place).

[sebberry]

I never thought it as an anti-corporate issue. 

 

Mike, do website owners typically make money on ad click or impression?  Because with an adblocker or not, the only time I've clicked ads is when they've expanded unexpectedly when I've gone to click something near them.

[jklymak]

Here you go: just add this to your sites and folks w/ ad blockers won't see your content...

 

stackoverflow

[Mike K.]

I never thought it as an anti-corporate issue. 

 

Mike, do website owners typically make money on ad click or impression?  Because with an adblocker or not, the only time I've clicked ads is when they've expanded unexpectedly when I've gone to click something near them.

 

The common misconception is that only click-throughs generate revenue. That is not the case at all. More is made via impressions than click throughs and that's been the case for many, many years.

 

@jklymak, thanks for the link. It would be nice to not have to go down that route, but eventually this may be what happens. Of course the ad-blocking community is now creating depositories of sites that block ad-blockers and are finding ways to circumvent most content blocking attempts.

[sebberry]

There's a car forum I visit, it's never had ads for the 10 years I've been visiting it.  They are however set up to take donations from members and many members do toss the site's owner $20 once in a while. 

 

Might be something to think about.  Strangely there's also a lot of forums where the operator will remove the ads if you sign up.  I guess as some sort of encouragement to join and participate. 

 

The other thing you could do is have a vendor section where vendors pay to advertise their business and engage in discussions with members.  Another way to circumvent ad blockers is to take payment directly from advertisers and embed the ad images on the site.  They'd display like any other JPG on the page and since they're not being served up by ad servers, they won't be blocked.  Added benefit of not tracking users too.

[G-Man]

I think that ads are going to bring in more than donations any day. People are cheap.

[jklymak]

Andrew Sullivan seems to do OK with a quasi paywall: you can see part of all the articles but to see the whole thing you need to subscribe.  Of course his content is not a forum.  

 

You could not let people who are not subscribers post, but for a small forum like this that might be a problem where you don't have a lot of posters already.  I appreciate what is done here and would pay on the order of $20/y, but I'm not sure how many would.  No idea how that would translate to the Skyscraper page.   

[LJ]

LJ, I think you've got a chronic virus or malware issue. Your browser has been hijacked by something and its overlaying ads. I think we've tried to help you with these issues on a few occasions. Oftentimes the malware will target the website or websites you visit the most in order to mask its presence. That being said, if you ever notice an obtrusive ad please let us know and we'll get on it.

Sebberry, and that's fine, but a few sites with an overabundance of ads or disruptive ads shouldn't force all other publishers who take great efforts to ensure their ads and the partnerships they strike are unobtrusive to their visitors to lose out on important revenue.

Yeah I wish I knew the answer. It causes VV to stop working in IE and slows it down in Chrome. I run malaware bytes and it doesn't find anything so I don't know where to go from there.

[LJ]

^And I know it is not something you are running because I just got an ad in Spanish for Cricket phones.

[Sparky]

I don't know where to go from there.

 

Future Shop.

[lanforod]

Yeah I wish I knew the answer. It causes VV to stop working in IE and slows it down in Chrome. I run malaware bytes and it doesn't find anything so I don't know where to go from there.

If you get the ads in both Chrome and IE, it isn't a single browser plugin. More likely a full blown chuck of malware installed.

[Sparky]

Yeah I wish I knew the answer.

 

Quit watching **rn.

[Bingo]

Yeah I wish I knew the answer. It causes VV to stop working in IE and slows it down in Chrome. I run malaware bytes and it doesn't find anything so I don't know where to go from there.

Tony, at Mother Computers.

[LJ]

Quit watching **rn.

What would I do in my spare time?

[LJ]

If you get the ads in both Chrome and IE, it isn't a single browser plugin. More likely a full blown chuck of malware installed.

I have Malware bytes professional installed so sent them a query, haven't heard back yet.

 

One of the offenders is myturfads.com and the other is liverail.com, but can't find anyway to uninstall the buggers.

[sebberry]

Follow the steps here: 

 

http://malwaretips.c...cake-popup-ads/

 

Malwarebytes is good, but nothing will remove everything.  Often multiple applications are required for a more complete clean.  I can give you a hand if you need.

[tedward]

 I also don't care for the 2-5 second ads that have been popping up in the corner of the television screen while viewing programs like Gracepoint.

 

I have been trying to watch something called Real Humans which is a Swedish production and is subtitled. SPACE keeps putting those stupid ads right over top of the subtitles!