The Verge: The internet is dying a slow death because of ad blockers

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I mean even on Neogaf, we have ads that have varying degrees of click-able content e.g a series of boxes that if you hover each shows more information of a product (like spec and price). It automatically makes the add bigger and heavier. Of course neogaf's ads are pretty good to otherplaces.

How hard is it to have a simple light image with a link attached to it, that doesn't load anything else?
 
PeskyToaster said:
I feel like these sites are taking our time and their existence for granted. They aren't really entitled to exist until the end of time and aren't entitled to exist without changing either. They are the ones who have to change in response to the consumer's browsing habits. the onus is on them to find a way to survive and the public isn't obligated to support shitty practices and content. It seems they are content with just guilting people into changing their habits instead of improving their site and content.
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This is how I feel. He's acting like this is ESSENTIAL CONTENT. It's so not.

The sites I support like GAF, etc I whitelist.
 
I have an idea that I shouldn't be posting here cos I could probably make millions of dollars w it but fuck it I'll shock some of u

Hb if u actually made ads that people wanted to follow instead of making stupid fucking banners that no one wants to see. I actually click some ads on Facebook because they know how to present something to me that encourages curiosity.
 
Ryaaan14 said:
I have an idea that I shouldn't be posting here cos I could probably make millions of dollars w it but fuck it I'll shock some of u

Hb if u actually made ads that people wanted to follow instead of making stupid fucking banners that no one wants to see. I actually click some ads on Facebook because they know how to present something to me that encourages curiosity.
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Your "idea" involves Facebook having more access to your personal life than any other website, and the fact that they use that personal information to target relevant ads to you and integrate the ads in such a way that you may not even realize it's an ad a company is paying for.
 
I tried not using ad-blockers but some sites make navigation simply impossible without ad-blockers. Stuff like background audio starting from out of nowhere is terrible.
 
Hey Evilore, I have a serious question I've wanted an answer to for a while. Do you get money only if people click on the ads on this site, or do you get money for every page load? I assume it's the latter since the former would be a completely different argument.

I mean showing me ads is one thing, but asking me to click all of them would be another. Just out of curiosity really.
 
The Real Abed said:
Hey Evilore, I have a serious question I've wanted an answer to for a while. Do you get money only if people click on the ads on this site, or do you get money for every page load? I assume it's the latter since the former would be a completely different argument.

I mean showing me ads is one thing, but asking me to click all of them would be another. Just out of curiosity really.
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The ads are primarily CPM based, so based on pageviews. Low clickthrough rate can influence things negatively in other ways, but it's always better to load the ad than to not load the ad.
 
Ryaaan14 said:
I have an idea that I shouldn't be posting here cos I could probably make millions of dollars w it but fuck it I'll shock some of u

Hb if u actually made ads that people wanted to follow instead of making stupid fucking banners that no one wants to see. I actually click some ads on Facebook because they know how to present something to me that encourages curiosity.
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This post is kind of funny to me.

Tons of people have been complaining about how "creepy" ads are and how they "track" you. You know what they're really doing? Figuring out what sort of ad to show you. The reason Facebook can get things right on the money is because you fill out all your information for them, and then you 'like' other things that interest you. Advertisers can target you, and you see content relevant to you. When you're talking a vast network of different websites, then the ad network has to figure out who you are. Basically google is doing what you want. They've already made millions of dollars with it.... but people find it "creepy."

I agree with you, though. If I'm going to have them, I want ads that are relevant to me, so when people complain a ton about ad companies "tracking" them I just don't get it. Obviously tracking certain things is kind of bad, but if they want to know how old I am and what I'm interested in, there isn't much nefarious they can and will do with that besides try and show me a thing I might be interested in. What's so bad about that? I like when I'm interested in stuff!
 
Fuck it lets bring back the 2003 era MySpace ads

A Clorox ad that shows a tshirt and lets u draw dicks on it.

Better yet, somehow program it to load other people's drawn dicks.

No one's gonna follow the link but ur gonna have a lot of people having a blast clicking on ur ad drawing beautiful thick throbbing cocks all over it possibly breasts.
 
EviLore said:
The ads are primarily CPM based, so based on pageviews. Low clickthrough rate can influence things negatively in other ways, but it's always better to load the ad than to not load the ad.
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Do you get more money if someone clicks them? Because very rarely do I ever get an ad for something relevant to me. But I'd gladly click ads if something actually appeals. Not that I'd buy anything from them or spend more than a second on their site afterwards.

I always wondered how they worked.
 
Ryaaan14 said:
Fuck it lets bring back the 2003 era MySpace ads

A Clorox ad that shows a tshirt and lets u draw dicks on it.

Better yet, somehow program it to load other people's drawn dicks.

No one's gonna follow the link but ur gonna have a lot of people having a blast clicking on ur ad drawing beautiful thick throbbing cocks all over it possibly breasts.
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I'll show you something I got in the mail back in the early 2000s only because I punched a stupid monkey...

HN2BSGM.jpg
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I don't even remember giving them my address but I guess I did. It just showed up without warning one day. I love it.

This post brought to you by treeloot.com. (Which no longer exists)
 
The Real Abed said:
I'll show you something I got in the mail back in the early 2000s only because I punched a stupid monkey...



I don't even remember giving them my address but I guess I did. It just showed up without warning one day. I love it.

This post brought to you by treeloot.com. (Which no longer exists)
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That's amazing

I'd click an ad for a boxing monkey
 
Bear Force One said:
This is how I feel. He's acting like this is ESSENTIAL CONTENT. It's so not.

The sites I support like GAF, etc I whitelist.
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If it's not essential content, why do you feel the need to still go to those sites without loading ads?

If a site bothers me I don't visit it. I don't go to IGN because their pages are a mess and their content is mostly unappealing to me, just like I don't shop at certain stores or buy products from certain manufacturers. It's not hard. There is an alternative for pretty much everything these days.
 
daegan said:
If it's not essential content, why do you feel the need to still go to those sites without loading ads?
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Seriously, there's some weird logic on display here from some people. If this stuff shouldn't exist, then why is it so hard for you to not go there. You can't tell them it's worth nothing at all and then continue to go there. Obviously it is worth something if you can't fucking resist it. They're not taking your time for granted, you are.
 
I'd much rather have ad via direct arrangement and/or sponsorship. It's not geocities time, small sites don't need them/have other options to monetize, enterprises can do something about finding partners. And with how little the ads are worth, if serving content is the business and the revenue to pay hosting, writers and other expenses has to come from the ads, no wonder the pages are chock-full of them. It's not even just the obnoxious audio/cover ones, 3 (often ugly) banners surrounding a paragraph from three sides is grating for purely aesthetic reasons. Or one of those full-page (on mobile multiple screens) "more of the web" atrocities. Unfortunately at this point the whole model is so messed up, I'm very glad it's going to be shaken up.

In the case of GAF/forums, it's actually one of the setups the system actually kind of works, with text as relatively light bandwidth/high volume to intersperse them enough, and mostly user-generated content. That or the forum is so full of huge avatars and signature banners, a couple more make no difference.
 
RDreamer said:
Seriously, there's some weird logic on display here from some people. If this stuff shouldn't exist, then why is it so hard for you to not go there. You can't tell them it's worth nothing at all and then continue to go there. Obviously it is worth something if you can't fucking resist it. They're not taking your time for granted, you are.
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Fair point in regards to people who regularly visit sites that they don't white list.

The problem is that an average day on the Internet doesn't consist of just visiting sites that are already a known quantity to you. Especially for folks like us who frequent forums like GAF, we encounter and, inevitably click, a lot of links to other sites. AdBlock is the default for a good reason. You never know what kind of shit you'll run into.

I definitely advocate whitelisting sites that you like, though. Doing otherwise is likely to negatively affect the content you enjoy.
 
RDreamer said:
Seriously, there's some weird logic on display here from some people. If this stuff shouldn't exist, then why is it so hard for you to not go there. You can't tell them it's worth nothing at all and then continue to go there. Obviously it is worth something if you can't fucking resist it. They're not taking your time for granted, you are.
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The problem is there's just too many substitutes. For example, I go to Polygon a couple times a week to see if there's any game news I've missed on GAF. I use Polygon because typically there's a Kuchera opinion piece to give me a chuckle, but if I had to pay to access Polygon I wouldn't consider it for an instant. I'd just start using IGN. Or Kotaku. Or Destructoid.

How many websites are there that do lists like Buzzfeed? That provide political commentary? That do media reviews? To a majority of people they're all interchangeable. People may have one site they go to out of familiarity and habit, but a majority of the time people don't necessarily want to see what The Verge things about the new iPhone, they just want to know about the new iPhone. They don't necessarily want to know what a specific author's take on the Republican debate, they just want to read a summary.

The information has value, but there's so many different outlets providing such similar content that each individual source loses value.

There are exceptions for authors talented enough or with the right personality to have people follow them specifically, but that's the explanation for a huge majority of the "This stuff shouldn't exist" mentality. The logic isn't so weird.

Edit: The post above mine make a good point too, but I think most people who block ads do so just to get rid of the ads, not for security reasons. I don't have any evidence to back that up, but a lot of people aren't up on computer security. No one likes ads.
 
EviLore said:
The ads are primarily CPM based, so based on pageviews. Low clickthrough rate can influence things negatively in other ways, but it's always better to load the ad than to not load the ad.
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Please think about using something like Stripe to let us browse ad free without guilt/banning. Like $3/month or something.
 
Tivo, cord cutting, ad blockers, etc spoiled enthusiasts. We want an ad-free experience ala Netflix. Even if the internet was free it'd be a hard sell to stop ad blocking
 
The Real Abed said:
Hey Evilore, I have a serious question I've wanted an answer to for a while. Do you get money only if people click on the ads on this site, or do you get money for every page load? I assume it's the latter since the former would be a completely different argument.

I mean showing me ads is one thing, but asking me to click all of them would be another. Just out of curiosity really.
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I wish I could get an ad blocker on my phone. Some websites have ads that you can't even close on mobile. It is awful. Smashboards and GameFaqs come to mind.
 
"We never thought viewers would have an option so we took over their phones with redirects to the App Store, forced video loads when people are milking their data plans and battery on their commute home, excessive tracking and full page road blocks you can't X out. It's not fair that were being held accountable!"

The verge has been increasingly buzzfeed pop culture terrible but this got me to stop visiting. They put up a poll with such biased options, they act like they're gods for allowing a completely civil comment section to be open and oh yeah, by the way, their staff has praised TiVo multiple times in multiple reviews.

The verge has some of the hugest, frequent, resource heavy, intensely tracking garbage ads of any news site. Boohoo. People don't want this shit on their phone killing their battery, destroying and hijacking their browsing experience and stealing their data. It is not illegal. And if there's some moral social understanding it's been nullified and abused by these intrusive ad practices.

By the way, I've worked in advertising for big name ny ad agencies. So for me to say this is something.
 
The Verge: hey guys, all you have to do to read our shitty click-bait content is endure a never-ending shitstorm of ludicrous page load speeds, enormous, intrusive ads and creepy 3rd-party trackers that follow you everywhere you go on the web.

The Internet: uh, yeah, no thanks.

Nillay is being willfully mendacious in his argument. It's not about ads; there's nothing wrong with tasteful, unobtrusive ads. No, this is about obnoxious, user-hostile behavior that actively degrades the experience of using the web. The fact that the Verge and a lot of other sites hitched their wagon to a privacy-invading, battery-draining, speed-killing network of scummy 3rd parties? Not my problem, sorry. Nilay and co. should take the same advice they spent years dispensing to the music, movie and book industries: adapt or die.

Man, my disgust with the technorati Kool Kidz club has reached an all-time high this week. Nilay, Gruber, Arment...fuck 'em all.
 
Fiction said:
If they make ads 100% virus free, not annoying popups that block out part or the screen or autoplay audio, then I would never use adblock again.
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Yep. Can't see many people having a problem with static images. But if someone's ad is going to do the digital equivalent of grabbing me by the ears and wrenching my head around to look at what they're selling, fuck off.
 
Monocle said:
Yep. Can't see many people having a problem with static images. But if someone's ad is going to do the digital equivalent of grabbing me by the ears and wrenching my head around to look at what they're selling, fuck off.
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Exactly.

Sometimes at work I use a browser without adblock and I'm always thinking "holy shit the internet is absolutely unusable without adbock". Blinking, moving shit left and right that takes ages to load. Terrible, just terrible.

Advertisers soured their own well here and practically forced people to use adblock. If your site employs that kind of ads, you have no right to complain in my eyes.

I do have exceptions set up for certain websites I visit often and whose advertising I "trust". Or I buy an ad-free membership like I have with Giantbomb, for example.
 
Booda said:
The Verge: hey guys, all you have to do to read our shitty click-bait content is endure a never-ending shitstorm of ludicrous page load speeds, enormous, intrusive ads and creepy 3rd-party trackers that follow you everywhere you go on the web.

The Internet: uh, yeah, no thanks.

Nillay is being willfully mendacious in his argument. It's not about ads; there's nothing wrong with tasteful, unobtrusive ads. No, this is about obnoxious, user-hostile behavior that actively degrades the experience of using the web. The fact that the Verge and a lot of other sites hitched their wagon to a privacy-invading, battery-draining, speed-killing network of scummy 3rd parties? Not my problem, sorry. Nilay and co. should take the same advice they spent years dispensing to the music, movie and book industries: adapt or die.

Man, my disgust with the technorati Kool Kidz club has reached an all-time high this week. Nilay, Gruber, Arment...fuck 'em all.
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Wait what? You basically just said the same thing Gruber/Arment have been saying for weeks now. (Arment's Peace backtracking aside) why would their views disgust you when you think the same thing?
 
I white list sites I 1) go to regularly and 2) that respect me and my time.

Neogaf is a paragon of respect when it comes to this.

Small banner ad that doesn't auto play audio/video or blow up to take up the whole page, or try to get me to play "find the x" so I can close the ad.

On the other hand, Eventhubs, is atrocious. Before I blocked them I remember full page adds for buffalo Wild Wings that would cover the entire screen, or dish soap ads that would play commercial audio in the background with each page load... On a loop.
That's not cool.


Each site I treat on its own merits. Most of the sites I regularly go to I white list. The places I tend to spend the most time, tend to respect my time anyway, so it's a win-win.
 
There's another ironic example of why this is necessary here. New York Times article on iOS 9 ad-blocking features an ad that makes it impossible to scroll down when viewed on an iPad. And this is the New York Times, not some trashy blog.

With stuff like that, and redirects to the App Store, etc, I'm really not surprised that Apple went with the nuclear option.
 
I'm glad Apple decided to make this move. Something has to change and it needed the same push Flash received. Sure Flash is still around but it's a lot more muted and most sites have alternative options for mobile now. That wouldn't have happened if Apple had just put Flash on iOS. Ads will always be around but hopefully this push will change them forever like they need to be.
 
outunderthestars said:
To be fair, if you are rejecting it, shouldn't you stop using the site in question?
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Decent sites have petition like "please remove adblocking software so we can pay the hosting, we promise our ads are not malware-like".

If I see something like that I'll whitelist that site.

Example:

tvvs2AB.png
 
Those who don't like *AD Supported content*, like THIS website should follow through on their convictions and stop reading ad supported Content, instead of blocking ads.

All you are doing is driving ads into content so you can no longer tell what they are. YouTube creators already do that - take money to pump stuff - and that will just increase as the last non ad block user folds under the load of supporting all the free loaders.

I run a site with Adsense and we have no options to run pop overs, animated ads, video ads that auto play, etc, and 3 ads max per page. It's very strict. Can't even Pin ads, but Adblock is still used by 30% of visitors. they don't care if ads are not intrusive the blocker blocks everything.

Meanwhile the blocking software company makes a fortune.

If you all want walled gardens like Facebook and apps, no free web and no easy way to tell what is Payola and what is not, ad blockers are the fast way to move to this world.
 
The internet is the worlds most popular platform. People and companies aren't going away because advertising is getting harder.
 
I found a new adware in form of ads in google sense. It hijacks your phone, open another site, makes a clickable text box and starts the vibrate funcion of your phone. You can't kill it by pressing back, you have to kill the tab or the browser.

Pretty shitty:

adsmierdas.png
 
The Real Abed said:
Do you get more money if someone clicks them? Because very rarely do I ever get an ad for something relevant to me. But I'd gladly click ads if something actually appeals. Not that I'd buy anything from them or spend more than a second on their site afterwards.

I always wondered how they worked.
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Does it matters? You should click ad when you are interested. That's all. Don't need to care how much he make.
 
jellies_two said:
Meanwhile the blocking software company makes a fortune.
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If there is so much money in selling ad blocking software, then does that not signify that people are willing to "pay for content"? You inadvertently made a strong argument in favour of removing ads and requiring users to pay for access to your site, although it depends on your definition of "a fortune".

Besides, many people are not trying to block "ads". They are trying to block the scripts that consume bandwidth and CPU time. The addition of content blockers into iOS was prompted by this behaviour draining battery and cellular data. We were content with regular banner advertising on mobile for eight years.
 
This headline keeps bothering me every single time I see it. No, the internet isn't dying any kind of death, you are (The Verge and their ilk, that is). I've been using the internet long before it was cluttered with ads and it was as useful then as it is now.
 
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