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Online Advertising Is Threatening an Open Internet
The internet is in a very sad state. Recent measures introduced by governments around the world, including C-51, TPP, and previous bills introduced such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), threaten the rights to a free and open internet. However, much less talked about is the current state of online advertising and how it's slowly eroding our rights to browse online through disabling content for those using ad-blockers, paywalls and invasive tactics to market products based on our browsing history.
Advertising is the life blood of a free and open internet. It has helped break down barriers to information that was once only accessible to the developed world and has helped fund and foster unique apps that billions of people use on a daily basis. However, ad-blocking has gone main stream and has become a serious threat to continued development of the internet and its applications.
Ad-blocking is not a new problem; it has been mainstream for years. However, the problem was typically isolated to desktops. Apple set a recent precedent, by accidentally allowing the approval of a new app, known as Been Choice, into the iTunes App Store. The app claims to block advertisements not only in mobile applications, but also in native mobile apps, including Facebook and even Apple’s own News application. This is the first app of its kind in the mobile space, with many more expected to pop-up in the near future.
Browsing the web without ads is not just nice, it’s liberating. No popups stealing your screen. No accidental clicks taking you away to a non-relevant site. No auto-playing video ads making the page load as slowly as if it were being dialed up through America Online circa 1999. Online advertising has become so invasive that consumers are taking matters into their own hands. Over 198 million consumers agree by actively employing ad blocking software, and that number is growing at 41% annually.
PageFair paints a scary picture for online publishers with some facts on the current state of ad blocking:
- Ad blocking estimated to cost publishers nearly $22 billion during 2015.
- There are now 198 million active adblock users around the world.
- Ad blocking grew by 41% globally in the last 12 months.
- US ad blocking grew by 48% to reach 45 million active users in 12 months up to June 2015.
An Israeli ad-blocking company, Shine, even went as far as denouncing the US advertising trade body, Interactive Advertising Bureau, with a provocative print ad in the Financial Times.
What can be done?
Advertisers and publishers are currently employing the following ideas to help reduce the relevance of ad blocking, however, none improve the overall customer experience of an open and free web.
One solution among advertisers is to pay off ad blockers. This is akin to paying off the mob for protection. What’s to stop ad blockers from increasing rates? This also impacts the spirit of net neutrality. Smaller advertisers and networks will be crowded out by large, well funded advertisers. This does not change the way advertisers and publishers deliver ads.
Integrated, organic content.
Many publishers and advertisers are turning to paid advertorials or sponsored posts, ad blockers have a difficult time recognizing these types of content as advertisings. Rather than forcing users to view this content, users have a choice to view and actively engage with the content. However, deciphering between a regular post or paid ad could be deceptive and publishers need to be actively engaged with businesses to generate content and funds.
Oh pretty please, turn off that ad blocker.
Why not just ask users to disable ad blockers with a pop-up? Appeal to a users’ sense of duty by educating them on the dangers of ad blocking and how it endangers a publishers’ business. According to Jordan Whelan at Grey Smoke Media, “Consumers don’t interact in the way you would like them to, many will see educational pop-ups as additional advertising, further impacting traffic, engagement and conversion levels.” Like other solutions presented by advertisers, asking for permission does not fix the way advertisers and publishers engage with their users, ads are still plentiful and invasive.
Block Content from People Who Use Ad Blockers
This is draconian and exactly what the world was getting away from as we moved online. By playing bad cop with ad blocking users, you run the risk of driving traffic away, further impacting the ability to monetize your creative work.
The Freemium Model
Freemium is a pricing strategy that offers the basic product or service for free of charge, but charging for more advanced features. One company famous for this is Spotify, a digital music service that offers a free, ad-supported version and a paid, ad-free version. If people are so anti-ads, maybe they’ll pay a few dollars a month for a paid, ad-free version. Subscription services typically account for a small portion of revenues. Tech start-ups and blog sites are able to grow so rapidly due to providing creative, unique content for free on a continuing basis. Even a service as massive as Spotify relies heavily on their ad-support service for user growth and revenues.
With the solutions above, advertisers and publishers are blaming users. The issue at heart is the invasiveness of advertisements in the daily life of consumers. The ad industry has shown a total lack of respect for the audience they want to monetize. Rather than forcing products down our throat, advertisers need to look at more organic solutions for consumer outreach.
One ad network platform that is evolving to meet the needs of consumers is Framestr. Unlike traditional ads that re-direct traffic off-site, users can view more information or even purchase a product directly from a pop-up window. The publisher receives the affiliate commission, set by the vendor, and 50% of ad revenues paid by the vendor. Rather than re-marketing, publishers set the type of products they want to advertise to their user base, say good bye to personal injury lawyer toronto ads on fashion blogs.
Unless advertisers and publishers start working together to provide unique, engaging content that provides value to customers, more and more customers will be driven to ad blockers and other services that improve their web experience. I implore advertisers to think outside the box for solutions that improve the overall web experience while keeping the internet open and free to each and every user around the globe.
This piece was written by Chris Porteous, co-founder of digital marketing agency Grey Smoke Media in Toronto.
- advertisements -
ad-blocking is pissing off tyler. but he's pissed cuz he just recently jumped into advertizing big time: pop-ups, side-screens, everything. No wonder people are blocking all this shit, man.. its obnoxious. Your main content is great but the pervasive ads are getting tiresome.
Tone it down
I agree ... see this message here;
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-18/it-will-sune-be-over#comment-68...
If the ads weren't bogging the page down with server calls, videos, pop-overs that don't go away, and things that crash the browser, there would be no need to block them.
I find that Firefox's "reader view" in a private window works pretty well most of the time to view a page without the crap.
I always have a backup channel that interests me, but not enough to make me skip the main channel. Ads come on and (clikc!( i switch to the BU channel. works most of the time, but sometimes they syncthe commecials
when i started with browsing internet, i never used addblockers
so what happend? after a month my pc became slow, i thought it was the internet providers fault limiting my speed but it was because of cookies addsites create on my pc +facebook button +google like button +twitter button
further flash adds popped out and maximum loud sound came out of the no-where in the middle of the night
and dont forget if you surf the net and some filthy porn popps out with extremly fat woman and ugly peneses all over your screen even if its not a pornsite you are browsing I DONT WANT TO SEE PENIS AND I DONT WANT TO SEE FAT WOMAN
so after 2 months of my first internet experience i had to remove all adds and now i dont want them back not even the harmless - fuck your stupid business
(zh load time less than 1 second here - 16Mbits most cheap intenet)
Flash, (after Java) is the most dangerous thing on the internet-it is prehistoric and Adobe cant be bothered to really fix it. If HTML5 became the norm, it would not be a problem but many rinky dink sites still use flash
Flash can eat up lots of memory and slow down your browser
The OVERWHELMING MAJORITY ads are repetitive, intrusive, and USELESS for the vast majority of people who spend time utilizing the Internet for anything useful.
People have been flipping the TV and radio channels for DECADES (especially men) because they have heard the same F&#KING commericals incessantly and they still won't buy the crap being hawked. The same applies for the Internet. Anyone who doesn't use Adblock Plus or some other ad-blocking software is silly or worse.
Apart from click bait sites such as ZH, all of the ads of which can be blocked by Adblock Plus, if the content is not worth paying for, and it has to be supported by annoying ads that can be blocked, then it's time for the content providers to get a day job, or two . . . or three.
The VAST MAJORITY of content is not worth paying for, nor advertisers wasting time and money pushing ads that will and should be blocked.
Again, Adblock Plus. You'll be so glad you did.
I never used ad-blockers until the content started to take over entire web-pages, forcing you to interact with advertising to view the content. Before reading this article I forgot I had even enabled my ad-blocker. I guess a few obnoxious sites ruined it for all of them. I don't remember if ZH was one of them.
Oh, and when one of those screens cover up my entire screen trying to force you into something for the content, I use the Firefox Firebug inspect element option to DELETE it. It has worked every time!
If I could pay a small fee to make ads go away, that would be the obvious choice. Would most people not pay a few bucks to their top 10 websites and not have to look at ads on them anymore?
There is nothing more obnoxious than popup video ads because I don't want any sound unless I enable it specifically on any web-page. That is what really got me to switch to ad-blockers. So, I think websites have inadvertently destroyed their own revenue streams with annoying ads that nobody wants.
I actually cant use ZH on any pad or tablet. It fucking crashes all the time.. I hate it.
Try ghostory it works in Opera chrome Internet Explorer and Firefox. It also works for android in at least Mozilla Firefox. I could care less if it works for iOS.
The beauty of it it tells you how many trackers there are on each website you go to, you can really tell how bad sites like zero hedge really are.
Another big benefit to ghostery is that you can white list sites that have reasonable advertisement. Try Lou Rockwell.com and compare it to zero hedge and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Try ghostory it works in Opera chrome Internet Explorer and Firefox. It also works for android in at least Mozilla Firefox. I could care less if it works for iOS.
The beauty of it it tells you how many trackers there are on each website you go to, you can really tell how bad sites like zero hedge really are.
Another big benefit to ghostery is that you can white list sites that have reasonable advertisement. Try Lou Rockwell.com and compare it to zero hedge and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Try ghostory it works in Opera chrome Internet Explorer and Firefox. It also works for android in at least Mozilla Firefox. I could care less if it works for iOS.
The beauty of it it tells you how many trackers there are on each website you go to, you can really tell how bad sites like zero hedge really are.
I had problems getting on ZH for awhile but one of my computers if fine now, the other one is better. I opened my PCs and cleaned them, then I checked everything to see what was using too much space and memory, etc. I found that my Anti-virus software had been backing up my files without deleting old batches. I ended up finding about 250 GB being used for one of the back ups. I deleted it, which took awhile. Now this computer works fine and I haven't had problems getting into ZH. I deleted a lot of stuff I wasn't using too.
I don't have Ad Block, and don't think i need it now that I deleted junk that was taking up too much space.
EcoJoker, Adblock Plus, dude. Just do it.
I was a newspaper publisher in the 80s. I sold a lot of ads. I also wrote a ton of stories, edited even more, delivered newspapers all over the place. My newspapers were free. The ads were the main (80-90%) income source. I got wiped out by a major corporate news giant, Gannett.
I discovered the net, and started up a number of sites. I still depend on advertising for the bulk of my income, but it is not easy. Providing relevant content on a regular basis is time-consuming, labor-intensive and, without advertising, completely without reward.
Advertsing, whether you love it or loathe it, pays the rent, the salaries, the overhead and maybe, if one is really lucky, a little profit. I too object to the absurd, CPU-draining pop-ups, pop-unders, video, etc. I run only basic banners from three different sources and they are quality companies seeking what everybody else is seeking, a return on their investment.
Without advertising, the internet would be off-limits for most independent publishers. There would be NO ZERO HEDGE. Seriously, consider that. This site would not exist without advertising. While I agree that ZH overdoes it with the intrusive ads, those of you who use adblockers should consider contributing on a regular basis. I know my opinion my be unpopular here, but, seriously, would you want TV, radio and the internet to be the sole province of government and non-profits?
Please think (and read a little history of publishing) before blocking ads.
Thank you. I was not paid for this message. Altruism is great when one doesn't have to earn a living.
"..There would be NO ZERO HEDGE. "
but the content would simply route around that problem and appear somewhere else.. proly on a site with a much lower advertizing footprint ^H^H^H bootprint
"There would be NO ZERO HEDGE. Seriously, consider that."
ZH would still exist but probably as a pay site with much less, or no, click bait ads and a much smaller readership.
The IQ of the readership would soar, too.
What's bad about that? :-D
For some reason this year, I've been getting back into watching a little football on Sunday. It's the only TV I've watched for years and, omg, what an intolerable exercise it has become. Without recording and skipping, it would be impossible to endure, much less enjoy.
Now online sites are going the same route-- pounding away without any regard whatesoever for the feelings of the target audience. People no longer are regarded as individuals, but rather as marketing opportunites and every second of interaction with them should be taken advantage of.
I picture the old Orwellian boot on the face of humanity forever but the sole of this boot flashes geographically-tailored health care ads at you as it smashes down on your teeth.
I feel the same way about internet ads as I do about telemarketers and pollsters: You have no right to steal my time from me without some small degree of compensation being transferred to my account in order to restrict advertising to those who are truly certain that they have a product worth pitching. Why should I donate my uncompensated time and attention to your business enterprise?
Pay me a penny to view your ad. This will keep you from abusing your right to gain access to my eyeballs over the internet. It will also keep your valid business proposal from being submerged in the cacophony of fake schemes. Wipe out the false advertisers who will not and cannot pay to gain an audience for their abominable schemes, let the legitimate ones make legitimate pitches that end up creating legitimate jobs for people, and help the end-user pay their internet bill and enjoy a less stressful existence.
Streaming is killing traditional tv for the very reason you mention. They past my threshold decades ago; I can focus on work for hours on end whereas thirty minutes of live tv drives me bananas.
http://www.telecomtv.com/articles/video-and-broadcast/worried-us-broadca...
If a link is CNN or Forbes I don't go to it because there's so much shit that loads before the content you went to see.
I'd like to add USAToday to the no-go list if you aren't using adblock. News sites are the worst offenders.
I hate to say this, but advertising agencies (if not individuals) act like psychopaths. They don't care about our rights, they get rewarded if they can bypass our own intent and replace our will with theirs.
https://ixquick-proxy.com/do/show_picture.pl?l=english_uk&rais=1&oiu=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%2F736x%2Faa%2Fc9%2Fb8%2Faac9b8f95414dc20d2acdf542543d606.jpg&sp=d9678b8cb85cbb4493f929f4a8210f47
Besides absconding my bandwidth (as does the NSA) its the scripts and malware they resort to that really picks my ass. I would probably allow advertising that was actually part of the website I'm visiting, But I face a swarm of scripted links that actively stop me from doing what I came there to do. When it reaches the point where I can't use the webpage anyway, that site is no better off if I AdBlock or never visit again.
Some of us remember the Internet way back around 2000, it seems to me the web was plenty healthy with almost no advertising. Youtube included.
Well if advertisers compensated me for:
1. the cost of my bandwidth used
2. my computer depreciation
3. my time
I might disable ad blockers
Otherwise they're just throwing their trash around the world and expecting others to pay the cost of dealing with it.
I´m forced to use AdBlock on Zerohedge because my web browser (Internet Explorer 11) always crashes when I visit Zerohedge unless I use AdBlock. I didn´t experience this problem 6 months ago.
The Explorer is sort of being phased out. Here, ZH does not work with Explorer or Mozilla. Even with Chrome it can behave sluggish. Before I tried Chrome I thought of never visiting ZH again, because the crashes, delays, losing the cursor, and angry beeps were getting on my nerves.
PLEASE NOTE: The TPP is not yet fact, we are still fighting against it being ratified and if it is indeed thrust down our throat, explore how we can get out of it, because so far it's a one-way-cul-de-sac, normally called a trap.
How many people that hit the "skip ad" button on a ytube vid can actually tell you what the ad was even for?
I know I can't!
So not only are we forced to watch these ads but we don't even know what they were advertising...this is a complete waste of their time and money and my bandwidth and my time!!!
Maybe we can fight back... Maybe we can email or blackball any company that pays for ads that cover up the content or force us to watch their ad... email them and tell them that you will never buy their product until they do responsible advertising....after a few hundred or thousand emails to coke pepsi or GM they might get the idea...
Fiat Con, you don't have to skip the ad if you use the Adblock for YouTube ads.
Fight back?? Ha! Ha!
Hey! For shits and giggles, you can click on every single ad on every single website you open. Let them make sense out of that!
I spent 30+ years in media sales 15+ years of it in online. It is a mess so i got out. There is no real solution. You notice whats going on more ads and more ads. Same thing in TV. Its supply and demand. Over supply of eyeballs (viewers x page viewsx ad unit per paage) continues to drive down the unit price of ads so more ads are added per page at lower and lower costs. Its a death spiral. TV is developing the same problem
Tedstr,
I would enjoy learning more about your 30 years and possibly show you what I'm doing that might turn the tide here. If you're interested, let me know. Thanks.
CIK
Ads are how most websites make money so be careful what you wish for. There are costs associated with running a website not to mention time. Ads are probably just about the only source of income for 99% websites. Not many people can afford to hire a team of writers, servers, and other fees just to do the world a favor. Without ad income many sites, especially big ones like ZH will have to turn to charging subscription fees. I doubt the owners would pay out of pocket just to keep you cheapskates informed. You'll pay one way or another, pick your poison.
HeyI dont mind advertising but does it have to bog down your cpu? Does it have to be plastered all over the front of what you are trying to read? should it force you to watch some BS ad before you can get on with what you came to the site for?
How about responsible ads on the side of the content? Is responsibility too much to ask?
I don't see these forced ads really any different than if we were to do DOD attck on their website, but oh no that would be ilegal if we were to do something like that...What a shit show...
I have an idea. Why not advertise somewhere else :) If I need your s*, I'll find you. Trust me. Just make sure you have something worth buying. The truth is, 99.99% of all the stuff advertised is totally whatever 'products' and 'services'. If advertising was limited to the .01% of things actually worth considering, sure, no more adblock. One tiny ad off in the upper corner of 1 out of every 1000 web pages you look at. As it is, ads are flying all over the page, they drag page loads, popping up, out, over under, fading in, following you all over as you scroll. I HATE internet ads. Truly and passionately. Ppl just sell total s* anyway, so better they all go out of business and figure out what is worth it. Then word of mouth will bring them clients and I won't have to listen to someone crying about some stupid ad appearing everywhere all over the place on the internet.
And for the crybabies, there *is* a way to adverstise IF it is hardcoded right into the html of the web page. If they want to pay the $$ for that sort of advertising, they better have something someone wants, instead of trying to off some useless crap.
Agreed. No need to adblock edge everything, just adblock plus it, so that ZHers can read the contents of their favourite site further on for free.
I'm a sychophant...
I am currently blocking 25 elements on this ZH page. Some other website pages it is as high as 80. I seriously do not know how people can tolerate browsing without an ad-blocker of some sort running.
The answer is to stop larding up your websites with gigabytes of spam choking our internet connections! No fooling, I just installed AdBlock Plus RIGHT NOW, less than 10 minutes ago as I sit in an airport and can't read my favorite news site because of the abusive and ridiculous number of ads, scripts that freeze up, memory-leaking flash ads that choke the connection and suck CPU and RAM.
Advertisers and ad-supported content providers are bringing this on themselves! Fix your shit.
I've got "allow unobtrusive ads" turn on, I'm not trying to steal content, I'm trying to enjoy it. Still see ads that are not flash based.
"advertising is the life blood of the internet"
No, advertising is the life blood of dot.com/tech bubble 1.0 and dot.com/tech bubble 2.0. The internet will change along with teh market and people using it. We usually surf with js totally disabled and Adblock (which is almost mandatory these days). Surfing teh deep web reminds muh of what a real content-based internetworking experience should look like.
It's not only the intrusive ads. It's also the tracking, detailed and seriously intrusive tracking.
Running Firefox with Ghostery, uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger. Adobe Flash completely uninstalled.
I run noscript, ghostery, and privacy badger. This "in your face" theft of my time is disgraceful!!!
Oh, here's another thing: I switched from Firefox to Pale Moon (a fork of FF).
I couldn't be happier.
Advertising is largely horseshit!
Spoctor Din
ZH was getting so ridiculously slow before I got Adbloc I was genuinely on the verge of disappearing from here. There is a limit with ads people are willing to tolerate and ZH went past that long ago. Everything I watch on TV now is pre-recorded and I watch later so I can simply fast forward the ads. Without the Fox IQ box in Australia I'd have f*#ked them off long ago.
Yes Phil spot on, Zero Hedge was the site that made me install Adblock, and I cannot visit Zero Hedge on my mobile as the ads just choke the page.
Especially considering that our comments are ZHs bread and butter.
Their ad load is insulting!!!
Spoctor Din
I am perfectly willing to read free content or pay for content that I want to pay for.
A. I never read the Wall Street Urinal or Financial Times online.
B. I read ZH, but with Java Scripting turned off because ZH is completely unreadable with the ads.
To the publishers: Please either offer content or do not. Charge or do not. These are your choices. People do not OWE YOU ANYTHING, especially their eyeballs and brain. If people don't want to watch crappy propaganda and advertisements then it is their right not to. Make it attractive for them to watch and they will. Use the carrot, not the stick. And if the carrot is tasty enough looking you will get people to watch.
Making it a crime to not watch advertisements should be criminal. Personally I believe that it should be a crime for people to sell data about me without just compensation and my EXPRSS permission (not buried in bullshit legalese). Selling someone's info without their express permission is THEFT!!!
What about the people who read ZH for years and never donate. Theft?
ZH is not a charity. It is not here for our goodwill. It is a business. If ZH does not want to publish then they should not. If ZH wants to charge for their service, then they should. They have choices.
Very little, if anything, on ZH is original. It is taken from other people who do the research and write the articles. Is that theft? Not if it is done with their permission.
If you do donate to ZH they still slam you with some of the most obnoxious and intrusive ads on the internet.
That sort of behaviour supresses lots of things including charitable donations.
Send them money using Visa, PayPal etc .... then get swamped by begging letters, emails and phone calls. No thanks.
It is one area where accepting Bitcoin (with its partial privacy) would get some extra income ... pay by Bitcoin and you are not providing a way for the receiving organisation to harrass your.
The only way I donate these days is anonymously and with cash or with my time.
The first things a "so called" charity does is sell your name and address to anyone they can. These are not charities. They are business designed for the well being of the executives who tend to give some money to other executives running similar scams. Very little goes where it actually helps people.
So, I lose the tax break... great! Giving to a charity so that one can get a tax break is not charity.
What about fish that take the bait and don't get hooked?
Fish Or Thieves?
Redacted... unprintable.
Spoctor Din