Floaters are the New Pop-Ups 613
windowpain writes "A prior Slashdot article discussed the ever-increasing ability of pop-up ads to break through adblocking software. Now the New York Times (registration required) is reporting that pop-ups are pooped out, replaced by those annoying "floaters" that are even more resistant to conventional pop-up blocking software. From the article: 'Not to be confused with pop-up ads, which open new windows and clutter virtual desktops, these floaters, or overlays, or popovers (no one can agree on a name), can evade the pop-up blockers that many Web browsers have incorporated. In the last year, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, which collects and analyzes data on Web advertising, the frequency of these ads has risen markedly, by almost 32 percent from December 2003 to December 2004, while pop-ups in that period declined by 41 percent.'"
Not a problem (Score:5, Informative)
For example, I found some that use divs with IDs, so I just added something like:
div#GF__p_0,
div#floatpop { display: none !important;}
And, poof, they're gone. Sometimes it can be difficult to figure out what to block, but the Webdeveloper extension [chrispederick.com] can help quite a bit.
No Reg Link (Score:4, Informative)
AdBlock (Score:3, Informative)
One advantage (Score:2, Informative)
Article Text (Score:3, Informative)
On a cricket league chat board in New Zealand, exasperated users have been deluged with floating squares that try to interest them in mattresses, dating services and officially licensed trinkets from the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy.
Not to be confused with pop-up ads, which open new windows and clutter virtual desktops, these floaters, or overlays, or popovers (no one can agree on a name), can evade the pop-up blockers that many Web browsers have incorporated.
In the last year, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, which collects and analyzes data on Web advertising, the frequency of these ads has risen markedly, by almost 32 percent from December 2003 to December 2004, while pop-ups in that period declined by 41 percent.
The floater ads, often using a computer's Macromedia Flash Player to run, overlay the content of the page rather than spawning new windows. They have been around since 2001, but their rise has been abetted by the growing use of high-speed Internet connections, allowing them to play with greater ease.
Floaters are one example of a variety of online ads known in the industry as rich media. Some variants include banner ads that expand to show graphics and streaming video when the cursor is waved over them; a tamer version packs the video and graphics into a static, or polite, banner. All have a common characteristic: they cannot be categorically blocked by existing technology.
To many, they are just as irritating as pop-up ads, if not more so. On the New Zealand cricket chat board, one user declared, "This form of advertising is without a doubt the most ridiculous and offensive form I have ever come across."
But as with pop-ups (before pop-up blockers), their appeal to advertisers is simple: they get people to click, usually transporting them to the advertiser's site. While static Web ads typically have "click through" rates of 0.5 percent of viewers, according to numerous industry studies, the rate for pop-ups and floaters is 3 percent to 5 percent, though some studies suggest that many of those clicks are attempts to get rid of the ad.
According to Nielsen/NetRatings, the sites on which such ads were most common in the year ended in December were three Microsoft sites - www.msn.com, www.msnbc.com and Hotmail - followed by espn.com and www.yahoo.com.
Although most advertisers and the sites where the ads appear seem happy with the use of the floater ads, recent research suggests problems. A study of 2,500 British Internet users released last month by OMD UK found that just as many Web users (44 percent) were annoyed with floaters as they were with pop-ups. Many major sites, like nytimes.com and www.msn.com, limit the number of times a person is shown such an ad. (At nytimes.com, the limit is once per visit to the site.)
"We want to do something that's informative and entertaining as opposed to being annoying," said Joanne Bradford, vice president and chief media revenue officer for msn.com. "That's our guiding principle." To that end, the company introduced on Feb. 1 a design that limited the number of ads on the main page. (Ms. Bradford would not say by how much.) The action, she noted, did prompt "a little bit of squawking" from advertisers.
Some are trying to figure out other ways to stop the onslaught. Mozilla, designer of the popular (and free) Web browser Firefox, which offers a pop-up blocker, is trying to block floater ads as well, but has so far been unsuccessful, said Chris Hofmann, director of engineering for the Mozilla Foundation. "It really is an arms race," he said.
Jarvis Coffin, chief executive of Burst Media, a company that sells advertising for more than 2,000 Web sites, said that even though he is a fan of the "rich media" ads, he warns that advertisers should understand that they cannot deluge people with the technology without consequence. "Just because you can do it doesn't make it a smart thing to do," he said.
Flashblock (Score:3, Informative)
Flashblock and AdBlock == good surfing experience.
Slashdot links to NY Times (Score:3, Informative)
This time, the non-membership Slashdot version seeems to be:
Brilliant!
Re:Flash suppression (Score:2, Informative)
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ [mozdev.org]
Flash animations show as buttons until you click on them.
Re:Flash suppression (Score:5, Informative)
flashblock [mozilla.org] is what I used to use... it blocks out flash until you click on it to view.
how do they work? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not a problem (Score:3, Informative)
There's alwasy some pricks trying to ruin the web for everyone else.
Re:Hey! (Score:5, Informative)
It already happens. You're watching a TV show and suddenly a swirling logo appears in a corner and then an ad for another show on that network appears. And then during the closing credits, the network will break in with obnoxious promos that block out anything you can see or hear on screen.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
For cripes sakes people, make a HOSTS file. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:"Remove this object" (Score:4, Informative)
Re:"Remove this object" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Informative)
The solution is to not allow layered content like that to cover up the page in the actual browser core.
This is similar to blocking popups using a *popup.html* filter instead of actual logic in the browser to prevent windows from appearing unless the user has clicked the mouse and requested them.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who Clicks On These? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:AdBlock (Score:1, Informative)
When I find something similar that slips through, I tweak it a little.
I also have major advertising companies like atwola and atdmt blocked as
and even yahoo ads
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Informative)
Some people use this in a highly annoying way, it's true. But the solution is NOT "to not allow layered content like that to cover up the page in the actual browser core." If you are going to do that, you might as well just turn off javascript, which most browsers will let you do, already.
AdBlock = easier (Score:5, Informative)
I disable javascript... (Score:2, Informative)
I'm no developer and I don't usually peeked into webpages code, but I guess that the "nexgen" of add blockers should "sniff" all the javascript passed to the browser(s) and sort it out if its an popup/floater/whatever piece of garbage or if it's something actualy usefull for the browsing.
To sum it up: Opera (javascript off), then Firefox, then (gasp!) IE.
Re:This will get worse (Score:3, Informative)
They haven't even activated the update service yet. They are waiting for a few days until the manual downloaders are done swamping the servers.
Source [spreadfirefox.com]:
Re:Floaters are not evil. (Score:3, Informative)
This tends to happen because ads are 'inlined' rather than iframed, to prevent adblockers and such, and therefore can happily slap layers all over the whole browser window.
If there were an option to turn those layers off, Id certainly use it, I havent seen it used for anything other than ads, and popping up dialogs in hotmail perhaps?.
Im sure there are a few sites which use layers for laying out content legitametly, but Id rather they choose a different design or require to be put on a white list than put up with content flashing about my screen over what Im trying to read.
Re:AdBlock = easier (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hey! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not a problem (Score:2, Informative)
The best way, I have found, is to block the companies that provide the ads. Searching for *doubleclick* blocks all doubleclick ads; *googlesyndication* similarly. This is effective as only rarely does the site host the ads themselves - and when they do, they are likely to be interesting to you.
Re:Obviously... (Score:3, Informative)
you can block scripts as well as iframes for the page from the little adblock menu in the lower right.
Re:Not a problem (Score:4, Informative)
Advertisers might be able to come up with new ways to make me see or hear their ads, but it will only happen once. It takes me only 2 minutes to ensure I never see their ad again. Honestly, when will Internet advertisers understand that when I've gone out of my way to block your ads, I really don't want to see them? I'm not going to say, "ooh! This guy figured out a way to get around my ad filters, he must make good products!" Get real. I'll never buy anything from X10 just because they were one of the biggest purveyors of popups back in the day.
Annoying people is not a good way to convince them to buy your product.
Re:"Remove this object" (Score:3, Informative)
Something similar has been a part of my IE Stuff pack for a while now. I consider it invaluable.
http://www.jordanmills.com/odds.asp [jordanmills.com]
Re:Complain (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Flash suppression (Score:2, Informative)
Avoiding flash. If you ue FireFox. For example edit C:\Documents and Settings\user.name\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.nsy\chrome\u serContent.css
Translation: zero flash - zero iframe - no exception. May be a little too drastic.
Personaly I don't beleive in viability of adding a little rule from time to time for such and such add which makes it's way through. I am lazy: no feature = no problem.
On a more general aspect It is quite concerning to see abuse of "floating" stuff because this one, we won't be able to filter... Yes, I believe it's a question of day advertising site will proxy to advertisers, so we won't be able to filter urls, or ip's. Supposing divs are named, we could filter on names ? Arg: the advertising site will mangle it's own legtimate div's name just to let adv divs goes through.
I am afraid there won't be solution but to turn off JavaScript completely... Once again we'll have the conclusion no feature = good feature. The lynx evengelist may have the ultimate answer. Aaarg!
For advertisers. Please just have nice text adv on the side of the page. ( no blink, flash, move, ...). Just 5 words bold + 10 words descr. I don't care of this one. But there is more: because I don't find them annoying I read them ( some of them). But wait there is more: I even clicked recently on one.
Z.
Re:Not a problem (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, this depends on how they do it. I've seen lots of sites that host the advertising used on their site, and not the advertisers proxy. Sites that do this, usually have the ads stored in their own directory, something like /ads or /advertisment, or even /sponsors. The adblock plug-in for firefox allows wildcards, so you just have to put in a wild card in the ad dir, and presto, all the ads stored in that dir are gone. This even works for proxy servers that are numbered, like 2.annoying.advertising.proxy.com. just replace the 2 with a *, and it, and any advertising from any of the annoying.advertising.proxy.com domain no longer appear.
However, adversisers, and some ad driven web sites are getting wist to these tricks, and are hiding the ads in the same directory they use for their content, something like /images. Now, putting a wild card into this directory means that none of the images are loaded for this site, not just the ads. These sites are also advoiding keywords that can be filtered out. Like having the word advertisement appear in the image name as it is possible to filter them out too easily.
I have seen these floating DHTML ads for a few years now, and they are quite annoying. Fortunately, they were few and far between, however this situation has to be fixed now before it becomes problematic. First of all, turning off Flash does not work, as Firefox puts an opaque placeholder graphic in its place, which covers up the content. One solution is to make that box semi-transparent, so you can see whats underneath it. I had to launch flash a couple of times, just to be able to launch the animation so I could an embedded butten to close it. Also, Firefox should never allow the right click mouse menu to be overridden (I have no problem with stuff being added to it). This would allow you to right click on flash or DHTML floating images, and Adblock them. Firefox currently allows you to neither. To ad block flash, you have to click on the Adblock icon on the lower right hand corner of the browser, and search for embeded objects. For DHTML, its even worse.
Fortunately, the Open source nature of Firefox will allow this issue to be resolved well before it becomes mainstream, and several years before anyone over at Microsoft event thinks about doing something about it.
Maxthon can stamp out most of these ads. (Score:4, Informative)
I'm currently running MySoft Technology's Maxthon (formerly MyIE2) shell program for Internet Explorer 5.x and later, which has a very powerful function called AD Hunter. AD Hunter not only blocks mostly pop-up windows, but also the vast majority of "floating" ads, Flash animated ads, a large number of online static ads and even allows you to block ActiveX objects!
Article text (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway, here's the article text:
IF you happened upon nj.com in the last month, you might have noticed a clucking penguin waddling across the computer screen, stumbling over text as it promoted a local utility company.
On a cricket league chat board in New Zealand, exasperated users have been deluged with floating squares that try to interest them in mattresses, dating services and officially licensed trinkets from the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy.
On the Web, the floater's time has come.
Not to be confused with pop-up ads, which open new windows and clutter virtual desktops, these floaters, or overlays, or popovers (no one can agree on a name), can evade the pop-up blockers that many Web browsers have incorporated.
In the last year, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, which collects and analyzes data on Web advertising, the frequency of these ads has risen markedly, by almost 32 percent from December 2003 to December 2004, while pop-ups in that period declined by 41 percent.
The floater ads, often using a computer's Macromedia Flash Player to run, overlay the content of the page rather than spawning new windows. They have been around since 2001, but their rise has been abetted by the growing use of high-speed Internet connections, allowing them to play with greater ease.
Floaters are one example of a variety of online ads known in the industry as rich media. Some variants include banner ads that expand to show graphics and streaming video when the cursor is waved over them; a tamer version packs the video and graphics into a static, or polite, banner. All have a common characteristic: they cannot be categorically blocked by existing technology.
To many, they are just as irritating as pop-up ads, if not more so. On the New Zealand cricket chat board, one user declared, "This form of advertising is without a doubt the most ridiculous and offensive form I have ever come across."
But as with pop-ups (before pop-up blockers), their appeal to advertisers is simple: they get people to click, usually transporting them to the advertiser's site. While static Web ads typically have "click through" rates of 0.5 percent of viewers, according to numerous industry studies, the rate for pop-ups and floaters is 3 percent to 5 percent, though some studies suggest that many of those clicks are attempts to get rid of the ad.
According to Nielsen/NetRatings, the sites on which such ads were most common in the year ended in December were three Microsoft sites - www.msn.com, www.msnbc.com and Hotmail - followed by espn.com and www.yahoo.com.
Although most advertisers and the sites where the ads appear seem happy with the use of the floater ads, recent research suggests problems. A study of 2,500 British Internet users released last month by OMD UK found that just as many Web users (44 percent) were annoyed with floaters as they were with pop-ups. Many major sites, like nytimes.com and www.msn.com, limit the number of times a person is shown such an ad. (At nytimes.com, the limit is once per visit to the site.)
"We want to do something that's informative and entertaining as opposed to being annoying," said Joanne Bradford, vice president and chief media revenue officer for msn.com. "That's our guiding principle." To that end, the company introduced on Feb. 1 a design that limited the number of ads on the main page. (Ms. Bradford would not say by how much.) The action, she noted, did prompt "a little bit of squawking" from advertisers.
Some are trying to figure out other ways to stop the onslaught. Mozilla, designer of the popular (and free) Web browser Firefox, which offers a pop-up blocker, is trying to block floater ads as well, but has so far been unsuccessful, said Chris Hofmann, director of engineering for the Mozilla Foundation. "It really is an arms race," he said.
Jarvis Coffin, chief executive of Burst Media, a company t
Re:Rate of change correlation (Score:1, Informative)
Re:how do they work? (Score:2, Informative)
It woulndt be hard to do a bookmarklet/favelet that checks for all elements with the z-index set and changes the highest one to a minimum value.
opera (Score:3, Informative)
If I hit a site with one of these pop ups I hit the following keys. F12 -> u -> F5. Done.
When I get time I'll look into writing macros that do the same thing for firefox.
Kill 'em all and let http:null sort 'em out. (Score:3, Informative)
Kills most ads dead, including flash and other "popovers". You can edit it to your liking to include more blocked hosts anytime. Works with most browsers and most OS's.
If you use OSX/Safari, go to Window: Activity to view the urls of every item on any page, including the ones this CSS blocks and of course the ones that might get past from time to time. Add them as required by editing the text file.
Other OS's/browsers may have a similar ability (not just view source, although it does help sometimes to do that) but you will have to check that out yourself or perhaps if someone knows they could reply to this post and let us all in on it.
I have noticed a few sneak by once every few weeks, but for the most part it's working good for me and has for years. Add new offenders as they are discovered and it's pretty simple and painless.
Occasionally you will find a page where you need to view a button that is blocked (eg the "Download" button for Shockwave 10 won't show up with this enabled) so just disable temporarily and use as if you were John Q Public. Most of the time it doesn't affect "normal" content at all, or put another way I don't miss whatever I'm not seeing in the least.
Re:Not a problem (Score:3, Informative)
It's called "Nuke Anything". It's a dead-simple DOM hack, and it's not persistent though, so AdBlock provides a more long-term solution.
Re:Not a problem (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Not a problem (Score:2, Informative)