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.
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
games too (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:games too (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:games too (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Not a problem (Score:3, Funny)
Adverts of Prison....
hmm, I'll take the risk, I can't stand web adverts.
Re:Not a problem (Score:3, Informative)
There's alwasy some pricks trying to ruin the web for everyone else.
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate pop-ups and floaters as much as the next guy but c'mon, you're on their website! It's not like they're sticking their ads on every website you visit withotut he site's approval. If you don't like their business model, do not visit the sites. simple.
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Obviously, what we need to do is get rid of all the stupid people. I suggest telling them there is a giant space goat coming to eat the planet and putting them all on some kind of space ark.
Re:Not a problem (Score:4, Interesting)
However, I find myself keeping ad banners unblocked on a site
You want to show me "brought to you by", or reserve even half the space on the page for ads, go for it. Just keep it calm. You get in my face like a used car salesman though, I'm gone from your site for the day, and your advertiser is gone from my browser for good.
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
I like to think I'm a lot like many other people here. When making purchasing decisions, I decide what I want based on rational criteria such as price, features, customer service and so forth. I tell myself that none of the millions of ads I've seen in my life are shaping my decisions.
I remember reading a short SF story about consumerisation in the future. People are working ten hour days, six and seven days a week to buy all this useless crap that is specifically designed to break down in three months. Car tires, for instance, must match groove patterns in the roads (which are changed every few months) or the vibrations will destroy the tire and car. People spend all their free time figuring out deals in buying clubs. Finally, ad companies come up with these subliminal mind control antennas. The main character ends up stopping at the store for a carton of cigarettes (which he doesn't smoke) and putting them absentmindedly in the glove compartment with all the other unsmoked cartons of cigarettes.
Honestly, how do we know we aren't being influenced?
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
That's what you think.
Honestly, how do we know we aren't being influenced?
Now you are on the right track. However, there is no spooky, subliminal hypnosis involved. It's just that we are far more susceptible to advertising than we think. Companies advertise for only one reason: it works. New products have uncertain demand, but in established industries it is fairly easy to predict how sales will respond to advertising. Yet nobody thinks they are influenced by ads. Likewise, it is easy to prove that physically attractive political candidates have a material advantage over uglier ones, but while we may be willing to to believe that other voters could be so superficial, we all know that we ourselves are wiser
Re:Not a problem (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the brain dead masses would surprise you if we automated everything that could be automated, gave them the option of living in an enclave/commune with $DRUG_OF_CHOICE or bettering themselves and contributing something to the community at large. Personally, I think most people would try to contribute. If contributing to the community weren't a natural drive of most humans, we would never have gotten where we are. I think it's a much more powerful drive than any purely selfish greed-based drive. In most people.
Again, this is just my opinion, but I think that far more dangerous than the people with no ambition/work ethic are the people with too much ambition and no empathy/community spirit. They are the real blood-suckers, not the passively lazy.
Re:Not a problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not a problem (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
Re:Not a problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Menus and dialogs etc are tricky though, as the browser cant detect when the user has requested it or not, and in some cases you may want it even when you don't manually request it.
Perhaps instead would be a way where you could hold ctrl and click a layer and it would disappear. Too many times Ive seen ads with the little 'x' to cl
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
That is definitely a better solution. You still have to see the ad initially, but it at least returns control to the user. I'm all about user-control when it comes to the web. Control of your browser and your computer should rest with *you*, not some random, untrusted site on the public internet.
Re:Not a problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, thought of one more response heh.
That is partly because, in the case of popups, you can distinguish between a popup that the user wants (e.g. they clicked a link which opens content in a new window), and automatic popups. Popup blockers still allow new windows when you click a link, typically. They just kill automatic popups.
Unfortunately, in the case of dhtml layers, it *is* harder, as you said, to distinguish. Maybe someone could think up a solution though, that doesn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were.
Re:Not a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do we even need drop-down menus on websites? Whatever happened to decently laid out sites that didn't contact the server every 10 seconds to see if there was an update? Web-forums with private messages? Let them notify me of a new message when I request a new page. Real-time dynamic content does not belong in a browser window.
Maybe I'm just old fashioned here, but I don't see "the web" as something I want to turn into application software. Not over HTTP. Leave my HTTP alone, let me browse through information, maybe hit some server-side app here and there for quasi-dynamic content. Enough with the client-side stuff. The only thing I can even see running client side is a validation script that just checks to see values are entered into a form. Not that they are right (other than format, like ###-###-#### for a US phone #). Other than that, keep it on your damn server.
The real solution.... (Score:3, Funny)
Another possibility is that people are not good at finding the more legitimate stuff they want and end up clicking links to dodgy sites. Th
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
The adverts are usually served up by third party advert servers and thus looking at the adblock list of blockable elements... just block all items that are not on the domain for the site you're looking at.
That takes care of 99% of floaters, popups, etc.
The real problem is the next stage of advert evolution, which will be when content providers still use third parties to sell and supply adverts, but start to act as proxies for the adverts.
When content providers are acting as proxies and adverts appear to come from the same domain and content management system as the content... then adverts will be VERY hard to block.
The prevalence of adblock is going to increasingly push companies towards such solutions.
They'll still need to monetise their sites, and whilst it used to be that they didn't care for a minority of people blocking adverts, when that is a fast growing minority and it's affecting their revenues... they will find ways around it.
Just as the DRM rules state that if you can see and hear it you can bypass DRM and copy it... maybe a rule should be created for adverts: If you can see or hear the content, then advertisers CAN find a way to make you see or hear advertisements.
Re:Not a problem (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a simple solution - don't use their site
I dont think i know any site that i couldnt live without that use ads to get their revenue.
So if thats what it comes to - fine, i wont be using such a site at all.
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:Not a problem - use RegExp (Score:3, Interesting)
For instance, a filter in AdBlock which is simply
Whats also great is that REGEXP can't be circumvented by the advertiser moving to a new doma
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 y
AdBlock = easier (Score:5, Informative)
Re:AdBlock = easier (Score:3, Informative)
Solution (Score:3, Funny)
Brand new, from what I hear.
Floaters are not evil. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with popups is that clicking the back button was not enough, one had to clean up the mess -- sometimes a mess that would keep respawning itself. Floaters look superficially similar to popups, but floaters are completely contained within the window. That makes them just another (usually bad) design feature.
Re:Floaters are not evil. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Floaters are not evil. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Floaters are not evil. (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, they indicate that you're getting enough fiber in your diet!
My own stool, sir, are perfect. They are gigantic, and have no more odour than a hot biscuit" Dr John Kellogg (Anthony Hopkins)
Re:Floaters are not evil. (Score:3, Interesting)
With pop-ups/unders, you can get rid of them by closing the browser window that contains them -- this is something that is under the control of the browser application/OS, not the web page.
Floaters are integrated into the page content, so there are no standard browser controls available to remove them -- you have to rely on any provision that has been made within the floater/containing web page to remove it.
I would not trust that clicking on part of a floater will remove it and not just l
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 certainl
windows (Score:3, Interesting)
No Reg Link (Score:4, Informative)
Rate of change correlation (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Rate of change correlation (Score:3, Insightful)
But the big bonus is just by not installing Flash, at least half of ads don't load -- in particular, the most obnoxious ones.
"Remove this object" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Remove this object" (Score:4, Informative)
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:"Remove this object" (Score:5, Informative)
AdBlock (Score:3, Informative)
Obviously... (Score:4, Interesting)
Same with iFrames (which is already implemented well in AdBlock)...
It's so obvious I'd be surprised if the functionality doesn't already exist.
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.
I wish... (Score:5, Interesting)
A bit of courtesy from the advertisers and I am willing to watch it if it catches my fancy, but if they throw it in my face, they ain't getting anything but rage from me.
Raise your hands (Score:5, Funny)
I just wonder where some marketers draw the line.
Re:Raise your hands (Score:4, Funny)
>
>I just wonder where some marketers draw the line.
"There's a line?"
- Some marketoon
I can only say this: Given that marketroids tend to surf with IE, Flash enabled, and Javascript enabled, and I tend to surf with Mozilla, Flash disabled, and Javascript disabled (through the use of the PrefBar extension), and have never seen a "floater" anywhere other than my toilet bowl, I'd very much like to see an over-the-Internet face-slapping technology developed.
The new ESTP protocol! (Score:5, Funny)
[...] I'd very much like to see an over-the-Internet face-slapping technology developed.
Easy, if you replace face-slapping with electro-shocking.
If you thought that you could get away with using rubber gloves, you are dead wrong: this is a circumvention, and you'll be hit by the DMCA!
Floaters (Score:3, Funny)
Even more annoying ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Even more annoying ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Unlike all these pop-ups and pop-unders and "floaters" and the like, if you click on the link to a page and are served a different page instead, then it's completely out of your control, and there's nothing at all that your browser can do about it. Disabling javascript or whatever won't help - you asked for a page, you got served a page, and the fact that the content isn't what you wer
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.
Who Clicks On These? (Score:5, Funny)
"Who the Hell actually clicks on all the popups,popovers,floaters,ads and logos anyway?"
I can safely say the only time I click on an ad when online, is when my mouse slips?
I suppose it must be like spam. The percentage of suckers is incredibly low, but if ads are 10% of internet content, then you'll get a few hits.
Still though, I mean, what kind of person goes around saying "Oh! I do want a cheaper morgage!!" *CLICK*. Do any slashdotters have some amusing tales of such perpetually clueless lusers in their domains?
Re:Who Clicks On These? (Score:3, Interesting)
Think about ads on TV - obviously, noone ever clicks those. People are just (passively) subjected to them while they wait for their favourite shows/movies/... to start/resume, and many will in fact use the break to do other things, or turn of the sound so they don't have to listen to the ads (I do that), or switch to another channel (my parents do that), or other such things.
Nevert
Re:Who Clicks On These? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your perception of "minimum quality you'll accept" has been influenced by marketing. That "5 star test" result is marketing. Honda having plants in the US is partly marketing... I could continue, but maybe that's unnecessary...
Of course some people are less influenced by ads and other marketing than others, but saying you're absolutely sure you're immune is living in denial.
Re:Who Clicks On These? (Score:5, Funny)
There is no sig
Re:Who Clicks On These? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've clicked on an advert and bought something.
It was a small, text-only advert that simply gave the relevent product details: root on a FreeBSD virtual server for $65/mo, no set-up fee [johncompanies.com]. I saw it, I thought it sounded like a good deal, clicked through, their website was simple and clear, so I signed up. They've given excellent service with the best technical support I've ever found in a hosting company, and I've b
CSS + Javascript (Score:5, Insightful)
Ergo; the user can simply dissallow CSS allowing flying elements ("float"-ing is a different thing, you see).
There needs to be a definite shift from the web-site having "control" unless the browser is patched to snatch it back, towards the web-page being permitted to do its thing within certain boundaries (boundaries that the user is in control of).
The rush to provide "web applications" runs contary to this; web pages are DATA, not programs and the further we go from that state, the more invasive mal-intentioned pages can be (example; ActiveX)
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!
I don't mind them... (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with popups wasn't the one new window.. It's playing Whack-A-Mole with the 32 pops spawned by that one.
Not effective anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
Fax/printer spam (Score:3, Interesting)
Sollution. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sollution. (Score:4, Interesting)
Floaters? (Score:3, Funny)
This will get worse (Score:3, Insightful)
The more people that use firefox the more things like this will pop up, so we'll end up playing catch up over and over (and lets face it, the release yesterday proved how bad the update system is right now) untill people get sick of it and use a new browser which fixs this.
Now watch the post get 12 million replies saying "Yea like Usenet and Windows! Firefox is going to die hahahaha".
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]:
Who does this? Why do they do it? (Score:5, Insightful)
These "floaters" remind me of that childish thing where someone leaps around thrusting their hands in front of your face going, "Not touching! Can't get mad!" Oh, yeah. That behaviour is really going to make me want to buy your product.
Since "floater" is (in England, anyway) slang for a turd that can't be flushed away, the name is at least appropriate.
Annoying ads (Score:3, Interesting)
I know I've refused to deal with companies before because of their advertising, but I'm not sure the majority of folks will.
With Opera it's not a problem (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know if Fire Fox has this option but for those of you more involved with the project it would be a nice added feature.
how do they work? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:how do they work? (Score:3, Interesting)
yeah, that's what I was thinking, too. it's gotta be on top, so it'll have the highest z-index in the page. maybe the browser could look at all the layers, take the top one (highest z-index) and either display it as the lowest. or somehow indicate to the user that the top layer's been removed.
again, however, doing this in a blanket fashion could hork up sites that (a) use z-index, and (b) do not use floaters.
For cripes sakes people, make a HOSTS file. (Score:4, Informative)
Easy fix for all ads (Score:3, Interesting)
2. Enable popup blocking
3. Install Adblock [mozdev.org]
4. Install filter rule set [geocities.com] for Adblock.
Every now and then, Adblock lets an ad through, but you can just right-click it and select "block ad", which augments your filter rule set. Now a real killer feature for Adblock would be for it to somehow filter ad indirection pages, i.e. you go to a page but are indirected through a page with a giant ad. Currently that page will look mostly empty because Adblock blocks the giant banner, but maybe Adblock could be improved to auto-skip to the next page... which should be easy to find because it is the redirect URL.
Appropriate name (Score:3, Funny)
Complain (Score:5, Interesting)
"I believe it would be in your companies best interest to institute a policy that your banner advertisments cannot make sounds unless a user is interacting with them.
You are currently running a banner add on your web site that is extremely anoying. It says "Swat the fly and get a free $250 gift certificate," and has a fly flying around and your mouse turns into a fly swatter when you mouse over it. The anoying thing is that it makes a buzzing sound even if you do not do anything.
Your web site auto refreshes at regular intervals. I usually leave my browser open on your site durig the day while I work and periodically check the headlines and read the articles. Imagine my surprise when, while I am working with my browser minimized, my computer suddenly begins to buzz. I use firefox for a browser, and usually have at least seven news sites open in tabs at once. It took me quite some time to find which site had an add that was playing the anoying buzzing sound.
Since I cannot prevent your site from auto refreshing, eventually that banner add will come back up. As a result, I am not going to be able to leave your site open today. That is a real shame because I relly enjoy your web site and read it daily. Unfortunately that annoying sound will drive me nuts and prevent me from getting my work accomplished.
Thank you for your time. I hope you will take my advice and change your advertising policy."
This was their response:
"Thanks for writing. We've been deluged with complaints about this ad. It was served by a third party advertiser, and we're working to track it down and remove it. If it does crop up again in the future, please don't hesitate to email us right away."
I was really surprised at the response. I guess since they are a legitimate news site (gonna get flamed for that), they cannot afford to have their advertisers driving their readers away from the site. Still I sent a similar email to abcnews.com for a similar ad a couple of months ago and the response was the exact oposite. I did not save the email but they basically told me to screw myself.
Re:Complain (Score:3, Interesting)
The response (not auto, an actual person): Yes, it's out on DVD in the UK *now*!
My response was along the lines of 'I am
Theirs: What are you talking about? It's already released! Go buy it!
Total fuckwittery.
Re:Complain (Score:5, Informative)
Effective marketting through pain (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's just glance at the trends to see where they are going. With TV, they started with commercial spots which were actually convenient because if gave you the opportunity to get up and get a drink, make a sandwich or go use the bathroom. But lately, with the excessive amounts of commercials you have time to do all three of those things. Now they are corrupting our entertainment with product placement within the entertainment itself. Annoying...but livable since they have only the ability to make sounds and video so it kind of limits what they can do. (Though I make predictions that they will begin adding ear-drum-peircing tones to the beginning and end of each commercial to take advantage of the new pain marketting techniques.)
The same generally applies to radio where the commercial air time obviously swarfs the amount of entertainment air time. But again, ear-drum shattering tones, not unlike the Emergency Broacast System tests, will mark the beginnings and ends of advertisments on the radio.
With computers and internet, we have suffered greatly from the creative genius of marketters who clearly illustrate they have no moral boundaries. They spam us, we block them, they find ways around the blocks and keep spamming. Now what marketting genius thinks it is a good idea to skirt what amounts to security measures in order to get your advertisment through? In some places it's a criminal offense to ignore a "No Soliciting" sign. How about climing over a security fence in order to place a handbill on your door? Is it okay? Or what about picking the lock of your back door (a clear invitation since you have a back door, it must mean you want someone to come in through it right?) in order to stick something on your refridgerator (and then count all the items in your food storage to see what you've been eating and buying)? Would this be acceptable? No, guess not. Marketters would think it's equally ridiculous...or would they..? (Do you think I just gave them a bad idea? D'oh!)
I have proposed this idea in the past and I believe I got some support for the idea at the time but now I'm almost ready to start the push myself. Let's make a "mark" in the minds of the consumers out there.
I think we should hire some people to go around and beat up random strangers on the street. The advertising comes in when you script the ass-kickin' with commercial messages. Timing is crucial. For example, if I were advertising Viagra, a kick in the crotch should happen at exactly the moment the product name is mentioned. This works directly as the word "Viagra" will be stuck in the mind of the recipient for a LONG LONG time. And indirectly, as you see people holding their damaged "goods" and you ask them what happened, they can simply answer "Viagra" and the message will be clear.
I have considered many ways in which pain would be an effective marketting tool and the scenario above is just one example.
Popups are for wimps.
Mod me down if you want but... (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree that popups are bad because they grab your screen real estate, they go outside the content provider space into your personal space.
But floaters do not use any of your personal space. When you visit a website, you are giving the content provider some space on your screen. In return it provides you with content of interest. If in addition, in the same space you are allowing him to use, it provides ads, just live with it.
And if you don't like the way he serve ads, then just leave the site.
If a web site become too anoying, I either complain to the site operator or just leave the site and not return to it anymore.
We don't need to escalade the arm race against ads... We already have way to disable ads images ans popups. We also have a way of saying to content provider that the way they display ads annoys us. I believe that's more than enough!
Poisoning the well (Score:3, Interesting)
I anticipate that the next generation of web browsers will include whitelist capabilities that allow users to enable these features only for "well behaved" web sites that refuse to allow intrusive advertising.
Just avoid these sites (Score:3, Insightful)
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
The next level of blocking (Score:5, Insightful)
First, we need to get Flash under user control. This may require implementing an open-source Flash player, or beating hard on Macromedia. Flash animations need to respond to a "block all images from this site" right-click. All animations should come up static, dimmed, and silent, requiring user action to activate them. This keeps the annoyance level down.
Then we need to make page ownership hierarchical. If a page opens another window, the new window is considered a child of the parent window. When the parent window closes, so must the child.
Further, child windows should be restricted to the area of the parent window. They must be in front of the parent, and they must have some minimal overlap. (Restricting them to the parent window frame is probably too restrictive, but requiring some overlap means they can't move freely around the screen.)
Re:It is a good day for (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hey! (Score:4, Interesting)
Man, I hate advertising. I'm with Bill Hicks on this: If you're in marketing, just kill yourself. Please.
Re:Hey! (Score:3, Insightful)
One word: Subscriptions. I have subscriptions for the news outlets I rely on for my information (including Slashdot).
Re:Hey! (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn it all to hell, TEXT ADS! In a space on the side of the screen! Google figured this out years ago, how long is it going to take for the penny to drop with the rest of these bozos? How hard is it to understand that maximizing annoyances your potential customer base is not good for business?
Seriously. Why does this have to be so difficult? The fact that people are developping countermeasures to your advertising should be lighting a bulb, however dim, somewhere in your mind. What could it mean? Whatever could it mean?
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.
Re:Yawn.... Firefox + Adblock = Ads? What ads? (Score:3, Interesting)
Site navigation is not a valid use. Links are a valid navigation method, plugins and other shit are not.
Blocking *.swf would render some sites completely unusable.
This is true, but by definition those sites weren't worth visiting in the first place.
TWW