[Closed] Ads Generally

I blacklist sites that have adblocker blockers.

It's the equivalent of being chained to the sofa when watching TV during the ad break, instead of using it as an opportune moment to have a slash and put the kettle on.

Is it just me that’s get P’d off with popups now saying your using an ad blocker please whitelist or watch a 30 second video

If I want to read it I'll do it.

Not being funny but if your revenue comes from ad’s maybe you should make the content worth paying for there are plenty of sites Bikerumour for example MTBR that dont pull this stunt.

But you want to visit and read it so it must be worth reading?

But you want to visit and read it so it must be worth reading?

I think its more a case of same press release I just don't have to sit through ads on those sites I dont have a preference for any and if they start loading it with ad's I'm done there too!

I've ditched Cycling News because it always comes up as "oi, stop it .. stop using an adblocker" thing is my work environment insist on adblockers..

As for Whitelisting, nah sod off.

As for Ads in general, I'm 50/50 with them. However I have a list of criteria that I can stomach..

1) stop chuffing flashing

2) stop chuffing moving

3) stop the chuffing noise they make (the ones with vids embedded are the pits

4) stop making embedded bloody links of clickbait out of them

If the ads are plain, simple, few colours and have phone numbers so you can call the "shop"/"virtual shop" then I'm ok with it.

Being blasted with the same shite day in/day out is abhorrent.

I know it's all about the kids and developers making the sodding things flashy and google passing tomes of experimental guff about where a user places their eyes and retention and attention spans, but honestly the more they throw at it the more I turn off it..

But they won't listen, because they're all Internet blind chasing limited users who accept the sodding things.

I don't like it either, and will vote with my feet if I get greeted with intrusive "sign up to our newsletter" type pop-ups before I've even seen the site.  But it's the way the web going, and the way sites realistically have to go if they're to survive.

Hosting has to be paid for.  Bandwidth has to be paid for (and in the case of popular sites that can be a sizeable wedge).  If the content isn't worth "paying for" and you're not prepared to have advertising visible on a site, where else is that revenue going to come from?

The only other options I can see are a) hobbyist sites run on pennies a month and propped up by the occasional donation, b) value returned in other ways such as an e-commerce website, or c) businesses big enough that they're prepared to run the site at a loss in return for other benefits it may bring.

and for a more constructive comment

I know it’s all about the kids and developers making the sodding things flashy and google passing tomes of experimental guff about where a user places their eyes and retention and attention spans, but honestly the more they throw at it the more I turn off it..

But they won’t listen, because they’re all Internet blind chasing limited users who accept the sodding things.

How many normal and boring ads have you clicked or noticed? Was it more than zero? Here is the problem, the majority are not willing to pay, ad blocking is removing revenue and the real scary one is the content carriers/software companies who want to host "their" ads while allowing blocking of others as ideas.

Perhaps the more we block (and don't pay) the worse the ads get.

5) no cross site / cross device tracking

as in, I'm more than happy for the website I'm visiting to analyse my use of that website, but I will not permit identifiable data to be used by a third party to track my use across multiple sites.

this is the thing I primarily block.

I have no contract with facebook, criteo etc.  They have no right to assume that I have accepted any terms and conditions of the use of the internet.

STW, BBC, Snowheads, MTB News, Gmail, etc. etc. are more than welcome to profile my use of their sites.

Maybe it's just Spesh getting everyone so annoyed.

@2.28

I don’t click on them.

If I want something I search the internet and not adverts for products and services.

I too follow andys ethos, tracking is ballz. STW can pass data about my clicks all they like, I accept the terms and conditions on that.. other than that they can FRO about using my usage data for anything other than what’s on here.

Thats one reason the use of adblockers and content blockers and tracking blockers are being developed and used, we’re increasingly pissed off with being used as some kind of subliminal marketing data gathering harvest.

Excluding the fact this place has ads very intrusively in the middle of posts now and a large pop up saying subscribe for £1.50

Is it just me that’s get P’d off with popups now saying your using an ad blocker please whitelist or watch a 30 second video

Not a problem I’m having.

not having that problem on here.

I have elsewhere. I have then left the site pdq and never returned.

Just give in and use Pinkbike.

One of us, one of us...

Ads Generally : are shit

Most of my tv viewing is recorded, I ffd over or ignore/am irritated by adverts

My internet surfing may be interrupted by ads occasionally, but I don’t buy anything from pop-ups, ads and the more intrusive they are, the less likely I am to click on them.

But that’s just me, there must be people who go “Ugh, duh, I’ve never heard of Amazon” click and buy something from it, there must be, or it wouldn’t be there.

I’ve been using the web since it was just newsgroups and I can count on the fingers of one finger the number of times an ad has worked on me.

And I buy my share of stuff!

I’ve been using the web since it was just newsgroups

No you haven't.  That's the Internet you're thinking of.

I've not come across something yet that I've wanted to read so much I'll deal with an ad-blocker blocker, not that the web-site owner is missing out either I guess.

On here specifically, I don't find the ads too bad but have blocked specific flashy ones - they're annoying + I only come here at work and I don't particularly want desk passers-by attention drawn to my screen (especially as some of the thread titles could be alarming out of context :p ).

No you haven’t.  That’s the Internet you’re thinking of.

Always one to pick out the important stuff eh? 😛

I am getting increasingly more and more fed up with advertising being pushed into your eyeballs and earholes everywhere you go.

There are gigantic video screens at the side of the road now - the brightness on them is cranked right up and they run 24 hours a day. Some of them are in residential areas:

I don't watch TV or read newspapers or magazines either, so I have a low exposure to advertising. It's very jarring when you get hit with it. Like going to your parents' place where they have the TV on all the time.

I run adblockers and anti trackers on my web stuff. It's mostly about taking control of what I see and have to deal with.

And if a website can't get the revenue it needs to run then that's their problem, not mine. It's the churn of capitalism.

I’ve been using the web since

Ahhhh… Mosaic on a VAXstation was my first web experience 😀

Before that though the nearest kind of thing was Gopher and WAIS, browsing boring academic documents. Newsgroups were more of a threaded email kind of thing.

All I meant was "a long time" ffs! 😆

And if a website can’t get the revenue it needs to run then that’s their problem, not mine. It’s the churn of capitalism.

Sorry but I'm going to have to pull you up on that one. If a website doesn't get revenue, who pays the bills for the staff, and in turn how do they put food on the table/a roof over their head? Should everyone do stuff for free? Do you work for free?

That's not the "churn of capitalism" as you describe it. It's just people wanting to make a living. **** me, if nobody was allowed to monetise their activities and turn it into a revenue stream, we'd be back to living in caves.

yep our young guitar hero wants something for nothing and goes out of his way to avoid paying for it.

our young guitar hero wants something for nothing and goes out of his way to avoid paying for it.

Hard times, innit!

He's a poor student you know.....and the arse has fallen out of the used panty market. 😉

Jesus wept, let me see if I've got this right...

OP "I really want to use STW, but I find the adverts really annoying.."

STW "Yeah, but you know, people who create all this want to do crazy stuff like eat and have somewhere to live, tell you what you pay us half the cost of a Starbucks Hazlenut Fat Cup a month and we'll take them all away".

Op "you're really taking the piss now..."

When it comes to 'stuff on the web' you can be the customer, or the product - you could always create your own site for the people for free?

Those who stop visiting sites who ask for them to whitelist on an adblocker - if you don't, and stop visiting, tbh they won't actually care. By using an adblock they get no revenue from you anyway, so you're largely irrelevant.

Websites, content, staff etc aren't free to create. If you won't pay to see it then they'll have to take money to serve ads to you. It's pretty simple. Other than popups, I can't think of an ad that has negatively affected my viewing experience of a website that hosts content I'm interested in.

5) no cross site / cross device tracking

as in, I’m more than happy for the website I’m visiting to analyse my use of that website, but I will not permit identifiable data to be used by a third party to track my use across multiple sites.

this is the thing I primarily block.

I have no contract with facebook, criteo etc.  They have no right to assume that I have accepted any terms and conditions of the use of the internet.

STW, BBC, Snowheads, MTB News, Gmail, etc. etc. are more than welcome to profile my use of their sites.

Agreed. And one of the products I work on is all around personalization, and as a result user tracking. But we (were) pretty unique when we first designed it many years ago to take into account a lot of things from the point of view of the user. The right to nuke your data, control what is collected etc. And it is specifically about tracking your usage with a brand to improve your experience on their site (ie learn what you are looking for and enhance the experience to make sure the right things are put in front of you). Not about tracking you across other people's sites to hassle you.

Personally I would be very happy if all the FB etc tracking pixels etc went away. If I want to be on facebook, I'll visit facebook!

But that’s just me, there must be people who go “Ugh, duh, I’ve never heard of Amazon” click and buy something from it, there must be, or it wouldn’t be there.

there's something I looked at on amazon a few months back. (and also googled the product generally).

Still not decided if I want one yet.

I get reminded by the amazon ad on about half the pages I see on the internet. Even in the side bar of sites i'm legitimately using for work.

I might have forgotten all about it if I wasn't reminded daily.

@morphio - that's basically the Amazon "You may also be interested in ..." type user analysis. The main problem with it is that it's possible to generate very personalised walled gardens where the visitor/customer is only seeing content similar to what they've already viewed, there needs to be some random element to show that there's other content as well. The third party trackers like the FB pixel tracker are basically there to pester you in a targeted way.

Other than by pure accident - usually caused by the page refreshing and moving around when ads get inserted - I've never clicked on any on-line advert.

One point to note: using the developer tools I compared the load times of a local newspaper's website in two browsers, both with the cache cleared, one had AdBlocker enabled the other didn't. The load time for the adblock enabled browser was under ten seconds, that showing the adverts was over four minutes!

I don't mind a few ads if it means I can get decent or interesting content for free. Wouldn't even mind ads like the specialized one if it reduces the membership fee or paid for another web dev. Back in the day when this site was largely as free with a single crc banner I would choose to click on it if I was buying something as I was under the impression stw got revenue from that. Ads that make noise, take over the screen, or move around are not welcome though. Usually because they are slow and buggy so can't even close them as designed. Any sites like that I'll use an ad block or just avoid them. As mentioned, I doubt they care if I never come back

Ads that make noise, take over the screen, or move around are not welcome though.

Agreed.  None of the ads on STW should do that.  If they do it's a rogue ad rather than intentional.

A confession: I just got logged out, an ADVERT appeared for MTB holidays on the Costa Del Somethingorother. I thought "that looks nice" and almost clicked on it! Then I was distracted by the fact that I was logged out, so clicked Login instead.

So that's 2 fingers now 😆

I think we are slowly evolving.  Users will migrate from poor websites / forums to better ones.

Recently I read Sender magazine, almost zero ads and a bloody good read with great photos.  Cost me a tenner though.  But you know what, the alternatives for sale a WHSmiths are thinner, full of ads I don't want to see and crap articles.  Page for page Sender was probably cheaper.

I shall buy another copy of Sender soon.

Advertising needs to evolve to work, at the moment a lot of it fails to work.

Jesus wept, let me see if I’ve got this right…

No you got it wrong from the off, next.

Advertising needs to evolve to work, at the moment a lot of it fails to work.

It probably works a lot better than you think.  Aside from anything else, if it didn't work, companies wouldn't pay to do it.

You're right though, it does need to evolve.  Google have said that they're going to start blocking intrusive advertising direct from the browser in future versions of Chrome (antitrust, anyone?) and Mark has mentioned before about researching alternatives to traditional advertising so that STW is less reliant on the adverts we all love.  I'm reasonably certain that if STW never had to serve another third-party advert again Mark would be a very happy man.

What he said

What would happen if the digital sub was £2?

I really can't see why everyone who feels strongly enough to moan on here doesn't subscribe.

This place has had it's issues and I've moaned about them but the amount of bullets that I've dodged due to advice on here means I'm forever indebted.

I didn't even see the S yesterday and I went looking for it.

I appreciate other forums are free ,it's just that this place was perfect so any current faults are magnified.

And I'm glad that the big long thread has slid away.

What would happen if the digital sub was £2?

History would suggest three pages of complaining and multiple flounces.

(-:

It doesn't cost £2 per user per month to run this forum. That's to subsidise the failing magazine.

<div class="bbp-reply-author">Mark
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What he said

Thanks for the update.

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TBH I didn't realise the STW digital sub was so cheap so finally just sub'd myself (this isn't an ad btw :p )