[Closed] Freeloading tools....

It is, plenty of sites do it.

Also, http://singletrackmag.com/terms-and-conditions/

Not that way cougar, I mean not deliver content to them

like this...?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/15/to_read_this_page_please_turn_off_your_ad_blocker/

(not sure if that link will get "amended" or not)

No, I know. Plenty of sites do it. avforums for one, off the top of my head (or did so last time I looked).

Have been to a few that try to make it difficult, but only comedycentral has forced me to disable/whitelist to see the content (and that was probably more a feature of the the video player, that won't play content until tha ad has been played).

If they want to do research to find out what I do next if prevented from seeing content, I can save the time and effort, and tell you I'll go elsewhere.

Loads of sites detect such tools and put up nag messages.

Errr, so I've heard.

The problem isn't That Software but the advertising policies of the sites concerned. If users are annoyed by adverts they will find a way to block them, so don't regard your users as ad fodder to be abused in any way you see fit.

Even if such anti-You Konow What becomes widely adopted the YKW will respond by disguising themselves as unblocked connections and do the filtering within their own servers, as already happens with some Products

No, the problem is people expecting things for free.

Do you work for free?

I argue that we forumites contribute to the success of the whole. The online/Facebook/Youtube sort of advertising model was fundamentally flawed, doing the businesses who used it more harm than good. It's a miracle it lasted for this long before the inevitable counterreaction caught up with it.

Fundamentally, putting stuff up on the web is making it available for nothing. If you want it paid for put it behind a paywall. You can't realistically complain at people reading some of what you put on the web and not all of it.

Yeah I'd hate to be in Facebook's shoes financially.

Just because you [i]can[/i] take something for free doesn't mean you should.

Still, if it makes you feel clever it's probably worth it, eh?

Just because you can take something for free doesn't mean you should.

Make sure you never get up to make a cuppa during an ad break on TV then.

And be sure to carefully read every advert in your local paper.

And make sure you read every single thread on STW, don't pick and choose which bits you want.

Make sure you never get up to make a cuppa during an ad break on TV then.

And be sure to carefully read every advert in your local paper.

I don't have to watch every advert on TV just like I don't have to click through every ad on this website.

Ditto local paper adverts.

The advertisers pay to present these marketing opportunities to me, it's then up to me whether I choose to take them further.

Hope that makes sense as it's quite an important distinction.

No, the problem is people expecting things for free.

No the problem is people who pay for mobile connections not wanting their allowances 'wasted' on pointless (to them) or overly intrusive ads that make the device they are also paying for unusable.

Have you been to a shop or restaurant where on paying for the thing you want they try and persuade you that you also need x? The goods ones leave it at that when you politely decline but the nauseating ones bang on and on about it making it virtually impossible to just buy the thing you want. It devalues the product you wanted and ruins the experience. There are many a time I'd have loved to have planted a fist in the spotty little oiche's face. Think of ad blockers as a virtual punch in the face to the over persistent websites that seem hellbent on ruining the experience of using their sites. Unfortunately some more professional websites that don't attempt to insult their customers with overbearing ads get caught in the crossfire. I feel their beef should be with other websites, not with the browsing public.

I didn't bother with ad blockers until recently, but it makes various ( 😉 ) sites much more palatable.

Cha****ng

.forumites generate content for free..but publishers, like stw and lots of others attempt to monetise that freely generated content.

.forumites generate content for free..but publishers, like stw and lots of others attempt to monetise that freely generated content.

That's a different argument, but the work for free thing is bollocks when it comes to selling adverts on the back of user generated content.

Eh, you have to pay for the infrastructure to start with, why do you think the site is monetising your forum posts?

enough server time to run a forum is cheap as chips, , forum software is available open source and is free. Innumerable examples of forums running for free and hosted freely right through internet history all the way back to bulletin boards.

Go on find me a free Web hosting 🙂 one where no money is required

I block adverts, unobtrusive adds which do not slow down the page or takeover my screen I can deal with. The main reason I block adds is the amount of data about myself which i do not consent to being shared around. Install a plugin like ghostery or disconnect and see where data about yourself is being sent to. STW is pretty good compared to some sites, but some sites you go to, it is amazing the amount they track you.

I did pay for a digtal subscription, however the product was poor in my opinion, so I stopped.

Hopefully, adblockgate, will mean that new ways of monetizing content on the internet will come to fruition, which do not make the user experience terrible, and impact on peoples privacy.

No the problem is people who pay for mobile connections not wanting their allowances 'wasted' on pointless (to them) or overly intrusive ads that make the device they are also paying for unusable.

I understand the reasons people use them, but I take issue with the assumption that there is some sort of right to free content.

.forumites generate content for free..but publishers, like stw and lots of others attempt to monetise that freely generated content.

So you use ad blockers as a political statement?

Aren't you usually a right wing troll?

Hopefully, adblockgate, will mean that new ways of monetizing content on the internet will come to fruition, which do not make the user experience terrible, and impact on peoples privacy.

Not trolling..just pointing out that forum members are expected to work for free to generate content for stw (and other companies) to sell and profit from.

Not trolling..just pointing out that forum members are expected to work for free to generate content for stw (and other companies) to sell and profit from.

No one is expected to do anything. What an utterly bizarre thought.

Not trolling..just pointing out that forum members are [b]expected to work for free to generate content[/b] for stw (and other companies) to sell and profit from.

That's funny 😀

Firstly half the content is generated on the time of the forumite's actual employer and secondly most of it is so much dross that if it was work we would have been performance managed out years ago 😀

Despite using a blocker these days I still recognise that websites need paying for somehow - my use is just a knee jerk reaction to the unsympathetic and crass way it is often done now. Sites like this are an irrelevance in many ways - the bigger issue in my opinion is the mainstream press. As a society the press play such a vital role in reporting and commenting on political, economic and general life (although it could be better than it is now clearly). With a move away from paid for paper publication it is now behind a firewall or festooned with adverts. I have yet to get my head around either yet 'demand' quality - I (the consumer) needs a mindset change as much as the publisher.

No one is expected to do anything.

So can we, as contributors, expect a cheque in the post? Cool !! 🙂

forum members are expected to work for free to generate content

You're right, that does sound like exploitation.

Are you a member of a union?

So can we, as contributors, expect a cheque in the post? Cool !!

Can you cover the cost of the P+P? I can't guarantee the cheque amount will make up for the cost of that though.

Newspaper ads don't flash or fick from text to text. That's something I find distracting and annoying. I think there will always be an alternative, even if it's right at the screen end of the process.

*Goes off to google 'depraved filth', to see what ads result*

What is the forum here for?

Is it to sell the users the magazine? Is it to use the members to make money from adverts? Is it here in order to attract new users to the site (and magazine) by using existing members contributions?

I suspect it's a mixture of all the above. I imagine Singletrack needs the forum more than the members do. The site is a terrible experience when ads are enabled, maybe if this long standing problem was addressed earlier then more people would enable the ads.

The site is a terrible experience when ads are enabled

+1

Ah, c'mon. My preferred means of surfing STW is by a three (maybe even four) year old iPad so no ad-blocking software and apart from the four Tudor ads per hour (which I just refreshed to get rid of) it wasn't [i]that[/i] bad.

I resize the screen so other than the 'reply' ads I barely noticed them...

Of course if I was on my laptop I couldn't see any for some strange reason.... 😉

Presumably because you're a subscriber so have turned the ads off in your account settings?

Yes ads turned off now, but it was different before Friday...

Dunno. Maybe I just got used to it.

(Was that just a friendly warning btw?)

No warning... and if anyone wants to know why the forum substitutes the word 'freeloader' it's because we thought it was funny.

Ok, I was just reading way too much into it... (I had my wrist smacked once before previously)

Spent the last 9-10 months as non subscriber, so that's what I was meaning.

But must admit ads turned off (legitimately 😀 ) is definitely an improvement.

The site is a terrible experience when ads are enabled

It really isn't..... On old computer or iPads everything still works and most of the ads just sit there at the side. Every so often one auto plays or causes an issue but a quick email to the admin and it gets sorted out.
If every site was run like this it would be a dream!
Try looking at the bbc site from outside of the U.K. Random ads that lock out the screen when trying to read the news. Any video has an advert before it.

Ah I see.
It's surprising (to us at least) how many subscribers have ads turned on. In an upcoming site tweak we are going to set the default state to ads off for all subscribers.

The reason there's no hand slapping on this most taboo of topics is essentially because Apple have changed the game and we are adapting. Preventing ad blocking is a hiding to nothing. We've been in a position to fight back, as it were, for a while but we haven't for exactly the reason outlined above. To do so would be counter productive. Dodging someone's preference for no ads in their browser by forcing ads on them is not a subscriber going to make.

The publishing world has to shoulder a bunch of the blame for the fact the business model of ads on websites is now crumbling because it went nuts with how many ads they plastered everywhere. It began a vicious cycle in that the more ads that were placed the lower the yield per 1000 impressions (CPM) and so publishers had to place more ads to keep the revenues up and round and round we go until we get to the sorry mess we are in today.

Apple, Facebook AND Google are forcing a new business model on us and I'm struggling to see it as a bad thing right now. There's uncertainty about what revenues the new way will bring and whether it will be enough but I do think that content will be forced to improve as a result and that advertising quality will also increase too since the demand for the much reduced volumes available will be very high for those publishers that can offer large audience reach.

Yes, all three of the giant tech co.s take a 30% cut but that's only on the ads they source themselves. We are able to place ads we have sold directly to an advertiser in their news apps and if we do we take 100% of the revenue. The big three take nothing. That sounds great, and it is, but they won't miss out on their 30% slices since most of the biggest publishers have way too much ad inventory to sell themselves and there's always a large proportion of what is called 'remnant' inventory left over. On this site if you see an ad with a blue triangle in the corner that will be remnant inventory and in the main this is the stuff that is delivered through multiple ad networks. All three tech giants are going to make billions from that.

Now, 30% sounds like a lot but compare it to what the Newsstrade industry takes from us for our print output. WHSmith Wholesale and mag distribution take 50% of the cover price of all mags sold on the high street. And that is all on sale or return (Which is blox as we never get them back as they get pulped by the wholesale process). So, I and most publishers I know are really quite happy about the 30% slice that Apple et al will be taking in return for distributing our content via their apps. They are, after all, providing us with a delivery mechanism for our content AND the ads we sell ourselves.

Now, if only Apple would turn the bloody thing on, Facebook give us the tools to create these Instant Articles and Google fix the bloody annoying bugs in their Newsstand app we could get on with the business of writing stories and being able to pay for them.

The promoting ad blockers rule still applies btw. So long as we are debating the wider issue here then all is good as far as I am concerned.

🙂

There's ads on the site? Weird....never seen any myself.

Hehe, tbh I did think that on this specific thread I'd've been alright with an oblique cheeky reference...

I always understood why the rule existed.

You've mentioned before that the forum is a big source of income mark.

Will that be served through these new revenue share systems then?

I've only heard a bit about it but I thought it was more for news articles and features.

I have no idea.
It all depends on the audience take up of the new app channels and the rates that the single ad per story actually pays. Since most ads are delivered through a marketplace it'd the marketplace that will decide the eventual worth of that placement. Until they turn it all on we won't know. This DOES give me sleepless nights. Our margins are very tight and something as disruptive as this new publishing model from the Big3 could go either way.

I'm still not sure how this works for you though. As I understand it the stories you are referring to are the ones on the rest of the site, not the magazine nor the ads on the forum pages so you would still lose the revenue from the forum? (unless of course the assumption is that all new content in consumed through the app and the web site and forum still exists but isn't the way most people get to your content ( runs off to review his own website 🙁 ))

Websites as destinations for content consumption are endangered, at least as far as the media is concerned. You still need websites to sell stuff directly. Journalism tho will be served mostly via apps from the Big3. The forum will stay and will be as busy as it is normally but I expect revenues from it directly to decline. It's the stories we publish and write ourselves that will be carrying the revenue burden in the future. Ads displayed around our stories already generate a lot more revenue than ads in the forum per page impression.

Publishing has never been a simple business model but it's getting more complicated at the moment. The challenge is to adapt.

Ads in print magazines I look at not least as they typically use quality photography. The issue with online ads is in many cases they are very intrusive and they materially slow down web page load, I'd are negative additions Print ads may make the magazine slightly thicker but they don't stop you turning straight to the page you are interested in.

We all need to understand unless we pay for content, see ads or allow our data to be harvested there will be nothing to look at. Other forums I use have ads and they have sponsored forums. We cannot expect something for nothing.

"blox" 🙂

Another couple of thoughts.

If ads where less intrusive I'd be happy to have them switched on even being a subscriber, eg non animated banner ads which don't slow down load time / cause constant re-rendering.
I wonder what the value of ads per user is (confidential I know), perhaps users would be prepared to pay that in order not to see ads. It maybe be as little as £1 or £2 per annum ?

The reason ads are currently all flashy and animated is because they perform better than non animated ads. No matter what we all say bout flash = annoying.. the actual reality is flashy = clicks.

We see this every day when we analyse the performance of the ad campaigns that we run directly.

The reason that particular nugget of marketing reality won't matter so much in the new publishing era of ads in apps is that app ads can't be avoided. They are inline with the content so you eye will always scan across it to get to the content on the other side. So it doesn't have to quite as flashy and animated to score that subconscious 'hit' that all advertising works on.

Up until now content has been delivered on big desktop screens where content is in one area and ads in another (Excluding interstitials and pop-ups) so the ads have always had to work hard to get your attention because they are not directly in your sight-line. They are over to the side and so they have to jump up and down and shout 'EXCUSE ME!' to grab your attention.

Now content can be delivered in a really nice way on mobiles via apps the ads can stop shouting ta you and start chilling out a bit more since you are going to see them anyway.

You can test this out by looking at our stories in the new grit.cx app that contains a free news feed (Coming to Singletrack shortly) and in the Google Newsstand app for ios and android. There's a single ad mixing it up with the content of the stories but it isn't half as annoying an experience as ads on a website. It's another reason why in the near future you won't actually use the internet directly - you'll use an app instead. It's just a nicer user experience than using a browser.