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The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

121 points by nkurz 11y ago

sunni2sunni 11y ago
well nkurz pull the plug before it is too late. ads suck, no one ever wants to look at them.
- Oletros 11y ago
  But we want to read their reviews and participate in their forums.
  - SixSigma 11y ago
    How much in $ terms is that worth to you? Work it out and send guru3d a payment
    - hcon 11y ago
      Obviously nobody does that. My favorite example is when you see a popular github repository with a donate button (Flattr, Bitcoin address, etc) only to realize they've made a whole $14 in the past year. Wow, thanks world! It turns out that ads worked because the user didn't actually have to do anything. They didn't have to get their credit card out of their wallet, something they rarely do on the internet. And when they do, it's to give money to a large corporation like Netflix or because Jimmy Wales managed to beg for donations in a more invasive annoying way than a banner ad ever was. (You know, I never once had to see the face of the founder of AdultFriendFinder in one of their ads.) I hope we find a next-coming middleground that changes the culture of what people are willing to pay for and how they do it. But the fact that giving your credit/debit card number to someone gives them (and anyone else) unlimited charge license on your account is not helping.
      - SixSigma 11y ago
        You say "nobody" but I know that's not true because I am "somebody" who donates. Ad blockers mean one isn't prepared to pay for your product. Personally when I am prevented from viewing content because my Privoxy has been detected I tend to just go elsewhere. I find ads a significant burden on my concentration and well being. Yet in print media I don't mind. Often I read trade mags specifically for the ads, they are great market research.
        hcon 11y ago
        I mean "nobody" in the sense that it doesn't scale and people like you, god bless, do not replace ads for the vast majority of websites. At least not until some sort of shift happens in how we pay for content which I think is imminent. > Ad blockers mean one isn't prepared to pay for your product. Perhaps rather: "Your product is not worth taking out a credit card and paying for" which applies to most websites. There are massive barriers to explicitly paying for things, even just psychological. In an abstract sense, ads are like vignette windshield stickers that let you cruise past tollway checkpoints when the alternative is to have to stop at a tollboth even if it's just to pay 10 cents. People have tried to create services that replace ads in that abstraction, but so far nothing has stuck. I think the post-ad solution needs to be just as mindless as ads if it's going to replace them.
      - chris_wot 11y ago
        Yeah, ads work because users don't do anything. That includes actually clicking on the ads themselves.
        hcon 11y ago
        Ever use Adwords or Adsense? People click on ads. Fewer and fewer, but they still do and with enough volume to prop up entire businesses, small and multinational.
  - augustk 11y ago
    And you trust advertiser-funded reviews?
- jfoutz 11y ago
  Eh, a better approach is probably to just detect adblock and put up a "please don't use adblock/donate here button". Maybe lightbox you from time to time asking for the same.
  - rewqfdsa 11y ago
    > detect adblock One does not simply "detect adblock". Browsers are user agents. They run code in an environment optimized for user safety and convenience. These environments will always be able to tell your site's server- and client-side code exactly what it wants to hear while showing something different to the user. You can't stop it. The client will always win. We may eventually get to the point where clients use various computer vision techniques to recognize ads. If I can clearly distinguish jiggling, improbably large elf anatomy below a flashing yellow "PLAY THIS ONLINE RPG" from content I want to see, so can an algorithm, at least to within an acceptable error rate. Advertisements that are so borderline that they can't be detected as advertisements are ones I probably don't mind seeing anyway. Spammers have already tried all available countermeasures and they've completely lost. Spam is so completely ineffective that it's actually dipped below half of email traffic. No, the client will always win in the end.
    - sputr 11y ago
      Actually, it can (and is routinely) done. https://github.com/brockwhittaker/Detect-Adblockers https://github.com/brockwhittaker/Detect-Adblockers
      - rewqfdsa 11y ago
        It's an arms race. Advertisers may be able to detect ad blockers in the short term, but eventually they will lose. That's because users control their machines and advertisers don't. Widespread use of adblock-blockers will only hasten this inevitable defeat. The techniques used by the project to which you've linked can be trivially worked around by detecting the script itself and either not running it or telling it what it wants to hear. (Come on: an iframe? You really don't think a browser extension could lie about that? I expected at least some kind of server-client traffic correlation for a serious ad-blocker-blocker attempt.)
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cm2187 11y ago
I am amazed that their response to adblockers is more targetted ads. My main reason for using an adblocker isn't to block ads, which don't bother me that much. It is to block tracking accross websites. Telling me that they will do more tracking in response isn't really going to change my mind...
- rewqfdsa 11y ago
  ... but it may change most minds. What bothers me about advertising is the visual noise, which amounts to a pollution of my environment. Better advertising can help reduce the need to rely on pure attention-sucking and so reduce the urge to block ads entirely. I don't give a damn about tracking. All the doomsday scenarios that those in the anti-tracking camp imagine have not come to pass.
- junto 11y ago
  Sites need to consider going back to the pre-Double-Click world, where they self hosted and self managed ads. I'd accept that without issue. I don't mind ads, I just can't accept the intrusive tracking, including being retargeted.
  - cm2187 11y ago
    Me too. And there is no point to access the last two years of someone's browsing history to know that someone visiting a video game website is interested in video games or technology.
    - rewqfdsa 11y ago
      But what kinds of science and technology? Maybe our user has a bit of disposable income and wouldn't mind ads for high-end hardware he didn't happen to know about. Maybe she's interested in DLC for games she's passionate about, as measured for frequently of forum visits. Maybe our user runs a lab and would be very interested in high-end PCR machines. You can do much better than "interested in video games or technology" if you know a bit about your users. This tracking makes advertising much less annoying (occasionally veering into useful).
jarradhope 11y ago
or you know, change your business model to suit your market.
- tsujamin 11y ago
  what would that business model be if their primary goal is to write interesting tech articles? Is producing this sort of content sustainable at all?
  - teddyh 11y ago
    Ask LWN, they seem to be doing fine.
futbol 11y ago
Don't care. Nothing shall be changed. You're on your own, guru3d.
- alan_cx 11y ago
  Why is this down voted? Its what most people who use ad-blockers think. Its probably the most honest comment in this thread. HN members might not like it, but so what?
DrScump 11y ago
Are you sure that ad blockers are the only variable in play here? "(October 2014) we had nearly 4.5 million hits (read) on our articles. This year (October 2015) we are at 4.4 million hits... Where a year ago we served 375~400K pageviews per day, we now register just over 200K pageviews a day." Is pageviews the actual metric, or is ads served the metric? Given the recent discoveries in how many "ad views" were actually never presented to the reader and were just phony revenue ticks, could it not be that you are also "suffering" from an ongoing reduction in phony ad presentations as the trickery is discovered and addressed? I block ads primarily to limit tracking and bogus traffic, not to dodge advertising per se. I heartily endorse jfoutz's suggestions here. If you continue to serve quality content, it's the more sustainable business model long-term anyway. Years before the modern ad-network paradigm, many media sites were subscription from the outset (e.g. WSJ, mercurynews). Some later went free, using ad networks to pay the way. Now, the trend is moving back to a subscription model. Those sites that do the punitive block-ads-and-we-block-you (e.g. washingtonpost) will find that people just go elsewhere for those stories.
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  nah, I and many others directly block Google Analytics = no pageviews in google dashboard. I refuse to be tracked by third parties whenever I go.
seanwilson 11y ago
Is there a reason more sites don't do self hosted ads? Is there a general way these can be blocked as well? If the ad is coming from their own server and displayed with their own custom HTML/CSS, I can't see an obvious way these could be detected and blocked in general.
- deleted 11y ago
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- hcon 11y ago
  > Is there a reason more sites don't do self hosted ads? Google Adsense (for example) is a live auction clearing house where you paste a snippet of code into your site that resolves into the highest bidder for the keywords on each page. You're done. Meanwhile, hosting your own ads entails finding advertisers, wooing them, developing a relationship with them, maintaining that relationship, negotiating a contract, settling that contract, building an ad-serving system somehow, automating it somehow, etc. And that's if you're even big enough to attract anyone or even warrant the work to begin with. And the second you try to generalize it (which is what ad networks do), then you're back on every adblocker's default blocklist.
  - nsomaru 11y ago
    Why not build a generic system where ads are served to the server serving the website (which maintains a cache of relevant ads and serves them appropriately)? That way you can get the benefits of a network + the benefits of serving from the same server that is serving the content
    - hcon 11y ago
      Yeah, I'm sure Adsense will let you proxy requests through my server soon or release some similar offering. It would come at the massive expense of high-quality tracking and thus incur a massive reduction in ad revenue, but it's an imminent trade-off that beats unconditional adblocking. I think everything is just waiting for the actual tipping point that forces everyone's hand like we always do. Adblockers are still the minority.
hannob 11y ago
This is so common for the many anti-adblock texts you see these days - they all avoid to talk about the major issues here. (I say that with the background that a significant part of my income comes from ad-financed news pages.) That is: * Security risk through ads (malvertising, ad networks not supporting https etc.). * Ads killing performance (70% CPU for a flash ad is not uncommon). * Privacy (Ad vendors having mostly stated that they won't accept user wishes through DNT or similar technologies). Privacy is a tricky one, because data is in part where the income comes from. But the other two are fixable. I want to hear from everyone complaining about ad blockers what they intend to do to make ads less of a security risk and cpu cycle burner. That would be a good start of a proper conversation about the topic. Every text that ignores these issues is usually not worth recognizing.
- teddyh 11y ago
  Those are all valid reasons, but they are not the reason I first started to block ads: • They impose a surprisingly huge cognitive load. Even if you (like most people nowadays) are used to them and hence “do not notice them”, that very habit of ignoring them actually takes more brain power than you’d think.
  - johnchristopher 11y ago
    I'd be okay with ads on the web if it looked like newspaper or magazine ads (and with the associated cognitive load). But not auto-play videos that pops up in the middle of the article or blinking GIFs on the side.
  - xorcist 11y ago
    That's true! I stopped watching TV somewhere around the high school age, which means I react to it just like small children do: if I'm trying to have a meeting where there's a TV running I turn into almost a drooling idiot. My brain is simply not conditioned to flashing colors and quick cuts that aren't important. It requires practice to read a text bylined with blinking animations, and I simply don't have the cognitive power to do that. Most people that cope with it probably doesn't realize how much practice they've had.
sputr 11y ago
This reminds me of the copyright/piracy debate. The copyright industry was screaming about lost profits , but would not change it business models. Well, it turns out, all they had to do was change their business models to something people actually wanted. Now piracy rates are falling where appropriate services are available. Patreon (and youtube community in general) have, together with projects like gog.com, humblebundle etc. proved that people actually WANT to pay for content even if they don't have to. But only in the way they want to. Especially if that means they'll get more reader centric content, not advertiser centric.
- johnchristopher 11y ago
  Do you have anything for me to read about falling piracy rates ? (e.g. gamasutra)
JDDunn9 11y ago
I remember a time on the Internet before ads, when the only websites were made by geeks who were passionate about the topic. Then came the popup ads, followed by the popup blockers, banners never worked, then came contextual ads. Google made it quick and easy to profit from content and made content a commodity. Currently they are the #1 financier of web spam, and pay off ad-blockers to whitelist their ads. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Ad-supported media is not free, it's costs are simply externalised. While we, the tech-savvy, may not click ads, somebody is buying those payday loans, lose 30 lbs in a month with this weird trick, get-rich-quick scams. I'm more than happy to see ad-financed (mostly low-quality) content go the way of the popup. I have no problem paying for quality content (Netflix, Hulu Plus, Audible, etc.). The few high quality ad-supported blogs will then be able to charge for their content, since there will be no decent alternatives. As long as ad-supported content exists though, it will be a race to the bottom.
- sologoub 11y ago
  What you are describing is a world where only big, well financed, or well known entities can survive. In order to keep the amazing internet we actually have, we need to come up with a model that can be used by small upstarts to either serve smaller markets or to give them time to figure things out and become large over time. Requiring people to publish things for free will only result in the most extreme of views. Look at any Wikipedia article that remotely touches a controversial topic - it will likely present a strongly biased message towards whatever side the maintainer of that article feels strongly about.
  - JDDunn9 11y ago
    The world where only the big players can win is the one we live in now. It's difficult for a small player to be heard when Buzzfeed-type click-bate headlines dominate the landscape. Switch it around, who would pay for access to Buzzfeed? On the other hand, I would pay for an expert's opinion on a topic I'm passionate about. You only need 1,000 people paying $10 a month to make a good living. To get $120k from ads, you'll need a whole lot of visitors.
iagooar 11y ago
Maybe you should start building a sustainable business model, instead of whining because people who are annoyed with ads and trackers started effectively blocking them. If your content adds value to your visitors' lives, then charge for it. If the only revenue stream you can rely on is ads, then probably there is a problem with the stuff you offer not being valuable enough to people. I don't want this to sound grumpy, and I don't mean to say your content is not good or valuable. It's just that I've discussed this topic a lot of times with friends and colleagues and there seems to be a common agreement that ads and trackers have become so invasive (visually and privacy-wise) that people are not wanting to see them anymore or to be tracked. As always, it's about survival of the fittest and those who know how to adapt quickest. Find a way to charge for your content and build a sustainable business.
- hcon 11y ago
  > If the only revenue stream you can rely on is ads, > then probably there is a problem with the stuff you > offer not being valuable enough to people. Not quite. What people are willing to pay for has a large social/cultural/conditioned element. It's a crux of the entire problem. The vast majority of people still attribute zero cost to ads. When you start charging $1 for your offering, now you're the one site among your competitors that's charging money. Maybe some HN nerds will care. Whoopdee doo. Nobody else does. The rest of the world isn't going to take their credit card out of their wallet when they can endure a banner ad instead. Oh wait, they can just install an ad blocker the day they actually do care. Or maybe when their kid or significant other or buddy installs an adblocker on their browser like I did for my parents and they won't even realize the trouble it ever saved them. See, I think that we will be soon on the cusp of a shift that needs to happen before we can replace ads at all, and it's more than just something a website can do by themselves by adding a paywall or whatever solution that doesn't work for most websites that people seem to conjure up in response to these issues.
  - hughperkins 11y ago
    So what they should do is, what Android apps do: - when you first go to the website, you get the ad-infested website - you can pay for the app, and now, no more ads. In Android apps, the amount tends to be crazy low, like less than a cup of coffee. Pay that and get no ads is a no-brainer really...
chippy 11y ago
"Guru3D.com is a costly operation." Well now how costly? Just one dedicated server? multiple? Usage of AWS? Distributed data centres? Staff? accountants, designers, moderators? Or automated scripts and volunteers? If an organisation appeals to me to support them, I will, if they outline where and why they need it. Like Wikipedia for example or like OpenStreetMap. To say "oh it costs too much and we have lots of hits" is not an appeal to rationality.
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belorn 11y ago
What would happen if I lazily assumed that Guru3D will follow the advertisement laws that exist in my country, and if the ad-network which they subcontract the delivery of ads breaks the law, Guru3D will then take full responsibility? As it stand, most web users block ads and most web publisher block legal responsibility. Neither side want to take the hit when malware is spread through ads, people personal information is being illegally stored, and when laws that govern advertisement in news papers, radio, and TV is ignored on the web. Both side want all the benefits with none of the draw backs, and advertisement through websites will run closer and closer to the fate of advertisement through email.
zamalek 11y ago
AdBlock is one thing. However, > Ghostery These guys are complaining that users don't want to be tracked. I honestly can't take a single word in the entire article seriously.
xorcist 11y ago
"Blocking" ads is loaded language, and should be recognized as such. Not viewing ads can be done in a multitude of ways, but it's not like users are patching software to get there. The web was always built to be adaptable to the end user device. The user agent was intended to act as the decision maker how to render the markup. For many years, browsers even respected the default foreground and background colors and font choices (sadly not many respect X resources anymore). CSS was designed to include an end user defined style sheet to override tiny fonts and other things that made web pages hard to read. Not viewing animated banners isn't at all different from changing your base font, or not loading javascript. Had we chosen to call it "disabling" instead of "blocking" it would have been much more clear that this is an action that the user is and should be empowered to take. I do recognize that we're stuck with the loaded word for now, I just feel it's important not to forget that. The public discourse is dominated by media people, and their perspective is important too, but not more so than the technical one.
- adminprof 11y ago
  You bring up a terrific point. The ads are simply not loaded. The user is accessing an external server, and it's up to them what to load.
  - ChrisGranger 11y ago
    Indeed, a user could likewise load only the HTML and ignore all images, scripts, CSS and suchlike. The user is in control, and that's how it should be. I am not obligated to view ads any more than I'm obligated to view any other part of a website.
jensen123 11y ago
I think we really, really need cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. Buying access to stuff online with a credit card is totally inconvenient, and even worse, you have no privacy then. I guess this is part of the reason why sites financed by advertising have become so prevalent. Personally, if there was an easy and private way to do so, I'd much rather pay for content than getting "free" stuff financed by ads. Inevitably, sites will be extremely reluctant to write anything negative about products from companies that buy lots of ads. For this reason, I consider many of the reviews on tech sites, for example, kinda worthless. So, I'm glad to see this ad financed business model break down. Buying access to content with a cryptocurrency could be real easy (and relatively private). But it does not help that many governments want you to calculate capital gain/loss everytime you make such a purchase. I think governments ought to make an exception in the capital gains tax for small personal purchases. Maybe promoters who loudly proclaim that cryptocurrencies will soon replace "legacy" government fiat currencies are part of the problem. No wonder governments are so negative. But I don't think cryptocurrencies necessarily will replace fiat currencies anytime soon. Cryptocurrencies work great for small purchases online, but I wouldn't want to put my lifesavings into one - oh no! My computer got hacked - my life savings are gone! Edit: replacing the entire capital gains tax with a wealth tax would probably be even better.
- danieldk 11y ago
  I think we really, really need cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. Or just something where I could pay, say 10 Euro per year, and every website that participates gets a fraction to my number of visits or reading time. As far as I understand, Google is trying to do this. But it does not provide a 'no ads' guarantee and there are other ad networks with even more obnoxious ads.
  - teddyh 11y ago
    You mean something like Flattr?
  - ac29 11y ago
    > Or just something where I could pay, say 10 Euro per year, and every website that participates gets a fraction to my number of visits or reading time. The problem with this is you must allow a third party to track every page visit and/or page view time, which is unacceptable to many people that use ad blockers. If you are OK with persistent, pervasive tracking, I think this is probably the best solution.
tlrobinson 11y ago
"Where a year ago we served 375~400K pageviews per day, we now register just over 200K pageviews a day. That's right, nearly 50% of the readers are blocking ads." I'm not saying ad blockers had no effect on their business, but I find it extremely hard to believe 50% of their visitors discovered and started using ad blockers in the past year.
tlrobinson 11y ago
"Where a year ago we served 375~400K pageviews per day, we now register just over 200K pageviews a day. That's right, nearly 50% of the readers are blocking ads." I'm not saying ad blockers had no effect on their business, but I find it extremely hard to believe 50% of their visitors discovered and started using ad blockers in the past year.
hyperbovine 11y ago
Dude, Just charge money. Have we all forgotten how commerce worked for ~5000 years before the ad-supported model came along?
- raddad 11y ago
  Websites used to ask you to click the links because they got a fraction of a penny for your clicks. I'll send them my check for $0.001 to look at their page.
WizardlySquid 11y ago
Whenever I read something like this I feel really bad and turn off my ad blocker, as soon as I do that I'm usually greeted with 2 minute long unskippable ads, sites re-skinned with ads, targeted ads, ads that are just straight up spam, ads that play in the background and ads that require me to fill out a survey. I want to support these websites but online ads don't pay nearly as much as TV, radio or print ads but that are 10 times more annoy, detrimental to my privacy and if I ever click on them I know their almost certainly going to be some sort of phishing scam or virus from eastern Europe. You know it sucks that people are blocking ads but online ads are the absolute worst, if online ads functioned and payed as much as print advertisements than I don't think anyone would have a problem with seeing ads but we all know they don't. Only thing I can recommend is that these sites change their business model or at least augment it with a mixture of merch, internet begging (patreon), premium memberships and being more choosy with what ad networks they choose to partner with.
z3t4 11y ago
When running a business, you need to spend 50% of your time on the business-part and the other 50% on providing content, serving your customers, etc. With ads, you let the ad-network do the business-part, while only taking 10%-50% of your turn-over. You can spend 100% of your time making content, etc. Especially small businesses are happy with that model. The ads where good for content, as more content was created. But it's now leaving a huge gap of opportunity! Then there's also product discovery. We need new ways for people to discover more content that they are interested in.
Yuioup 11y ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you want some of my money you need to get it from the people who charge me every month for accesing you web page: My ISP. They are the ones making money off the fact that I want to get on the internet and access content. Too bad there is no reliable, independent mechanism for taking some of that money and putting it in a large pool to be ditributed to content creators. The amount you get is based on how popular your site is. The ISPs know exactly how popular your site is. (Too bad I'm late to the thread. Nobody is going to read this)
- Dolores12 11y ago
  you pay your ISP for internet access, not for content.
- Falkon1313 11y ago
  Sounds like a good idea at first, but... Who did we pay for TV content prior to cable/satellite? No one. You bought the hardware and thereafter the content was all free, supported by ads. Cable access providers promised ad-free content, so people paid for it. Paying the access provider worked well. So well that it mostly wiped out the ad-supported over-the-air competition and left the cable cos as monopolies. Which enabled them to raise their prices and become filled with ads. While controlling what you could see and when, charging extra for some content vs other content, etc. Making ISPs more like cable companies doesn't seem like a good idea for the consumer. And it won't make the ads go away.
  - bigbugbag 11y ago
    Well in TV jargon "content" refers to advertisement and "feel" refers to what you think as content. Isn't public TV paid for by taxes? Anyways, I second you, the ISP should not collect money for accessing content.
BogusIKnow 11y ago
Main reason for ad-blockers for me: They try to distract you from reading the text you came for. While in print ads don't (can't) do this. Online they open to the whole page after some time, they constantly animate things to draw your attention from the text, some play sound, videos, left, right, above, below and in the text between paragraphs and capturing links. Main reason probably because they don't really work.
- fromMars 11y ago
  I am also not a fan of annoying ads and maybe I am just a crotchety old guy, but, IMO, using an Ad Blocker and viewing content is theft. If one is concerned with privacy, there are alternative measures such as cookie blocking options, legislation, etc. If the ad formats are annoying then the right thing to do is to let the publisher know and work out a way to pay for the content ad-free or just stop using the site. I also feel the same way about the bit-torrents and downloading copyrighted content. But, maybe I am the only one who feels this way.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    I mostly agree with you. But on a metered Internet connection the ads can increase cost. That's pretty lousy - I pay to get this extra content that I don't want, in order to provide minimal payment to the content creator. Some movie studios realised that one thing driving torrent downloads was the fragility of DVDs / BluRays in the hands of children, and people wanted backups. So they started offering electronic downloads for people who bought the disc, or free disc replacements.
  - BogusIKnow 11y ago
    I don't agree. If I get a magazine which is mostly not financed by my payment but the ads, and rip out all ads and throw them away, or throw the ad supplements away and not read them, is it theft? If it is theft blocking (aka not reading) ads online, is it theft if I just don't read them? And I don't want to argue, just interested, where is the difference in not reading them and blocking them? Is it morally imperative to read all ads in a magazine? So I came to the conclusion, because I throw away ad supplement of magazines right away and don't read ads in magazines, me ad blocking can't be theft either, or not reading ads in magazines is theft too. PS: Because you bringing up bit torrent implying people who ad block are also downloading films, well, I'm not.
njharman 11y ago
If your business model requires changes to reality, then your business model is probably dead. [If you have lobbying power, you can extend your business model for awhile, perhaps indefinitely ala content industry and copyright.] In other words, adapt your business model to change or die. It's not up to "reality", us, to change to support your business model. If there is demand for whatever you produce, someone will create a "business model" to supply it. If there is not enough demand to pay for any business model then so be it, we didn't actually need/want your product after all.
- jhall1468 11y ago
  It's exactly this kind of attitude that is going to lead to paywalls for virtually every type of content on the Internet. And the people that use the most heavy-handed approaches with ad-blocking are going to be the same people that are screaming "NOT MY PROBLEM" while the ship goes down. Their business model doesn't require changes to reality. Their business model requires the end-user to accept reality for what it is: you can't get a bunch of free stuff, ad infinitum, while simultaneously blocking the only feasible revenue model for said free stuff. > It's not up to "reality", us, to change to support your business model. Did you pat yourself on the back while you said that, or right after? We are not reality. The reality is, ad-blocking will be the absolute death of currency-free content. This abuse of the word reality is truly odd to me. You seem to think every choice we make as consumers is the current reality. What you call reality, I call a house of cards.
  - anonymousab 11y ago
    Your post seems entirely based on the assumption that people will not create and host quality content for free.
    - cinquemb 11y ago
      It also assumes people will not try to extract content from walled gardens via any means and share such information for free.
    - 11y ago
snksnk 11y ago
This is the Internet, whose users tend to be highly innovative. If your business model is built on serving (good) content with ads and people don't like ads, then you will have a problem. It is a pity for some, but inherent to the Internet. I have seen many web sites turn from a hobby into a small business funded by ads, who are now feeling the pinch. They either need to find a new way to monetize what they offer, or turn into a hobby project again. (Which often saves a lot of money on horrible UX. Generally after 2007 / the uptake of smartphones a lot of good features were eliminated and sucked into the black hole of UX and dumb simplifications to accommodate the average Internet user. Everything is tailored now for the average user, and the power user is left out.)
nekopa 11y ago
Can anyone here tell me how much a site like Guru3D makes if I visit and read one article? Is it like a fraction of a cent?
- putlake 11y ago
  RPM (revenue per 1000 pageviews) varies wildly by site, geo and platform (desktop/mobile). If you're a site with cat photos it's about $1. If you're about mortgage refinancing or roofing, it could be $15. The first pageview in a user's session is more valuable than subsequent pageviews on the same site. So if your 1000 pageviews are from 900 users, your RPM will be $4 but if they are from 200 users (5 PVs per user), then it'll be $.90. RPMs on desktop/tablet are much higher (about 2x) compared with mobile. RPMs for U.S. traffic are also much higher (4x) compared with say traffic from India. Interstitial ads pay much higher (about 3x) compared with standard banner ads. Over the past 2 years, RPMs from Adsense have fallen about 40%. EDIT: All of the above applies to 3rd party ads sold on exchanges via ad networks like Adsense. Direct-sold ads have much higher RPMs, usually in double digits. But small publishers either don't have the traffic volume or the sales staff to sell ads directly.
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  This is a good point and destroys any kind of discussion about micro transactions for me. Micro transactions are NEVER micro. You dont see free games asking you to buy $0.1 worth of gold, they want $10. The same would happen if guru3D wanted to charge individual users. NYTimes made maybe 0.1 out of every user visiting them, but switching to subscription model they milk ~$12 per month minimum.
LargeCompanies 11y ago
I use ad blockers because certain streaming sites I visit are the worst in terms of pop ups. I feel bad that using a blocker for these types of sites by default blocks all other sites. Publishers need to get paid and we as consumers don't want to pay for web content. Non intrusive ads and ads are needed and should be respected in terms of allowing us the opportunity to make a living creating content and or enjoying content. If we continue down this path it's truly going to be a wall gardened app world controlled a ton by Apple.
- lisivka 11y ago
  Lost of their income due to their bad service is not a your problem. You are just helping them to understand their mistake. Feel good.
  - lisivka 11y ago
    The anonymous coward, who silently downvoted me: read «Gemba Kaizen», please.
deleted 11y ago
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vosper 11y ago
I tried what they're asking - the linked article is noticeably less responsive than the same one without ads. Especially scrolling - it skitters visibly. It's definitely less pleasant to use the site this way.
mattwar 11y ago
I have hated ads from the time of dialup Internet when I was paying by the minute for access, ads increased my bills - I was paying for them. The same now where o pay based on my internet usage, on mobile it is not cheap, and the cost of ad's is again on my shoulders. So, I don't want ads. Simple.
intrasight 11y ago
I use uBlock Origin. I don't block ads - I block 3rd party requests. People that complain about ad blocking are indeed missing the mark. I'm fine with ads - really. But if you want them seen, you are going to have to serve them yourself. There is no going backwards - for reasons spelled out by others in this thread. So if your business depends on ads, then you are in the ad business. Web sites are going to have to become like magazines. When I look at a magazine, I don't see a page with the message "please go get this other publication and look at the ad on page 3". I see the ad - in the publication I am viewing. Really, stop wining and just create quality content and engage with advertisers and ad firms that will create quality ads FOR YOU that will be place IN YOUR web page. Nothing exists that I know of that can block such ads.
- intrasight 11y ago
  I just looked at the guru3d site. The content is the ad - there's no need to add more ads. You just need to monetize the "ads" you already have. You are promoting these products. Negotiate with the vendor or reseller directly to get your fair share.
  - AYBABTME 11y ago
    That's not a good idea if you want people to trust that your reviews are unbiased.
    - intrasight 11y ago
      That is why Consumer Reports carries no ads, and is why I am willing to pay for their content.
  - dikaiosune 11y ago
    That would have a deleterious effect on the editorial independence of their content, I imagine.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
BogusIKnow 11y ago
One of these websites: "This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website." instead of "This website uses cookies to track your behaviour across this and other websites to better target and retarget you with ads. Identifying and segmenting you ensures higher advertising rates. Thanks." Still waiting for the first website with an honest cookie warning.
robgibbons 11y ago
Note to website operators: Ad blockers are not just a way of disabling annoying content. They prevent intrusive tracking and spying. If you can find a way to monetize my views without tracking my habits and sharing them with third parties, I'll happily disable my extensions.
- mozumder 11y ago
  I have no idea what the practical ramifications of this complaint means... What exactly is the fear of "intrusive tracking and spying"? What does it mean? Are you scared that you're now going to get ads that target your demographic, such as motherboards, instead of ads that don't target your demographic, such as Alzheimers drugs? I don't understand the problem with this. If that's not the fear, then state the ultimate practical effect of what you fear, because right now it sounds a lot like a "made-up-in-your-mind problem that will never, ever affect you negatively".
  - robgibbons 11y ago
    I don't need to justify my right to privacy. All you need to know is that I don't want my browsing habits tracked and correlated across virtually every site I visit, by a small handful of companies that have nothing to do with the content I am seeking. The burden is not on me to justify why I disagree with these practices.
    - mozumder 11y ago
      The burden is on you to justify your right to privacy. Otherwise it just makes you look bad, as if you're trying to defend indefensible actions. Remember, you're visiting THEIR sites. They aren't visiting your sites. They have something you want when you visit their sites, and you have to offer something in return. If you're unable to justify yourself, then companies (both advertisers and media publishers) will proceed as they wish. Your privacy is not their concern. You need to make it their concern. Right now ad blockers are just a mere stepping stone for these companies to track you. When they proceed with native ads (among many other options), it's going to be really difficult for you to block them. Do you want these companies to move forward to their next step in tracking you?
SimeVidas 11y ago
Ad blockers block Google Analytics? Why?
- KJasper 11y ago
  User tracking
lazyjones 11y ago
It would be a little bit more convincing if they had actually tried alternative revenue sources (paid subscription, associate links to Amazon, donations with a variety of providers like Flattr or using Bitcoin) and found no other viable solution.
proactivesvcs 11y ago
It's getting tiresome doing this. "We understand perfectly that some of you might find ads annoying" "Our pledge: we do not serve intrusive ads like pop-downs/pop-ups and takeovers." From one page load of www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/guru3d-rig-of-the-month-october-2015,1.html this list excludes the dozen or so trackers and adverts that I don't have record of serving malware. googletagservices.com (Angler, Neutrino exploit kits, to mention just the most recent) doubleclick.net (Angler, Neutrino exploit kits, to mention just the most recent) adnxs.com (Angler exploit kit, Flash 0-days on MSN.com) openx.net (don't get me started on the cesspit of openx) serving-sys.com
snambi 11y ago
the real issue is the pages are getting slower when ads are served. it is really annoying.
lucaspiller 11y ago
I disabled uBlock Origin and decided to see what ads they have on their site. Pretty much all of them were retargeting sites or products I'd looked at before, but had no intention of buying. Only one was really relevant to their site, which was a gaming keyboard. The same screen real estate could be used to to link to their articles and reviews of products from their sponsors, which would be a lot more relevant and actually provide value to the reader. Oh and whatever uBlock Origin blocks, made scrolling really laggy when it was enabled. I think I'll stick to using it thanks.
Animats 11y ago
From the site: "We review the Voyager Air 2 from Corsair, this portable storage unit allows you to connect it to USB 3.0 and WIFI. It actually comes in a 1 TB HDD model as well, which we review. This great looking device might be what you're looking for to move or stream your content from and with the latest Corsair Smartphone it might just be what the doctor ordered." "One of the CPU cooler makers we do adore, Noctua today celebrated its 10-year anniversary. Since the introduction of the first generation NH-U12 heatsink in October 2005, Noctua's products have received more than 6000 awards and recommendations from leading international hardware websites and magazines, making them a default choice for quiet cooling enthusiasts all over the world." That's the content. This is not someone who has a legitimate right to complain about ad blocking.
- pc86 11y ago
  I'm sure you could find plenty of negative reviews on the site as well. Just because someone says a product is great doesn't mean they are being paid to do so, or even that they received it for free. It could just be that the product is great for the use case they reviewed.
douche 11y ago
I turned off AdBlock on their site. A clean, attractive site immediately transformed into a supermarket sales flyer, except with animated ads. No thanks. I don't know what the answer is. Display ads are dead or dying, though. I get a lot more revenue on my websites from Amazon affiliate links than I do from AdSense. Probably it's going to look more like paid reviews and advertising masquerading as content.
- mozumder 11y ago
  Don't people go to their sites for shopping purposes anyways? What's the point of these sites if not to tell you what to buy? People used to pay money to buy magazines like Computer Shopper just for the ads...
jo909 11y ago
Potential buyers want sources to learn about products, compared them, have uninfluenced and honest reviews to help them make decisions. Vendors want their products reviewed. And I think they understand that reviewers need to be financially independent to be believable, so directly paying reviewers does not work. Both sides will find a way to get what they want, there is clear financial motivation to keep the review business alive. Money is not the problem here, only how to distribute it. I do not worry about this kind of content.
bashinator 11y ago
Until security experts stop recommending ad blockers as a first line of defense against malware, I consider it the obligation of content providers to fix the system.
jjuhl 11y ago
If they can't survive without advertising then let them die. Personally I don't see the problem. The few sites I care about that produce quality stuff (like https://lwn.net/ https://lwn.net/) I pay for and that's just fine. The rest are nice to have (without ads) but if they go away it doesn't really matter - I'll just read something else or (shock, horror) nothing at all - I'm sure my life will continue even if they go under. Can't honestly say I care a great deal. Edit: and as I guessed they would; the downvotes now flow in. Seems like people never like to hear that one can just stop using "stuff" and do something else.
jgoewert 11y ago
I barely remember Guru3D, but what I still remember was the full page animated ad for something that made the site completely unusable. It was a while ago, like 8+ years and I remember it being some huge green slime dripping all over and blocking the content and the whole animation ran for like 30 seconds before you could read the page. I added a rule in my hosts file to not load that ad as it was before client based ad blockers.
SapphireSun 11y ago
How much benefit does tracking and personalization actually provide in clickthrough percentages? Is it very large or is this companies grasping at threads to stay alive?
jveld 11y ago
I'm in favor of a move from ad-based to paywalled content. It just feels more honest to sell your content than your readers (or viewers, visitors, etc). There's also a mental hygeine aspect: I've noticed a pretty distinct correlation between my total exposure to online advertising and my ability to reach states of deep focus. For example, I've been finding it extremely difficult to finish books for the past few years. But since February or so, as my exposure to online ads has dropped to nearly zero, I've knocked half a dozen challenging non-fiction works off my hit list, and a few novels to boot. And it's not just mental stamina -- my moment to moment engagement and comprehension is also much higher. This observation is anecdotal, and furthermore, poorly controlled, so establishing causality is pretty difficult. But I have noticed that when I DO browse facebook or other ad-heavy sites, I experience a significant drop in my level of mental energy, often for hours after I'm off the internet. It's as if viewing ads, which are designed to grab one's attention, forks a process in my brain whose task is to react to the ad content, thus depleting my brain-hardware resources. The social hooks make facebook a particularly bad culprit. BUT, there's a big caveat. I don't want subscriptions -- at least, not on every site that sometimes puts out content that I like. That would cost me hundreds of buxx a month that I simply can't afford. There needs to be a decent micropayment solution so that people can buy the content that they actually want without the overhead of paying for a bunch of stuff they don't care about. I speculate that this would be a pure win for content companies. Right now, paywalls are more like "go-away-walls." If there were buttons on paywalls that said "Read this article for 50 cents," I would personally be paying for a lot more articles. There's probably even a good business opportunity in mediating these transactions to centralize signups and aggregate purchased content.
hardwaresofton 11y ago
While there's obviously nothing wrong with directly asking users to not adblock guru3d, the long-term solution is definitely to find another business model. I'm not a regular reader of Guru3D, but would it be a stretch to imagine that the community would willingly pay $1 a month to see the content you put on the site? Maybe you can shuffle only people with adblockers to the paid version of the site, and allow people with ads to view for free.
- intrasight 11y ago
  I pay to use the Consumer Reports content. I think if Guru3D became the 'Consumer Reports' of gaming hardware, then they could probably get paying viewers. Here's some other ideas. As long as they are doing test builds, how about selling detailed instructions for those builds. And if they get all this hardware donated by vendors, how about selling the rigs they build. Perhaps they can get a "brand" markup - sort of like selling NASCAR pace cars.
jordanpg 11y ago
For the record, I don't want to hear or see any ads, ever. The internet is great because it provides a channel for information to cheaply get from creators to consumers at global scale. Sadly, all of that infrastructure and creation takes time, energy, money, etc. It's not free. I don't take it for granted that advertising is the only way there can be an internet. I'm pretty confident that if everyone starts using adblockers, the internet will continue to exist. But will it be the internet I want? The internet that gives me Netflix and Amazon Prime I can take or leave. The internet that gives me endless blog posts, reviews, and Q&A sites I can take or leave. The internet that gives me API documentation, etc., chat, email, and Wikipedia I will fight for. I will pay for it. I will pay higher taxes for it. The rest I just don't care that much about, and I really doubt that many other people do either.
Mz 11y ago
Related post, inspired by this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10488967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10488967
RUG3Y 11y ago
Times are changing, again. I block any and every ad.

121 points by nkurz 11y ago

sunni2sunni 11y ago

well nkurz pull the plug before it is too late. ads suck, no one ever wants to look at them.

Oletros 11y ago
But we want to read their reviews and participate in their forums.
- SixSigma 11y ago
  How much in $ terms is that worth to you? Work it out and send guru3d a payment
  - hcon 11y ago
    Obviously nobody does that. My favorite example is when you see a popular github repository with a donate button (Flattr, Bitcoin address, etc) only to realize they've made a whole $14 in the past year. Wow, thanks world! It turns out that ads worked because the user didn't actually have to do anything. They didn't have to get their credit card out of their wallet, something they rarely do on the internet. And when they do, it's to give money to a large corporation like Netflix or because Jimmy Wales managed to beg for donations in a more invasive annoying way than a banner ad ever was. (You know, I never once had to see the face of the founder of AdultFriendFinder in one of their ads.) I hope we find a next-coming middleground that changes the culture of what people are willing to pay for and how they do it. But the fact that giving your credit/debit card number to someone gives them (and anyone else) unlimited charge license on your account is not helping.
    - SixSigma 11y ago
      You say "nobody" but I know that's not true because I am "somebody" who donates. Ad blockers mean one isn't prepared to pay for your product. Personally when I am prevented from viewing content because my Privoxy has been detected I tend to just go elsewhere. I find ads a significant burden on my concentration and well being. Yet in print media I don't mind. Often I read trade mags specifically for the ads, they are great market research.
      - hcon 11y ago
        I mean "nobody" in the sense that it doesn't scale and people like you, god bless, do not replace ads for the vast majority of websites. At least not until some sort of shift happens in how we pay for content which I think is imminent. > Ad blockers mean one isn't prepared to pay for your product. Perhaps rather: "Your product is not worth taking out a credit card and paying for" which applies to most websites. There are massive barriers to explicitly paying for things, even just psychological. In an abstract sense, ads are like vignette windshield stickers that let you cruise past tollway checkpoints when the alternative is to have to stop at a tollboth even if it's just to pay 10 cents. People have tried to create services that replace ads in that abstraction, but so far nothing has stuck. I think the post-ad solution needs to be just as mindless as ads if it's going to replace them.
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      Yeah, ads work because users don't do anything. That includes actually clicking on the ads themselves.
      - hcon 11y ago
        Ever use Adwords or Adsense? People click on ads. Fewer and fewer, but they still do and with enough volume to prop up entire businesses, small and multinational.
- augustk 11y ago
  And you trust advertiser-funded reviews?
jfoutz 11y ago
Eh, a better approach is probably to just detect adblock and put up a "please don't use adblock/donate here button". Maybe lightbox you from time to time asking for the same.
- rewqfdsa 11y ago
  > detect adblock One does not simply "detect adblock". Browsers are user agents. They run code in an environment optimized for user safety and convenience. These environments will always be able to tell your site's server- and client-side code exactly what it wants to hear while showing something different to the user. You can't stop it. The client will always win. We may eventually get to the point where clients use various computer vision techniques to recognize ads. If I can clearly distinguish jiggling, improbably large elf anatomy below a flashing yellow "PLAY THIS ONLINE RPG" from content I want to see, so can an algorithm, at least to within an acceptable error rate. Advertisements that are so borderline that they can't be detected as advertisements are ones I probably don't mind seeing anyway. Spammers have already tried all available countermeasures and they've completely lost. Spam is so completely ineffective that it's actually dipped below half of email traffic. No, the client will always win in the end.
  - sputr 11y ago
    Actually, it can (and is routinely) done. https://github.com/brockwhittaker/Detect-Adblockers https://github.com/brockwhittaker/Detect-Adblockers
    - rewqfdsa 11y ago
      It's an arms race. Advertisers may be able to detect ad blockers in the short term, but eventually they will lose. That's because users control their machines and advertisers don't. Widespread use of adblock-blockers will only hasten this inevitable defeat. The techniques used by the project to which you've linked can be trivially worked around by detecting the script itself and either not running it or telling it what it wants to hear. (Come on: an iframe? You really don't think a browser extension could lie about that? I expected at least some kind of server-client traffic correlation for a serious ad-blocker-blocker attempt.)

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cm2187 11y ago

I am amazed that their response to adblockers is more targetted ads. My main reason for using an adblocker isn't to block ads, which don't bother me that much. It is to block tracking accross websites. Telling me that they will do more tracking in response isn't really going to change my mind...

rewqfdsa 11y ago
... but it may change most minds. What bothers me about advertising is the visual noise, which amounts to a pollution of my environment. Better advertising can help reduce the need to rely on pure attention-sucking and so reduce the urge to block ads entirely. I don't give a damn about tracking. All the doomsday scenarios that those in the anti-tracking camp imagine have not come to pass.
junto 11y ago
Sites need to consider going back to the pre-Double-Click world, where they self hosted and self managed ads. I'd accept that without issue. I don't mind ads, I just can't accept the intrusive tracking, including being retargeted.
- cm2187 11y ago
  Me too. And there is no point to access the last two years of someone's browsing history to know that someone visiting a video game website is interested in video games or technology.
  - rewqfdsa 11y ago
    But what kinds of science and technology? Maybe our user has a bit of disposable income and wouldn't mind ads for high-end hardware he didn't happen to know about. Maybe she's interested in DLC for games she's passionate about, as measured for frequently of forum visits. Maybe our user runs a lab and would be very interested in high-end PCR machines. You can do much better than "interested in video games or technology" if you know a bit about your users. This tracking makes advertising much less annoying (occasionally veering into useful).

jarradhope 11y ago

or you know, change your business model to suit your market.

tsujamin 11y ago
what would that business model be if their primary goal is to write interesting tech articles? Is producing this sort of content sustainable at all?
- teddyh 11y ago
  Ask LWN, they seem to be doing fine.

futbol 11y ago

Don't care. Nothing shall be changed. You're on your own, guru3d.

alan_cx 11y ago
Why is this down voted? Its what most people who use ad-blockers think. Its probably the most honest comment in this thread. HN members might not like it, but so what?

DrScump 11y ago

Are you sure that ad blockers are the only variable in play here? "(October 2014) we had nearly 4.5 million hits (read) on our articles. This year (October 2015) we are at 4.4 million hits... Where a year ago we served 375~400K pageviews per day, we now register just over 200K pageviews a day." Is pageviews the actual metric, or is ads served the metric? Given the recent discoveries in how many "ad views" were actually never presented to the reader and were just phony revenue ticks, could it not be that you are also "suffering" from an ongoing reduction in phony ad presentations as the trickery is discovered and addressed? I block ads primarily to limit tracking and bogus traffic, not to dodge advertising per se. I heartily endorse jfoutz's suggestions here. If you continue to serve quality content, it's the more sustainable business model long-term anyway. Years before the modern ad-network paradigm, many media sites were subscription from the outset (e.g. WSJ, mercurynews). Some later went free, using ad networks to pay the way. Now, the trend is moving back to a subscription model. Those sites that do the punitive block-ads-and-we-block-you (e.g. washingtonpost) will find that people just go elsewhere for those stories.

rasz_pl 11y ago
nah, I and many others directly block Google Analytics = no pageviews in google dashboard. I refuse to be tracked by third parties whenever I go.

seanwilson 11y ago

Is there a reason more sites don't do self hosted ads? Is there a general way these can be blocked as well? If the ad is coming from their own server and displayed with their own custom HTML/CSS, I can't see an obvious way these could be detected and blocked in general.

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hcon 11y ago
> Is there a reason more sites don't do self hosted ads? Google Adsense (for example) is a live auction clearing house where you paste a snippet of code into your site that resolves into the highest bidder for the keywords on each page. You're done. Meanwhile, hosting your own ads entails finding advertisers, wooing them, developing a relationship with them, maintaining that relationship, negotiating a contract, settling that contract, building an ad-serving system somehow, automating it somehow, etc. And that's if you're even big enough to attract anyone or even warrant the work to begin with. And the second you try to generalize it (which is what ad networks do), then you're back on every adblocker's default blocklist.
- nsomaru 11y ago
  Why not build a generic system where ads are served to the server serving the website (which maintains a cache of relevant ads and serves them appropriately)? That way you can get the benefits of a network + the benefits of serving from the same server that is serving the content
  - hcon 11y ago
    Yeah, I'm sure Adsense will let you proxy requests through my server soon or release some similar offering. It would come at the massive expense of high-quality tracking and thus incur a massive reduction in ad revenue, but it's an imminent trade-off that beats unconditional adblocking. I think everything is just waiting for the actual tipping point that forces everyone's hand like we always do. Adblockers are still the minority.

hannob 11y ago

This is so common for the many anti-adblock texts you see these days - they all avoid to talk about the major issues here. (I say that with the background that a significant part of my income comes from ad-financed news pages.) That is: * Security risk through ads (malvertising, ad networks not supporting https etc.). * Ads killing performance (70% CPU for a flash ad is not uncommon). * Privacy (Ad vendors having mostly stated that they won't accept user wishes through DNT or similar technologies). Privacy is a tricky one, because data is in part where the income comes from. But the other two are fixable. I want to hear from everyone complaining about ad blockers what they intend to do to make ads less of a security risk and cpu cycle burner. That would be a good start of a proper conversation about the topic. Every text that ignores these issues is usually not worth recognizing.

teddyh 11y ago
Those are all valid reasons, but they are not the reason I first started to block ads: • They impose a surprisingly huge cognitive load. Even if you (like most people nowadays) are used to them and hence “do not notice them”, that very habit of ignoring them actually takes more brain power than you’d think.
- johnchristopher 11y ago
  I'd be okay with ads on the web if it looked like newspaper or magazine ads (and with the associated cognitive load). But not auto-play videos that pops up in the middle of the article or blinking GIFs on the side.
- xorcist 11y ago
  That's true! I stopped watching TV somewhere around the high school age, which means I react to it just like small children do: if I'm trying to have a meeting where there's a TV running I turn into almost a drooling idiot. My brain is simply not conditioned to flashing colors and quick cuts that aren't important. It requires practice to read a text bylined with blinking animations, and I simply don't have the cognitive power to do that. Most people that cope with it probably doesn't realize how much practice they've had.

sputr 11y ago

This reminds me of the copyright/piracy debate. The copyright industry was screaming about lost profits , but would not change it business models. Well, it turns out, all they had to do was change their business models to something people actually wanted. Now piracy rates are falling where appropriate services are available. Patreon (and youtube community in general) have, together with projects like gog.com, humblebundle etc. proved that people actually WANT to pay for content even if they don't have to. But only in the way they want to. Especially if that means they'll get more reader centric content, not advertiser centric.

johnchristopher 11y ago
Do you have anything for me to read about falling piracy rates ? (e.g. gamasutra)

JDDunn9 11y ago

I remember a time on the Internet before ads, when the only websites were made by geeks who were passionate about the topic. Then came the popup ads, followed by the popup blockers, banners never worked, then came contextual ads. Google made it quick and easy to profit from content and made content a commodity. Currently they are the #1 financier of web spam, and pay off ad-blockers to whitelist their ads. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Ad-supported media is not free, it's costs are simply externalised. While we, the tech-savvy, may not click ads, somebody is buying those payday loans, lose 30 lbs in a month with this weird trick, get-rich-quick scams. I'm more than happy to see ad-financed (mostly low-quality) content go the way of the popup. I have no problem paying for quality content (Netflix, Hulu Plus, Audible, etc.). The few high quality ad-supported blogs will then be able to charge for their content, since there will be no decent alternatives. As long as ad-supported content exists though, it will be a race to the bottom.

sologoub 11y ago
What you are describing is a world where only big, well financed, or well known entities can survive. In order to keep the amazing internet we actually have, we need to come up with a model that can be used by small upstarts to either serve smaller markets or to give them time to figure things out and become large over time. Requiring people to publish things for free will only result in the most extreme of views. Look at any Wikipedia article that remotely touches a controversial topic - it will likely present a strongly biased message towards whatever side the maintainer of that article feels strongly about.
- JDDunn9 11y ago
  The world where only the big players can win is the one we live in now. It's difficult for a small player to be heard when Buzzfeed-type click-bate headlines dominate the landscape. Switch it around, who would pay for access to Buzzfeed? On the other hand, I would pay for an expert's opinion on a topic I'm passionate about. You only need 1,000 people paying $10 a month to make a good living. To get $120k from ads, you'll need a whole lot of visitors.

iagooar 11y ago

Maybe you should start building a sustainable business model, instead of whining because people who are annoyed with ads and trackers started effectively blocking them. If your content adds value to your visitors' lives, then charge for it. If the only revenue stream you can rely on is ads, then probably there is a problem with the stuff you offer not being valuable enough to people. I don't want this to sound grumpy, and I don't mean to say your content is not good or valuable. It's just that I've discussed this topic a lot of times with friends and colleagues and there seems to be a common agreement that ads and trackers have become so invasive (visually and privacy-wise) that people are not wanting to see them anymore or to be tracked. As always, it's about survival of the fittest and those who know how to adapt quickest. Find a way to charge for your content and build a sustainable business.

hcon 11y ago
> If the only revenue stream you can rely on is ads, > then probably there is a problem with the stuff you > offer not being valuable enough to people. Not quite. What people are willing to pay for has a large social/cultural/conditioned element. It's a crux of the entire problem. The vast majority of people still attribute zero cost to ads. When you start charging $1 for your offering, now you're the one site among your competitors that's charging money. Maybe some HN nerds will care. Whoopdee doo. Nobody else does. The rest of the world isn't going to take their credit card out of their wallet when they can endure a banner ad instead. Oh wait, they can just install an ad blocker the day they actually do care. Or maybe when their kid or significant other or buddy installs an adblocker on their browser like I did for my parents and they won't even realize the trouble it ever saved them. See, I think that we will be soon on the cusp of a shift that needs to happen before we can replace ads at all, and it's more than just something a website can do by themselves by adding a paywall or whatever solution that doesn't work for most websites that people seem to conjure up in response to these issues.
- hughperkins 11y ago
  So what they should do is, what Android apps do: - when you first go to the website, you get the ad-infested website - you can pay for the app, and now, no more ads. In Android apps, the amount tends to be crazy low, like less than a cup of coffee. Pay that and get no ads is a no-brainer really...

chippy 11y ago

"Guru3D.com is a costly operation." Well now how costly? Just one dedicated server? multiple? Usage of AWS? Distributed data centres? Staff? accountants, designers, moderators? Or automated scripts and volunteers? If an organisation appeals to me to support them, I will, if they outline where and why they need it. Like Wikipedia for example or like OpenStreetMap. To say "oh it costs too much and we have lots of hits" is not an appeal to rationality.

deleted 11y ago

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deleted 11y ago

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belorn 11y ago

What would happen if I lazily assumed that Guru3D will follow the advertisement laws that exist in my country, and if the ad-network which they subcontract the delivery of ads breaks the law, Guru3D will then take full responsibility? As it stand, most web users block ads and most web publisher block legal responsibility. Neither side want to take the hit when malware is spread through ads, people personal information is being illegally stored, and when laws that govern advertisement in news papers, radio, and TV is ignored on the web. Both side want all the benefits with none of the draw backs, and advertisement through websites will run closer and closer to the fate of advertisement through email.

zamalek 11y ago

AdBlock is one thing. However, > Ghostery These guys are complaining that users don't want to be tracked. I honestly can't take a single word in the entire article seriously.

xorcist 11y ago

"Blocking" ads is loaded language, and should be recognized as such. Not viewing ads can be done in a multitude of ways, but it's not like users are patching software to get there. The web was always built to be adaptable to the end user device. The user agent was intended to act as the decision maker how to render the markup. For many years, browsers even respected the default foreground and background colors and font choices (sadly not many respect X resources anymore). CSS was designed to include an end user defined style sheet to override tiny fonts and other things that made web pages hard to read. Not viewing animated banners isn't at all different from changing your base font, or not loading javascript. Had we chosen to call it "disabling" instead of "blocking" it would have been much more clear that this is an action that the user is and should be empowered to take. I do recognize that we're stuck with the loaded word for now, I just feel it's important not to forget that. The public discourse is dominated by media people, and their perspective is important too, but not more so than the technical one.

adminprof 11y ago
You bring up a terrific point. The ads are simply not loaded. The user is accessing an external server, and it's up to them what to load.
- ChrisGranger 11y ago
  Indeed, a user could likewise load only the HTML and ignore all images, scripts, CSS and suchlike. The user is in control, and that's how it should be. I am not obligated to view ads any more than I'm obligated to view any other part of a website.

jensen123 11y ago

I think we really, really need cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. Buying access to stuff online with a credit card is totally inconvenient, and even worse, you have no privacy then. I guess this is part of the reason why sites financed by advertising have become so prevalent. Personally, if there was an easy and private way to do so, I'd much rather pay for content than getting "free" stuff financed by ads. Inevitably, sites will be extremely reluctant to write anything negative about products from companies that buy lots of ads. For this reason, I consider many of the reviews on tech sites, for example, kinda worthless. So, I'm glad to see this ad financed business model break down. Buying access to content with a cryptocurrency could be real easy (and relatively private). But it does not help that many governments want you to calculate capital gain/loss everytime you make such a purchase. I think governments ought to make an exception in the capital gains tax for small personal purchases. Maybe promoters who loudly proclaim that cryptocurrencies will soon replace "legacy" government fiat currencies are part of the problem. No wonder governments are so negative. But I don't think cryptocurrencies necessarily will replace fiat currencies anytime soon. Cryptocurrencies work great for small purchases online, but I wouldn't want to put my lifesavings into one - oh no! My computer got hacked - my life savings are gone! Edit: replacing the entire capital gains tax with a wealth tax would probably be even better.

danieldk 11y ago
I think we really, really need cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. Or just something where I could pay, say 10 Euro per year, and every website that participates gets a fraction to my number of visits or reading time. As far as I understand, Google is trying to do this. But it does not provide a 'no ads' guarantee and there are other ad networks with even more obnoxious ads.
- teddyh 11y ago
  You mean something like Flattr?
- ac29 11y ago
  > Or just something where I could pay, say 10 Euro per year, and every website that participates gets a fraction to my number of visits or reading time. The problem with this is you must allow a third party to track every page visit and/or page view time, which is unacceptable to many people that use ad blockers. If you are OK with persistent, pervasive tracking, I think this is probably the best solution.

tlrobinson 11y ago

"Where a year ago we served 375~400K pageviews per day, we now register just over 200K pageviews a day. That's right, nearly 50% of the readers are blocking ads." I'm not saying ad blockers had no effect on their business, but I find it extremely hard to believe 50% of their visitors discovered and started using ad blockers in the past year.

tlrobinson 11y ago

hyperbovine 11y ago

Dude, Just charge money. Have we all forgotten how commerce worked for ~5000 years before the ad-supported model came along?

raddad 11y ago
Websites used to ask you to click the links because they got a fraction of a penny for your clicks. I'll send them my check for $0.001 to look at their page.

WizardlySquid 11y ago

Whenever I read something like this I feel really bad and turn off my ad blocker, as soon as I do that I'm usually greeted with 2 minute long unskippable ads, sites re-skinned with ads, targeted ads, ads that are just straight up spam, ads that play in the background and ads that require me to fill out a survey. I want to support these websites but online ads don't pay nearly as much as TV, radio or print ads but that are 10 times more annoy, detrimental to my privacy and if I ever click on them I know their almost certainly going to be some sort of phishing scam or virus from eastern Europe. You know it sucks that people are blocking ads but online ads are the absolute worst, if online ads functioned and payed as much as print advertisements than I don't think anyone would have a problem with seeing ads but we all know they don't. Only thing I can recommend is that these sites change their business model or at least augment it with a mixture of merch, internet begging (patreon), premium memberships and being more choosy with what ad networks they choose to partner with.

z3t4 11y ago

When running a business, you need to spend 50% of your time on the business-part and the other 50% on providing content, serving your customers, etc. With ads, you let the ad-network do the business-part, while only taking 10%-50% of your turn-over. You can spend 100% of your time making content, etc. Especially small businesses are happy with that model. The ads where good for content, as more content was created. But it's now leaving a huge gap of opportunity! Then there's also product discovery. We need new ways for people to discover more content that they are interested in.

Yuioup 11y ago

I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you want some of my money you need to get it from the people who charge me every month for accesing you web page: My ISP. They are the ones making money off the fact that I want to get on the internet and access content. Too bad there is no reliable, independent mechanism for taking some of that money and putting it in a large pool to be ditributed to content creators. The amount you get is based on how popular your site is. The ISPs know exactly how popular your site is. (Too bad I'm late to the thread. Nobody is going to read this)

Dolores12 11y ago
you pay your ISP for internet access, not for content.
Falkon1313 11y ago
Sounds like a good idea at first, but... Who did we pay for TV content prior to cable/satellite? No one. You bought the hardware and thereafter the content was all free, supported by ads. Cable access providers promised ad-free content, so people paid for it. Paying the access provider worked well. So well that it mostly wiped out the ad-supported over-the-air competition and left the cable cos as monopolies. Which enabled them to raise their prices and become filled with ads. While controlling what you could see and when, charging extra for some content vs other content, etc. Making ISPs more like cable companies doesn't seem like a good idea for the consumer. And it won't make the ads go away.
- bigbugbag 11y ago
  Well in TV jargon "content" refers to advertisement and "feel" refers to what you think as content. Isn't public TV paid for by taxes? Anyways, I second you, the ISP should not collect money for accessing content.

BogusIKnow 11y ago

Main reason for ad-blockers for me: They try to distract you from reading the text you came for. While in print ads don't (can't) do this. Online they open to the whole page after some time, they constantly animate things to draw your attention from the text, some play sound, videos, left, right, above, below and in the text between paragraphs and capturing links. Main reason probably because they don't really work.

fromMars 11y ago
I am also not a fan of annoying ads and maybe I am just a crotchety old guy, but, IMO, using an Ad Blocker and viewing content is theft. If one is concerned with privacy, there are alternative measures such as cookie blocking options, legislation, etc. If the ad formats are annoying then the right thing to do is to let the publisher know and work out a way to pay for the content ad-free or just stop using the site. I also feel the same way about the bit-torrents and downloading copyrighted content. But, maybe I am the only one who feels this way.
- DanBC 11y ago
  I mostly agree with you. But on a metered Internet connection the ads can increase cost. That's pretty lousy - I pay to get this extra content that I don't want, in order to provide minimal payment to the content creator. Some movie studios realised that one thing driving torrent downloads was the fragility of DVDs / BluRays in the hands of children, and people wanted backups. So they started offering electronic downloads for people who bought the disc, or free disc replacements.
- BogusIKnow 11y ago
  I don't agree. If I get a magazine which is mostly not financed by my payment but the ads, and rip out all ads and throw them away, or throw the ad supplements away and not read them, is it theft? If it is theft blocking (aka not reading) ads online, is it theft if I just don't read them? And I don't want to argue, just interested, where is the difference in not reading them and blocking them? Is it morally imperative to read all ads in a magazine? So I came to the conclusion, because I throw away ad supplement of magazines right away and don't read ads in magazines, me ad blocking can't be theft either, or not reading ads in magazines is theft too. PS: Because you bringing up bit torrent implying people who ad block are also downloading films, well, I'm not.

njharman 11y ago

If your business model requires changes to reality, then your business model is probably dead. [If you have lobbying power, you can extend your business model for awhile, perhaps indefinitely ala content industry and copyright.] In other words, adapt your business model to change or die. It's not up to "reality", us, to change to support your business model. If there is demand for whatever you produce, someone will create a "business model" to supply it. If there is not enough demand to pay for any business model then so be it, we didn't actually need/want your product after all.

jhall1468 11y ago
It's exactly this kind of attitude that is going to lead to paywalls for virtually every type of content on the Internet. And the people that use the most heavy-handed approaches with ad-blocking are going to be the same people that are screaming "NOT MY PROBLEM" while the ship goes down. Their business model doesn't require changes to reality. Their business model requires the end-user to accept reality for what it is: you can't get a bunch of free stuff, ad infinitum, while simultaneously blocking the only feasible revenue model for said free stuff. > It's not up to "reality", us, to change to support your business model. Did you pat yourself on the back while you said that, or right after? We are not reality. The reality is, ad-blocking will be the absolute death of currency-free content. This abuse of the word reality is truly odd to me. You seem to think every choice we make as consumers is the current reality. What you call reality, I call a house of cards.
- anonymousab 11y ago
  Your post seems entirely based on the assumption that people will not create and host quality content for free.
  - cinquemb 11y ago
    It also assumes people will not try to extract content from walled gardens via any means and share such information for free.
  - 11y ago

snksnk 11y ago

This is the Internet, whose users tend to be highly innovative. If your business model is built on serving (good) content with ads and people don't like ads, then you will have a problem. It is a pity for some, but inherent to the Internet. I have seen many web sites turn from a hobby into a small business funded by ads, who are now feeling the pinch. They either need to find a new way to monetize what they offer, or turn into a hobby project again. (Which often saves a lot of money on horrible UX. Generally after 2007 / the uptake of smartphones a lot of good features were eliminated and sucked into the black hole of UX and dumb simplifications to accommodate the average Internet user. Everything is tailored now for the average user, and the power user is left out.)

nekopa 11y ago

Can anyone here tell me how much a site like Guru3D makes if I visit and read one article? Is it like a fraction of a cent?

putlake 11y ago
RPM (revenue per 1000 pageviews) varies wildly by site, geo and platform (desktop/mobile). If you're a site with cat photos it's about $1. If you're about mortgage refinancing or roofing, it could be $15. The first pageview in a user's session is more valuable than subsequent pageviews on the same site. So if your 1000 pageviews are from 900 users, your RPM will be $4 but if they are from 200 users (5 PVs per user), then it'll be $.90. RPMs on desktop/tablet are much higher (about 2x) compared with mobile. RPMs for U.S. traffic are also much higher (4x) compared with say traffic from India. Interstitial ads pay much higher (about 3x) compared with standard banner ads. Over the past 2 years, RPMs from Adsense have fallen about 40%. EDIT: All of the above applies to 3rd party ads sold on exchanges via ad networks like Adsense. Direct-sold ads have much higher RPMs, usually in double digits. But small publishers either don't have the traffic volume or the sales staff to sell ads directly.
rasz_pl 11y ago
This is a good point and destroys any kind of discussion about micro transactions for me. Micro transactions are NEVER micro. You dont see free games asking you to buy $0.1 worth of gold, they want $10. The same would happen if guru3D wanted to charge individual users. NYTimes made maybe 0.1 out of every user visiting them, but switching to subscription model they milk ~$12 per month minimum.

LargeCompanies 11y ago

I use ad blockers because certain streaming sites I visit are the worst in terms of pop ups. I feel bad that using a blocker for these types of sites by default blocks all other sites. Publishers need to get paid and we as consumers don't want to pay for web content. Non intrusive ads and ads are needed and should be respected in terms of allowing us the opportunity to make a living creating content and or enjoying content. If we continue down this path it's truly going to be a wall gardened app world controlled a ton by Apple.

lisivka 11y ago
Lost of their income due to their bad service is not a your problem. You are just helping them to understand their mistake. Feel good.
- lisivka 11y ago
  The anonymous coward, who silently downvoted me: read «Gemba Kaizen», please.

deleted 11y ago

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vosper 11y ago

I tried what they're asking - the linked article is noticeably less responsive than the same one without ads. Especially scrolling - it skitters visibly. It's definitely less pleasant to use the site this way.

mattwar 11y ago

I have hated ads from the time of dialup Internet when I was paying by the minute for access, ads increased my bills - I was paying for them. The same now where o pay based on my internet usage, on mobile it is not cheap, and the cost of ad's is again on my shoulders. So, I don't want ads. Simple.

intrasight 11y ago

I use uBlock Origin. I don't block ads - I block 3rd party requests. People that complain about ad blocking are indeed missing the mark. I'm fine with ads - really. But if you want them seen, you are going to have to serve them yourself. There is no going backwards - for reasons spelled out by others in this thread. So if your business depends on ads, then you are in the ad business. Web sites are going to have to become like magazines. When I look at a magazine, I don't see a page with the message "please go get this other publication and look at the ad on page 3". I see the ad - in the publication I am viewing. Really, stop wining and just create quality content and engage with advertisers and ad firms that will create quality ads FOR YOU that will be place IN YOUR web page. Nothing exists that I know of that can block such ads.

intrasight 11y ago
I just looked at the guru3d site. The content is the ad - there's no need to add more ads. You just need to monetize the "ads" you already have. You are promoting these products. Negotiate with the vendor or reseller directly to get your fair share.
- AYBABTME 11y ago
  That's not a good idea if you want people to trust that your reviews are unbiased.
  - intrasight 11y ago
    That is why Consumer Reports carries no ads, and is why I am willing to pay for their content.
- dikaiosune 11y ago
  That would have a deleterious effect on the editorial independence of their content, I imagine.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

BogusIKnow 11y ago

One of these websites: "This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website." instead of "This website uses cookies to track your behaviour across this and other websites to better target and retarget you with ads. Identifying and segmenting you ensures higher advertising rates. Thanks." Still waiting for the first website with an honest cookie warning.

robgibbons 11y ago

Note to website operators: Ad blockers are not just a way of disabling annoying content. They prevent intrusive tracking and spying. If you can find a way to monetize my views without tracking my habits and sharing them with third parties, I'll happily disable my extensions.

mozumder 11y ago
I have no idea what the practical ramifications of this complaint means... What exactly is the fear of "intrusive tracking and spying"? What does it mean? Are you scared that you're now going to get ads that target your demographic, such as motherboards, instead of ads that don't target your demographic, such as Alzheimers drugs? I don't understand the problem with this. If that's not the fear, then state the ultimate practical effect of what you fear, because right now it sounds a lot like a "made-up-in-your-mind problem that will never, ever affect you negatively".
- robgibbons 11y ago
  I don't need to justify my right to privacy. All you need to know is that I don't want my browsing habits tracked and correlated across virtually every site I visit, by a small handful of companies that have nothing to do with the content I am seeking. The burden is not on me to justify why I disagree with these practices.
  - mozumder 11y ago
    The burden is on you to justify your right to privacy. Otherwise it just makes you look bad, as if you're trying to defend indefensible actions. Remember, you're visiting THEIR sites. They aren't visiting your sites. They have something you want when you visit their sites, and you have to offer something in return. If you're unable to justify yourself, then companies (both advertisers and media publishers) will proceed as they wish. Your privacy is not their concern. You need to make it their concern. Right now ad blockers are just a mere stepping stone for these companies to track you. When they proceed with native ads (among many other options), it's going to be really difficult for you to block them. Do you want these companies to move forward to their next step in tracking you?

SimeVidas 11y ago

Ad blockers block Google Analytics? Why?

KJasper 11y ago
User tracking

lazyjones 11y ago

It would be a little bit more convincing if they had actually tried alternative revenue sources (paid subscription, associate links to Amazon, donations with a variety of providers like Flattr or using Bitcoin) and found no other viable solution.

proactivesvcs 11y ago

It's getting tiresome doing this. "We understand perfectly that some of you might find ads annoying" "Our pledge: we do not serve intrusive ads like pop-downs/pop-ups and takeovers." From one page load of www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/guru3d-rig-of-the-month-october-2015,1.html this list excludes the dozen or so trackers and adverts that I don't have record of serving malware. googletagservices.com (Angler, Neutrino exploit kits, to mention just the most recent) doubleclick.net (Angler, Neutrino exploit kits, to mention just the most recent) adnxs.com (Angler exploit kit, Flash 0-days on MSN.com) openx.net (don't get me started on the cesspit of openx) serving-sys.com

snambi 11y ago

the real issue is the pages are getting slower when ads are served. it is really annoying.

lucaspiller 11y ago

I disabled uBlock Origin and decided to see what ads they have on their site. Pretty much all of them were retargeting sites or products I'd looked at before, but had no intention of buying. Only one was really relevant to their site, which was a gaming keyboard. The same screen real estate could be used to to link to their articles and reviews of products from their sponsors, which would be a lot more relevant and actually provide value to the reader. Oh and whatever uBlock Origin blocks, made scrolling really laggy when it was enabled. I think I'll stick to using it thanks.

Animats 11y ago

From the site: "We review the Voyager Air 2 from Corsair, this portable storage unit allows you to connect it to USB 3.0 and WIFI. It actually comes in a 1 TB HDD model as well, which we review. This great looking device might be what you're looking for to move or stream your content from and with the latest Corsair Smartphone it might just be what the doctor ordered." "One of the CPU cooler makers we do adore, Noctua today celebrated its 10-year anniversary. Since the introduction of the first generation NH-U12 heatsink in October 2005, Noctua's products have received more than 6000 awards and recommendations from leading international hardware websites and magazines, making them a default choice for quiet cooling enthusiasts all over the world." That's the content. This is not someone who has a legitimate right to complain about ad blocking.

pc86 11y ago
I'm sure you could find plenty of negative reviews on the site as well. Just because someone says a product is great doesn't mean they are being paid to do so, or even that they received it for free. It could just be that the product is great for the use case they reviewed.

douche 11y ago

I turned off AdBlock on their site. A clean, attractive site immediately transformed into a supermarket sales flyer, except with animated ads. No thanks. I don't know what the answer is. Display ads are dead or dying, though. I get a lot more revenue on my websites from Amazon affiliate links than I do from AdSense. Probably it's going to look more like paid reviews and advertising masquerading as content.

mozumder 11y ago
Don't people go to their sites for shopping purposes anyways? What's the point of these sites if not to tell you what to buy? People used to pay money to buy magazines like Computer Shopper just for the ads...

jo909 11y ago

Potential buyers want sources to learn about products, compared them, have uninfluenced and honest reviews to help them make decisions. Vendors want their products reviewed. And I think they understand that reviewers need to be financially independent to be believable, so directly paying reviewers does not work. Both sides will find a way to get what they want, there is clear financial motivation to keep the review business alive. Money is not the problem here, only how to distribute it. I do not worry about this kind of content.

bashinator 11y ago

Until security experts stop recommending ad blockers as a first line of defense against malware, I consider it the obligation of content providers to fix the system.

jjuhl 11y ago

If they can't survive without advertising then let them die. Personally I don't see the problem. The few sites I care about that produce quality stuff (like https://lwn.net/ https://lwn.net/) I pay for and that's just fine. The rest are nice to have (without ads) but if they go away it doesn't really matter - I'll just read something else or (shock, horror) nothing at all - I'm sure my life will continue even if they go under. Can't honestly say I care a great deal. Edit: and as I guessed they would; the downvotes now flow in. Seems like people never like to hear that one can just stop using "stuff" and do something else.

jgoewert 11y ago

I barely remember Guru3D, but what I still remember was the full page animated ad for something that made the site completely unusable. It was a while ago, like 8+ years and I remember it being some huge green slime dripping all over and blocking the content and the whole animation ran for like 30 seconds before you could read the page. I added a rule in my hosts file to not load that ad as it was before client based ad blockers.

SapphireSun 11y ago

How much benefit does tracking and personalization actually provide in clickthrough percentages? Is it very large or is this companies grasping at threads to stay alive?

jveld 11y ago

I'm in favor of a move from ad-based to paywalled content. It just feels more honest to sell your content than your readers (or viewers, visitors, etc). There's also a mental hygeine aspect: I've noticed a pretty distinct correlation between my total exposure to online advertising and my ability to reach states of deep focus. For example, I've been finding it extremely difficult to finish books for the past few years. But since February or so, as my exposure to online ads has dropped to nearly zero, I've knocked half a dozen challenging non-fiction works off my hit list, and a few novels to boot. And it's not just mental stamina -- my moment to moment engagement and comprehension is also much higher. This observation is anecdotal, and furthermore, poorly controlled, so establishing causality is pretty difficult. But I have noticed that when I DO browse facebook or other ad-heavy sites, I experience a significant drop in my level of mental energy, often for hours after I'm off the internet. It's as if viewing ads, which are designed to grab one's attention, forks a process in my brain whose task is to react to the ad content, thus depleting my brain-hardware resources. The social hooks make facebook a particularly bad culprit. BUT, there's a big caveat. I don't want subscriptions -- at least, not on every site that sometimes puts out content that I like. That would cost me hundreds of buxx a month that I simply can't afford. There needs to be a decent micropayment solution so that people can buy the content that they actually want without the overhead of paying for a bunch of stuff they don't care about. I speculate that this would be a pure win for content companies. Right now, paywalls are more like "go-away-walls." If there were buttons on paywalls that said "Read this article for 50 cents," I would personally be paying for a lot more articles. There's probably even a good business opportunity in mediating these transactions to centralize signups and aggregate purchased content.

hardwaresofton 11y ago

While there's obviously nothing wrong with directly asking users to not adblock guru3d, the long-term solution is definitely to find another business model. I'm not a regular reader of Guru3D, but would it be a stretch to imagine that the community would willingly pay $1 a month to see the content you put on the site? Maybe you can shuffle only people with adblockers to the paid version of the site, and allow people with ads to view for free.

intrasight 11y ago
I pay to use the Consumer Reports content. I think if Guru3D became the 'Consumer Reports' of gaming hardware, then they could probably get paying viewers. Here's some other ideas. As long as they are doing test builds, how about selling detailed instructions for those builds. And if they get all this hardware donated by vendors, how about selling the rigs they build. Perhaps they can get a "brand" markup - sort of like selling NASCAR pace cars.

jordanpg 11y ago

For the record, I don't want to hear or see any ads, ever. The internet is great because it provides a channel for information to cheaply get from creators to consumers at global scale. Sadly, all of that infrastructure and creation takes time, energy, money, etc. It's not free. I don't take it for granted that advertising is the only way there can be an internet. I'm pretty confident that if everyone starts using adblockers, the internet will continue to exist. But will it be the internet I want? The internet that gives me Netflix and Amazon Prime I can take or leave. The internet that gives me endless blog posts, reviews, and Q&A sites I can take or leave. The internet that gives me API documentation, etc., chat, email, and Wikipedia I will fight for. I will pay for it. I will pay higher taxes for it. The rest I just don't care that much about, and I really doubt that many other people do either.

Mz 11y ago

Related post, inspired by this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10488967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10488967

RUG3Y 11y ago

Times are changing, again. I block any and every ad.