5 ms·

Unrelated to the article, but WOW did anyone else see the giant full view height ad video at the top? I have ad blocker off for NatGeo. It's followed by a giant

by kin 9y ago

Unrelated to the article, but WOW did anyone else see the giant full view height ad video at the top? I have ad blocker off for NatGeo. It's followed by a giant banner. I can't imagine how much crazier ads have been getting and most of us don't even notice 'cause we have ad blocker.

overcast 9y ago
What's more amazing is that they never learn. As if blasting us with more and more ads that take over your entire browser. Will somehow put everyone at ease. The advertising industry is the next big reboot on the web as far as I'm concerned.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  The advertising industry's policy seems to be that the well is infinitely deep, and therefore no amount of shitting into it is too much.
- nolok 9y ago
  I'm not sure what you expect them to learn. Only use "cleaner" ads ? It will pay less, ads don't pay much any more, you need the big, splashy, if-possible-exclusive-and-targeted ads to get money now. Offer subscriptions ? They already do that, and they publish quality original content, so it's not the case of journal-X publishing the same press release as everyone and complaining that people don't subscribe. At this point, they can only do two things with people who don't subscribe: block them from accessing content, thus losing lots of traffic and conversion possibilities, or show them intrusive ads, make a little money off of them, and hope a few subscribe. One argument could be that "those ads are turning people off of subscribing and ultimately makes them lose money", but in every debate on this matter I have never seen it substantiated with actual numbers, and especially in the case of a household name like National Geographic I sincerely doubt it, at least not in any meaningful way.
  - overcast 9y ago
    People didn't start using ad blockers, because sites had a couple well placed ads. If everyone is blocking your ads, maybe it's time to change all those reasons you gave me for "how they work".
    - nolok 9y ago
      I think you misattributed or misundertood my intention here. I am in now way arguing that those more and more terrible ads did not cause the surge in ad blocker usage, and what I said is not affected in any way by how many people are using ad blockers on NG. Fact is, revenue per ad viewed has been crashing down for all type of ad. A site like NG can either block their free access and force a subscribe (lose attention and name recognition), give it for free fully but remove incentive to subscribe (lose revenue), or change their ad type to more intrusive ad that pay more to compensate. I'm sincerely open to discussion if you disagree, about what they could potentially do that isn't one of those three, but the revenue per ad viewed falling is not in their control, it's a global market trend since several years.
      - overcast 9y ago
        How about, beautiful, site specific, non-intrusive, relevant ads? Charge less if you have to. Enough with the Tabula bullshit, and Amazon selling me something I already purchased(why is this even a thing). You'd be surprised how many loyal people to a site would be willing to white list, knowing the advertising isn't going to shit on their experience.
      - criddell 9y ago
        If they continue down the current path, they are going to die one way or another. At some point the people working there are going to stop being proud of their work when it's presented in such a shit fashion and they will stop writing for NG. I understand that business needs may require a publication to lower their standards but it seems like they have dropped below where the floor should be. When I load the page, there's a giant Microsoft video at the top of the screen. Microsoft should be ashamed of that as well.
dchuk 9y ago
Maybe ads are getting more aggressive because we are all using ad blocker?
- X86BSD 9y ago
  The inverse is also possible.
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    Co-evolution.
nolok 9y ago
> I can't imagine how much crazier ads have been getting I would certainly argue the way this comment (and many others in a lot of threads about ads here or elsewhere) seems to imply that ads are at their worst ever. I mean either people forgot or are too young to remember, but in the 2000's alone ads had both their "pop up and sound and unclosable javascript spam" and their "flash everywhere turning your modern supercomputer speed into that of a 80's calculator" eras, and probably a lot of other ad-cancers that my brain chose to forget. The entire reason the ios/flash debate happened was because 1 - flash was on every page and ad, 2 - flash was eating every resources you would throw at it and still need more. I mean, I agree totally that the web without ad blockers is insane, but I think many also see how it used to be as much better than it actually was.
- seanp2k2 9y ago
  Ads were terrible, they continue to be terrible, they used to and still do provide most of the money needed to run sites, and it's still hard to get users to pay for content like articles on the internet. We still haven't solved these fundamental problems with funding quality content on the web. There are models that kinda work, but ads sadly seem to work the best in terms of giving everyone access "without paying", even though you're paying with your privacy, time, and eyeballs. Many people prefer this vs something like paywall games or subscription-only services.
  - erikbye 9y ago
    I subscribe to a lot of sites and newspapers and they still show me their ads.
- psyc 9y ago
  I was there, and I only started using ad blockers a couple of years ago. It is much, much, much worse now.
  - nolok 9y ago
    Different opinions then I guess. I prefer a (collection of) ads that obfuscate the entire page I'm trying to read but doesn't bother me while I look at something else and happily let me close and go away than something that makes everything a hog and crash my browser randomly while I might not even see it because it's five tabs away in the footer of some website.
X86BSD 9y ago
Wow yeah I instantly hit "Back" and have now blacklisted national geographic. Seriously, national geographic? Thing's have gotten that bad I am now blocking NG? Sigh. I liked grubbers dubbing of a "dickbar" but this kind of ad deserves its own moniker. PrickPage?
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  NatGeo was purchased by FOX recently, if that insight helps...
psyc 9y ago
I just got a new laptop and hadn't got around to installing uBlock yet. I'm comfortable saying the mainstream web is literally unusable without ad blocking. I watched the download notifications in the status bar iterate through dozens of ad servers, for 1-2 minutes, per page. I could barely scroll at all. I couldn't tell where the actual content was. All 3 columns full of ads. You have to hunt for isolated paragraphs of content. The other glaring thing I noticed is the browser becomes a festering petri dish of promiscuous cookie-sharing. Every site obviously knows everything I'm doing on every other site.
- aeorgnoieang 9y ago
  > a festering petri dish of promiscuous cookie-sharing Shouldn't that be impossible? What browser lets one site access another's cookies?
  - b5ec5a483dfd14 9y ago
    https://robinlinus.github.io/socialmedia-leak/ https://robinlinus.github.io/socialmedia-leak/
  - psyc 9y ago
    I mean tracking in general. I feel violated every time FB or Google reveal they clearly know where I've been recently. Afaik, there may not be sharing across domains, but there surely is across pages.
  - nkkollaw 9y ago
    Pixel tracking is trivial to implement.
david-cako 9y ago
I don't know, I distinctly remember in the late 2000s there being all these insane "take over the entire page" flash ads for cars on sites like New York Times.
Facemelters 9y ago
They are aggressive with ads because everyone is using ad blocker and no one clicks on ads. Content and infrastructure are not free. What do people expect to happen??

by kin 9y ago

overcast 9y ago

What's more amazing is that they never learn. As if blasting us with more and more ads that take over your entire browser. Will somehow put everyone at ease. The advertising industry is the next big reboot on the web as far as I'm concerned.

pavel_lishin 9y ago
The advertising industry's policy seems to be that the well is infinitely deep, and therefore no amount of shitting into it is too much.
nolok 9y ago
I'm not sure what you expect them to learn. Only use "cleaner" ads ? It will pay less, ads don't pay much any more, you need the big, splashy, if-possible-exclusive-and-targeted ads to get money now. Offer subscriptions ? They already do that, and they publish quality original content, so it's not the case of journal-X publishing the same press release as everyone and complaining that people don't subscribe. At this point, they can only do two things with people who don't subscribe: block them from accessing content, thus losing lots of traffic and conversion possibilities, or show them intrusive ads, make a little money off of them, and hope a few subscribe. One argument could be that "those ads are turning people off of subscribing and ultimately makes them lose money", but in every debate on this matter I have never seen it substantiated with actual numbers, and especially in the case of a household name like National Geographic I sincerely doubt it, at least not in any meaningful way.
- overcast 9y ago
  People didn't start using ad blockers, because sites had a couple well placed ads. If everyone is blocking your ads, maybe it's time to change all those reasons you gave me for "how they work".
  - nolok 9y ago
    I think you misattributed or misundertood my intention here. I am in now way arguing that those more and more terrible ads did not cause the surge in ad blocker usage, and what I said is not affected in any way by how many people are using ad blockers on NG. Fact is, revenue per ad viewed has been crashing down for all type of ad. A site like NG can either block their free access and force a subscribe (lose attention and name recognition), give it for free fully but remove incentive to subscribe (lose revenue), or change their ad type to more intrusive ad that pay more to compensate. I'm sincerely open to discussion if you disagree, about what they could potentially do that isn't one of those three, but the revenue per ad viewed falling is not in their control, it's a global market trend since several years.
    - overcast 9y ago
      How about, beautiful, site specific, non-intrusive, relevant ads? Charge less if you have to. Enough with the Tabula bullshit, and Amazon selling me something I already purchased(why is this even a thing). You'd be surprised how many loyal people to a site would be willing to white list, knowing the advertising isn't going to shit on their experience.
    - criddell 9y ago
      If they continue down the current path, they are going to die one way or another. At some point the people working there are going to stop being proud of their work when it's presented in such a shit fashion and they will stop writing for NG. I understand that business needs may require a publication to lower their standards but it seems like they have dropped below where the floor should be. When I load the page, there's a giant Microsoft video at the top of the screen. Microsoft should be ashamed of that as well.

dchuk 9y ago

Maybe ads are getting more aggressive because we are all using ad blocker?

X86BSD 9y ago
The inverse is also possible.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Co-evolution.

nolok 9y ago

> I can't imagine how much crazier ads have been getting I would certainly argue the way this comment (and many others in a lot of threads about ads here or elsewhere) seems to imply that ads are at their worst ever. I mean either people forgot or are too young to remember, but in the 2000's alone ads had both their "pop up and sound and unclosable javascript spam" and their "flash everywhere turning your modern supercomputer speed into that of a 80's calculator" eras, and probably a lot of other ad-cancers that my brain chose to forget. The entire reason the ios/flash debate happened was because 1 - flash was on every page and ad, 2 - flash was eating every resources you would throw at it and still need more. I mean, I agree totally that the web without ad blockers is insane, but I think many also see how it used to be as much better than it actually was.

seanp2k2 9y ago
Ads were terrible, they continue to be terrible, they used to and still do provide most of the money needed to run sites, and it's still hard to get users to pay for content like articles on the internet. We still haven't solved these fundamental problems with funding quality content on the web. There are models that kinda work, but ads sadly seem to work the best in terms of giving everyone access "without paying", even though you're paying with your privacy, time, and eyeballs. Many people prefer this vs something like paywall games or subscription-only services.
- erikbye 9y ago
  I subscribe to a lot of sites and newspapers and they still show me their ads.
psyc 9y ago
I was there, and I only started using ad blockers a couple of years ago. It is much, much, much worse now.
- nolok 9y ago
  Different opinions then I guess. I prefer a (collection of) ads that obfuscate the entire page I'm trying to read but doesn't bother me while I look at something else and happily let me close and go away than something that makes everything a hog and crash my browser randomly while I might not even see it because it's five tabs away in the footer of some website.

X86BSD 9y ago

Wow yeah I instantly hit "Back" and have now blacklisted national geographic. Seriously, national geographic? Thing's have gotten that bad I am now blocking NG? Sigh. I liked grubbers dubbing of a "dickbar" but this kind of ad deserves its own moniker. PrickPage?

52-6F-62 9y ago
NatGeo was purchased by FOX recently, if that insight helps...

psyc 9y ago

I just got a new laptop and hadn't got around to installing uBlock yet. I'm comfortable saying the mainstream web is literally unusable without ad blocking. I watched the download notifications in the status bar iterate through dozens of ad servers, for 1-2 minutes, per page. I could barely scroll at all. I couldn't tell where the actual content was. All 3 columns full of ads. You have to hunt for isolated paragraphs of content. The other glaring thing I noticed is the browser becomes a festering petri dish of promiscuous cookie-sharing. Every site obviously knows everything I'm doing on every other site.

aeorgnoieang 9y ago
> a festering petri dish of promiscuous cookie-sharing Shouldn't that be impossible? What browser lets one site access another's cookies?
- b5ec5a483dfd14 9y ago
  https://robinlinus.github.io/socialmedia-leak/ https://robinlinus.github.io/socialmedia-leak/
- psyc 9y ago
  I mean tracking in general. I feel violated every time FB or Google reveal they clearly know where I've been recently. Afaik, there may not be sharing across domains, but there surely is across pages.
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  Pixel tracking is trivial to implement.

david-cako 9y ago

I don't know, I distinctly remember in the late 2000s there being all these insane "take over the entire page" flash ads for cars on sites like New York Times.

Facemelters 9y ago

They are aggressive with ads because everyone is using ad blocker and no one clicks on ads. Content and infrastructure are not free. What do people expect to happen??