Adblock Plus and (a little) more

The Sorry State of Online Advertising · 2007-01-31 00:18 by Wladimir Palant

Advertising online is at an all-time low. Users are constantly bombarded by advertisements that seem to be getting larger and more visually obtrusive by the minute. Online advertisements seem to have little or nothing to do with the site’s content and lack any sense of respect for the user. Even though it is a well-known fact that internet users detest ads, the same horrendous model is shoved down their throats. It is as if site creators have just accepted that the advertising status quo is the only way to generate ad revenue and they expect that the users will have to “deal with it”.

Read The Sorry State of Online Advertising by P.J. Onori.

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Comment [7]

  1. rick752 · 2007-01-31 02:43 · #

    It is more than that, Wladimir. It has just turned to uncaring greed. Most sites now figure that the more ad companies that they can ‘sign’ with, the more chances for revenue can be achieved.

    I can actually confirm this type of behavior simply by analyzing the tens of thousands of sites that I visit. It seems that ‘multi-advertisement servers” are becoming more common on a lot of sites. It isn’t just enough to have one adserver have ads on your site anymore … I now regularly see 3 or 4 different ad companies serving ads on a single site. This practice is absolutely disgusting in terms of ‘bombing’ the user …. especially when the site has little or no real content to begin with.

    Long live ABP!

  2. Sheepy · 2007-01-31 05:59 · #

    You know, not only Internet users detest ads, the marketing companies themselves hate them too:

    http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The_Great_Google_Banner_Ad_Conspiracy_.aspx

  3. chewey · 2007-01-31 07:01 · #

    Sheepy: True. According to my logs, there are quite a few subscribers to my filter list at the (self-proclaimed) biggest german online advertising agency. :-D

  4. Alec · 2007-02-01 03:13 · #

    True, many ads are annoying, but I think that if all ads were like Google’s, most people don’t mind. In fact, I removed google from my filterlist because I think the services Google provides me (my email, my search engine, my file host, my Firefox home page, hours of fun with Google Earth…) is worth a few small text boxes on my screen, which I sometimes click

    After all, Google is an advertising company
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6319031.stm

    Reply from Wladimir Palant:

    I covered that topic in http://adblockplus.org/blog/mozilla-hurting-google-by-recommending-adblock-plus

  5. Matt Nordhoff (Peng) · 2007-02-01 18:10 · #

    @chewey:

    Might the company be monitoring your filterset?

    Reply from Wladimir Palant:

    Peng, you only need to download the file once if you are monitoring the filter list. I understand it that chewey gets numerous hits from the same network indicating a number of users downloading the subscription regularly.

  6. Greg · 2007-02-17 11:16 · #

    I’ve noticed that more ads are using dynamic number image URLs and links, but sometimes they have “sponsored link” or something similar in their alt-text. Is there much chance of ever having a blacklist on alt-text phrases?

    Reply from Wladimir Palant:

    Element hiding (see http://adblockplus.org/en/filters#elemhide_basic and https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/4364/) can do this already. It isn’t blocking but merely hiding however, you won’t save any traffic with it.

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