x-byte Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 I understand that some sites need ads, but how many of the ads are per view? Myself have never ever clicked on an ad. Why not set opp a donation. I'm sure many will donate some money if it keeps most ads away. I know a couple of sites which have had success with this. Maybe there's something being overlooked here... but if these people are suing the developers of Adblock becuase it disables ads from being shown how do these developers justify that in many cases they are serving up an ad free RSS feed? The developers of adblock can counter in court that the RSS feed is served up free of ads so what is the legal merit to disabling ads on the html version? That's not really the same. You, in most cases, have to click on a link to read the full story. Also some sites have ads in the RSS feed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doli Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 Maybe there's something being overlooked here... but if these people are suing the developers of Adblock becuase it disables ads from being shown how do these developers justify that in many cases they are serving up an ad free RSS feed? The developers of adblock can counter in court that the RSS feed is served up free of ads so what is the legal merit to disabling ads on the html version? What? When you click on a link from a RSS feed where does it take you? When visiting a website, I don't think the user ever agreed with the site owners that they had to view ads. Even if they did, that would be an agreement between the user and the website, not the website and AdBlock Plus. Did I agree to view ads on free over the air TV stations? or even paid cable/satelite TV? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brentaal Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 What's next, will they sue people who don't click the ads? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shc-boomer Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 Or ads jumping at you from text when you're just trying to move your mouse across the screen. I agree with you, I hate that on news sites especially... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tokar Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 My issue with internet advertising is how it is handled. I block ads with adblocker because ads get in my way of enjoying the web. My list of problematic ads: -flash ads that can deliver malicious code -flash ads which scroll with you as you scroll a webpage -flash ads which do some annoying action when you hover over them, even accidentally (e.g. expand, make a sound, etc.) -javascript ads which take forever to load and make a website that would take 2 seconds to load now take 30 seconds -popup ads or popdown ads. I don't need extra windows when I don't want them - that is what tabs are for -adult themed ads on mundane sites (who hasn't seen AdultFriendFinder on some regular website they visit, seriously) -"Get a free XXXXX!!!*" ad. They are very easy on the eyes, and quick to load, sure, but they deceive people. And I hate ads which deceive people. -Ads for products I know are crap. This is akin to television networks taking ad money from infomercial style crap (e.g. ShamWow, anything Billy Mays, etc.). Spyware Doctor is crap and I don't want to see sites taking money from it just for the point of taking money. Websites should have some level of morality. -Flash ads which are a video. I'm sorry but not everyone is running a souped up PC capable of loading webpages with video ads smoothly. Besides, netbooks have increasing market share, and they can barely handle this crap. If the internet was all text and image ads, I don't think i'd have a problem. The other problem I have with ads is their placement. If all ads were placed in a separate column, or in a way so as not to affect the layout of the site (e.g. make the page longer, wider, symmetry, etc.) I wouldn't have a problem. Neowin's ad at the top is not a problem. My problem is with the ads placed in-line with the stories. It indents the text from one of the stories and I don't like it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vice Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 Except it's not like owning a car for many site owners. Instead, it's like opening up their own business. You'd be pretty ****ed if you opened a new brick and mortar store and people came in, took your services or products (in this case, bandwidth) and didn't pay because they decided it was too much of an inconvenience. Websites have Bandwidth costs, this is true. But so do users. We pay monthly to get access to the internet and some users have Bandwidth caps. The flash ads especially with sound and animation can chew up 1MB+ of Bandwidth. Is the Site operator going to pay his users for using their bandwidth in serving them Ads that make Him/Her Money? In all fairness this is a 2 way street. You can't just say because the Site is popular its bandwidth usage and costs are more important than each individuals especially when the content being shown on the website is created by all those users (For Free). I also notice that Neowin does not allow it's users to advertise in their signatures, even though they are having to foot the bill to come here and help other users. You may say that's the users choice, but that is also the Admins choice to setup a site and keep it operating even when they can't afford the price of the site themselves. First of all the Intellitext ads on the front page are so frustratingly annoying. I have to park my mouse off-screen so that I can read without pop ups coming up over stories. It's annoying. I tried to upgrade to Subscriber2 to get rid of all the Ads and I PM'd who I was supposed to but never received a reply, this is bad financial management. We want to give you money, please help us do so. Also may I suggest a Donation drive. Like Wikipedia and many Bittorrent sites have. At the beginning of each month is a 'goal' (basically that months running costs) and underneath it a Bar saying how much money we have so far and how much is needed to foot the bill for that month. Anything that goes over the amount needed goes in to the Next Month. If you did this and it actually worked (Like it does on many other sites) you could get rid of all the ads and I'm willing to bet people are more open to staying on the site when they feel they are actively contributing to its survival, like a personal investment, many subscribers stay for that reason now but it could go further. And I just want to be clear again that my stance on adblocking is that it should only be used to block malicious and insanely obtrusive ads like the ones that hover over content, flash at you, make sounds or pop-up in new windows or in 'fake' windows utilising java or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7Dash8 Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 Websites have Bandwidth costs, this is true. But so do users. We pay monthly to get access to the internet and some users have Bandwidth caps. The flash ads especially with sound and animation can chew up 1MB+ of Bandwidth. Is the Site operator going to pay his users for using their bandwidth in serving them Ads that make Him/Her Money? Stupid argument. The site owner gets nothing if you use their bandwidth and don't pay them anything or see their ads. The user gets free information (like tech news) in return for the bandwidth they use to view the site. There's no way the people who provide the information you view for free should even consider paying YOU to view their material. Imagine if that occurred... why the hell would anyone run a website if that was the case?? In all fairness this is a 2 way street. Uh no, it's not. Neowin gives you information and a place to discuss things with other people. What do you give neowin? It's not a two way street at all "in all fairness". Also may I suggest a Donation drive. Like Wikipedia and many Bittorrent sites have. At the beginning of each month is a 'goal' (basically that months running costs) and underneath it a Bar saying how much money we have so far and how much is needed to foot the bill for that month. Anything that goes over the amount needed goes in to the Next Month. If you did this and it actually worked (Like it does on many other sites) you could get rid of all the ads and I'm willing to bet people are more open to staying on the site when they feel they are actively contributing to its survival, like a personal investment, many subscribers stay for that reason now but it could go further. Right, and would these donations also cover the time and effort spent by the staff of Neowin in running this site? Why should neowin just ask for the costs of the servers, why don't they have a right to earn some income above and beyond their costs to pay the staff and perhaps even give them money to expand?? Also, how successful are most sites in getting donations? The same cheap asses who block ads will just as gladly not pay a cent if they don't have to. So the solution is to reduce website owners to begging their users for change every month like beggars? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smithy_dll Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 I'm going to have to rip Digg on this one (top dugg for today) but since it's related, I feel that it's suitable: http://imgur.com/gQouk.jpg You forgot the page automatically reloading every 5 minutes to give you a fresh set of ads in case you didn't like the ones they already gave you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neoauld Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 Somethin tells me these advert companies are gonna turn into the next RIAA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vice Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 Stupid argument. The site owner gets nothing if you use their bandwidth and don't pay them anything or see their ads. The user gets free information (like tech news) in return for the bandwidth they use to view the site. There's no way the people who provide the information you view for free should even consider paying YOU to view their material. Imagine if that occurred... why the hell would anyone run a website if that was the case??Uh no, it's not. Neowin gives you information and a place to discuss things with other people. What do you give neowin? It's not a two way street at all "in all fairness". Right, and would these donations also cover the time and effort spent by the staff of Neowin in running this site? Why should neowin just ask for the costs of the servers, why don't they have a right to earn some income above and beyond their costs to pay the staff and perhaps even give them money to expand?? Also, how successful are most sites in getting donations? The same cheap asses who block ads will just as gladly not pay a cent if they don't have to. So the solution is to reduce website owners to begging their users for change every month like beggars? I don't want to get in a thing with you over it but I'll just say I disagree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vice Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 dupe post. delete me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solid Knight Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 If you're posting the content without view restrictions then it is free. Running ads to earn some revenue is not the same as providing a service at cost. It would be difficult to make an analogy in the real world as the scenario would be quite ridiculous. The correct scenario would be: you own a business in which your services are free to anyone and you have a third party who waves banners in the face of the customer and each person who looks at the ad or asks a question regarding the ad earns the business owner some money. Really, the reason I block ads is because they destroy the layout of the site. It's really just to appease my sense of order. Perhaps if I didn't have to deal with huge boxes floating in the middle of the page or some annoying box the constantly blinks, beeps, or talks I wouldn't block ads. Throw that crap in the side bar or the top and bottom of the page. And for the love of god, get rid of ads that pretend to be hyperlinks to sources. You're reading something, a hyperlink appears, you expect it to be about something relevant to the article so you click on it and it spawns a pop-up ad. Awesome. Now I don't trust hyperlinks in your articles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ji@nBing Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 Uh no, it's not. Neowin gives you information and a place to discuss things with other people. What do you give neowin? It's not a two way street at all "in all fairness". What do we give Neowin? How about the discussion that you just mentioned. Lets face it, Neowin is ALL about the community. Without the community, it would just be a stale, mediocre news site (sorry Neowin, but there are better places to get news). Now, Neowin provides great, customized forum software (the Neowin forums are the nicest on the web, bar none) and generally great moderation staff, but to say it's not a two way street is ridiculous. It's really the great community and discussions that make Neowin so great. I know that's why I've been coming here for going on 8 years now. It's not for the news. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insanelyapple Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 I saw this on digg today. :p added yesterday also on polish digg-like site - 817 votes and that good score; anyway, its almost true - i cant agree with comments. most of all west-european and american news sites, internet newspaper titles doesnt have commenting system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redmak Administrators Posted June 23, 2009 Administrators Share Posted June 23, 2009 These discussion are always the same. The answer is really simple. Neowin needs you (visitors) and the ad revenue to survive. Loosing either one will kill us. The cost to pay for a site like Neowin is higher than many of you may realize. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HawkMan Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 (edited) If you're posting the content without view restrictions then it is free. Running ads to earn some revenue is not the same as providing a service at cost. It would be difficult to make an analogy in the real world as the scenario would be quite ridiculous. The correct scenario would be: you own a business in which your services are free to anyone and you have a third party who waves banners in the face of the customer and each person who looks at the ad or asks a question regarding the ad earns the business owner some money.Really, the reason I block ads is because they destroy the layout of the site. It's really just to appease my sense of order. Perhaps if I didn't have to deal with huge boxes floating in the middle of the page or some annoying box the constantly blinks, beeps, or talks I wouldn't block ads. Throw that crap in the side bar or the top and bottom of the page. And for the love of god, get rid of ads that pretend to be hyperlinks to sources. You're reading something, a hyperlink appears, you expect it to be about something relevant to the article so you click on it and it spawns a pop-up ad. Awesome. Now I don't trust hyperlinks in your articles. your real world comparions doesn't work. the comparison would be ads in stores, the guys in malls singing you up for cell phone plans or banking and stuff like that, and mostly, ads in magazines. The reason you pay for the magazine is for the printing mostly, most of the actual wages for the reporters and freelancers come from the ads. Like a magazine a website like neowin can't survive without ads. oh and in most cases removing ads destroy the layout, since the layout is made with the ads in mind. If you don't want tads, then either don't visit the site, or in the case of neowin and similar sites, become a subscriber+ on that note, I do disagree with using intellitxt, mainly because it injects stuff into the text, and the security risk there is fairly big if intellitxt got hacked. and partly because they masquerade as part of the article and article relevant links. like wiki links in articles. But also because intellitxt can make the most optimized text only 3 sentence web page load like a old all flash demo dinosaur page. Edited June 23, 2009 by HawkMan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miuku. Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 These discussion are always the same. The answer is really simple. Neowin needs you (visitors) and the ad revenue to survive. Loosing either one will kill us. The cost to pay for a site like Neowin is higher than many of you may realize. Well I'd rather see sponsorship based items (Such as AMD/Intel/Microsoft etc.) than have to watch random ads on how I won things, how my 'thang' can improve by 2" or mis-spelled "knwo hwo logn u haz to lief" that were made through a Google translator - have you considered it as an option? I'd say Neowin has done it pretty well - the only annoyance I saw back in the day was those context based ads that slowed by browser to a halt but since they're gone (or at least they're reasonable nowadays) I don't see why people should block any ads here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EcPercy Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 I wish these web developers luck with suing and winning.... There is no agreement written or otherwise that requires anyone to view advertisements for any web content. If you are running a high profile site then you should choose to make it subscriber only or stop complaining about people not clicking/viewing ads. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bangbang023 Veteran Posted June 23, 2009 Veteran Share Posted June 23, 2009 Maybe there's something being overlooked here... but if these people are suing the developers of Adblock becuase it disables ads from being shown how do these developers justify that in many cases they are serving up an ad free RSS feed? The developers of adblock can counter in court that the RSS feed is served up free of ads so what is the legal merit to disabling ads on the html version? The RSS feed is much lighter on bandwidth. It's a few kilobytes, at most. Well I'd rather see sponsorship based items (Such as AMD/Intel/Microsoft etc.) than have to watch random ads on how I won things, how my 'thang' can improve by 2" or mis-spelled "knwo hwo logn u haz to lief" that were made through a Google translator - have you considered it as an option?I'd say Neowin has done it pretty well - the only annoyance I saw back in the day was those context based ads that slowed by browser to a halt but since they're gone (or at least they're reasonable nowadays) I don't see why people should block any ads here. The ads you see aren't wholly decided on by the site owners. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ccuk Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 Stupid argument. The site owner gets nothing if you use their bandwidth and don't pay them anything or see their ads. The user gets free information (like tech news) in return for the bandwidth they use to view the site. There's no way the people who provide the information you view for free should even consider paying YOU to view their material. Imagine if that occurred... why the hell would anyone run a website if that was the case??Uh no, it's not. Neowin gives you information and a place to discuss things with other people. What do you give neowin? It's not a two way street at all "in all fairness". Right, and would these donations also cover the time and effort spent by the staff of Neowin in running this site? Why should neowin just ask for the costs of the servers, why don't they have a right to earn some income above and beyond their costs to pay the staff and perhaps even give them money to expand?? Also, how successful are most sites in getting donations? The same cheap asses who block ads will just as gladly not pay a cent if they don't have to. So the solution is to reduce website owners to begging their users for change every month like beggars? Money, money and more money eh? To be completely honest I disagree with everything you said. Without a solid user base no one contributes to the site and therefore there really isn't any decent content worth viewing so there are less visitors... this is cyclic. As far as I am concerned if the staff care enough about the forum, they should give up any "income" and allow it all to be reinvested into the site to keep it running during these harsh economic times. Am I going to get paid for all the useful posts I contribute? No. Exactly my point... Also if you listen to your user base, and understand what they want rather than hammering home your own incentives and changing aspects for the sake of doing so, attracting users is easy and requires less effort; hence as a result you wouldn't have to beg anyone for any money, people will happily pay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miuku. Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 The ads you see aren't wholly decided on by the site owners. I know, that's I was wondering if a sponsorship with a business had been considered or even a viable thing. Then again usually such things tend to come with catches, such as negative publicity not being acceptable (or any level of journalistic freedom). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subject Delta Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 For me, unless these websites actively have some kind of EULA or similar agreement stating that you agree not to view the website unless you make the ads viewable then they don't really have a leg to stand on. Webmasters have the right to put advertising into their sites, but I also believe it is a user's prerogative as to whether they decide to view them or not. Can't see this lawsuit going anywhere in all honesty. Maybe they should also sue the makers of Opera for making it possible to adblock with urlfilter.ini, or with the makers of some of the various plugins that block ads in IE, or even the makers of Ad Muncher. Just targeting ABP is pointless, there are many ways to block ads that don't revolve around Firefox. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Calum Veteran Posted June 23, 2009 Veteran Share Posted June 23, 2009 [...] But, take a look at how much "cleaner" Neowin looks with ads blocked [...] That's exactly why we have the 'Tier 2' subscription ;) and anyone is welcome to sign up for that :) With that, you can get an ad-free Neowin whilst still making sure the site is able to be kept up and running. If somebody blocks Neowin's ads themselves, using ad-blocking software, that could well be their contribution to a downfall of Neowin. I'm sure none of you would want that to happen :happy: Any website looks cleaner without ads, but I agree that Neowin places ads in a way which is very unobtrusive. I don't tend to notice any of them anymore, I don't think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WastedJoker Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 I use AdBlock but I don't use it for all sites - I allow ads to be displayed on websites who display ads responsibly and without huge annoying pop-ups. They are very rare though - webmasters need to get more control of the type/size/method of adverts on their website first. I don't think anybody wishes to deny websites a source of income and most people block them because of their bad behaviour. I don't give to charity muggers for the same reason. In-your-face bullying advertising annoys me - I'm human not a moron. I can read an advert without it needing a ridiculous amount of flashing lights to garner my attention. Suing ABP is a pointless exercise and is typical of how advertisers don't see THEY'RE the problem with their methods. I don't block googles ads - they're discreet and very often linked to what I'm already looking at. That's how adverts should work. I don 't like to visit a forum about mechanic advice and receive a full-screen pop-up with half-naked women advertising Party Poker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7Dash8 Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 Money, money and more money eh?To be completely honest I disagree with everything you said. Without a solid user base no one contributes to the site and therefore there really isn't any decent content worth viewing so there are less visitors... this is cyclic. As far as I am concerned if the staff care enough about the forum, they should give up any "income" and allow it all to be reinvested into the site to keep it running during these harsh economic times. Am I going to get paid for all the useful posts I contribute? No. Exactly my point... Also if you listen to your user base, and understand what they want rather than hammering home your own incentives and changing aspects for the sake of doing so, attracting users is easy and requires less effort; hence as a result you wouldn't have to beg anyone for any money, people will happily pay. Hold on, flip your argument around... what exactly would a webmaster get from setting up a website then? A warm glow inside and a $1200 hole in their pocket every month, just for the privilege of allowing you and others to 'contribute' your amazing commentary in their forums? Please post the link to your forums, which I assume you run out of your own pocket, with no ads and no monetary incentive. Ultimately traffic doesn't mean anything on the internet unless it translates to income at some point. Sites like Youtube, Digg and others are proving this as they have a hard time finding ways to actually monetize and therefore continue running their service. The more traffic to a site there is, the more work it creates and the more time it takes to administer, not to mention the extra server costs. And again, you're saying a webmaster would foot the bill for all this, not to mention the time and effort, just because... well really, I don't understand, why would they do it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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