How would you fix digital advertising?

[Flubble]

back in the day people just uploaded content onto the internet for free and never expected a penny

now it's advert advert advert advert advert advert subscribe subscribe pay £15 a month to remove adverts subscribe advert advert advert SuBsCrEiBeLzPlZ!1!1....

no.

 

[StriderX]

Maybe the internet needs subsidies? If huge oil companies can get them, I don’t see what the problem would be.

 

[Marmot]

Adverts don't work on me. I ignore 99.9% of all adverts completely and automatically.

I would beg to differ, advertising works on nearly everyone.

If an advertiser is paying to display an ad to me, then they are wasting their money.

Again, from the data I see on a daily basis I don't believe this to be the case. There is a subconscious element you are unaware of.

I block the ads with an ad-blocker because they often:

1) cause excessive load times on pages. Without ads/javascript, a page might load in <1 sec. With ads the page is still loading 5-10s later...

5G will solve this.

2) follow me around when I scroll. Full page-width at the top, then if I scroll down, they follow me as a smaller version of themselves
3) start video with sound, often on every page
4) are excessively large - ie the "letterbox" ads on the left and right of your screen
5) are excessively bright, animated, in-your-face. By their nature they scream at you for your attention. By design.

So, as you mention a few points down, if the animated, flashing, scrolling, autoplaying issues were solved, and ads were just static billboards you would be happy to turn off adblocker.

This is not the experience I want from a leisure activity. Imagine you went to a health spa (if that's your cup of tea) to unwax and relind. Now imagine somebody followed you around everywhere you went in the spa, shouting at you to buy coffee, cars, over-50s dating (I'm not even 50 WTF), holidays to Ibitha (yuck). It would ruin it, even if the spa itself was free the experience would be so miserable you wouldn't go again.

Fine, "you wouldn't go again", except you do go again, only with your eyes glued shut and your fingers in your ears this time. If the health spa specifically stated above its front door that advertising is how payment is made, do you think that your actions are ethical? You've been forewarned but you choose to ignore the instructions and consume the experience for free.

Some static adverts on the walls would be fine; some brochures lying around the place would be fine; but the ad industry as a whole is moving towards high-impact, bright, moving adverts. E.g. see football matches, where all the banners are now electronic and all adds are now movies.

I think this thread is well-intentioned but futile. The industry as a whole has chosen HIGH IMPACT IN YOUR FACE LOUD MOVING TRIPPY COLOURS! Perhaps because they see us as low attention span fools or perhaps because, in a world full of advertising, you now need to really jump out/annoy/accost your audience to get noticed.

I don't think things will change for the better - I think if it's possible they'll get worse. So my ad-blocker is here to stay for the moment, but I'm sure eventually ads will be created that it is impossible to block. Like ads that are inserted into the content and served by the site you landed on - not served by a 3rd party.

As you say, the industry has ended up like this because of changing consumer habits and a crowded advertising marketplace. It is making ludicrous amounts of money for a few big players and there does need to be change. As for the thread being futile, I'm not trying to change the world, just get some peoples thoughts

 

[Marmot]

Double post

 

[peterwalkley]

The core of the issue for me is trust. There are a very small number of sites I whitelist as their content is worth my attention over the ads. If a site insists I disable the ad-blocker, I'll do it temporarily to see if they are the right side of the equation and if not, that site is forever on my ignore list. The internet is an open market, I doubt there is any content I'm interested in that can't be found on multiple sites.

The industry blew it by putting intrusive ads into pages and now they need to earn my trust back before I will blanket turn off my ad blocker for all sites. I don't see it happening either: as @FoxEye pointed out above the trend is for more intrusive, not less. Instant bans from me are auto-play video, auto-play sound, pop-ups and crap that follows you around when you scroll.

The industry has a long history of blowing it too. Does anyone these days watch live TV if they can avoid it ? I remember ad breaks being 3 or 4 30 seconds slots and once during a 30 minute program and twice during an hour. They're now longer and more frequent. The only live TV we tend to watch now is the news, everything else is TIVO'ed. NOT a sports fan here, but I realise many will want to watch sports live, so there's still a window there - but one again I would hazard is blown by interrupting the content for ads.

 

[chrcoluk]

I guess my opinion doesnt count since you havent replied to it so I am done with the thread.

 

[Flubble]

i get a 30 second william hill football betting video advert shoved down my throat about a million times a day and i still have no interest in william hill football betting, in fact i'll NEVER use it if i ever decided i did want to bet on football because it's been so annoying...

 

[Marmot]

Sorry Chrcoluk, I responded to the first half of the thread but my +multiquote was getting a bit long.

Some malware is spread via advertising networks.

Do you have any examples of this? I used to see unauthorised downloads and uncloseable pages when I was young and used torrent sites, but I wouldn't ever see this on any legitimate domain. Again, I really don't know what sites you guys are browsing where you have such awful experiences. I do not use an adblocker, and I do not encounter malware ever when using the internet.

There is a growing trend for sites to autoplay videos which is horrible behaviour.

I've made a point earlier about video previously. How do you feel about pre-roll or mid-roll on YouTube? Are you prepared to accept any video advertising at all?

Tracking significantly slows down web browsing, some sites particularly news sites have over 10 domains used for tracking purposes, each of these will require a dns lookup and at least one tcp session opened.
It wastes bandwidth, depending on the device and isp used can be significant.

I don't personally think data useage is an issue to the majority of people due to unlimited plans. I also think 5G will solve the load time issues.

Its a nuisance when ads are animated, or they move around the screen following your movements.

Would you be prepared to accept advertising if it was non-disruptive? Enough so to completely disable your adblocker?

In the 1990s adverts were a mess, popups, animations etc.
Then after adblockers were made, web publishers started getting the message and were slowly restricting adverts to text non animated adverts, in return the dev of adblocker added an acceptable advert feature to keep these adverts working. People were slowly coming to a happy compromise.
But suddenly in recent years, we slowly going back to the early net with animations, autoplaying videos, large adverts covering big chunk of screen, also boxes that popup when you start to scroll etc. Plus I think tracking has gone completely out of control.

In short its been abused, and as long as its been abused I will filter my internet from it.

Sites I use regularly I do add whitelisting but will only whitelist small non animated adverts and no tracking.

Sites like hardocp/hardforum have funding from patreons I am indeed a patreon on hardocp. FT is funded by subscriptions, some sites survive in other ways.

I'm glad to hear you whitelist content you deem to be worthy of payment, but do you understand why the tracking element is important to businesses?

I don't know what hardocp/hardforum is i'm afraid, but the FT relies heavily on advertising. It has a paid subscription service but it also has a advertising model.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

Ads are in your face constantly and for this reason my adblocker will never be turned off. I don't want to see the latest products in the world if I'm honest. If I want something I will find it another way through discussions.

Does this make you nervous?

 

[chrcoluk]

As I said pre roll is ok if limited to 3 seconds maximum, thats enough time to get brand name out to the viewer.

Also as I said you dont need either pre roll or mid roll, just place a logo or object in the video showing the brand name.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

I've made a point earlier about video previously. How do you feel about pre-roll or mid-roll on YouTube? Are you prepared to accept any video advertising at all?

Well, why not put something in the description NOT the video! I don't watch videos with ads now. I just find another one.

 

[Marmot]

Ads are in your face constantly and for this reason my adblocker will never be turned off. I don't want to see the latest products in the world if I'm honest. If I want something I will find it another way through discussions.

Does this make you nervous?

Not really, do you get nervous when you venture out into the big scary world and see advertisements on buses too?

 

[Deleted member 77746]

Not really, do you get nervous when you venture out into the big scary world and see advertisements on buses too?

I would prefer to see adverts on buses/billboards than online. Personal opinion.

 

[Marmot]

As I said pre roll is ok if limited to 3 seconds maximum, thats enough time to get brand name out to the viewer.

Also as I said you dont need either pre roll or mid roll, just place a logo or object in the video showing the brand name.

Hmm, on your second points are you recommending that the advertisement should actually be part of the content itself? Like product placement? Or do you mean it should overlap the content temporarily? Surely that's worse than a 3s pre-roll and then uninterrupted video?

 

[Marmot]

I would prefer to see adverts on buses/billboards than online. Personal opinion.

Fine, so what I'm trying to understand is whether your adblocker mentality is so ingrained that you would still refuse to disable it, even if we could reach a digital circumstance akin to that which we experience with outdoor advertising.

 

[chrcoluk]

Hmm, on your second points are you recommending that the advertisement should actually be part of the content itself? Like product placement? Or do you mean it should overlap the content temporarily? Surely that's worse than a 3s pre-roll and then uninterrupted video?

yes part of the content, some video creators already do this.

Also when its part of the content adblockers cannot block it as its actually part of the video.

A small logo in the corner or product placement is not worse as its not interrupting the content, a pre roll forces you to wait to start watching the video, its about your precious time as a human being. Not losing a few pixels to a logo.

 

[Haggisman]

I take it you also feel that using Sky+ to fast forward through ads is stealing from the program producers?

Get Ripped here!!!

Interesting to see YouTube mentioned a couple of times as someone who does it right - the same 30s unskippable ad 5 times in a row on 2 minute video clips is what finally prompted me to install ABP in the first place!

OMG BUY THIS THING

So what would I consider acceptable as adverts?

Static banners in unobtrusive TOTALLY AWESOME ADVERT HERE positions, e.g at the top, side, or bottom of the page.

Absolutely no to garish flashing images, explosions, etc.

Even more absolutely no to any kind of sound or autoplaying video, if I'm chilling out to some music reading something, last thing I want is to hear is "OMFG BUY THIS POINTLESS PRODUCT THAT EVERYONE IS RAVING ABOUT AND YOU DON'T NEED AND WILL NEVER USE BUT IT'S EPIC" blasting out of my headphones at 40 million decibels

Also there needs to be a limit on ad/content ratio, as per my you tube example above, when the ads are 25% of what you are consuming, then quite frankly it's taking the ****. USELESS OVERPRICED TAT FOR SALE Should be in single figures really, so static ads should be sized relative to the page you're on, video length should be relative to the length of what you're watching.

Also, it needs to be made obvious what is content and what is an ad, both on the page and if you click on it (e.g. a prompt that warns you've clicked on an ad)

Out of interest, has anyone ever actually NOT skipped one of those YouTube ads?

 

[Rroff]

As a secondary point I would really question what type of sites you are visiting where there are more ads than content? Very occasionally I get sent a daily mail link with a humorous title or such, and yes the experience is awful, but that is once a month maybe. Practically all of the sites I visit these days have fairly conservative ad placements, no autoplay with sound or anything like that at all.

The local news site for my area for instance has depending on page a combination of some or all of these - the background is an ad and clickable which messes with navigation, there are two autoplay video ads per page one when the page loads the other when you scroll, there are banner ads at the top and bottom of the page as well as the sides and interspersed in the content and on first load and after very short intervals every other article an ad hijacks the whole page. After the article there is a grid of ads trying to present themselves as relevant additional content.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

Fine, so what I'm trying to understand is whether your adblocker mentality is so ingrained that you would still refuse to disable it, even if we could reach a digital circumstance akin to that which we experience with outdoor advertising.

If adverts weren't in your Face, 1 per page I would be happy to disable it forever. However, they are everywhere.

01, installing applications
02, webpages
03, videos,
04, photos,
05, branding on hardware,
06, software embedded

As consumers we can't get away from it unless we install ad blockers. I don't want to wake up with crap in my face.

 

[chrcoluk]

of course google dont like product placement videos as youtube doesnt get revenue from it. They will always prefer pre roll, end roll etc.