Jeff- Kill this ad YESTERDAY!

Jeff said:

... If the ads don't load, we don't get paid. If we don't get paid, there is no site. We're not exactly getting rich off of this proposition, so don't think we're going to just do it for the good of mankind.

See, that's the problem. I'm all for letting the ads load, provided the ads behave themselves. But I have my limits, and as a consumer, I don't have the option of specifying which ads I am willing to put up with and which I am not. That's why I issued the request to have the site operator kill the badly behaving ad...thus replacing it with something reasonable...because the only option I have at this end is to drop the atomic bomb: "127.0.0.1 www.nastyadsite.com". I'd rather not do that. Heck, if I can't get the site administrators to clamp down on the ads they host, I'd prefer to just have an option on the browser to right-click on the image and tell it, "Never load this file again." Even better would be some way to send an automated nastygram back to the ad site that says, "Quit doing this crap or prepare to land in my bit bucket."

Hey, the complaints worked when the Opera ad banner started talking. They put a stop to that in a hurry!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Hmmm...this is interesting...

Ads for PointBuzz are served by Burst Media. If you look in the creative guidelines on Burst Media's site, it says quite clearly:

"All banner actions (i.e. audio, expansion, launching new browser windows, etc) must be initiated by the user"

In other words, if the banner doesn't have focus, it should be SILENT! The advertising service says so, and if the ad violates that rule, it should be killed with extreme prejudice.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

IN my firefox, i right-click the image and choose "Block images from Burstnet.com"

now i know you can't do that on your mac, but the option is probably there somewhere.

Nobody seems to get the point. The site is providing you with a service on condition that you pay a fee. The fee either being a banner ad view or $12/year. Defeating the banner ad hurts the site owner.

What I'm saying is, is it really hard to pay $12? $12 a year is nothing compared to the almost 500 bucks a year to pay for cable TV, $325 paid for high speed internet access, and usually less than one DVD or CD from the store.

If you like the site, support it in one way or another.

well, i don't have a credit card and cannot order the premium service.

OK - my bad...

From the TOS over on Coasterbuzz :

"You agree when viewing pages on CoasterBuzz.com to not use any kind of ad-blocking software, and agree to be held liable for any damages or loss of revenue to POP World Media, LLC in the event you do use such software."

I have to concede that I just assumed that the TOS on Pointbuzz had also been updated with this line.

Either way, blocking the ads doesn't help out on the financial end of the equation - even if you won't get sued.

Steve *** Edited 2/21/2005 1:20:39 AM UTC by Panman***

It's really not that complicated. You can deal with the ads or you can't. Like I said, if we don't get paid, we'll cease to do it. I can't speak for Walt, but this is what I do for a living. It's not a hobby. Do you do your job for free? I suspect that if you had to, you'd get another job. I'm no different.

Right. But there should be a check option for those without credit cards like myself.

PKIDelirium said:
IN my firefox, i right-click the image and choose "Block images from Burstnet.com"

now i know you can't do that on your mac, but the option is probably there somewhere.

I *could* do that if I were running Firefox, except that Firefox on MacOS doesn't have a proper MacOS interface. Likewise, I can reconfigure several stages of my network connection, ranging from my client to my router, to pretend that burstnet.com doesn't even exist. The point is, I don't want to do that! I don't mind the ad sitting on the page, I have a fast enough connection that the ad loading makes very little difference to me now that the ad server is at least as fast as the main site connection (I remember the bad old days when Jeff used an ad host that was slower than dirt...). The only ads I want to block are the ones that are apparently in violation of BURST!Media's creative content restrictions and shouldn't even be running in the first place!

Am I the only person who can see the bigger picture here? It should be possible for websites to use advertising to support themselves. It works in virtually any other medium, it should work on the Web. The trick is, there are limits to the level of intrusion end users will endure. The automatic pop-up ad, for instance, was immediately abused to the point where a pop-up eliminator is now standard equipment on any modern web browser (yes, I noticed that Microsoft finally came around), and in many cases is now turned on by default. The pop-up ad is dead as a World Wide Web advertising method because it became so intrusive and so irritating that the users deployed widespread technological methods for shutting it down.

Now, suddenly, the advertisers have decided that they need to make their in-page ads...those ads which are most easily tolerated by users...as irritating as the pop-up ads that most users can't even see anymore. They don't seem to realize that blocking misbehaving banners requires a different technical strategy from blocking pop-ups, and when the strategy backfires, they will suddenly find that no ads at all can get through.

The problem with that, of course, is that it effectively closes down any viable revenue stream short of subscriptions. That, too, is unacceptable to the Web as a whole. We see it here...people object to spending even more money than the already high cost of their network connection, and the situation with a site like this one is even worse: the content on this site comes from the users. A comparatively small portion of the user base really wants to pay a fee just to hear themselves talk. You see major discussion sites go subscriber-only and you'll see people learning how to use UUCP newsreaders again.

The answer is that the advertisers need to learn how to behave themselves. I read through the BURST! creative guidelines, and they make great sense. The rules were written for a reason: if the rules for in-page ads are followed, the ads will get impressions, the people who look at the pages...who, I should remind you, are not there to look at the ads...will allow the ads to load, may even look at them from time to time, and most important, won't go searching for technological measures to defeat the ads.

Ultimately, this is about the very survival of any ".com" site that doesn't exist solely to sell product. This is important, folks, and it is the site operators who are going to have to take a stand on this one and stick to it. Unfortunately, most webmasters have better things to do than to convince the hand that feeds them that it's about to get bitten off.....

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Seems the way to solve this one is...pay the 12 bucks. It's not going to defeat the nasty advertisers, but it will make those vexing ads go away for you as an individual. Clearly some folks have spent WAY more than the 12 dollars worth of their valuable free time on this topic...there's principles, sure...but then, there's sanity...

You don't get the philosophy behind this whatsoever. The point is I'm registered to about 10 message boards after this plus I visit many other sites. I can not afford to dish out hundreds of dollars to keep my computer from getting crippled. We're not saying that Jeff is doing anything wrong. I would most likely do the same thing that he is doing in keeping the adds. But what we're complaining about is the fact that these adds companies are crippling your computer and don't give a rat's ass about keeping their clientel. This could do to the internet what Wal-Mart did to the Mom and Pop grocery stores where only big sites like Yahoo and MSN can survive when users just can't go to the littler sites like this because it freezes up their computer so much.

Do you honestly think you have the answer, Dave? Do you think you know better than everyone on Madison Ave.? If you do, you should probably send them a resume and save the industry and its small publishers. We've been "taking a stand" for years. Maybe you didn't notice that dozen or so "big" ad firms that have since disappeared into dotcom history.

Let's do some math. The average Cheap Tickets ad, one of the few genuinely relevant ads for our audience, pays $0.53 net per thousand impressions. That means the one time you see that ad we'll get paid $0.00053. Walt and I split that evenly. When you see those CoasterBuzz Club ads or those "take our survey" ads, we get exactly nothing. Not exactly the big bucks one needs to pay for software or fancy digital cameras like those we use.

I don't control the ad market. I don't make the rules. But I did come up with an alternative, and that's the premium membership. I get screwed on that too, because nearly a buck goes to the bank, the price of doing low-volume credit card business.

People pay more than $12 a year for a crappy magazine that gives them an hour or two of entertainment once a month. If you can't see the value in that, you're entitled to your opinion. Just don't tell me what I have to do to survive. GTTP and CB would've died in 2002 if I didn't do what I had to do.

It doesn't seem like what Dave is suggesting is unreasonable at all. The ad agency is in breach of its own guidelines by distributing these invasive banners. Like Dave, I don't want to totally screw the site out of what little revenue I generate by shutting all the banners down, but it would be nice not to feel attacked by these ads everytime a page loads. Honestly they are more annyoing than the old Angelfire pop-up banners that would appear on every page if you shut them down.

For those of you who keep saying, "Well just pay the 12 dollars...," you obviously don't get the point we are trying to make. If I was a newcomer and I wanted to join this community I would be incredibly alarmed by these ads, and it could push me away from wanting to come here often because it simply wouldn't be enjoyable to browse the site.

It's pretty obvious that this issue will ultimately come to a stalemate between the the users and the site administration, but at least we have brought it to light, and hopefully it has some kind of bearing on future ads hosted by this site.

Does it really take to much time to hit the "X" ON A ad. NO

This goes back to the point of those who don't have credit cards, and cannot order the premium service. I would do it if i could.

It's not the pop-ups we're talking about. It's the banner adds which I wouldn't mind if they didn't make highly annoying croaking/singing/mooing/shooting.

Jeff did you get rid of the noise ones because I havent seen them for awhile?

I don't see ANY of them anymore ;)

Nope, I just got the shoot the paparazzi one. Makes me really want to shoot the paparazzi just to shut the cameras up!

it doesnt shut up. after it opens a window and you close it it keeps going.