I go to TV Tropes today, and after a moment, the page I am on vanishes and I get this message:
Then fine. I just won’t go back to your website, ever again. If you think you are indispensible to my existence, think again.
OK. Going to try to be fair and outline the concerns of all four groups here.
[ul]
[li]Webusers[/li]
Want an aggravation-free web surfing experience, without being bombarded with products and services they are not interested in (esp. if presented in a very obtrusive vein which may also slow down their surfing experience). And certainly want to keep their machines protected against any sort of malware.
[li]Websites[/li]
Even if they are in a purely nonprofit position, they still need a constant revenue stream to remain viable. So what to do? They can charge for the privilege of people visiting their site, and thus put most or all of their content behind a paywall, but this will probably limit discussion and lead to a small insular community (and thus may not be profitable anyway). They can try a two-tier system (as the Dope does), with those who pay getting certain benefits…
Or they can turn to ads. The issues with ads of course are severalfold: they can be a total pain in the rear for end users, the websites (in our current paradigm) often have little or no control over ad content, specifically their quality or relevance, and ads can often be a big source of malware. So instead of people getting PO’ed at the paywall, they get PO’ed at the ads, and once again revenue is lost.
[li]Advertisers[/li]
Want to make money and sell whatever services they are presenting (even if nothing more than website hits), and alas (for various reasons) are often unconcerned about exactly how this is done or what the end consequences would be for either end users or websites.
[li]Viruswriters[/li]
The big wild card/fly in the pasta in all of the above. Advertisers & websites may promise that their ads are invariably “safe”, but there are no guarantees there. For whatever reasons malware is probably here to stay.
[/ul]
So, what’s the end game here? Who ends up “winning”, if anyone? This isn’t necessarily a zero-sum game, note. Tragedy of the Commons? How could the ad side of things be streamlined and cleaned up?
Given what happens in pretty much every other context, I figure the websites will win by lining up advertisers, and I figure the advertisers will win because they get webusers to see the ads, and I figure the webusers will win because they can cheerfully shrug at the ads for products that don’t interest them – and I figure someone will come along to sneer at me for being so foolish as to think people can shrug at ads, you only think you’re shrugging at ads, or maybe you’re the one mental marvel who manages to shrug at ads but they totally work on people you guys, people are gullible suckers who can’t shrug no matter how much it looks like that’s what’s simply happening.
Perhaps if web ads were less obtrusive people wouldn’t work so hard to avoid them. Don’t slow my experience down to a crawl with blaring video, put the same ad in umteen places on the same page, and a install a thousand trackers and I won’t block them. Insist that I stop blocking, and I leave. I agree with the OP, nothing online is so exclusive the same thing can’t be found on some other site that isn’t so annoying. It isn’t the ad, it’s the obtrusiveness of the ad. A graphic or a picture with a link is one thing. Sound, video, and dozens of popups are something else. As for who will win the war, I predict no one. It will rage into infinity.
I don’t understand why the ads need to be so infested with malware, or why there don’t seem to be any ad-serving companies who strictly screen their clientele to ensure that they’re serving up only non-malware-infested ads.
I pay to have the internet. I should not also have to pay to use website A, website B, website C, and as Jean Luc Picard said, there’s plenty of letters left in the alphabet.
Looking at the (Chrome) AdBlock-Plus White-List, I see I’ve allowed ads on six sites … including Forbes.Com! :eek: I evaluate each request case-by-case.
Frankly, ads are among the least of my worries. I have more hatred for sites that start hard-to-find videos automatically, or that run pop-unders or pop-overs that AdBlock doesn’t find, sites that misuse frames or scroll bars, completely useless search hits, sites where 1 or 2 clicks per paragraph are needed just to read the content, badly designed sites, and Facebook.
I think users will eventually win. The companies (advertisers) will eventually discover the ads just aren’t working.
In July, Procter and Gamble announced they were stopping a large portion of their digital advertising (as in $140 million worth) because it wasn’t effective. The ads were apparently appearing on sites P&G didn’t want associated with, and in ineffective spots. Their revenue climbed anyway after the advertising was stopped.
I’m hoping this is the beginning of the end for the annoying LOOK AT ME ads. I’ve never believed those worked as far as product sales. I would guess they only work if you’re counting clicks.
Nobody seems to think that serving malware may be the whole point of ads. The malware industry could be making far more revenue than does any sales made by randomly seen advertisements.
And how much money should go to ‘content creators’ ?
10 years ago * Google answers estimated the average number of page-views seen in a day was 120. The Internet has increased vastly and become more vital in a decade, so make that 150 page views a day now.
150 pages at a cent each x 30 days = $45 a month extra to use the Internet.
And again, nobody holds a gun to their heads: if these people don’t want to put the stuff out there for free they are entirely welcome not to, or to put up a paywall, or to write begging letters; there are always enough ‘content creators’ to take their place.
One doesn’t make a micro-payment for each item one hears on the radio or TV; one doesn’t make a micro-payment every time one looks in a shop window; one doesn’t make a micro-payment every one embraces one’s significant other.
None of the money I pay to my electric utility or my computer manufacturer goes to content creators either, but those are just as necessary services for viewing stuff on the internet.
Regarding “content creators”, there are other ways to pay for content you like. Wikipedia holds funding drives, for instance, and many artists and webcomics are funded by Patreon, which is an evolution of the paypal tipjar you still occasionally see.
Web adverts do work on my kids - they see videos and adverts for games whilst they play their games or watch their youtube, and they want to play those games themselves. But their attention is flighty, and they very rarely pay any money into any of those games (mostly because I won’t generally let them)
Advertising always struck me as a poor match to the problem of funding content providers. Unlike TV and radio ads which we are forced to sit through, Web ads are easy to simple ignore. At this point my brain is trained to the point that I don’t even see most ads, practically never click on them and if I do don’t buy the product or service offered. It seems to only way to make them noticed is to make them obnoxious. But a user who is annoyed by your obnoxious ad is unlikely is likely to extend his annoyance to your product defeating the whole purpose of the ad. (although I suppose a false flag operation might work to deep six your competitors)
A funding mechanism like patron seems like a much better idea. Alternatively my idea would be to bundle together a huge swath of web sites, charge a nominal fee, say $5/month, for access and then divvy up this $5 (minus say 50 cents profit for the host) among the content providers based on the viewing activity of that user. Anyone could set up a website in this domain, if its not popular they might net a few bucks a month, if its highly popular they might net enough to fund their lifestyle. You could set up bots to up the clicks on your site, but the amount you gain would be less than the cost of registering the bot to the domain so it wouldn’t be worth it.
Very few websites will be able to survive by putting their content behind a paywall; only certain, established and prestigious publications will be able to survive. The general public (me included) will not be keen to pay for a bunch of micro transactions to read news, participate on social media platforms, etc. Again very few websites will be able to utilise such a model sustainably.
This means advertising is here to stay. Unlike any other forms of advertising, online adverts have the ability to interfere with the use and enjoyment of my device and even suffer financial loss due to acting as vectors for malware. This does nothappen with print or screen ads. The user is left without recourse (none Im aware of at any rate). There is little incentive for website owners to properly vet ads or suppliers. (Case in point: the Straight Dope) This is not an acceptable or sustainable state of affairs and will be replaced by a model that isn’t simply a giant middle finger to the end user.
Less well-known sites could still work fine with a paywall given sufficient bundling.
There could be a handful of web conglomerates that all the indie sites contract with. No per-article per-site microtransactions, just a monthly fee or two.
This works in other markets. Public performances of music, for example. You could go out and track down the rights of each song you want to play in your bar, but what happened is that there are two licensing companies, and pretty much everyone signs up with them.
I’m not saying it’s bound to work, or that websites are just like music licensing, but it could work.
The big problem is a lack of guarantee. If I am browsing a website with adverts and my PC gets infected as a result of a malicious advert then I expect the website to compensate me. The website should then recoup that from their provider of adverts.
This does not currently happen, so I have no problem with blocking adverts.