In one of Stanislaw Lem’s futuristic books, he mentioned that a government regulation had to be passed that forbade robotic junk mail from reaching out and grabbing you by your shoulders to read them.
I think of this now when I see pop-ups, which thankfully have been answered by browsers that disable them.
But many sites–including the SDMB, I’m sad to say–are employing sound pop-ups, and they drive you crazy because you can’t even find the window to turn them off. Perhaps you can’t because they run on background mode.
Video ads also infect the most respected of sites.
Is there an Internet group, or an Internet-advertising group, that has standards on this? Or are we getting to the future described by Lem?
I’d like to keep the thread appropriate to this board, if possible, and not to the “About this Board” or the other conversation/opinion threads.
The IAB. Most Web publishers rely on advertising networks to fill their ad inventory. Even when publishers scrutinize the prospective ads to be shown on their site, and specify no auto-play audio and video ads, 3rd-party advertising creatives can get through that do not satisfy the publisher’s minimum requirements. This is a growing problem that publishers and advertisers are still working out, and is a sign of the immaturity of Web advertising in general.
Can anyone tell me why no advertisers have brains enough to just insert a text box into the background of a web site, or as a photo on a web site, instead of using these dumb ad servers that are so easy to block? My prediction, they will finally realize this and start paying the web sites directly instead of some ad server, to just insert an ad as a box or photo where it is built just like the rest of the site and can’t be blocked???
I am smart indeed if no one has tried this. All those web consultants and no one can think if they do that: 1. cant be blocked 2. Web site can charge more for such an ad, and even if not they would get the middlemans profit now going to the ad server people.
It’s not just popups. Some websites are using sound outside of any ads. I had to convice my employer to turn the sound off on a flash objects they created where a roaring engine would be the first thing to greet you.
What I really wish we could do is control the sound level for flash objects, independent on how loud it decides to be!
It’s already happening - for my own website, I get frequent requests from advertisers (usually representing online casinos) to insert a block of text within the body of the article, containing links to their sites, or just to apply their prescribed links to specific words in the existing text.
They usually offer quite good money for this, but I’m never going to do it.
Mang, thanks, I really did begin to wonder if I just gave away a billion dollar idea. I am sure this will be the future of web site ads, too. I am rather surprised web sites did not figure this out long ago and get rid of the middleman and make more money all along.
But elements of a site can be blocked as easily as a separate web server. Using Firefox addons such as Grease Monkey or Adblock Plus Element Hider unwanted site elements, such as ads, can be blocked before they’re loaded or hidden and prevented from loading in future.
One big reason for having the ads come from a different server is that the advertiser does not need to trust the website to give him a count of how many people saw the ad. The advertiser can check this from the traffic at the ad server.
function End on my Dell