LOL. Unless you make a habit of clicking on those ads, you’re not adding any more revenue to the site than those who just blocks all the ads.
Why? How are they hurting you?
I don’t know why everyone seems to think IE can’t run those add-ons.
Different advertisers use different metrics, but page views are as important as the clicks. More page views = more clicks. Average click through rate is around 1 - 2%, and that’s pretty steady across all websites, including this one, I promise you.
Personally, I’ve found that this is often the fastest and easiest way to recover from malware and viruses.
I’ve also switched to linux for most of my internet stuff these days (except at work where I still use Windows).
You’re a Charter Member. You don’t see the ads that guests and new visitors to the site see. If you want to run a fun experiment, try spending six months visiting the SDMB logged out with AdBlock disabled. Report back.
I’m a big believer in safe web-surfing. But I’m also a big believer in not repeatedly infecting other people’s computers because I want to maximize ad revenue. The SDMB’s ad broker is clearly a piece of shit. I’m sure they pay top dollar: being really half-assed about ad screening is quite cost effective. But the more you try to milk the cash cow for every cent you can squeeze out of it, the more you harm the long-term reputation and success of the board.
Given that metric, turning off AdBlock but then ignoring the ads would actually be worse for the site. The percent click- through would go down. Am I missing something?
The average percentage of clickthrough may well be fairly consistent, but deciding to view ads instead. Of blocking them will not increase clicks. Clicking does that.
If you want to contribute to their revenue most sites accept donations or have a subscription available (like this one).
If I suspect something nasty has got right in and hidden away, I would consider doing likewise, but not just because an AV program clucked on one occasion when some popup ad appeared.
What about TV? Should people feel obliged to sit and pay attention through the commercial breaks?
That’s true, but I think you’re giving people too much credit. The click-through rate will still hold fairly steady. It’s also insanely cheap to run those ads… Average cost is around $10 per thousand clicks (CPM).
Given the history of malware on this site, it is too risky to come here without Adblock. When and if this board manages to go for a full year without a single complaint about malware infested ads, I will consider changing my security practices. Until then, I will use Adblock in conjunction with other defensive measures.
Easy to say, my friend. Our piece of shit ad brokers include companies like Google. There’s this persistent belief that there are ad brokers out there who never ever let a bad ad slip through, and that if we dumped our present collection of incompetents and hired these saintly entities our troubles would be over. This is a fantasy. Straightdope.com delivers more than 5,000,000 ad impressions per week. If our ad screening were as half-assed as you think, we would be deluged with complaints. As it is we get occasional beefs. We take these seriously and investigate whenever we get enough information to make it possible to do so. We have had our providers block advertisers whom we believe have sent us malware and we’ll continue to do so. But it’s not possible to guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen. As for milking the cash cow … please. We make enough money on ads now to cover our costs, which wasn’t always the case. But we’re sure not getting rich.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear. When I ran my experiment it was all web surfing and not just SDMB. Yes, as a Charter Member I don’t see ads. But I was still exposed to ads from other sites.
I just don’t care. I didn’t use it for a long, long, time, but then it started happening that everytime I went to i can haz cheezburger it would start running a video ad, with sound. I couldn’t stop it or turn it off, and it was on all of their sites.
That was that. I am willing to put up with silent ads, and even video ads, but honestly unless it’s youtube I don’t want sound emanating from my computer without my permission. Honestly, it was creepy.
Ed, perhaps there needs to be a sticky thread on ad malware. In it, offer a set of instructions for Dopers on how to report malware. Seems to me it will make everyone’s job a wee bit easier when a report is posted it contains essential information about the user (operating system, web browser and version number, any currently installed anti-virus and anti-malware software, etc.) along with details of the alleged ad malware (date and time of occurrence, which page it showed up, specific nature of the ad, etc.)
What ads? Adblock plus runs on Chrome for me, I honestly forgot all about ads.
You’ve mentioned before that you use two ad services, Google and Rubicon. While no ad provider is immune to malware, I believe the SDMB is serving up way more than its share. Occam’s Razor would indicate that Rubicon is more likely to be at fault than Google.
Why not at least try another ad broker and see if things improve? Gaia Online, the biggest message board listed on big-boards.com, lists the ones they use in their privacy notice:
Despite having this many ad brokers and being WAY huger than the SDMB (2 billion posts and 25 million members to our 14 million posts and 100k members), if you Google “Gaia Online malware” you get a few threads in their ATMB-equivalent forum, most of which are several years old. Google “SDMB malware” and you get ATMB thread after ATMB thread from the past year. Basic statistics tells you when you sample from a pool over 200 times smaller and find significantly more infections that something is wrong.
This is true for many ads/sites, but not all. I only make any revenue from ads from one site of mine (well, pennies a year from a few others) and while MOST of the money is pay-per-click, I do have deals with two companies who pay me a monthly fee for an ad to appear–all the time, not in a rotation–on the site. So SOME revenue is generated on SOME sites without clicks. But in those cases, the revenue isn’t stopped by use of ad blocking software, either. [/pedant mode off]
For the vast majority of sites/ads, it holds true that they’re not making any revenue if you never click on any of the ads.
As a Charter Member I don’t get ads on the SDMB, but I’m really curious to know if it ever displays the truly most evil-of-evil* type of ad: the flash video that moves out in front of the content after the page has been open and you’ve already started reading, and has a really hard to find, hidden little “x” to close it, somewhere completely outside the diameter area of the ad. Do you get those here? I HATE sites that use those. I’m looking at you, weather.com.
*all ads that play sound without you having to specifically hit a “play” type of control are in the general “evil” category, btw, imo.