Website ads (PPC Thoughts or otherwise)

[bigkingfun]

I've just finished reading through the 23 pages of posts regarding the subscriber services and it brought a question to my mind. Why exactly do so many people dislike banner ads and pop ups?

Pop ups I can understand in some circumstances - they can be a real pain if overused - but I personally don't have a problem with them if they are used sparingly. I don't really see what the problem is with the banner ads however. I don't click on them often, but every once in a while something will catch my eye and I'll click through.

I understand why Jason has given subscribers the option to turn the ads off since a lot of people don't like them, but I'm curious why people would feel the need to do so. This is obviously a business as well as a labour of love so why should he not take every opportunity to earn some additional income? The content of this site is what keeps people coming back and if the ads don't interest you, just don't click on them.

I'm not trying to start a flame war or anything, I'm just curious...

[Kati Compton]

I don't mind the banner up in the top right, but I could see a subscriber wanting to turn off the new one that was added underneath it in the forums... It takes up extra space that used to hold content of the site....

[spg]

I don't mind banner ads at all, but pop-up ads really get to me. If I wanted another window open I could do it myself... I don't need ads to do it for me. I know I could just hit the "X" and be quiet about it, but do you know how many muscles it takes just to move the mouse to that "X"? :lol:

Personally, I've left the ads turned on here. The space is still going to be there, empty or filled with an ad. I figure leaving the ad showing is just another way I can help keep this site running longer. Anyway, just my 2 cents.

[Pony99CA]

I've just finished reading through the 23 pages of posts regarding the subscriber services and it brought a question to my mind. Why exactly do so many people dislike banner ads and pop ups?
I don't mind banner ads, either, as they are fairly innoucuous. I don't like ads in the middle of content, though.

As for why some people don't like them, there are probably many reasons:

They slow things down, especially on a dial-up connection.
They take up screen space that could be used for content. This is especially important on small screens like PDAs. (This isn't an issue for sites like Pocket PC Thoughts that don't include ads on their mobile site.)
People generally dislike ads of any type. The same is true of commercials on TV, junk mail, magazine ads, etc.
Some people are opposed to ads on the Internet on principle. They think the Internet should be free, especially as it was created by our tax dollars.

I understand the need to pay the bills, and Jason's ad policies have always seemed reasonable, so I don't mind them here. As long as he doesn't resort to pop-ups and pop-unders, it's all good.

Steve

[dean_shan]

I turn off the ads because I am already paying for the service and I never cliked on any of the banner ads on PPC Thoughts. So if I never clicked on them in the first place why should I keep them on?

[hollis_f]

I've just finished reading through the 23 pages of posts regarding the subscriber services and it brought a question to my mind. Why exactly do so many people dislike banner ads and pop ups?


Pop-ups are the work of the devil.

Banner ads are OK if not to intrusive. I can't stand the ones that flash to get my attention. They can also be a pain when too large - check the new ads on Brighthand that run down the side of the list of forum messages (and the complaints about them).

[dean_shan]

I HATE flash ads :evil:. I hated them when I had dial-up and I still hate them with DSL. I really hate the pop-up flash ads that hid and kill your bandwith then spring on you. :evil:. Oh and I hate flash websites. They are good when it is used for playing games (Candystand) but I hate it when the whole site is just a flash file (Movie sites). What is so wrong with the quick loading HTML!?!

</rant>

[Dave Beauvais]

Flash-based ads and ads that fly around thanks to Dynamic HTML are what made me detest online advertising as a whole. I went to view a satellite image at the Weather Channel's site during a brief dial-up session on my laptop during our recent 47-hour, ~300,000 customer, city-wide power outage :evil: and was forced to wait for a *$#&ing Flash ad to download before the page would display. Then once it was done, it hovered over most of the page for ten seconds before flying away into a corner of the page. The kicker is that not only was I made to wait for the bloated ad which obscured the content I had come to see, the only way I could have closed it was to click on it, thus making the ad lucrative to the company and encouraging more of them.

I do not in any way want to support that form of advertising, and detest Flash ads which have no obvious way of closing them. These are worse than pop-up/under ads, in my opinion. I am almost ready to uninstall Flash and disable all ActiveX controls entirely, except that would render perfectly good sites like Homestar Runner (http://www.homestarrunner.com) completely useless. Plus, the Thoughts Subscriber buttons wouldn't work anymore! ;)

--Dave

[Janak Parekh]

I do not in any way want to support that form of advertising, and detest Flash ads which have no obvious way of closing them. These are worse than pop-up/under ads, in my opinion. I am almost ready to uninstall Flash and disable all ActiveX controls entirely, except that would render perfectly good sites like Homestar Runner (http://www.homestarrunner.com) completely useless. Plus, the Thoughts Subscriber buttons wouldn't work anymore! ;)
Those two are big reasons (I still play with the Subscriber button :mrgreen:) but, additionally, many sites rely on Flash. I'm sure some browsers will eventually have a "block this Flash" as a selective feature, but I don't think any do, yet.

--janak

[droppedd]

I do believe there's a plugin for Mozilla's Firebird browser that lets you make it so that flash files on a site appear as just a button, which you have to click to load. Pretty nice if Flash ads bug you out and you don't usually visit sites with Flash content. Plus it has integrated popup blocking, and there's also a plugin that can block image ads that you tell it to, along with reclaiming the screen space from the ad if you so choose.

[Jacob]

I can't stand pop-ups just because they interrupt everything I'm doing when I go to a page. They don't appear right away usually so I'm half way into reading something and then BOOM Orbitz.com is advertising something.

I also can't stand hitting the back button then having to close the same pop-up yet again.

Banner ads I'm not really against. My main problem is when sites put too many adds that distract from finding what you're really looking for.

[davidspalding]

Too many web advertisers abused the user's computer by having ads that flashed insanely, slid across the content making reading difficult, had flash ads that made noise or were too distracting, and introduced obnoxious popups -- which I still consider an intrusion and misuse of the client browser software -- which clutter the user's screen.

I remember some flash "games" ads on CNN.com which drove me up the wall. "<plink!> <plunk!><plink!>" In one case it took me 2 minutes just to find out what was going on.... >:|

Web advertising is finally (!) coming around to sense, witness these new Google ads (which I'll be adding to my own site soon). They're innocuous, targeted, and don't ruin the "web experience." I'm afraid that I've had to remove Brighthand and PPCpassion from my "bypass proxy" list, as their ads have again become obnoxious. Sorry, I'd like to help them pay the bills, but I also want to read the site without such obnoxious distractions.

Popups ... I squash 'em. No one, NO ONE, has a right to create unsolicited new browser windows on my computer, with my bandwidth, without my consent. It's right up there with UCE/spam, imHo.
____________

Hat's off to Jason for managing this site's ads so that I can let them display without any complaint. Bravo, dude.

[Evee Ev]

i use the avant browser http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=2346 and it works wonders for pop-ups and stuff. the full-screen mode is the best too! it hides all of the toolbars for easy browsing. it pretty much rocks!

[Hyperluminal]

I think Jason's ad policy is very good, and it was very smart for him to reject using popups and full screen ads, even though they apparently pay much more. Still, when I subscribed I turned off ads, simply because I'm on dialup, and without ads the site loads much faster... :)

[Jeff Rutledge]

I don't mind the banner ads at all. I usually click a couple a day, mostly to support the site. Although I do find myself following a link of interest every now and again as well.

Popups, on the other hand, are evil incarnate. It's the equivalent of telemarketers being able to pop into your phone call. Thankfully NetCaptor has a built in popup blocker.

More to the point, thankfully PPCT doesn't use them!
:rock on dude!:

[freitasm]

Not all banners are evil, as you noted. I'm now using AdSense on Geekzone, and they're cool - once Google crawls the page the ads are 100% related to the subject. And I've seen quite good click rates because of this! Great because Google pay per click, and helps supporting the site.

I agree with the opinions against pop{up|under} :devilboy: They're evil!