Ads on Pocket PC Thoughts

[Ward]

I also notice the significant ad presence here, on this site too. Its now significantly slower to browse PPT than it was a few years ago. Simple page transitions take too long, especially since I have 2Mbit/s.

I won't begrudge PPT its revenue, but in my opinion, PPT has gone too far. The ads now impact my usage of the site too much. They've been blocked.

Ironically, I own most of what is advertised already, and I've never clicked an advert in my life. I even highlight the URL in Google search ads and paste it to the address bar to circumnavigate the click recording system because my time is expensive.

++Edit++

Downloading this page = 130Kb @ 4 seconds
Downloading with ads = 280Kb @ 12 seconds

I'm international. Your ad servers aren't.

:roll:

[PetiteFlower]

*ducks*

[Phillip Dyson]

Sigh this is like the friggin movies! I SO am over the fact that no matter what you do these days you can't avoid ADVERTISING!

Hold on lets start a list of places there are Ad's



While I whole heartedly agree that ads are becoming too intrusive. However, the only situations where I believe we really have a complaining leg to stand on are places where we've already paid for the service.

On the other foot. Perhaps we should start a list of things that are free, that suddenly wouldn't be if advertising went away. 8O


I don't even think I buy many products due to anything I have seen in advertising.

This is a difficult statement to prove at best. I mean who can really say that they've never been influenced by ads? Perhaps if you can honestly say that you've never acquired anything chronologically after seeing an ad for it. :robot:

To paraphrase (read: butcher) the Oracle from The Matrix
Whats really going to bake your noodle later is would you have broken the vase if I hadn't said anything. :wink:

[Vincent M Ferrari]

While I whole heartedly agree that ads are becoming too intrusive. However, the only situations where I believe we really have a complaining leg to stand on are places where we've already paid for the service.

:clap:

:soapbox:

Truth is, the intellitxt linking drives me up the wall, but even though I subscribe (and have since the day they started offering it) I still leave the ads there. While your time might be worth money, so is theirs, and all of the content on this site is provided free of charge, wherever you live.

Considering how much of the stuff on this site is "given away," I'd say complaining about anything related to ads is utterly unfair.

[Jason Dunn]

Tomorrow I'm off for a one-week vacation, someplace sunny. I haven't had a vacation in a year, largely because I spend every waking moment pouring my heart and soul into this, and the other sites, trying to make them the best I possibly can. We're doing a HUGE re-work behind the scenes, and have been for months, all with the goal of making the site better for all of our users.

I find your attitude disgusting and reprehensible, but I'm not going to allow you to upset me right before I leave on vacation - I do have a few things to say, however.

I also notice the significant ad presence here, on this site too. Its now significantly slower to browse PPT than it was a few years ago. Simple page transitions take too long, especially since I have 2Mbit/s.

The solution is simple: pay $36 USD, become a subscriber (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/subscribe.php), and you have the ability to turn off the ads. If you don't want to pay that, then you pay with your time. It's the simple equation that the whole Web is based on. You either value your time, or your money, more. I offer a system whereby you can save either time OR money.

Ad blocking is theft, pure and simple. You're taking my bandwidth, taking my server resources (both of which cost money), and blocking the only avenue of revenue that I have. You are stealing my resources, and giving nothing back. You are a thief. I don't say such a thing lightly, but your arrogant attitude leaves me no recourse.

Ironically, I own most of what is advertised already, and I've never clicked an advert in my life. I even highlight the URL in Google search ads and paste it to the address bar to circumnavigate the click recording system because my time is expensive.

Thankfully, people like you are far and few between, or this site and 90% of the rest of the Web wouldn't exist. Think about the Web without content when you applaud yourself for saving a few seconds.

I value this community dearly, and each and every member means something to me, but when a member such as yourself openly declares war on my way of earning a living, I give no quarter.

[Jason Dunn]

While I whole heartedly agree that ads are becoming too intrusive.

I'm curious to know which ads you find intrusive. I say no to all pop-up, pop-under, eyeblasters (full page flash ads), floating flash ads, interstitials (full page ads that appear before you can read the article), and every single other type of ad that I personally would never want to see when I visit a site. The only ads we run are banners, text ads, and IntelliTXT.

Do you perhaps mean too frequent, as in, there are too many banners? Because that's something entirely different.

And at any rate, you can turn them off as a subscriber, right? ;-)

[Jason Dunn]

...most of the content on this site is provided free of charge, wherever you live.

I'm just curious, when did we charge for content? We haven't ever, to my knowledge, so I'd like to know where this perception comes from - it's certainly not one that I want to create. 100% of our content is available to 100% of our readers, and that's always been my goal.

[Vincent M Ferrari]

Holy crap, Jason. Sorry 'bout that. I was typing so fast I wasn't really paying the attention I should've been. I meant all.

:oops:

Color me embarassed.

[Jason Dunn]

Holy crap, Jason. Sorry 'bout that. I was typing so fast I wasn't really paying the attention I should've been. I meant all.

Aha. Ok, no worries, I just wanted to make sure we weren't giving off the idea that there was some secret stash of hidden content only for the "special" people. ;-)

[Vincent M Ferrari]

Does this mean I have to turn in my secret key and forget the secret handshake?

:rotfl:

[Phillip Dyson]

While I whole heartedly agree that ads are becoming too intrusive.

I'm curious to know which ads you find intrusive. I say no to all pop-up, pop-under, eyeblasters (full page flash ads), floating flash ads, interstitials (full page ads that appear before you can read the article), and every single other type of ad that I personally would never want to see when I visit a site. The only ads we run are banners, text ads, and IntelliTXT.

Do you perhaps mean too frequent, as in, there are too many banners? Because that's something entirely different.

And at any rate, you can turn them off as a subscriber, right? ;-)

I guess I could have been clear in my statements, or perhaps some other posts have got you seeing red. :wink:

I wasn't refering to this site specifcally. Or even at all. This site is free content and as such I can appreciate and expect ads for reasons that you've stated.

When I refer to intrusive, I mean things like commercials preceding movies that I've paid admission for. Product placement in movies and shows. And if you've ever watched SpikeTV, those little animations that continuously appear in the bottom 1/5th of my screen.

[Jason Dunn]

Does this mean I have to turn in my secret key and forget the secret handshake?

No, you can keep those. I'll need my "PalmOS Rulz" secret decoder ring back though. ;-)

[Jason Dunn]

I wasn't refering to this site specifcally. Or even at all....When I refer to intrusive, I mean things like commercials preceding movies that I've paid admission for.

Ah yes, I understand, and quite agree. If I'm paying $12 for a movie, why should I have to see ads for cards, pop, juice, perfume, etc? They're trying to prop up the failing movie business, because all those $30 million-a-movie stars need their green M&Ms. ;-)

The ones that REALLY get me though are the "Don't steal movies!" ads from the MPAA. I mean, really, I'm sitting here having paid for my movie, and I'm being preached at? Wrong audience bub. :lol:

[Hx4700]

I am a lifetime subscriber since that was offered and a member sine my Ipaq 3600 days. I have always liked this site and it is usually the first one I go to (well, after DrudgeReport) when I sign on.
I guess I'm in the middle. I notice that I unconcously do not look at the ads here (or anywhere) - probably because I have just natually trained myself to ignore all ads around the screen when I'm surfing because of the really intrusive types Jason mentioned that are on a lot of other sites. Although I could turn off the add banners as a member, I do not because of what Jason had explained how this works long ago. I do not begrudge him using the banner ads. I guess I'm going to have to try to retrain myself to notice those ads here and click thru some of them when I visit.
IMHO...
Ron...

[Ward]

I'm not against the ads - just their implementation. There are too many and are hosted by servers which are not favourable to international users. Unless I want to wait 12 seconds for the trivial "Your message has been posted" page, I will block servers that significantly impact my usage.

I do not feel that you have the right to call me a thief. Blocking content is not a crime in the eyes of the law. I personally feel dissapointed that I've had to resort to this. PPT looks ugly with the ads, doubly so with the whitespace in their place. I enjoy this site, I visit a few times daily and use the information. New products, programs, accessories - I buy, use or trial. Many manuafcturers can thank this site for highlighting their products.

Lastly, the ads are uncacheable. They rotate continously, its like having to cut out the ads from every page of a magazine! Look at Google - they make the ads unobtrusive - its not impossible.

[Vincent M Ferrari]

You know, Ward... With all due respect, you could (gasp) PAY for this site. That would be a really good way to show your support as opposed to just saying how much you love it and how often you visit it and then blocking all the ads that bring it to you for free...

[PetiteFlower]

I'm curious to know which ads you find intrusive. I say no to all pop-up, pop-under, eyeblasters (full page flash ads), floating flash ads, interstitials (full page ads that appear before you can read the article), and every single other type of ad that I personally would never want to see when I visit a site. The only ads we run are banners, text ads, and IntelliTXT.

I turned off ads after the ones that run down the side of the page in the forums were added. They were way too distracting for me. The intellitext are also annoying. Sometimes the banners flash in an irritating way, but I could just scroll down the page to avoid that.

My 2 cents, I subscribed so I could turn the ads off.

Oh and Ward - if you subscribe and turn the ads off, you also don't see the whitespace - the pages reformat.

[Jason Dunn]

I'm not against the ads - just their implementation. There are too many and are hosted by servers which are not favourable to international users.

I understand your frustration - remember I'm in Canada and my ad server is in the southern USA - but unless you want to front me the money to created some sort of international ad serving network.

I do not feel that you have the right to call me a thief. Blocking content is not a crime in the eyes of the law.

The law is not always moral, and it's often behind the times. One look at Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia tells us that just because something is legal, does not mean it's moral. I believe it's immoral to visit a Web site, use the information/resources it contains, and block the ads. You're taking something and not giving anything back. It's no different than walking up to a bakery, taking a loaf of bread (a finite resource with real cost), and walking out with it, because lining up to pay for it was just a "hassle". I pay for two servers to keep things going, and they're not cheap. Last year we had to go from 2 GB of RAM up to 4 GB in our main server, and that was $900 USD out of my pocket. I have bills to pay and a family to support, and all I ask in return is that you either subscribe, or stop blocking ads. Is that so unreasonable?

PPT looks ugly with the ads, doubly so with the whitespace in their place.

Then subscribe (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/subscribe.php) to the site! You can turn off ALL the ads, and they vanish, giving you a very clean and VERY fast page. $3 a month is all it costs.

Lastly, the ads are uncacheable. They rotate continously, its like having to cut out the ads from every page of a magazine! Look at Google - they make the ads unobtrusive - its not impossible.

If we were to cache the ads, it would break the process by which we earn income. Advertisers buy ads in lots of 1000 - for instance, they might pay $10 for 1000 of the 728 x 90 banner ads. If 1000 people visit the home page, and that banner loads 1000 times (nice people don't block ads), then I make $10 (I don't, those aren't my real rates). Caching would break that - we cache EVERYTHING we can already, all of the content, to make the experience as fast as possible...but we can't cache the ads.

Look at Google - they make the ads unobtrusive - its not impossible.

You're seriously asking me why my one little server can't serve up ads as fast as the thousands of servers that Google has? Come on, be serious please...

[l_emmerdeur]

Jason,

While I agree with everything you have said thus far, you need to understand that the landscape of every person's life is very quickly being inundated with advertisements, some legitimate (like yours) but others much more intrusive and unavoidable.

As you said, I come to this site for a very specific type of information, I can tolerate the ads, pay the fee, or not visit the site.

However, when any kind of activity in which you interact with the world outside of your home involves loud, blaringly tacky advertisements crammed down your throat on pretty much every surface that will hold one, people get very stressed and angry. The legitimate ads (TV, a free website) get jumbled with the unacceptable ones (movie theater, on your cell phone). The consumer ends up revolting against advertising in general, and does everything they can to minimize them, without discriminating between the two categories.

I live in Manhattan. Do you know what it is like to be stuck in a traffic jam in midtown, and idling next to you waiting for the light to turn are 2 or 3 billboard trucks whose sole purpose is to drive around the city getting as many people as possible to see their ads? They are creating traffic to advertise to me. It is actually in their best interest to exacerbate the traffic, so as to be noticed by more people walking by. Oh, let me count the times I've dreamed of dispatching them with a shell from my trusty RPG16.

Let's face it, most advertising makes our world much uglier, and in some cases creates inconvenience which we have to choice but to suffer.

As for blocking ads, I don't think people mind some well placed, targeted ads. in fact, I like ads on sites like this one, because they have the best chance of advertising something I might be interested in, and informing me of a product or service I might use.

But then there are sites like Howardchui.com. Load time for a forum page without ads = 1-2 seconds, with ads = 20-30 seconds. That's just plain unacceptable, especially since those ads freeze up Firefox and don't let me do anything until they have completed loading (and have, on occasion, crashed Firefox outright).

Do you know how people react to this? They install Adblock, and forget about it. And sites like PocketPCThoughts suffer because the asses at sites like Howardchui.com can't be bothered to do something about their slowpoke ad feed providers.

For many years, there were places that were considered appropriate for ads. In the last few years, those limits have disintegrated, and one wonders how far this new infection will spread before people revolt against ads being flashed on the inside of their eyelids while they sleep, or having to watch 60 seconds of ads before being allowed to eat your dinner at a restaurant.

Until balance is restored, and curbs are mandated, your business model will suffer due to the negative sentiment created by Subway ads in Counterstrike, ads on cellphones, billboard trucks on the streets of Manhattan, and ads before movies at the theater.

One last thing: I love sites that give you the option to pay for ad-free content. I believe most people view this very differently: they see it as sites holding them ransom, simply because all interent content used to be free. The single most difficult proposition in the world of content distribution is persuading someone to pay for something they used to get for free (even when there is so much more value and functionality added to the content when compared to 5 or 10 years ago).

[Ward]

I'm not unreasonable - I'll unblock your ads purely because you're listening. Most don't.

http://www.cward.co.uk/wp-content/PPCTAds-thumb.jpg (http://www.cward.co.uk/wp-content/PPCT-Ads.jpg)

Consider removing the ads for the forum editing, preview and submission pages. They are pages which contributers see when adding content to the forum - content which increases the value of the forum and pages which suffer the most from the ads.

Loading the above page in the screen shot took 14 seconds. The page was unusable until the ads finished loading - so I spent 14 seconds furiously avoiding looking at the ads and cursing their existence. I'm sure many others do too.

On a slightly related note, sigs and inline images are limited, presumably to preserve user's bandwidth...

[Jonathon Watkins]

Consider removing the ads for the forum editing, preview and submission pages.

Ward, Pocket PC Thoughts needs the advertising revenue to keep going. You can't charge advertisers a higher rate for fewer adverts. It does not work that way. :)

I subscribed to Pocket PC Thoughts primarily because I wanted to support the site, but also to be able to control adverts to customise the layout of the site to suit the way I viewed it (often on a TFT in vertical portrait mode).

I don't block any adverts on sites I visit (apart from pop up adverts of course - which PPCT does not use). If a site gets too obtrusive with adverts, it will loose viewers - a Darwinian process. :)

[Ward]

But those pages are there to add content to the forum. They enrich the site. Ads there increase the loading times by an order of magnitude where its least necessary.

You want people to post. Forcing them to wait 10 seconds before they can start typing is silly. And so is the vertical banner.

[Constant Caffeine]

There are too many and are hosted by servers which are not favourable to international users.

Ward, if you don't mind, what country do you live in? I’m moving to Scandinavia later this year and I’m curious if there will be a longer delay. As for subscribing, I PM’d Jason a few days ago asking about subscribing. At this point, I’m not sure if I want to do the $3 or ‘lifetime’. Do any subscribers have comments regarding the two choices available?

[Ward]

Isn't it in my profile? Hmm. I reside in the UK.

[Constant Caffeine]

Isn't it in my profile? Hmm. I reside in the UK.

No, it is not in your profile, that is why I asked. The location is blank. Thanks for answering. Have you tried the trial subscription? At least you will be able to 'try before you buy'.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Isn't it in my profile? Hmm. I reside in the UK.

You know where I'm from Ward. :wink: I almost always found PPCT to be very fast at loading, even before I subscribed. As you know, I post a lot and have not found the speed to be an issue.

Personally I went with the lifetime subscription. One payment, done. That way there's no hassle, you don't need to remember to renew and it is a big help to the site. :way to go:

[emuelle1]

I don't mind the ads on PPC Thoughts. I don't experience Ward's slowdown in loading, and I find both at work and at home that the pages load very quickly. The ads here are, at least for me, unobtrusive and non-irritating. I have no problem, personally, with the way Jason runs this site and his others as this is the way he generates his income. My wife and I got "sucked" into one of those silly "sell stuff on Ebay and run a website store" type scams a few years ago. I'm sure people are highly successful at it, but we found that it was more work than having 40 hour a week jobs. I can only imagine the work it takes to keep these sites running and free from hackers.

It is true though, the advertising in our culture is getting out of hand. So many ads are tasteless. I had the History Channel on last night as I was putting my 18 month old to bed, and a Cialis commercial came up. I realized that if I'm going to watch the History or Discovery Channels with my children, I'll have to run the risk that they'll be saying "Erectile Dysfunction" before they say "Daddy". It's disgusting. However, adversiting does pay for some really great content on the web and on TV, and I'm not aware of a better solution. I can only imagine, however, how much trash TV would go away if advertising became outlawed and people had to pay for the shows that they liked.