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The Almighty Buck Businesses Google The Internet

How Text Ads Tamed Ads on the Wild, Wild Web 278

Posted by Hemos from the been-much-much-better dept.
securitas writes "In Sunday's New York Times, Randall Stross writes about How Google Tamed Ads on the Wild, Wild Web and how it is largely responsible for the demise of the odious pop-under ad. From the article: "Without intending to do so, the company set in motion multilateral disarmament by telling its first advertisers in 2000: text only, please. No banner ads, no images, no animation.... Google introduced these ads at the very moment when X10 ads were strewn like chewed gum on every square of sidewalk. X10's pop-unders were accepted at mainstream sites run by companies including Microsoft, Yahoo and The New York Times." Remember that "in mid-2001, X10's company Web site was the fourth-most visited" on the Web. Thank you, Google." I'd actually argue that while the text ads had something to do with it, the massive growth in pop-up/under blockers made as much of a difference, if not even more.
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How Text Ads Tamed Ads on the Wild, Wild Web More

How Text Ads Tamed Ads on the Wild, Wild Web

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  • X10 ad museum (Score:5, Informative)

    by pohl ( 872 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:41AM (#14081404) Homepage
    In case anybody does not remember the X10 ads, I was able to find an online gallery [wisc.edu] of old X10 ads. Not at all subtle about who their target market is, are they?

    • Re:X10 ad museum (Score:3, Interesting)

      by lucabrasi999 ( 585141 )
      Hey, sex sells. If you check the x10 site today [x10.com], you see a bunch photos that are very similar to your link.

    • Re:X10 ad museum (Score:5, Funny)

      by Loc_Dawg ( 862613 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @11:01AM (#14081557)
      That reminds me of a fake SA page [somethingawful.com] from a few years ago!

    • Re:X10 ad museum (Score:5, Funny)

      by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @11:06AM (#14081585) Journal
      You misspelled ad nauseum.
    • >> "X10 ad museum"
      Funny how I read that as "X10 ad nauseam". While we are there, anyone remember "punch the monkey"?

      I'm so glad my browser let's me block image animations, and that it does not have Flash.
      • Sadly, punch-the-monkey style ads are still around. As...

        Hit the mailbox (picture a delinquent hanging out the car window as mailboxes fly by on the side of the road). This one tees me off a bit because it's advocating vandalism.

        Hit Osama (he has hung his AK-47 on the wall and has put on a pair of boxing gloves). Very cliche.

        Pretty sure there was one where you shoot at ducks (shooting-gallery style ducks). I've also seen half-a-dozen other variants that I can't remember off-hand.

    • Re:X10 ad museum - disappointed with product (Score:5, Funny)

      by borkus ( 179118 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @11:19AM (#14081671) Homepage
      I got several of those cameras and was disappointed with the results. Apparently, bikini clad women were not lounging around my house when I was away at work. If they had been, I would have asked them to do a litle vacuuming.
      • I got several of those cameras and was disappointed with the results. Apparently, bikini clad women were not lounging around my house when I was away at work. If they had been, I would have asked them to do a litle vacuuming.
        I hope the vacuuming would involve something else than the carpet!!!

    • Re:X10 ad museum (Score:5, Funny)

      by czarangelus ( 805501 ) <iapetus@@@gmail...com> on Monday November 21, 2005 @11:21AM (#14081693)
      What frightens me is the bottom ad on that page [wisc.edu]. It's advertising a hidden camera for "security in your kids' playroom" with a picture of an older girl with noticably hard nipples. What are these people trying to tell us?

    • X10 not a bad company IMHO (Score:4, Interesting)

      by tomcres ( 925786 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @11:22AM (#14081702)
      I actually bought my TiVo Series2 from them. They were selling a 140-hour for what the 80-hour cost elsewhere. I have to admit that their aggressive advertising turned me off to even considering buying from them, regardless of price... but in the end, I'm glad I overcame my prejudice and did business with them. There was a problem with my card and their customer service was very quick to let me know, and was very courteous and understanding about the situation.

      However, I did let them know that their ads tend to be very obnoxious and intrusive and they almost lost me as a potential customer because of it (they asked how I'd heard of X10-- who hasn't heard of X10 that's used a web browser??!). It's a shame when good companies alienate potential customers in that way. And it wasn't even one of their ads that got me, anyway. It was PriceGrabber or MSN Shopping or something like that. They happened to have the best price. My purchase was actually in spite of their ads, not because of them.

      • Wow- I agree with you about alienating customers. But I remember an MBA class right after the Do Not Call list, and they were talking about how millions and millions of people buy things from telemarketers.
        This shocked me- I am the type of person who if you call me out of the blue at 7 pm at home and are selling something, I won't even consider it, even if it is a great deal...
        Although spam and annoying nets ads are far cheaper than telemarketing (usually), they must be getting enough sales to justify the

  • The Google-fication of the facts (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Billosaur ( 927319 ) * <<wgrother> <at> <optonline.net>> on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:42AM (#14081406) Journal

    I see... so Google saved us all from ourselves did they? I seem to remember that even though Google was much talked about in 2000, it had yet to become the preminent search engine it is today.

    Perhaps this has more to do with it: Results 1 - 10 of about 7,590,000 for Pop-up blocker software. (0.20 seconds). Taken from Google itself. Pop-ups weren't simply replaced, they were stamped out. They still exist, but not at the staggering, nauseating level they were once.

    Does anyone know anyone who ever bought one of those X10 cameras?

    • There was one at our office that was glued to the back of a lego robot and used as an attempt to demonstrate wireless video to investors...company now dead :)
      • Gee, I wonder if the company's failure had anything to do with using a Lego robot in your investor pitch...Don't get me wrong, I personally would've loved it. Then again, I'm not the type of guy who has money to give to cool projects...

    • Re:The Google-fication of the facts (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dslauson ( 914147 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:52AM (#14081487) Journal
      "Pop-ups weren't simply replaced, they were stamped out.
      Very true, but Google had a hand in that, as well. The Google toolbar, with popup blocking, was popular before browsers like Firefox that have integrated popup blocking were part of the mainstream. It's definitely what I used in IE before I made the switch.

      • Re:The Google-fication of the facts (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Pxtl ( 151020 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @11:52AM (#14081926) Homepage
        Hmm.... that does make me wonder.

        Google sells non-popup ads, and provides users with a blocker for popup ads. Personally, I can understand the valid, intelligent reasons for doing both - both giving consumers what they want.... but put together, it looks pretty damn evil.
      • Very true, but Google had a hand in that, as well. The Google toolbar, with popup blocking, was popular before browsers like Firefox that have integrated popup blocking were part of the mainstream.

        Google's toolbar rose at the same time as Firefox did (along with a lot of other third party toolbars. Lots of pop-up blocking toolbars preceded Google in the IE space, for instance): Google doesn't need to be thanked for implementing something so obvious, and they were far from first.

        Of course for the people in t

    • Re:The Google-fication of the facts (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rolfwind ( 528248 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:54AM (#14081503)
      I think that the premise of Google killing these ads are false as well.

      Without ad-blocker turned off. (though Firefox is set to block ads), I still get 2-4 pop-unders per session. I wonder how many Firefox itself is blocking.

      In any case, I'm not focused on the ad but the little 'X' button to shut them off. I wonder how often it simply became uneconomical to advertise this way and how often would someone would return to an insignificant website that throws pop-ups or pop-unders around like that? It's a quick way to drive away your audience.
      • Most of the new versions of pop-unders use Javascript to sneak past the pop-up blockers. I really hope that you are not actually surfing with Javascipt enabled.

        • Re:The Google-fication of the facts (Score:5, Insightful)

          by trezor ( 555230 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @12:23PM (#14082237) Homepage

          I really hope that you are not actually surfing with Javascipt enabled.

          <sarcasm>Because as we all know, javascript can't be used to improve site functionality or reduce BW overhead in page updates.</sarcasm>

          I take it you've never ordered a plane-ticket online or used any site that actually uses javascript for good. For all you people saying javascript is all bad, I urge you to look at Gmail. That's a web-app at it's finest if you ask me.

          For the record: I have javascript enabled, and I almost never get popups. The annoyance of a popup every now and then hardly constitutes going back to the pre-javascript web.

        • Re:The Google-fication of the facts (Score:5, Informative)

          by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) * <scott@alfter.us> on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:24PM (#14082879) Homepage Journal
          Most of the new versions of pop-unders use Javascript to sneak past the pop-up blockers. I really hope that you are not actually surfing with Javascipt enabled.

          That's why you use NoScript [noscript.net]. You can selectively enable JavaScript for those sites that really need it and leave it off everywhere else.

      • I'm sure you've noticed that TONS of the newer pop-ups use graphics to look like a regular Windows window, so there's 2 x's to click. I'm sure plenty of people see one and click it, and are instead taken to the company's website.

        Of course, it just makes it really funny when viewed under OS X or a Linux browser, where the windows look entirely different (OS X especially, since usually the red "close" button is sticking out on the left side of the browser, since they figure "hey, let's stick out a bit but

      • Re:The Google-fication of the facts (Score:5, Informative)

        by Reziac ( 43301 ) * on Monday November 21, 2005 @12:09PM (#14082074) Homepage Journal
        The other day I got one through Mozilla's unrequested-popup blocking, which normally works 100%.

        BTW *never* click on the corner X, that's not safe since a popup's corner X is sometimes a disguised "OK" button for installing something Nasty. Instead, use ALT-F4 (or whatever keystroke your OS uses) to close the popup window. So far, that cannot be spoofed (far as I know, anyway).
    • I bought an X10 camera only days before I got my first pop-under ad from them. It was cheap, and what their camera was, it was exactally what I wanted. Too bad no one ever told me that the wireless camera REQUIRES AN AC ADAPTER FOR POWER. What a joke. And the quality was worse than the snaps I get on my $2.99 320x240 digital camera, with poor reception to boot.
    • My uncle bought one. At the time, he was making a ton of money and bought anything he thought might have been useful.

      I hated the ads but almost bought one because they are cool. I had lots of dirty ideas, but would legitimately like one to monitor my car in my apartment complex garage.

    • I seem to remember that even though Google was much talked about in 2000, it had yet to become the preminent search engine it is today.

      Remember that Google was the preeminent search engine (as far as effectiveness) for over a year before it left "beta" status--it had supplanted Altavista and Lycos well before then among the technically sophisticated. And then note that Google dropped the "beta" label in September of 1999. By then it was clearly the market leader technologically and possibly the leader by
  • I wouldn't be surprised if pop-up blocking browsers also helped end the era of pop-up ads. Personally, I didn't know pop-ups were dying. I've been using Galeon and Firefox, often thru a personal filtering proxy, so I never saw many pop-ups.

  • I like google as much as the next guy... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:46AM (#14081438) Homepage
    ...but what a stretch. Even Hemos notes it:

    I'd actually that while the text ads had something to do with it, the massive growth in pop-up/under blockers made a large difference as well.

    ( ignoring missing words and all. I have no room to talk in that dept )

    Can we please attribute things to where they belong? google may be the second coming of Christ, who knows, but let's try to keep their achievements realistic.
    • Pop up blockers have nothing to do with the reduction of in-page (ie, non-popup) flash ads and the like. I do believe that, for the most part, these have been declining as well. I think this can be attributed at least in part to Google's push for text ads.

    • Re:I like google as much as the next guy... (Score:5, Informative)

      by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Monday November 21, 2005 @11:00AM (#14081546)
      google may be the second coming of Christ, who knows, but let's try to keep their achievements realistic.

      Their achievements are all they are cracked up to be. They started with basically nothing, used Linux, redefined searching as we know it, AND were able to be advertiser supported with very unobtrusive ads. I'm not talking about their popup ads don't popup other ads, I'm not talking about not so annoying animated gifs. I'm not talking about not so annoying flash ads. They use all text based ads that are effective and not thrown in our face like billboards, or product placement ads in movies, just simple text ads that are often less than 10 words.

      Oh, and to my knowledge, google does no direct advertising themselves. A real product doesn't need to.

      I think we all owe them a good thank you, and I wish other companies would learn from their success.
      • And for all of that, if it weren't for pop up blockers, we'd still have them on every page. In fact, I would say they would be so acceptable that slashdot would have them on every page.

        I'm not dismissing google's achievements, I am simply saying they should not get more credit than they deserve.

        Oh, and the bit about real products not needing advertising: Don't be silly. If I make a widget that does x better than everyone else but I tell no one about it, how is that widget going to gain popularity?

        They si
        • "Oh, and the bit about real products not needing advertising: Don't be silly. If I make a widget that does x better than everyone else but I tell no one about it, how is that widget going to gain popularity?"

          Ever heard of word-of-mouth? Yes, it IS a form of advertising, but not one that the company itself participates in. (Usually, sometimes companies like Microsoft use astroturf campaigns, Google has not so far.)

          Hell, Google gets basically free product placement on some TV shows and in some movies, altho

  • Pop-up ads are coming back (Score:5, Interesting)

    by davidwr ( 791652 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:47AM (#14081442) Homepage Journal
    Lately thanks to animation-plugins and other technologies, I've seen a rash of annoying pop-up and "peel-back" ads. Anything that covers existing content without me explicly asking it to do so is by definition annoying.

    I'm waiting for someone who has the skill to update Firefox so plugins cannot overwrite areas of the screen already used by text and graphics. Either that or put in white space for the part of the screen the ad will eventually take over, so the ad doesn't obscure the real content.
    • I hear you on that one. tek-tips.com does it, which is where I find myself a lot when I search for various web development bugs, and tsn.ca, (Canadian sports news site) also does it, which made me start using nhl.com instead (since I only read hockey news anyway.)
    • Flashblock !!

      The second greatest plugin for Firefox, Adblock being the first
    • I've seen a rash of annoying pop-up and "peel-back" ads. Anything that covers existing content without me explicly asking it to do so is by definition annoying.

      AdBlock [mozilla.org].

      Google ads are some of the few I don't block: They aren't annoying, in fact, sometimes they're even interresting.

      But anything that flashes, moves, makes sound, pops up or under, or worse: Loads VIDEO in a banner, freezing my browser and all it's tabs while doing so, is blocked. That last one is what pushed me over the ethical conundrum of wan

  • Google doing banners too (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jaiyen ( 821972 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:48AM (#14081458)
    Interestingly, if you're an Adsense publisher nowadays there's a lot more options for banners and graphical ads for what used to be a text only scheme. The banners seem to get a reasonable CTR too.

    I think what killed the old style banner ad was not so much text ads, but the fact that the Google text ads were well targeted compared to the moronic "hit the monkey!!" banner ads. I know many ad publishers also became annoyed at the banner ads which seem specifically designed to get a low click-through rate, thereby getting maximum branding exposure for the advertiser at minimum cost. I reckon any ad publisher is forever grateful to Google for revolutionising this system.
    • So obviously you haven't seen the ads now-a-days where they say something along the lines of "do X" (e.g. shoot the watermelon, knock out Osama, hit the mailbox) and "get a free Y* participation in our spam marketing promotions required"

  • Crazy pop-up/under ad blitz is alive and well... (Score:4, Informative)

    by httpamphibio.us ( 579491 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:49AM (#14081462)
    Maybe for the big corporate sites. But massively invasive advertising is alive and well.

    Turn off your pop-up blocker, turn on flash and check out PWInsider [pwinsider.com] for a great example. If you have access to a Windows box check it out with IE, it's mind boggling...

    Obviously, they are including tons of ads not for the purpose of gaining ad revenue as much as they are including tons of them to get people to buy a membership.

  • Capitalism at work? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by altoz ( 653655 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:49AM (#14081464)
    Let's not forget why text ads and pop-up blockers became popular in the first place... People demanded it! I don't know a single person that likes intrusive advertising like the pop-unders and the flash animations that come on top of everything else. What the google ads show is what everyone should have known before... The internet is a place where people come looking for you, and when that's the case, you don't need loud, fancy graphics, you only need enough information for them to identify your product (text).
    • Right on. Intrusive advertising makes me a lot less likely to a) buy the product or even b) return to the website that had the intrusive ad. I had been using GAIM and just for kicks I decided to download the new version of AIM the other day to see if they had actually added anything useful to it. Well, to make a short story shorter, they hadn't. Even worse, while chatting with a friend, harry potter flew out of my buddy list on a broomstick. Scared the shit out of me. I quickly closed AIM and reopened
    • you don't need loud, fancy graphics, you only need enough information for them to identify your product (text)

      I think there are still alot of people around that 'prefer' (or, are tempted more) to click on those silly animated banners, than the text-ones by Google though.

    • Let's not forget why text ads and pop-up blockers became popular in the first place... People demanded it!

      I think it would be fair to say that the Slashdot crowd as a whole has always had higher average bandwidth access than the masses. This difference probably is much more narrow compared to a couple of years ago.

      People did demand those blockers and my customers seemed to not be so much bothered by the fact of the ads themselves, it was the nightmare of navigating the web at 28-56K and often downl

  • I couldn't use text ads (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MindStalker ( 22827 ) <mindstalker@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:49AM (#14081465) Journal
    I remember in the early days of the bot com boom I worked at a startup where we would host websites for free in exchange for the right to add unobtrusive text advertisements. Strangly while many people were interested in having us host their sites, NO advertisers would make a deal with us. They insisted on banner or popup ads only.
    • dot com boom even. And worked was a bit of a stretch.. wasted my time is a better term I guess.
    • NO advertisers would make a deal with us. They insisted on banner or popup ads only.

      There's this myth that there is no such thing as bad publicity.

      Clearly, the publicist that came up with that one must be worshipped by his peers, but frankly, there are a number of businesses that will never get a dime of my money because they believed that lie, and they harassed me with bad publicity.

  • Other ad annoyances (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:50AM (#14081474) Journal
    ...and how it is largely responsible for the demise of the odious pop-under ad.
    Good! Perhaps they can help us get rid of other annoying ads, such as eye-wrenching Flash animations, or innocent-looking ads that play a sound when you roll the mouse over them. Some of those are bad enough to give you a heart attack if you have the sound turned way up.

  • Not just Google (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lheal ( 86013 ) <lheal1999NO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:50AM (#14081475) Journal
    Maybe Google had some effect, but I think they were just part of the more general backlash against such ads.

    Nobody but the parasuits liked them. Everyone savvy enough to know how to turn them off did so. I'd wager some people even quit web browsing over them.

    Google didn't want them because 1) they slurp bandwidth and B) they can't be tracked for content and $) because they don't fit the Google "no evil" culture.

    Those reasons pretty much coincide with how the rest of us saw them, too. Except for the pervs, that is. (Camera to spy on wife in shower? Ooh, baby!)
    • You need a camera to spy on your wife in the shower? I think most happy couples can just use eyeballs....
    • I just finished reading the comments on this article and I wasn't planning to add one. So I closed my browser window and was greeted with the cheery flickering of a "refinance your mortgage" popup ad.

      Then I closed the Refinance Your Mortgage popup ad and it was magically replaced by a "NHL Lightning versus Flyers" popup ad.

      So I guess they're not quite as dead as this article tells us.

      I'm a Mac user, so this wasn't spyware.

      I don't use a popup blocker because I want the sites we visit to be able to gain legi

    • Re:Not just Google (Score:3, Interesting)

      by erice ( 13380 )
      Google didn't want them because 1) they slurp bandwidth and B) they can't be tracked for content and $) because they don't fit the Google "no evil" culture.

      Sort of. When Google started, it was a graduate research project. At that time, the commercial search engines were inudated with graphical ads and were quite slow because of it. Google didn't have any ads and, as largely because of that, was much more responsive. A lot of people really liked that. Google remained ad free long after it became a compan

  • Text ads work (Score:5, Funny)

    by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:52AM (#14081483)
    And these text ads are oh-so-effective. Entering "fusion reactors" on Google gets a sponsored link

    Fusion Reactors
    Looking for Fusion Reactors?
    Find exactly what you want today
    www.eBay.com

  • but check some stats (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tehwebguy ( 860335 )
    I'd actually argue that while the text ads had something to do with it, the massive growth in pop-up/under blockers made as much of a difference, if not even more.

    but i'm pretty that annoying ads, even tricky pop-under ones, never had the kind of click % that google ads to.

  • Tamed? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DigitalWar ( 864198 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:59AM (#14081542) Homepage
    I wouldn't say internet ads have been tamed. Sure there are less popups and popunders. But whatabout all the new ones which cover the page (Fox is a major offender here), or noisy ads (I don't know if America got subjected to the jamster ads much).
    • But whatabout all the new ones which cover the page (Fox is a major offender here), or noisy ads

      Block them, and write to the website operator to let them what you are blocking and why.

      When I do so, I make a point to mention that I still see the google text ads, since they don't SCREECH in my ears or get in the way of what I'm trying to read.

      The behaviour of these ads would get you punched in the face if you did it in person, do it on the web and you get blocked. Deal. (you might want to be more polite, les
  • But X10's upskirtings and downblousings were NOT. Where is the justice?

  • Kompressor (Score:2, Funny)

    by parasonic ( 699907 )
    This brings back some fond memories of a song that I once heard by Kompressor about the said X10 popups...

    girl is naked, take a movie
    girl is looking, picture cutie
    you buy thing from pop up banner
    you get wallet, purchase camera

    we must destroy x10, we must destroy all internet ads
    we must destroy x10, we must destroy all internet ads

    window pop up on the screen
    taking control of my machine
    making all internet user insane
    x10 profit goes down the drain

    girl is naked, take a movie
    girl is looking, pi
  • I use Firefox which has a built in pop-up blocker, I rarely see pop-up ads, but recently they've started to show up more often. The arms race is still going on. I just upgraded to FF 1.5RC3 because I hope it does a better job of blocking this new kind of pop-ups. At this point the advertisers know that users despise these tactics, but some are still willing to keep up with the war. So I do my part and use Flashblock and Adblock all other ads on sight. If the sites go under due to lack of funds, so be it; I'
    • I use Firefox which has a built in pop-up blocker, I rarely see pop-up ads, but recently they've started to show up more often. The arms race is still going on. I just upgraded to FF 1.5RC3 because I hope it does a better job of blocking this new kind of pop-ups. At this point the advertisers know that users despise these tactics, but some are still willing to keep up with the war. So I do my part and use Flashblock and Adblock all other ads on sight. If the sites go under due to lack of funds, so be it; I'

  • Adblock (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DrJAKing ( 94556 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @11:11AM (#14081615)
    Are there adverts on the internet then? WTF...

    True enough though, for a while I couldn't be bothered to filter Google's ads. Nowadays I find RIP and CustomizeGoogle keep the interface nice and clean.

    Useful links for those that like to make their own mind up:

    http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ [mozilla.org]
    http://www.customizegoogle.com/ [customizegoogle.com]
    http://rip.mozdev.org/index.html [mozdev.org]
    http://adblock.mozdev.org/ [mozdev.org]
    http://www.pierceive.com/ [pierceive.com]

    And for those that might bleat "without advertising, many sites would fail" I say Good. Let those sites fail. Give me micropayments and an honest relationship.

    • Re:Adblock (Score:5, Interesting)

      by meringuoid ( 568297 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @11:59AM (#14081963)
      And for those that might bleat "without advertising, many sites would fail" I say Good. Let those sites fail.

      Actually, you don't really have to care.

      You're in a Prisoner's Dilemma situation with everyone else visiting those sites. You may choose to block, or not to block.

      If you block, and everyone else blocks, you don't get bothered by ads, and the site soon fails. Bad.
      If you don't block, and everyone else blocks, you get bothered by ads, and the site STILL fails. Awful.
      If you don't block, and nobody else blocks, you get bothered by ads, and the site survives. Good.
      If you block, and nobody else blocks, you don't get bothered by ads, and the site survives. Great!

      Now, since Everyone Else will make their own choices, and you cannot significantly influence them in that choice, you might as well please yourself. You may therefore block ads with a clear conscience.

      • Re:Adblock (Score:4, Insightful)

        by damiam ( 409504 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @05:19PM (#14085050)
        If you shoplift, and everyone else shoplifts, you get free stuff, but the store soon fails. Bad.
        If you don't shoplift, and everyone else shoplift, you spend a lot of money, and the store STILL fails. Awful.
        If you don't shoplift, and nobody else shoplift, you spend money, and the store survives. Good.
        If you shoplift, and nobody else shoplifts, you get free stuff, and the store survives. Great!

        Before anyone gets all pissy, I'm not trying to equate adblocking with theft, morally speaking. But the cause/effect situation is similar. One person shoplifting is not going to significantly affect the bottom line of a business, and will probably not cause prices to go up. But that doesn't mean shoplifting is OK. This is where the tragedy of the commons comes in - if we all block ads/shoplift/let our cattle graze on the commons, then there will be nothing left for anyone and we all lose. That's the flaw in your argument - just because you have a small impact doesn't mean you have no impact.

  • Pop-up/under blockers are only so effective. The can, no matter what, be circumvented -- and often are.

    How many times have you clicked on a link in a site to have a pop-up appear? Legit? Not? You have the option to approve every single freak'n time... or just use the block-on-load/close blockers (Opera has the options 'unwanted' which will only open pops when you click on a link or a button, I don't know about others).

    The decrease in the attempts to utilize these more obviously invasive ads comes from somew
  • Adsense text ads are just more pervasive because of a broader publishing network.
    I almost dread the pop up blocker functionality, it just made the approach for direct sell advertisers get that much more insidious, with splash ad pages and ads that fly around within the content of a page. That's alot more annoying to me than being able to just click out a window....

  • What's that, a Google PR stunt? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lazy Jones ( 8403 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @11:21AM (#14081685) Homepage Journal
    Everyone who is using AdWords knows that Google introduced standard (graphical) banners in skyscraper format a while ago... The only reason why text ads became so popular is that AdSense was made available in a very simple way to many small web sites that would have a hard time finding paying advertisers otherwise (and of course Google's popularity helped too).
  • Google Ads made it possible to target advertising dollars in a way marketing managers could only dream of before. Text ads provide pinpoint market segmentation to advertisers, and was probably a strategic move do avoid higher bandwidth costs associated with Images. Once Google lights up their dark fibre, watch for an increase in Google Banners by companies looking for brand recognition rather than sales. Those like x10 (maybe your favorite VOIP company)who have no focus and listen to their ad agencies blow
  • My experience might be a bit different, but it was Firefox's unobtrusive addition of a Pop Up Blocker that was the single most important change between the bad old days and now.

    Why? the Netscape browser was dying, IE Version whatever was the buggy, proprietary, virus-target of the day only other thing out there, and because MS is also in the advertising game via MSN, etc., they weren't about to give users the ability to turn off a specific class of advertisements without making it odious.

    Then Firefox declares war via pop-up blocker, and within a short time the early adopters (who are really the most important predictor of future technological trends, methinks) were moving in droves away from IE, and I don't think I was more than a few days behind them.

    Same time, Google's model saves me bandwidth and eye strain, and --ka- boom!!-- between the two the 'Net returned to being a useful tool with one tenth the amount of pain.

  • Everyone can earn money (Score:2, Interesting)

    by vivekg ( 795441 )
    Another reason is Google ads are related to what your visitors are looking for on your site, it makes more sense to visitor to click on it. I do not think so before Google any one offered ads where any one could sign in to Adsense and earn money. So it is like small publisher grows with money and google makes more money.

    But hold on Google Adsens offers Onsite Advertiser option too i.e. If some one likes your site they might able to advertises it via Google Adwords program. It is an extension of Google site

  • Money (Score:3, Insightful)

    by trollable ( 928694 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @11:30AM (#14081751) Homepage
    There is no moral here, people go for what works. For the webmasters (hosting the ads), AdSense text ads means more money because these ads are targeted and received more clicks. They are also less annoying. For the advertisers, text ads means less money because these ads are targeted and received only valuable clicks. They are also quite well perceived. So I would say the decline of popups is not due to text ads but to *targeted* and *less* intrusive ads. BTW, popups (being for ads or not) are considered something bad (in terms of ergonomy).
  • The individual components of Google's success had been tried with for several years. But it was their combination, especially with the best search engine to date that revived internet advertising.

    There were countless IPO prospectuses in the 1998-2000 touting how internet advertising was going to make them lots of money. But most of these failed because they were "before their time" or the wrong mix of components.

  • More invasive (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BenjyD ( 316700 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @11:33AM (#14081778)
    Many sites have even more invasive ads now that everyone is using pop-up blockers. Things like the annoying paid links (double underlined) with huge tooltips inserted in the middle of articles, dhtml pop-overs, "infomercial" style text ads in the middle of articles.

    There was some research done recently showing that the sheer number of (non-internet) adverts we see every day has just caused people to develop better ways of filtering them out.
  • "in mid-2001, X10's company Web site was the fourth-most visited"

    Hmm, I may have been "benchmarking" their web server around that time.
  • I'd actually argue that while the text ads had something to do with it, the massive growth in pop-up/under blockers made as much of a difference, if not even more.

    I'd guess that far more users are met with Google text ads than the users of MSN Toolbar + the ~10% users of non-IE.
  • I never intentionally clicked a banner AD but I frequenty click on Google's sponsor links because they are often exactly what I'm looking for.
  • Sortof on topic :

    Lately I am getting loads of pop-unders in Firefox, whereas before(let's say, two months ago) they were never there: Anyone knows a solution to this (besides turning off Flash and Javascript) ?

    • Anyone knows a solution to this (besides turning off Flash and Javascript)?

      1. Install FlashBlock [mozdev.org] -- no need to fully disable Flash.
      2. Open up your about:config and add a new value as per this page [petebevin.com] -- prevents plugin popups.

      I think I've seen only one popup-ad in the last 3 months.

  • who can't remember that lovely triangle guy [proxomitron.info]?

    There were proxomitron filters for geocities, xoom, etc. Too bad the author died and never released the code. I still miss the alter-headers feature where I could change the outgoing HTTP headers.
  • ``I'd actually argue that while the text ads had something to do with it, the massive growth in pop-up/under blockers made as much of a difference, if not even more.''

    How common are pop-up/under blockers, really? For the longest time, MSIE didn't have them, and I'm sure there are still many users who run versions of MSIE that don't have ad blockers. Sure, you can get them third party, but none of the people I know who haven't taken the step to axe MSIE have taken the step to install an ad blocker (or a tabb
  • FasterFox, a network optimization extension for FireFox not only improves the performance of the browser but also helps block some ads. Its can block adds that use Macromedia popups which are designed to bypass standard pupup blockers.

    Don't know if this stops X10's ads or not but you can try it.

  • Google's impact was very important (Score:3, Informative)

    by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Monday November 21, 2005 @12:43PM (#14082430) Homepage Journal
    As others have noted, Google didn't cause the radical diminishing of obnoxious ads all by themselves, but their role was very important. At a time when other search engines were still stuck on the "throw as much at the user as possible" model, which was intended to make search engines "sticky" destinations, Google went with a clean, user-centered interface.

    Their emphasis on the user was applied to ads as well. They recognized that text ads are less visually intrusive than image ads. So their refusal to allow banner ads in their results was great for users. But the real importance of this move was made important when advertisers began migrating to Google in droves. They discovered that text ads actually provide better long-term results than banner ads. Google forced advertisers to examine an approach web interface experts had been advocating for some time.

    Yes, all this excitement about Google's role seems like deification, but Google really did change the landscape. They did it with a user-centered approach, which the prevailing players at the time simply did not have. Whether Google will continue to keep the interests of its users in mind is an open question, but their advertising model has radically altered the playing field in a good way.

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