Consumer Ad Blocking Doubles

Dotnaught writes to tell us about an InformationWeek article reporting that, according to a Forrester Research report, consumers are fed up with ads. From the article: "In the past two years, the number of consumers using pop-up blockers and spam filters has more than doubled.. More than half of all American households now report using these ad blocking technologies to block unwanted pitches... Today, 15% of consumers acknowledge using their digital video recorders to skip ads, more than three times as many as in 2004." The study would have been more meaningful if it hadn't conflated spam blocking with ad blocking.

Re:DVR FF animation in future?

[Gordonjcp]

TV ad producers have been doing this for a while - advert spots that only look right when you fast-forward past them. They were fairly common on ITV and Channel 4 in the UK for a while in the 80s, but seem to have fallen out of fashion.

Re:What?

[gad_zuki!]

>What _are_ these "ads" people are talking about?

Edit your hosts file. [everythingisnt.com] The "ads" are the empty boxes you used to see blinky annoying things in.

Re:DVR FF animation in future?

[Surt]

This is already being done. Some of the lesser cable channels are starting to do this to try to cross advertise their shows. The problem is, I can't imagine how painful it must be for someone without a DVR.

Re:spam or not, it's all bad

[XMunkki]

Well I guess the actual point is that if you pay $140 a month, none of that goes to the content providers. As a web master, every hit I get costs me something. Of course it's not that much and I'm not that scared (and even want hits), but the cost is on the receiving end (of the query). If none of the pages you view were free, you'd soon stop using the internet or at the very least you'd contend that your $140 is not getting you enough.

And it is quite possible that you have your own website as well. Imagine it getting enough exposure. You surely would be got hit by a bill to pay for the traffic. So as you see, it's not enough if you personally pay for something. It's every deliverer, ISP and so on who need to fork up the cash to bring you the service you so enjoy.

Re:More than that

[Ididerus]

Please explain, what is this gold class? Never seen that here in NY.

But in reality? You pay MORE for your movies? Save that money and buy yourself a decent home theater setup. I know its a little more outlay, but I can get smashed off cheap (but so much better) drinks and not have to drive anywhere except into the pillow.

Re:Any flash-restrictors?

[moheezy]

If you're using firefox, you must get Flash Block. If I didn't have flashblock to block all the annoying advertisements, I'd go insane.

Linky: http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ [mozdev.org]

Re:And I thought...

[Reality Master 101]

Really? Then why does it cost more to get more channels? If your assertion is true, then it should cost the same no matter how many channels your cable box is authorized to decrypt.

Because 1) some amount of your cable bill does go to the stations (as I already said), and 2) because they can.

There's the same quantity of ads on cable as there is on broadcast TV.

Actually, no, there isn't. There are lots of channels that are commercial free -- mostly the ones that have very low production costs (for example, the Boomerang channel just runs old cartoons). How many broadcast channels are completely commercial free? That would be zero. (And no, PBS isn't commercial free -- they just call their commercials "pleas for donations", along with their corporate sponsorships).

Re:And I thought...

[MyNymWasTaken]

The cable company pays access fee to the content providers (i.e. the channels), so offering more channels = paying more fees = charging a high rate. The content providers supplement the usage revenue with advertising revenue exactly like print magazines do.

Whining about it shows a rather significant economic illiteracy.

Re:And I thought...

[ross.w]

You're in the wrong country.

The ABC here in Oz doesn't have ads (at least never in the middle of programs, and in between shows only to promote their other shows)

Same with the BBC in the UK, except here in Australia we don't have the licencing system. Problem with that is the Govco here cuts the ABC's budget whenever they say something it doesn't like. Can't do that to the BBC.

Re:spam or not, it's all bad

[dgatwood]

There are two types of stores: specialty stores that sell good products in a very narrow area and general stores that sell cheap products in a wide variety of areas. The specialty stores are few and far between, and mostly seem to exist in areas like furniture, fabrics, clothing, bicycles... mostly higher priced products that are not electronic in nature, though fabric succeeds as a specialty store because there are so many different types that it isn't practical for a general purpose store to cover it thoroughly. For those specialized areas, you will usually get a better product in those specialty shops if you're willing to pay the premium. It depends on whether the quality of that particular product matters to you or not.

Outside of those very specialized areas, though, Wal-Mart pretty much just sells the same stuff as every other place. They have different model numbers on electronics in many cases to make it harder to do price comparisons, but if you go down the feature lists, you can pretty easily map things to Sears and CostCo. Ditto for other sections of the store. Hand tools are pretty much the same brands and products at Wal-Mart, Sears, and Home Depot, though I'm sure there are a few products here and there that don't overlap. Medicines are made by the same companies no matter where they're sold. Food products still come from the same manufacturers. Kitchen utensils are often branded differently, but still are usually manufactured by one of a handful of companies.

Heck, AFAIK, even the Wal-Mart house brands are generally manufactured by a small number of companies that manufacture house brand merchandise for dozens of stores. About the only thing I can think of where Wal-Mart has a significantly different array of manufacturers than other stores is clothing, but even there, you'll find a fairly significant overlap. I guess maybe some of that stuff along the back wall... furniture, fabrics, picture frames... but even there, I haven't seen a huge difference in manufacturers unless you go to a store that specializes in that particular type of product.

So basically, by avoiding Wal-Mart, you're still getting junk, but you're paying more for it (albeit possibly with a different brand label). :-)

/etc/hosts

[kent.dickey]

Edit your /etc/hosts (works on Mac or Linux), add:

127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net

and 90% of all annoying ads disappear! If you run across another site feeding annoying ads, just add a line redirecting it to 127.0.0.1.

I usually don't mind ads (I just ignore them), but when they started the large-pop-up-when-you-mouseover stuff, then they get perma-banned.

Re:How is this a new thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

We generally call that compression. The max level stays unchanged, but the min level is brought right up so that it might be as little as 3dB lower - net result is that the apparent loudness hugely increases. They do it to evertything these days - I had the misfortune to listen to Coldplay's last album and it was appallingly compressed. Makes the songs easier to hear in a factory, but VERY tiring to listen to on headphones or in a quiet room.