Consumer Ad Blocking Doubles 379
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.
How is this a new thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this a new thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
What consumer cares at all about ads? We don't, it's the sellers that care about ads not the buyers.
I care about ads. There's a reason they used to say (and sometimes still do), "and now an ad from our sponsor". The ads are SPONSORING the program! Somebody has to pay the bills. I'm not saying I never skip ads, but I definitely don't feel intruded upon.
And I thought... (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh -- not enough millions of dollars that way. I have to pay AND watch ads. I'm SOO sad for the Comcast &c CEOs.
Re:And I thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
And here I thought I was actually PAYING for cable. What WAS I thinking.
You're not thinking, that's the problem. Your cable bill is paying for ACCESS, not for the production of all the content. Do you think your ISP bill pays for production of all web sites on the Internet? Now, some channels can survive on the puny amount of money they're paid, but it certainly is not going to pay for everything.
Re:And I thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Also, who pays for ACCESS to broadcast stations? There's the same quantity of ads on cable as there is on broadcast TV.
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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 e
Re:And I thought... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Whining about it shows a rather significant economic illiteracy.
Re:And I thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
Access, as in access to the content. You want SciFi's content, you have to pay SciFi to access their content. That's why it costs more if you have more channels.
Actually, I believe cable operators have to pay the stations in order to broadcast their content. They can't just stick up their own antenna and funnel that to their subscribers.
Also, arguably, you're paying for the convenience of accessing broadcast stations over cable with great reception. Remember one of the complaints about satellite was/is that you can't get your "local stations" so you still need an antenna.
By the way, the reason there are ads on basic cable stations is that they wouldn't sell enough subscriptions at a price that would make it worthwhile. How much does HBO charge? $9.95/mo? $12.95/mo? Would enough people pay $9.95/mo for, say, commercial-free Sci-Fi channel to make it worthwhile?
Re:And I thought... (Score:5, Interesting)
Would enough people pay $9.95/mo for, say, commercial-free Sci-Fi channel to make it worthwhile?
I would, so long as it didn't require continuing to pay $39.99 for 400 channels of crap just to get Sci-Fi Channel, USA, and a decent feed of local channels. Oh, and Cartoon Network and Disney. $5 for local channels + $10 each comes out to spending $5 more than I'm paying now without all the junk and without all the commercials. You bet your @$$, I'd do that.
Would I pay $40 in addition to my current bill? Hell, no. And that's precisely why we won't ever see those stations in an ad-free fashion until the majority of content is obtained by direct download rather than broadcast/satellite (which is already well on its way to becoming a reality).
Re:And I thought... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And I thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
DVD's with unskippable commercials, do you think those are really subsidizing the industry?
The fact is, while a certain part subsidizes the industry, the rest is just pure greed and power trips on the part of the corps. They can force-feed you ads, and most people will choose to accept them, so they do so. Again the reference to decreased ad content in movies, because if people show they're fed up enough to drop the service entirely, it might actually get cleaned up for awhile.
Re:And I thought... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just to point out that you also get 30 mins of marketing crap before the movie starts too... rest assured that money doesn't go the theater, it's another way for movie companies to squeeze more revenues out of the movie.
We honestly have every right to try to avoid the marketing crap thrown at us. It's our choice what we see and what we don't see. If the marketing companies had their way, the advertisements would be on the inside of our eyelids.
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But there's more to the tragedy of the addition of commercial ads on cable TV. There's the drop in broadcast power as well! That's the REAL bitch of the problem. Just having local channels and news would be plenty good enough for me a
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There is a difference between basic cable (sci-fi channel, the food network, comedy central, etc...) and premium cable (HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, etc...). One is subsidized by advertising while the other is more expensive and is external ad (i.e. they still promote themselves) free.
Re:And I thought... (Score:5, Interesting)
I just don't re-sub to them. Recently subscribed to several National Geographic publications and found that they contained so much advertisement that they weren't worth even the deeply discounted rates they offered to resubscribe.
Tear 'em out (Score:5, Insightful)
I realized after I posted, however, that I should have also noted that I am only *really* bothered by annoying or super-frequent ads. Popup blockers and ad blockers were developed AFTER the audience was over-inundated with advertisement. If they had just kept things at a reasonable level, we'd still be watching the ads instead of blocking them. But they get more and more greedy and have to fit "just one more" ad in.
Re:Magazine Ads, or why those ads WORK (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly. I too get Vanity Fair - and the only ads I tear out are most of the perfume ones (cause it stinks up my room with so many).
But most of the ads are quite informative, not too disruptive, and sometimes better than the rest of the magazine (especially some
Re:How is this a new thing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Without these sponsors paying for garbage ads, maybe we get some decent content that doesn't cost 8-digts for 20 minutes.
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That's why friends episodes cost nearly $10 million each to make. 6 Actors each getting $1.5 million to produce 20 minutes of content. Without these sponsors paying for garbage ads, maybe we get some decent content that doesn't cost 8-digts for 20 minutes.
The program makes that much money because a LOT of people like the show. Who cares that you don't like it? The point is that money is there, so who should make it? The producers? Quite often it's the actors that people tune into see. Personally, I don'
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Wrong. The program costs that much money to make so that a LOT of people WILL like the show. Advertising, hiring writers capable of keeping in line with heavily-researched viewer desires, and the competitive market for photogenic actors who can forge an illusory "connection" with the viewer make major television production an expensive business all around. Indeed, the costs are elevated by the need to recover money sunk into ter [wikipedia.org]
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Also Jennifer Aniston was the only photogenic actor in Friends.
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If focus groups were the answer we would have a lot more good television shows.
The truth is 70% of what they put out fails/is cancelled (including a lot of good stuff*)
Television was historically a *LIMITED* resource. Given a choice between a show that makes you 2 million in profits and another show that makes you 10 million in profits, and you can ONLY show one, you cancel the less profitable show.
Friends was LUCKY. Many many shows started. Due South is an excellent example o
Re:How is this a new thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as crap on the Internet... Firefox 2, Adblock Plus, the list found at http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/ [yoyo.org], and on my mail server, milter-greylist, SpamHaus RBL, and SpamAssassin with a sensitivity threshhold of 1.0. (and a daily cron task that has SA learn my "Spam-Bin" folder on IMAP as spam). Oh, and ClamAV, too, to block viruses.
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Did you count how many items you listed there? I counted 7. You're willing to jump through SEVEN flaming hoops to avoid it. SEVEN.
That's a lot of hoops man. I personally really enjoy football (american, NFL) and even I am beginning to become unnerved by the ads. They squeeze them on-screen in-game. Commercials between PAT's and kickoffs. Then back to commercial before the first play of the drive. WTF?
It's very, VERY distracting.
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That's because the FCC authorized the average volume of advertising can equal the peak volume of any given show (up to a max predetermined level). The louder the show, the louder the advertising. It is a constant race.
Phillips made a TV that "auto-mutes" advertising (SmartMute(TM) it is called). My neighbor has one an
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Yes. And if the ads no longer pull in enough money to pay the bills, it's not the fault of the public. There's no natural law stating that, say, the TV advertising market will always be big enough to support the kind of high-budget programming you're getting at the moment.
People think of this backwards, seeing themselves as the consumers. They aren't. Mass media companies are selling eyeballs to other companies to advertise for, and all the T
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The cost of those ads are being added to the products you consume. In the end you are still paying the bills.
Re:How is this a new thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
My daughter has lived pretty much AD free for a long time now. I use privoxy at home so no ad's come throughthe net, we only watch PVR Tv so ad's get skipped and she listens to only her ipod or sirius in the car. Our DVD player is a cheapo lite-on that is hackable to remove the must watch restrictions on DVD's. so she can press stop-stop-play to start the movie right away or simply press menu to skip the warnings and ad's.
when she goes to a friends or relatives house she cant stand how their TV has unskippable ad's or that they cant skip the junk at the beginning of the DVD, or that the internet is full of annoying ad's.
My wife and I also notice this in ourselves. Advertisments annoy us enough to swich off the cource the momen they start if we cant skip them.
Today advertising is getting even more annoying. we stopped PVR'ing anything on Spike-TV network as their damned blipverts in the show do nothing but ruin it. More networks are going to this and more shows are no longer watched because of it in our home. This is what people are seeing, Advertising is no longer an annoyance it's getting downright rude.
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Re:How is this a new thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. It's a death spiral. The more intrusive the advertising, the more consumers will rebel against it, which causes the advertisers to try to be more intrusive to get around the circumvention, and all it does is succeed in annoying everyone. Pretty much the same as viruses and spam. I'm already at the point that I view reading email as a burden. If you want to reach me, IM is faster. When that becomes an ad-fest, I'll move to another medium, staying continually one step ahead of the advertisers.
As for TV, I'm just waiting until the last two or three of my favorite shows are available on the iTunes Store so I can cancel my DirecTV subscription. The math comes out about the same in price for the number of shows I watch regularly compared with a year's DirecTV subscription for three boxes, but with iTunes downloads, there are no commercials, no interruptions, no bugs in the corner of the screen, no sped-up closing credits... basically none of the annoying things that TV networks do to ruin the content.
If and when iTunes content becomes an ad-fest, there's always bittorrent... and if the ads get annoying enough, that's precisely where I'll end up. The surest way for the networks to ensure that they get no revenue at all is to take desperate, panicked steps to increase their revenue.
Re:How is this a new thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
The VERY NEXT COMMERCIAL was for ford pickup trucks, no kidding.
I took it as a sign and threw the damn tv out right away. Best thing i ever did.
And youre right, it has made me more sensitive to advertising, I cant bear commercial radio these days, and i would never even dream of going online without an ad blocker. Ive simply had enough. If i want your product i will seek it out, otherwise leave me the hell alone, the more you shove your shit in my face, the less i want it.
Ive found that nowadays advertising has opposite the intended effect on me. When i do see an ad for the latest movie/product it makes me want to avoid seeing/buying it. When im at the store i ALWAYS look for generic/always save/no-ad brand (yes there actually is a brand called no-ad, and it is my favorite precisely because they dont advertise)
So advertisers, when you pop up in front of me & say "buy X-brand widgets" what *I* hear is "stay the hell away from x-brand widgets, they suck balls"
When I block your ads, i'm doing you a favor.
And then people will stop subscribing (Score:3, Funny)
WTF IS HOMELAND SECURITY DOING AT MY DOOR!!111!#2!!@@!33!!
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Ad arms race (Score:3, Insightful)
As for TV, I'm just waiting until the last two or three of my favorite shows are available on the iTunes Store so I can cancel my DirecTV subscription.
We do sort of the same thing with Netflix. We're ready to drop HBO from our cable lineup. You might have an even better idea there. Download your shows and watch what you want, put an antenna up for local stations. DirecTV always manages to find a reason to raise our rates every year, Dish is worse.
But I'm wondering if the download shows won't start
Broken business models (Score:3)
Ironically, some of the worst channels here for excessive commercials are the cable channels. Much as I love so much of their programming, BBC Canada [bbccanada.com] is almost unwatchable live, so I record it and skip the ads. They do the right thing with some shows (e.g. Spooks [bbc.co.uk]), showing them uncut in an expanded time slot. Others they cut (e.g. Life on Mars [bbc.co.uk]), but I'm a regular customer of various U.K. DVD places and have a multi-system TV and multi-region DVD player.
In the U.K. the BBC is funded by license fees: in eff
Always has been (Score:5, Interesting)
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Of course, that only applies to TV right now, but expect it to creep into other forms of media.
adblocking ~= spam blocking (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you're making the mistake of granting online ads some special significance because they were paid for by mainstream operations, but re
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spam or not, it's all bad (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno. For me, and I suspect many people, there's very little difference between spam and non-spam advertising.
Re:spam or not, it's all bad (Score:4, Insightful)
However, non-spam advertising tends to cover (or help cover) the costs of whatever it is you're consuming (website, TV program, train ride), while spam is completely unsolicited (email spam, junk postal mail).
I guess you'd have to put billboards into the category, though I (unfortunately) don't see legislation against those popping up in a hurry.
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Google ads on the other hand are just a trade-off, that the consumers are mostly willing to live with, since they are not paying for the service (even though I actually filter ou
More than that (Score:2)
Re:More than that (Score:4, Insightful)
I have ranted about this many times. I will deal with ads on TV, websites, etc. But, I can not stand sitting through 5 car commericals, 4 perfume commericals and 6 soft drink commericals
ok
Re:More than that (Score:5, Insightful)
I love paying $9 per ticket, $20 for a drink and popcorn, sit in a theater with some jackass laughing with his friends the entire time, some baby crying, the guy in front of me who takes his shoes off, getting my sit back kicked non-stop ...
This is why I only ever see movies in gold class unless I'm taking the kids. In gold class you don't get any kids because everybody has to be old enough to legally drink alcohol, you don't get noisy chatter among a group of friends since it's priced out of range for the sort of people that do that, you won't get the feet in the back of your seat unless the person behind you is at about 12 feet tall since the seats are spaced far enough apart that this can't happen.
Re:More than that (Score:5, Interesting)
Please explain, what is this gold class? Never seen that here in NY.
It's a smaller cinema with 4 rows each with 6 seats arranged in pairs. The seats are much larger, more comfortable, and include recliners, footrests and a small table in the middle of each pair. They are arranged such that your view of the screen cannot be blocked by a tall person with big hair in the front, and you still have a good view in the back. They serve food and drinks (including alcohol) inside the cinema (you order before you go in and they bring it to you), and there are foods they serve in gold class they don't serve in the candy bar.
But in reality? You pay MORE for your movies?
Yep. Like I said, it's priced out of range of the annoying younger people who like to spoil movies.
Save that money and buy yourself a decent home theater setup.
This is not so effective for things not yet on DVD.
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I fail to see by which criteria TV ads are solicited.
Though I do welcome them every once in a while, when they enable me to take a leak without missing a bit of a lengthy movie.
Given a choice, I'd still get rid of them. Most of them are so annoying that they get on my "I won't buy this shit. Ever. Even if the competing product is cheaper." list.
If I want it, I'll look for it myself. See if I find any happy customers.
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Re:spam or not, it's all bad (Score:5, Funny)
You need to upgrade to DVR, friend. It enables you to take a shit without missing any of the film.
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Funny, my list is like your's except that mine is the "I won't buy this shit. Ever. Even if the competing product is costlier."
Same goes for WalMart and such. I finally was fed up with the overall quality sucking, so I've quit shopping there. It's not some altruistic reason like wages, Chinese labor, etc. just tired of the crap quality.
-nB
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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 tho
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Yes, because my $140 monthly cable/internet bill just doesn't seem to be enough...
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They don't, so why do you bring that up?
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And it is quite possible that you have your own website as well. Imagine
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Not anymore, at any rate. Vermont's banned them since 1968. [publicbroadcasting.net] They're apparently [wikipedia.org] illegal in three other states as well: Maine, Alaska, and Hawaii.
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What really baffles me is (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What really baffles me is (Score:5, Funny)
Your project will be called "Description of belief distribution dynamics over large time frames as a function of population dynamics: Is water wet?"
Your angle is the general question of how does the percentage of people holding a given general belief, obvious as it may seem, vary over time? Answering this very important question allows valuable insights both into likely distributions during significant historical events, for instance when Columbus set sail on the medium that some people may have believed to be wet and the likely distribution at any point in the future. In the specific case of "is water wet?", this information can be used comercially, for instance, by umbrella manufactures in order to better understand the dynamics of their market over time - if the percentage of people believing that water is wet is at a low point, this may reflect in a decline of umbrella sale.
The answer is to your question not obvious. At a minimum, to find it, you will need to:
1 Identify the number of people one year ago who did believe that water was wet
2 Identify how many of those have since died
3 Investigate whether babies are born with an innate belief about the state of water and if not, do they acquire this in their first year?
4 Identify the number of babies born in one year
5 Identify the number of people who have changed believe in the last year and optionally investigate why
6 Estimate the new number of people now believing water is wet based on 2-5 above
7 Calculate the percentage based on the current total world population
Once you have answered this basic question, you can go on to build a general predictive model of the evolution of this percentage over time, tie it in with commercial market research as described above and look for correlations with other trends in the population.
This is a significant workload - you will easily be able to argue for and get enough funding for yourself, 3 PhDs and a Post Doc if you spin this right. Remember, your project is interdisciplinary - it involves Sociology, Infant Psychology, Dynamical Systems and Marketing at a minimum. Interdisciplinary stuff is becoming quite trendy, so write Interdisciplinary Research Proposal in big letters onto your funding application - it can only help.
Re:What really baffles me is (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were an advertiser I'd be interested in how to get my ads to the consumer most effectively. Paying to know how often my ad is blocked seems reasonable.
It depends on what you plan on doing with the information as to whether or not the data is valuable. Sadly, most advertisers seem to focus way too much on how, and way to little on why, people block ads.
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What? (Score:5, Funny)
And I'm fed up with hearing about it and not knowing what it means. What _are_ these "ads" people are talking about?
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Re:What? (Score:4, Informative)
Edit your hosts file. [everythingisnt.com] The "ads" are the empty boxes you used to see blinky annoying things in.
Study on effectiveness over time (Score:5, Insightful)
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They want you to believe that their p
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DVR FF animation in future? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:DVR FF animation in future? (Score:5, Informative)
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81% of broadband users... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Broadband households have become even harder to reach: some 81% of those with high-speed Internet access employ pop-up blockers and spam filters."
It's not surprising, either. At one point, it was commonly recognized that computers belonged to the people that owned them, and that it was the responsibility of people writing software to make sure that the software was well-behaved and did what the user told the software to do-- except for deliberately malicious software. While I do not claim that all forms of advertising are malicious, it's becoming the case that websites using lots of pop-up or pop-under ads, or software like games using Massive's technology or other in-game ad-delivery mechanisms operate under the assumption that they are free to do things with the user's computer and consume networking resources to fetch and display content that the user didn't ask for and does not want.
I can tolerate ad-bars appearing on the right-hand side of a page, so long as most of the screen real-estate shows the actual content I want, but some sites do obnoxious and deceptive things like displaying an interstital ad first. My response to that is to copy the ad link into an email, and send a complaint off to both the webmaster of the site I was on, and the site holding the advertising, indicating that their ad was so annoying that I won't be returning to the offending site for at least one week, and that obviously they will be losing my eyeballs and ad impression revenue for that period of time.
It seems to have an effect, too. At least two of the newspapers I visit (the Boston Globe & the LA Times) have toyed with interstitial ads and have dropped them soon afterwards....
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This goes back and forth (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Ads styled to resemble the program they interrupt: this is common during the Daily Show, especially during the last commercial break.
2. Experienced DVR users note that the blank-screen pause length between shows and commercials is generally longer than that between two commercials. I've observed other people responding both consciously and unconsciously to this, unpausing shows quickly during that period of blackness. Who doesn't like being precise with the remote and avoiding the post-commercial rewind? I've noticed that some networks, for the greater part of this past year, put a longer pause between the second-to-last and last commercial. Usually, some of the ad's audio is played before the FF function is rapidly restored; sometimes, people will just sit through the ad. The fact that I've only seen this with this particular timing (it wouldn't make sense to do this between two early commercials, because the viewer's brain isn't cued up to unpause the DVR) is what leads me to suspect it as a deliberate ploy; perhaps some
Anyone noticed any more of these little tricks? If I was an advertiser in a market with a high proportion of people likely to use DVR, I'd try a 15-second, unchanging, large-text ad with voice-over to at least propagate the brand and slogan for a few seconds of FF time.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeadOn [wikipedia.org]
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Re:This goes back and forth (Score:4, Interesting)
Adult Swim on Cartoon Network seems to do the reverse (starting five minutes early)
If they are doing it intentionally, they're idiots, because people using DVRs aren't the only people who change channels on the hour boundaries. Some people watch shows on other channels that run right up to the hour marker, and then change the channel to discover that the new show they were watching has already started. (Or in your example, be forced to choose between watching the end of one show and the start of another one.)
Comedy Central seems to have perfected the art of getting the Daily Show to start at 11:00 sharp, while allowing it to run slightly over 11:30 and then having the Colbert Report run a minute after 12:00, cutting off the end for DVR users like me.
TV ads never used to bother me until I got my TiVo and discovered just how long they are. I've learned that if I wait 20 minutes after an hour-long show starts, I can watch the entire thing without commercials. 20 minutes of commercials for an hour long show! (OK, to be fair, it's closer to 18 minutes of commercials, but still - that's a pretty lousy signal to noise ratio.)
Firefox Adblock (Score:2)
Spam is another thing entirely. Some spam is advertisement
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DVR numbers (Score:2)
Wow... I wonder whether there happens to be three times more DVRs now? Weren't these people just using the fast forward button on their VCR before?
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I don't know what the data would suggest, but my anecdotal experience indicates otherwise. Everyone I hang out with uses DVR to avoid ads; none of these people were previously using their VCR for the same function. It probably is a matter of convenience; although I don't know anyone (I hope) who is befuddled by VCR programming, it is undeniably easier to use a DVR, connected as it is to the technology which lets the viewer fi
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Why I was forced to use AdBlock+ (Score:5, Insightful)
Then fancier moving ads came out (maybe some with bugs) and I found some used up most of my CPU cycles in firefox.
Eventually I had to install AdBlock+ so I could be sure that I could have 40 tabs open without cripling the browser.
Sure a fancy ad may only add a little overhead, but when you multiply that by 40 it adds up.
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I installed Firefox with Adblock and the Filterset G updater on my girlfriend's aging Mac laptop. Because without the adblocking, she couldn't even edit her MySpace page due to the overbearing animated advertising that appears all over that site. Her computer would just lock up from the load.
Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Then why post this here?
People don't buy DVRs just to skip ads (Score:5, Interesting)
The article could more correctly say that "people are fed up with ads" if it were showing that people are going out of their way to block them. Instead they're showing that a lot of people downloaded the Google toolbar and discovered that it also blocks ads, and a lot of people bought DVRs so they could watch shows whenever they want, and discovered they can also fast forward through commercials.
A better measure of people's "fed-upness" with ads would be keeping track of the increase in use of products like ad-block in Firefox, or see if there's a major increase in the use of products that block ads that cost money (far fewer people would use such a product, but a dramatic increase in usership could likely be extrapolated to the general attitude of a population).
When you use Wired you really have to block ads (Score:4, Interesting)
I got so fed up after yet another wired blog was covered over by their own paid advertising I started to block them, if they would have be un-obtrusive (for example google who I think do a good job in balancing the ads to be there but not in your face!) I wouldnt have bothered.
Until companies like Wired stomp on this practice rather than encouraging it they are going to be seen as just as much as (well not quite this bad) a pariah as companies such as zango.
Darren
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Count loyalty in (Score:4, Insightful)
Most webbies of today are free of charge, whereas the visitor has the right to objectively decide whether he or she wants to read it for free or not. I feel that if I browse a site and return to it as well, I also need to give the author something in return. It's all about loyalty and morale. You get something for free and should therefore give something back.
Some can argue that there are too many ads on the sites they visit. If this is true, there is likely a good alternative to that site, too. What better way to show that you're displeased than stop visiting the site?
The lack of interesting content is a problem too! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The lack of interesting content is a problem to (Score:3, Interesting)
It is interesting how using MythTV actually got me watching LESS TV. I would have thought it
Spam=Ad (Score:4, Insightful)
Are they not both advertisements customers don't wish to receive? And it's hard to argue website flash ads aren't as intrusive as advertising in my Inbox. As are the ads on TV shows that come over the speakers at twice the volume as the actual program.
Spam originated on Usenet, so to say that spam has to be sent solely via email is absurd.