Blocking ads

[action9000]

What I don't like is some company with millions of dollars launching a crappy product or service and pumping millions into advertising to turn a tidy profit.

*Cough* Playstation Move and Microsoft Kinect *Cough*

Excuse me.  

. So, LBTL and action, for all your talk about "evolving monetization", you offered no real suggestions as to what additional services content creators can supply that you would be willing to pay for. Why is that? I believe the answer is simple: they couldn't do enough to impress you enough to pay them.

You're right. In their current state, they don't make anything cool that I would be interested in purchasing from them. That doesn't mean they're incapable of producing something that I may be interested in purchasing. I simply mean that, at this moment, they don't offer anything I'm personally interested in purchasing.

Let's take the Angry Video Game Nerd and his website, Cinemassacre, as an example. I've been watching their material for countless years now, many of those years with adblock. I generally love the work they've done with AVGN, James and Mike Mondays, Board James, etc.

Do they offer anything for sale that I'd be willing to drop money on? No, I'm sorry but they don't. Since you asked me to come up with some ideas for stuff they could produce that I'd actually be interested in paying for, how about:

1) Custom, high quality, AVGN or Cimemassacre-themed controllers for retro and modern consoles, ideally also with USB connections. That'd be cool and I'd pay a premium for an AVGN N64 controller, for example. N64 controllers are tough to find as it is and an AVGN one would be awesome! I'd even be willing to pay a premium for it over a new controller on Amazon or something, especially if it was custom-built. Imagine, a custom line of higher-than-official-quality controllers. That's cool!
These are the guys who have connections to people who can build Nintoasters and get Famicom systems with A/V outputs and longer controller wiring. I'm sure they can build custom controllers.

2) How about, pay a small donation to put a James and Mike Mondays game request higher up on a queue? The amounts and "power" of this queue pushing could be limited to prevent it from becoming a clusterfuck but it would allow people to effectively pay for the content they want.

3) AVGN-themed video game cases, especially for cartridge-based consoles. Again, for people with large NES, SNES or N64 collections could get AVGN-themed storage units, briefcases, etc for their games. Cool!

4) A CD with various remixes of the AVGN theme music...or a DVD or blu-ray with music VIDEOS to go along with them.

Is this hard work? Sure but it doesn't rely on ad revenue to pay the bills.

Let's face it - I'm not a marketing major. I don't have all the answers. But that's also called being an "entrepreneur". As an entrepreneur, it's your job to make something that people are willing to spend money on. If I had the answer to this problem I'd be doing it and already being the next big thing on the internet.

Now let's list some stuff they they HAVE released which is actually pretty cool:

- An AVGN Movie. This has sold reasonably well. I haven't picked it up, however, because I basically got the gist of it from Nostalgia Critic's review of it. It didn't look all that great to me so I didn't buy the movie.

- An AVGN video game. This is even available on steam! That's an awesome idea!

- Typical merchandise: T-Shirts, etc. Nothing wrong with going that direction!

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Something else I don't know is how much money they get paid for showing up to conventions. The AVGN is often at various game conventions and I'm positive he isn't doing that for free.
Why do I bring this up? Basically, I'm extremely convinced that Cinemassacre isn't hurting for cash. I don't have much incentive to turn off my extremely convenient ad block in an effort to support what is essentially the "microsoft" of gaming videos. They don't exactly need my 3 cents a month to get by. I'm sorry but my sanity is more valuable to me than you getting my 3 cents of ad revenue.
The AVGN has basically reached "celebrity" status at this point. I don't feel like he's exactly hurting for cash. I have no reason to worry about his well-being and lack of ability to continue to produce content. Yes, this is me being selfish but again, it's time and effort for me as a consumer to go out of my way to make sure he gets his 3 cents a month from me. When I know he's raking in big bucks and that 3 cents a month is insignificant, I'm just not going to make a big deal out of it.

Again, because that control is in my hands, the hands of the consumer, that's why ad revenue systems are inherently broken.

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Now there are some things I'd "pay" them for right now if they were more practical. For example, I've become a "Fan" of sorts of Cinemassacre over the years and I think it would be great to see them at a convention.

Problem: I live in Calgary, Alberta. Video game conventions don't really come here and I can't afford the trip to PAX or wherever. Yeah, if the AVGN came to a show in Calgary (or Edmonton or Banff or somewhere close-ish) I'd be psyched and I'd go!

Now suddenly all that free video watching I got all these years is paying off for HIM! He hooked me as a fan and now I'm part of the fanbase that makes it worth the convention paying HIM to have him there. The videos acted as an investment to build the fanbase.

The videos are acting as a support for his other ways to make money. That's what I'm getting at! What the "other ways" are is a case-by-case basis for each content creator. They need to find their own direction for how to do this and this is what makes the true marketing geniuses and business people of the world.

[WeirdRaptor]

Now those are some good suggestions! There'd be a few copyright loops to get through, but if they could get Nintendo to agree to something like that, that would be cool, as you said. Thank you for giving such a thoughtful answer instead of raging against independent content creators like LBTL seems to want to.

[action9000]

Alright, so I have a new beef with www.wired.com

I followed a link to a wired.com article from Facebook. When I got to the page, I was greeted with THIS full-screen overlay:



Notice: No "Close" button. No X. No "Got it, thanks. Let me continue."
They obnoxiously obscured the ENTIRE page because I had an adblocker installed...and there was no way to get rid of the overlay! :blink:

I actually had to reload the page in another tab in the same browser session in order to get rid of it. I was literally STUCK on that overlay making that browser tab entirely useless.

[EDIT] Oh wait, guess what! Even in the reloaded page, as soon as I started scrolling down again, the overlay came back in the new tab! You literally cannot access this content with an adblocker enabled.

[EDIT] Alright, I found a workaround. If I right-click and download the HTML page, I can view it offline to get around the overlay popup. That's what you've resorted me to, Wired!    I win:

[DarkHououmon]

That is strange. I just went to wired.com myself and I was able to access the page as well as one of the articles without anything popping up. I have Adblock Plus enabled; I checked to make sure that it was turned on. And wired.come does work just fine for me.

[F-14 Ace]

Action, here's a solution that may help.  http://technewsreporter.blogspot.com/2015/...t-block-ad.html

It works for Forbes so it might work in your situation as well.  There is nothing I hate more right now than websites that display smartass messages like the one in your screencap so I'm gonna try this just to flip these idiots the middle finger.

EDIT: Someone else said they got around the problem in Wired.com by just disabling Javascript on the page.

[DarkHououmon]

I kept on enabling Javascript on that page to see if anything would happen. But even with JS fully enabled as well as Adblock Plus, the sight still works just fine for me. I'm not really sure why I have no issues with wired.com but other people do.

[action9000]

It works for Forbes so it might work in your situation as well. There is nothing I hate more right now than websites that display smartass messages like the one in your screencap so I'm gonna try this just to flip these idiots the middle finger.

EDIT: Someone else said they got around the problem in Wired.com by just disabling Javascript on the page.

I tried the Referer Control extension and sadly it didn't help in this case. I"ll keep it anyway though. It's a nice one. Thanks for sharing!

   I kept on enabling Javascript on that page to see if anything would happen. But even with JS fully enabled as well as Adblock Plus, the sight still works just fine for me. I'm not really sure why I have no issues with wired.com but other people do.

That's odd. I'd say enjoy it.  

[landbeforetimelover]

These websites just don't get it.  I will NEVER click on an ad!  I don't care what it says.  It's not the 1990's anymore.  Most people are smart enough not to click on ads.  I'm sure the majority of ad clicks come from seniors that are new to computers, or mistaken clicks.  Whether you block my ability to view your website with an ad blocker or not, I never would have clicked on the ad anyway!  You're not losing money because people have ad blockers.  You're losing money because people no longer click on ads!

[action9000]

Just to add to my wired.com argument:

Hey, Wired, did you notice that by complaining about my Adblocker, you wasted both of our bandwidth?    

I reloaded the page 2-3 times to see if I could get rid of the overlay. There's a few MB of data transfer each time.

I also downloaded the HTML page to my hard drive.

I also came back and loaded it again because I needed to screenshot it for the GoF post.

In other words, your anti-adblocker campaign increased your bandwidth cost to serve me by about 400-500%? Not to mention the anti-adblock javascript code that gets sent to EVERY SINGLE user who connects to your pages (whether they have adblock or not) which is inflating how much bandwidth your pages use.

Well done guys. That bandwidth probably costs you more than I'd be worth when I don't click your ads anyway (right LBTLover?)

If I was using adblockers to conserve bandwidth on a low-data-cap connection, I'd be unhappy with wasting bandwidth like that. Luckily I don't have a low cap so I don't care. The only one who suffers is Wired.  

[F-14 Ace]

So, I heard where Yahoo has actually started locking people out of their email accounts for using adblock.  The more these companies try to pull this garbage, the more people are gonna resent them for it.

[Ducky123]

Yeah, as long as not all service providers punish people for using adblock, there'll always be a service, who tolerates people using it, that people will switch to.

[pokeplayer984]

Well, more reason for me to stick to Google and their e-mail service.  At least they make so much that they know blocking those who use Adblock will only hurt you.  I mean, their company CREATED ads and even they know better.  How ironic.

[pokeplayer984]

I've run into a simple dilemma.  I want to support someone by disabling my adblock.  However, he has chosen one of the worst places to have his videos on that gives revenue with ads.  For all that I go through to bring you all episodes of MLP, I still don't understand why EqD goes with Dailymotion.

I run into the problem of the videos restarting at times and to top it off, take a look at this.  My adblock version shows just how many ads it blocks.  Here's the final count from a 28-minute episode.



I want to support him, but I don't want to be interrupted so many times.  Yeah!  Suggestions?

[F-14 Ace]

Perhaps he should start a donation pool.

[pokeplayer984]

I found that the guy does have a Patreon Account.  I'll donate to him once my dentist appointment is out of the way. (If things go well.) I need an idea of how much I can give, but I can't be sure until I have my teeth checked.  Trust me, with my track record, I have reason to wait until then.

[F-14 Ace]

I came across another online debate where sites that use advertising are trying to guilt tip people into not blocking their crap. One particularly disgusting example was a website that was an actual vendor website!  This website (I'm not gonna say the name) is an online catalogue website that sells products to people, and the owner actually had the gall to complain about people blocking 3rd party ads, which they claim helps support their site.  Again, this is a website that already makes a profit by selling products, and then they're greedy enough to try and make MORE money by using intrusive 3rd party ads.  They claim they block people who block the 3rd party ads.  So not only are they greedy, but they're also stupid for limiting their customer base, not to mention rude.  That's literally like saying that I can't come into your store unless I pay you money upfront before I'm allowed to even see what you're selling. I have no pity for them and I hope they go bankrupt!  They're probably a scam anyway.

As I have already stated, ads compromise the security of your computer, eat up your memory and bandwidth, slow down your browser, whore your information out to all sorts of unscrupulous people, track you across the internet trying to sell you garbage that you don't want, infect your computer with malware, obscure your screen with obnoxious flashing animations and drop down windows that block your screen, and generally just ruin your online experience.  Then they have the gall to claim that blocking those ads is somehow morally wrong.  What's morally wrong is making a profit at the expense of my time, security, and privacy.

I have no sympathy for advertisers.  They are completely unregulated and have gotten way out of hand.  Ad blockers are basically the consumer's way of putting their foot down and saying that enough is enough.  Clean up your act or become irrelevant.

As for snotty online publishers whining about their loss of revenue, I'm gonna be brutally honest here.  99.9999999% of the time, your content isn't worth paying for, especially when literally any human being who is literate and has access to a computer can create content.  These people who think they can earn a paycheck by sitting on their butts all day and posting blogs are living in a fantasy world.  Very few people turn a profit and even fewer make any serious money.  Publishing content is a hobby, not a career.   Stop treating it like a career and get a real job!  You wanna publish for a living?  Become a journalist or an author.

[action9000]

What's morally wrong is making a profit at the expense of my time, security, and privacy.

^ This! You summed up the issue right there in that one sentence.  

Perhaps, and it's disappointing I'm sure for many content creators, some things just...aren't sellable. This is why hobbies exist.

I fully understand the concept of being a professional entertainer and I highly respect those who do it well and can make a living at it. The concept of basically monetizing everything anyone does is relatively new and we primarily have advertising, reality shows and the Internet to "thank" for it. I'm not convinced this is necessarily a good thing. Fun needs to be fun for its own sake sometimes. Putting an ad plug in front of everything just sucks all the purity out of it because now it just looks like they're doing it for the money, not because they're actually having fun and sharing a good experience with the world.

I get it; people (myself included) want ways to make money outside their shitty jobs.  I truly feel like there's a point where someone crosses the line between making something that has great production value and needs the funding versus someone who's just whoring themselves out because they can. There's no sense of restraint and there's no reason NOT to run ads on everything you post up.

This is the fundamental problem; because it's so easy to monetize everything, that's what the entertainment (and online content in general) world has become, to the point where it's almost sickening. As a result people are starting to ad-block which is forcing this business model out of favour. How will the world respond? I don't know yet but I do agree with the logic that I shouldn't be held accountable for adblocking your stuff just because your revenue system wasn't sustainable.

As for snotty online publishers whining about their loss of revenue, I'm gonna be brutally honest here. 99.9999999% of the time, your content isn't worth paying for, especially when literally any human being who is literate and has access to a computer can create content

Exactly. If you want to actually earn a living producing interesting content, that is real, hard work like anything else. If you stand out, you will make a living. For 99.99% of content creators, what you're producing isn't worth anything. I'm sorry; it's not. With the sheer volume of content out there, if all of it earned creators enough to make a living wage the economy would inflate to the point of being useless.

Publishing content is a hobby, not a career. Stop treating it like a career and get a real job! You wanna publish for a living? Become a journalist or an author.

I'm just starting my new career path as a game composer / music producer. The point where it progressed beyond "hobby" was the point I started sinking countless hours of real work into it. Yes I work from home on my own hours (hence why I'm here at 2 PM on a Friday) but I have deadlines to meet, quality control, expectations, like any normal job. It's incredible the sheer number of hours that goes into it. There's no shortcut or easy money - if you want to make it as a content creator of any type, you just have to do the grunt work.

Sounds like we're in agreement here, F-14  

[F-14 Ace]

There are actually companies suing ad block companies and trying to have them outlawed.  Some even go so far as to toss people who block ads into the same bandwagon as people who pirate music and videos.  I wonder how long it will be before blocking ads gets you a several hundred thousand dollar fine and sever years in the slammer.

[ADFan185]

Well yes adds can be annoying but sites need ads to pay for it.

[action9000]

Well yes adds can be annoying but sites need ads to pay for it.

In the immediate I agree but I really feel like this is a sign that the monetization system needs to somehow evolve. Basically one of three things can happen:

1) Status quo: Some people adblock and are shamed for it. These people justify adblocking in their own way but others tend to frown on adblocking. Business as usual.

2) Adblocking becomes so common that ad revenue is no longer viable for many content providers. A new "web...what are we on? Web 4.0" may need to evolve out of this.

3) Adblocking becomes illegal like you pointed out and this opens a RIDICULOUS can of worms in terms of human/ constitutional rights and per-country laws. As a Canadian, we're still pretty relaxed on anti-piracy laws (don't seed excessively and nobody cares). I can't imagine the Canadian government passing an anti-adblock law in the foreseeable future.

This is by far the scariest option to me because it suggests that ad producers have more rights than consumers. It basically puts ads in a magic bubble where they're protected moreso than any other content. I can't see how this is justifyable: If I produce a product and nobody wants it, I go bankrupt. I can't just go get a law passed that says people need to magically be interested in my product. No! My monetization scheme isn't working! Tough for me, I need to find another way!

Making adblock illegal is spitting in the face of that logic. Making adblock illegal is basically saying, "Yes, ads are the perfect solution to this problem and free of any further evolution. You'll be bombarded by ads for the rest of your life and we love everything about that! MUAHAHA". Making adblock illegal is preventing the evolution of our content monetization system!