• IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
    3·
    1 month ago

    Basically how I browse the internet these days … if I have to click on a bunch of stuff, sign up, register, accept a bunch of notifications, cookies, blah, blah, blah … all because I want to read 200 words on your dumb site … I’m not even going to bother with your site, skip and find a different source that is easier.

    • saltesc@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 month ago

      I go a step further and block them in DDG. This includes any “article” I have to scroll through to find the answer.

    • archonet@lemy.lolEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Get PopUpOFF and AdNauseam. Don’t just back down without a fight. If I need to read an article to find some information I am going to read it, dumb bullshit be damned, even if I have to break half your site to do so. I’ve even been spiteful enough to hack away at the page with inspect element if it still manages to get past those add-ons.

      • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        Generally for news websites … especially highly rated ones that are supposed to be the best professional outfits … if I can’t use ‘reader view’ and just read your copy … I’m skipping your site and never going back to you.

        All I want to do is read the news … you don’t need to sell me on a great refrigerator or a cigarette lighter that has a flame that can melt steel because I’m never going to buy it.

  • FaceDeer@fedia.io
    2·
    1 month ago

    Someday soon my “adblocker” might be a personal AI that reads the spam-ridden website on a virtual display in memory, identifies the actual content while pretending to look at whatever ads the site demands, and then passes the information I’m actually looking for along to me. Good luck captchaing that.

    • slaacaa@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 month ago

      An AI feature actually useful for consumers? Corporate overloards say no thx, let’s instead fill the net with more AI-generated SEO bullshit

      • FaceDeer@fedia.io
        1·
        1 month ago

        Adblockers aren’t made by “corporate overlords.” This wouldn’t be either.

  • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
    2·
    1 month ago

    It turns out the popular alternative is “force you to sign up (with a phone number) from critical mass/FOMO, track the snot out of you then slide ads in later.” Oh, and the stuff you want is siloed away until you join, and buried in a mountain of rambling and engagement optimization junk.

    Note that I’m largely talking about Discord, which is unfortunately where many of my interests have been shunted off to. People talk about Facebook, Google and OpenAI eating the internet, but I feel like Discord is the quiet trojan horse.

      • BlemboTheThird@lemmy.ca
        2·
        1 month ago

        Discord is 1000x worse because entire communities have taken to moving onto there. It’s like the one thing that’s worse than moving everything to Reddit: people using a fancy chat service like a forum. Everything from hardware to games seems to have most of the community on Discord; incredibly unhelpful if I’m trying to troubleshoot something.

  • NutWrench@lemmy.zipEnglish
    2·
    1 month ago

    Advertisers abused the hell out of us back in the early days of the Internet and we haven’t forgotten. Multiple Pop-ups, pop-unders and seizure-inducing banner ads.

    If they simply stuck with small, basic, non-flashing banners, I could have handled it. But greed knows no limits with advertisers.

    • yamanii@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 month ago

      Yep, they brought it upon themselves, I still remember as a kid falling for a “you are the visitor number 1 million” and getting a virus; and now we have porn and cults advertising on youtube, nothing changed.

  • EnderMB@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 month ago

    Many moons ago I worked briefly on an ad prototype that aimed to replace banner ads, particularly those that sit in content with a single bottom overlay that would “smartly” unobstruct the viewing experience of the page. I was able to reduce a full page of horrible ads into a single box at the bottom of the page that could be closed whenever.

    The idea fell completely flat for various reasons, but some off the top of my head:

    • We have x advertisers that NEED to be on this page - how can we possibly get x on the page with just one box?
    • I don’t care if people use ad blockers, let them do their thing and we’ll target those that are happy to see ads
    • If people can easily close them, the reflex to close will mean no ad is glanced.

    The sad stat that came out was that obtrusive ads, the kind that used popups or automatically opened apps to download were VERY effective. I could prove that my ads were several times more effective than “normal” banner ads and popups, but when you could sell 10x the ads it didn’t matter if they were 10x more effective.

    My brief stint in advertising made me feel that for many years people didn’t care about those that blocked ads because there was always more shit to optimise or grow into. That has stagnated, so now the likes of Google are targeting “market share” by getting those that block ads to look at ads again. It won’t work, at all, but it feels like they’ve now optimised themselves into a hole.

    • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      0·
      1 month ago

      What they’re “forgetting” is that those who block ads are more likely to say “fuck product X I’ll never buy it because of this ad” if forced to see an ad. (Well, they don’t care, they know, but they can still sell the “spot” so to speak because the advertisers themselves are dumb enough not know that it is just shooting themselves in the foot.)

      • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 month ago

        those who block ads are more likely to say “fuck product X I’ll never buy it because of this ad” if forced to see an ad.

        This demographic is much, much smaller than you probably assume it is–I mean ‘statistically insignificant’ small.