Jimquisition: The Adblock Episode

[KisaiTenshi]

Wouldn't the simplest answer be, playing commercials in your content... Like, oh I dunno, every TV show ever made ever, literally make it a part of the content itself?

It would be unblockable. We would have to watch it, and suffer what, 30 seconds of advertisement while to this day TV shows regularly put 10 minutes of adds in with a 30 minute time segment?

This could then make any other adds completely less intrusive, because the ads necessary are already there?

You can't tell me in this day and age it is impossible to embed an ad as a part of your content?

They would have to edit the video and replace it with one without it when the campaign ends since the use rights expire, which is more effort. But you're right, Jim's videos are perfect places to throw product placement in as opposed to arbitrary baked-into-the-video adverting you can't actually click on. Jim could just as easily go "here's the website for the current thingy I'm holding in my right hand *spell it out*, and for the thingamajig in my left hand *spell it out*"

Podcast people do it. And you can still skip over it. You can't usually skip the prerolls because the player doesn't let you. But you don't always see the prerolls either (go the earliest videos on Zero Punctuation, the only ad on it is at the end for the Subscription service, which is a separate video.)

 

[IceForce]

Wouldn't the simplest answer be, playing commercials in your content... Like, oh I dunno, every TV show ever made ever, literally make it a part of the content itself?

It would be unblockable. We would have to watch it, and suffer what, 30 seconds of advertisement while to this day TV shows regularly put 10 minutes of adds in with a 30 minute time segment?

This could then make any other adds completely less intrusive, because the ads necessary are already there?

You can't tell me in this day and age it is impossible to embed an ad as a part of your content?

This was already addressed by a staff member, a number of pages back.

If they embed ads directly into their videos here, they would have no way of removing them when serving the videos to people who've paid for an ad-free premium membership.

They would have to store TWO copies of every video; one with ads and one without, effectively doubling the amount of server space required to host them.

 

[NewClassic_v1legacy]

Wouldn't the simplest answer be, playing commercials in your content... Like, oh I dunno, every TV show ever made ever, literally make it a part of the content itself?

They would have to store TWO copies of every video; one with ads and one without, effectively doubling the amount of server space required to host them.

I have a somewhat limited understanding of how the advertisement systems work, but to my knowledge, that isn't the only issue with serving advertisements. As I understand it, advertisers don't trust websites self-reported numbers for unique pageviews and total viewership. Most companies who serve ads do so through their own backend, which includes trackers that pay attention to viewership numbers on their own. Advertising companies do this so they know they're getting "accurate" (or at least information they trust) information on the amount of advertisements served.

There are other issues, as well, but I'm not as aware of those details, so I don't really feel comfortable responding on that topic. Kross has made some excellent points in several posts. I encourage reading this one [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/6.843934.20781551], despite its length. As well, this one [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/6.843934.20782065] and this one [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/6.843934.20783775].

For most purposes, advertising and budgeting are both topics with a pretty amazing number of moving parts. That's what makes threads like these so difficult, how do you take what on the face sounds like a very good idea, and outright deny people because it just doesn't work out that way in practice? Part of why discussions like this are so difficult for everyone involved.

This is our extent of technological development? We have tivo which can literally fast forward, and some cases remove commercials, but the Internet? That's just too hard?

No really. Please do go on about how our technological advances make things like this an pipe dream.

In this case, that's not completely accurate. Websites can have relatively few lines of code to verify ad blocking, compared to a video content, which is literally data. It would effectively be two videos, one with ad files literally part of the video (increasing the file size) and one without. This would be two video files, with two respective sizes, both of which would need to be hosted on and served by the servers. Short of compression, there's not a lot that will change the fact that video files have a definitive size. There's also tracking issues that way, referenced in this post [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/6.843934.20782110], among others I'm unaware of.

That's not to say these ideas are definitively impossible, but in this instance, probably unrealistic. The Escapist is a relatively small team, and redefining a lot of code all at once isn't possible overnight. Especially with other issues that need to be addressed in practice as well. I don't doubt many websites are experimenting with this and slowly moving toward new systems. But until someone manages to address all of the problems at once, in a financially viable way for most companies, the current system is used so commonly because of its ability to fund sites like this one.

Just my thoughts, can't speak for its 100% accuracy.

 

[IceForce]

But then really, they already effectively have two copies of everything. One an ad free version, the other an ad filled version.

If it is truly that hard to accomplish something like that in this digitally advanced era we live in, I'm going to have to call bull. Double the amount of server space? You can literally detect ad blockers coming into your site. That doesn't double the server, yet something like this would?

They already have two direct clones of their site, one with ads, one without.

This doesn't double it? And it's impossible to change it?

This is our extent of technological development? We have tivo which can literally fast forward, and some cases remove commercials, but the Internet? That's just too hard?

No really. Please do go on about how our technological advances make things like this an pipe dream.

Oookay, I'm going to cut off this conversation with you right here, because you clearly have no idea about the technology of which you speak, and I can't be bothered explaining it to you.

See NewClassic's post on the previous page, if you're really actually interested in this, and not just here to clutch at straws.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

... Am I the only one that doesn't get all of the malware ads everyone keeps saying they get?

Maybe it's because I'm that one dude that likes to run MalwareBytes every other day and Avasts, Malwares, and Spybot: Search and Destroy's the computer weekly, but I've really never had an issue with ads breaking the computer.

As for annoying ads, again, I must be blessed or something, since I don't subscribe to the Escapist and the ads I do deal with are, for the most part, pretty good. There WAS this one really annoying about craft somethings or something or other that always kept expanding into the reply box in comments that pissed me off, but it was a really small complaint compared to everything. I never run adblock because I honestly don't feel that the ads are annoying enough to warrant its use in any capacity, really. :/

 

[EvilRoy]

... Am I the only one that doesn't get all of the malware ads everyone keeps saying they get?

Maybe it's because I'm that one dude that likes to run MalwareBytes every other day and Avasts, Malwares, and Spybot: Search and Destroy's the computer weekly, but I've really never had an issue with ads breaking the computer.

As for annoying ads, again, I must be blessed or something, since I don't subscribe to the Escapist and the ads I do deal with are, for the most part, pretty good. There WAS this one really annoying about craft somethings or something or other that always kept expanding into the reply box in comments that pissed me off, but it was a really small complaint compared to everything. I never run adblock because I honestly don't feel that the ads are annoying enough to warrant its use in any capacity, really. :/

I honestly don't do half of what you do and I really haven't had malicious code in years. Not since Vista I think.

And I look at a LOT of porn. Seriously. Gads of it. And that's where all the worst stuff is supposed to come from.

 

[KisaiTenshi]

... Am I the only one that doesn't get all of the malware ads everyone keeps saying they get?

Maybe it's because I'm that one dude that likes to run MalwareBytes every other day and Avasts, Malwares, and Spybot: Search and Destroy's the computer weekly, but I've really never had an issue with ads breaking the computer.

As for annoying ads, again, I must be blessed or something, since I don't subscribe to the Escapist and the ads I do deal with are, for the most part, pretty good. There WAS this one really annoying about craft somethings or something or other that always kept expanding into the reply box in comments that pissed me off, but it was a really small complaint compared to everything. I never run adblock because I honestly don't feel that the ads are annoying enough to warrant its use in any capacity, really. :/

I have never received any malware from ads. The worst crap I have to see is when someone links me to something that ends up being on a file sharing site and I'm bombarded with 42 download boxes, none of which are the file in question.

I have Spybot S&D, and that's currently my favorite. Ad Aware was the first though, however all these programs are trying to be antivirus products now and it's a bit obnoxious.

Ugh when I used to work at a computer store they used to make us upsell Norton Security Suite AND Spyware Sweeper, and yet I'd use Spybot to actually detect the malware. Protip: Computer stores hate you if have no antivirus/anti-malware tools and/or fail to update them. If you're too lazy and cheap, install the free Microsoft stuff, that's better than nothing. Otherwise, yes please keep coming to us so we can wipe the machine out at 120$/hr instead of you paying for an anti-virus product.

 

[Freyar]

... Am I the only one that doesn't get all of the malware ads everyone keeps saying they get?

That or you're just lucky and didn't get hit by it. Even with my legitimate browsing (IE: No Pronz) I was served a milicious advertisement from a sidebar on a machinima site as well as one from Gamespot. Both of these I reported, but that was enough for me to want to clamp down on the whole issue. I'd much rather be safe than sorry when it comes to infections and vetting scripts is part of the whole case.

That said, I do want to support content I like, and part of that rolls into paying for the subscription I have on The Escapist. While it's a modicum amount of money once it's all split, I get to view the site without ads and as far as I can tell there's no qualms with that since I'm paying for the content I'm viewing. (Safe to say that overall Jimquisition is the reason I'm continuing to pay here.)

Other sites are a different story, and I white-list on a case-by-case basis. If I like the content and feel the content creator has done a sufficient job to earn some money (because let's face it, with the landslide of content on Youtube, we have the Steam Early Access problem there as well) I'll white-list the page enough to be served the advertisements provided they follow a few rules.

1)Advertisements cannot be longer (or bigger) than the original piece of content I am there to read or view.
2)Advertisements that are image-based SHOULD NOT automatically push audio.
3)Advertisements that cause a flag for any security reason will result in being blocked once more for the entire domain.

I understand the need for advertising revenue and I understand the frustration that has to be there for the guys that are responsible for making sure everyone gets paid, but ultimately the advertisers are the ones that have damaged their own business model by being 100% TOO DAMNED GREEDY and being unable to audit their security practices. Advertisers pushed too hard and not only annoyed users but put their systems at risk. Users then decided to defend themselves by blocking potential scripts and content that was a known source of difficulty.

 

[Zacharious-khan]

Seems like the B& hammer is being swung pretty hard in this thread, i think i'll just play it safe and just say
THANK GOD FOR JIM

 

[karkashan]

Ever since Kotaku gave me two separate malware/worms/virus/evilcomputerthings I never turn off Adblock completely. I do try to remember to turn it off when I watch videos here, though if I could watch it in HTML5 without a pub account so I could watch it on my Wii U, that would be great (although I understand why/if the E! wants to keep it the way it is).

grimabepraised

 

[Torque2100]

I started watching this video expecting to really disagree with you, Jim. I run Adblock, I'm not proud of this fact but it's something is, in my experience, absolutely necessary for using the internet safely these days. This is after several incidents where the Adservs for the websites I had thought trustworthy played ads that hijacked my browsing session, attempted to install malware on my computer, and used my Amazon log-in to search for Porn thus embarrassing me when I logged in to my Amazon to show my mom how to order something and found my recommendations page flooded with Hentai DVDs and Sex Toys.

How am I under any obligation to view the content of an Adserv when the Adservs themselves cannot be bothered to properly police the content that is uploaded to them? I am of the opinion that once data gets onto a person's computer, no one else has the right to tell them how it can or cannot be compiled. This goes for Game Modding as well. If Advertisers are going to be so incredibly irresponsible that they will release ads that break formatting, crash browsers, auto-play and drown out videos we're trying to watch and allow their customers to spread malicious software around the web, does that not mean that the individual user has not only a right but an obligation to protect themselves from it.

I'm not going to disable Adblock but I do like that many sites are offering Subscriptions and I think the Subscription model is the way to go. It allows people to support sites they like, it allows content creators to continue to work without both sides being shackled to an increasingly irresponsible Internet Advertising Industry.

You have convinced me Jim. I'm going to be buying a subscription.

 

[M920CAIN]

Well, I'll give it some thought Jim, that's all I can say, but how about this. I only remove adblock just for the part of the site where your videos are? I mean I prefer a case by case decision rather than going full frontal.

 

[Remus]

Seems like the B& hammer is being swung pretty hard in this thread, i think i'll just play it safe and just say
THANK GOD FOR JIM

Careful. I got a warning for playing it safe. THANK GOD FOR JIM

 

[IceForce]

I see the mods are still active in this thread (albeit, covertly).

Despite the obvious censorship ramifications, I still would've personally rather seen this thread locked from the get-go.
Many many dozens of users would've been saved warnings/suspensions/whatever, had this been done.

I understand that the forum rules have very little flexibility. That being the case, you've got to weigh up what's best for the site; steadfastly refusing to lock the thread and instead annoying your users with warnings, or locking the thread and completely removing the likelihood of any users even GETTING any warnings (in this thread, on this topic).

 

[DoctorImpossible]

edit: Nothing to see here, sorry

 

[KisaiTenshi]

I see the mods are still active in this thread (albeit, covertly).

Despite the obvious censorship ramifications, I still would've personally rather seen this thread locked from the get-go.
Many many dozens of users would've been saved warnings/suspensions/whatever, had this been done.

I understand that the forum rules have very little flexibility. That being the case, you've got to weigh up what's best for the site; steadfastly refusing to lock the thread and instead annoying your users with warnings, or locking the thread and completely removing the likelihood of any users even GETTING any warnings (in this thread, on this topic).

Everyone who posted to this thread knew exactly what the risks were.

 

[mcnally86]

Maybe it is because he asked for honesty and sincerity so people are martyring themselves in his comment section. I also want to point out that the censorship system does not work. I find myself reading posts that were sectioned off more carefully than I would have otherwise. They just seem like they might be more interesting.

 

[Kaymish]

i use ad block but ive had it turned off on the escapist for yonks the ads on this site are not bad enough for me to justify to myself to use it and to be fair sometimes they are interesting enough that i will click them though i do suppose i am lucky that the escapist does not seam to have many ad brokers/whatever they are in my region so i can get away with the few ads they do have and i found that the site is optomised to have the ads displayed and it changes the formatting slightly when i have it on or off
additionally i read alot of web comics and unless the creator has been particularly bad with plastering her site with ads i turn it off there too
i suppose i use it because i hate getting blasted in the face and sometimes the ads break how a website works and often the site owners dont care thet only the ads are being displayed and noone can actually view the content thats under there and i tuen it off to sites that have proved they can be responsible and that i actually like