Jimquisition: The Adblock Episode

[IndomitableSam]

I use AdBlock and a lot of other stuff at home, as it's my gaming computer and I try to keep it clean. I pretty much only go to sites I trust on it, too.

That said, I also have a tablet and browse the Escapist mostly at work.

The tablet is used basically any time I'm not playing a game, as my computer is hooked up to the tv, so the tablet is needed lots. No blocking there. Can't really watch videos on it as it's an HP Tablet (yes, they still exist, I got one when they were $99 and it's a pretty damn good web browser device... but not much else). I'd really like to clean it up and take some crap off it, but I have to plug it into a computer to do that, so I have to hook up an old desktop that's not connected to the internet some time as I have no idea what's on the thing as there's no protection whatsoever on it. But it's also a device and OS no one uses so there probably aren't any keyloggers or anything on it. That said, I don't do anything important on it, ever. Also those rollover for sound ads..? They just play automatically. Dumb, cheap, tablet that allows me to comfortably browse the internet while watching tv.

At work it's IE (yay), and heavily locked down to changes so there's nothing to be done about crappy ads. That said, I wish I could block them as sometimes I get work-related ads, but sometimes I get ads that are really not work appropriate. Still, The Escapist remains unblocked and I usually have videos playing while I work. Yay dual monitors.

As for my opinions on it... they pretty much mirror Jim. Ads are needed to make money, but I don't blame people for blocking them. At all. It's a very tough choice.

Sometimes on Youtube, I won't skip the ads for people or content that I like, because I think skipping it means they don't get full pay? I don't even know.

It's basically a catch-22 and I don't know enough to offer any answers.

 

[Weaver]

This is plain and simple: I want to turn adblock off here, but there is a recurrent sound based add that won't let me watch the videos if I turn adblock off because it's just so loud. If anyone knows about a way of turning off just that add please tell me how so I can support The Escapist.

As I mentioned to someone above, if you report things like that to the Tech Team [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/view/Tech-Team], with screenshots or just some way of showing how bad it is, they can look at it and see if they can change that one ad.

Also there are some pretty smart people in that group, they might have a solution for you that'll allow you to whitelist the Escapist without getting these kinds of intrusive ads.

The fact that the team doesn't know these are present, yet have been on this site for at least half a year is somewhat troubling.

May I humbly suggest the Escapist staff try browsing the site as a regular user for a day to see what the experience is like?

 

[Aardvaarkman]

(Snip).

It's an unsustainable system, a quick patch-up rather than a long-term remedy. If adverts become intolerable, people block them, then the adverts become more invasive (to the point of stopping the relevant page from working or even infecting people's computers, if the reports on this page are to be believed),

Agreed, but I don't think that's the only reason it's unsustainable. It's hard to believe that the advertising dollars spent are in most cases effective at making the advertisers money. We are probably in an advertising bubble that will burst sooner or later. I don't think the advertisers can sustain this level of spending when most people are ignoring the ads, even if they don't block them.

This is true even in other media like TV, where the skipping of ads has led to more in-show promotions and product placement.

As bibblles put it up-thread:

You and the other content creators can argue that adds are the best solution, or the moral thing to do, or whatever totalbiscuit wants to vomit up in favor of his ad based life.

I really like that turn of phrase; "his ad based life." It really cuts to the heart of the matter. People publishing their content under an ad-driven model are choosing this business model. And they do so knowing full well that ads can be blocked. There is no legal obligation for us to watch ads and not to block them. They have willingly chosen a revenue model that they know is easily bypassed. But then they (meaning the likes of Totalbiscuit here, not Jim) whine about people "stealing" their content, when they chose to give it away in the first place.

So, the downside of an ad-driven business model is that it is easily disrupted and not particularly reliable. I wonder how many companies that rely on ads actually state that in their financial statements to investors? Of course, they want all the up-side, with none of the down-side. The up-side is that being ad-driven has few barriers to entry, and having a big hit can quickly rake in a lot of money. In contrast, the subscription model is much more stable, but doesn't offer the explosive growth in audience and revenue.

Essentially, companies are gambling with this model. Of course, when they lose the bet, they would rather blame ad blockers, rather than acknowledging that they were gambling in the first place.

But at the end of the day, nothing that I've found on the internet, that is ad supported, is vital or irreplaceable.

I also agree with this. I'd rather the whole web urn to ashes than to look at obnoxious advertising. There are plenty of things I can do other than look at websites, like read a book. We still have public libraries, and in my city, we still have some great community radio stations where I can listen to great music and talk without a bombardment of ads. We still have independent cinemas to watch interesting movies. We still have local bands playing gigs for reasonable prices.

As much as I enjoy Jim and Yahtzee, it is not essential enough to life to put up with ads to watch them. Fortunately, I am able to subscribe to the Pub Club for now. I will gladly subscribe to any site worthy of my attention that has a subscription option. If they don't have a subscription option, and they want me to watch ads, then screw them - they aren't getting my eyeballs.

 

[teadrinker12]

Alright. Fair point Jim. Since you asked nicely and the Escapist's ads have gotten better, I'll do as you ask. *click* Most sites I have Adblock on is for sites that when I have ads running and when I'm in the middle of one my shows, suddenly audio for an annoying advertisement starts blasting in the headset. So I must then pause and dig through my tabs to find the one ad on the one site in the one tab and mute it. That's my only problem with ads on the internet. All that accomplishes is my excluding of that brand, product, or company when I go into that particular market as a consumer.

 

[Callate]

I'm a Pub Club member because I think the Escapist is worth supporting. And, frankly, because I like to believe my time has some value, and that value is far above what I'd spend watching ads on the Escapist versus what amounts to a quite modest magazine subscription rate. I would pay more to support people like Jim Sterling, Yahtzee, and LRR than I do (and I was part of LRR's Kickstarter, if I need to prove that point.)

I can't speak for the ads on the Escapist, since I no longer see them.

But elsewhere... My freaking god.

I have seen advertisement videos that ran longer than the videos I was trying to access- and those videos were themselves, in some cases, ads. I have played Flash games that involved dragging with "roll mouse over to allow us to hijack your browser" ads immediately in the margins. I have seen ads that tried to upload malware to my computer- and this is not in some skeezy porn site or "warez" page, mind you, but relatively mainstream game and news sites. I have seen ads that made the pages and the content I was attempting to access refuse to load at all.

In some very real ways, Internet ads are actually worse than the ones on television, radio, and print. Such ads rarely make the program, music, or article I'm there to consume completely inaccessible, nor do they tend to insist I sit through an advertiser's pitch before any proof that what I've clicked on is worth the effort (or even what the link claims it is, or that the ad remains while the content has gone 404...)

I get that content creators need to get paid, deserve to get paid. And I don't buy the arguments of "This piece of crap isn't worth the $0.08 they get from this ad, now pardon me while I catch up on the entire archive of this crap" people.

But sometimes I really have to wonder if there isn't another way... Preferably a way that doesn't turn the entire Internet into beggars with Paypal donation buttons on their sites, holding out for that 5% of their viewership that doesn't hold a sociopathic view of the value of their creators' time.

I'd almost be up for something like a bandwidth tax that went directly to the creators, except that of course the creators of a webcomic or article aren't necessarily putting in less work than creators of some bandwidth-eating high-definition video.

I wish I had a simple answer. As it stands, it's pretty hard to feel righteous in siding with the advertisers as they double down on their war with their audience.

 

[Flight]

I don't block ads, but I do wish the ads on The Escapist would get less intrusive (blasts of sound and being unable to find the source can make me a bit jumpy when they suddenly pop up, seemingly out of nowhere), not to mention the ads that move what I'm reading halfway down the page. Perhaps the mods could consider less obnoxious ads? I'm not going to put Adblock on, but I do hope The Escapist (and, indeed, many sites) will at least reconsider changing up the way they do ads, at least a little bit. I like supporting content creators, and I do enjoy a lot of the content on this website, but when ads cause glitching on a video (forcing me to refresh the page several times), I begin to feel a tad annoyed.

 

[sky14kemea]

Sorry, but relying on ad based revenue leaves no one to blame but yourselves. Everyone who runs a website thinks they are mining gold and showering it on the masses, that somehow the mere act of creating content entitles you to a revenue stream. Sorry, but no. Imagine going to a rock show, and having the band led in, not by an opener, but rather by a 30 second ad for beer or soda. Imagine the intermission coming with more marketing nonsense. Do you think the consumer would be happy? Nope, but then again, they are paying for the show. So they have an expectation that their money is being spent on entertainment, not ads.

Make quality content and you will find your audience. Sorry but you don't have the right to inundate me with ads, just because you think your content has value. I determine if it has value to me, not you. Make the Escapist subscription based and work based on your true audience. Why is that off the table? Business models based on ads are not sustainable, and they never will be. You have to sell your product, not ad space.

You sell merchandise, you can create premium content, blaming the user because you want to do it the easy way isn't right. We don't OWE you anything for putting up a website. You chose to create this site, to contribute content, if you want to profit from it, you have to do better than assume your content is worth my time in ads, because in most instances it isn't.

I like this site. If it were subscription based, I MIGHT join, but ultimately, you are asking us to pay for a bunch of op ed pieces and a terribly moderated forum. How much is that really worth?

Sorry, I am not trying to be belligerent, but blaming the customer is never the answer. Even when they are wrong.

I don't understand this. You're saying we should charge every user a subscription instead of giving them free content and entertainment?

We do have an optional subscription available, that does give people some additional perks and ad-free viewing, but not everyone can afford a subscription for the sites they visit. This is why ad-revenue is currently the largest income source of the Escapist, because, especially these days, people just can't afford to buy merch and subscriptions all that often.

Your analogy of comparing The Escapist to a concert isn't really valid. Those musical artists still pay to advertise their album, or their concert, because if they didn't then people wouldn't know to attend. So yes they do still use ads, just not in the actual concert itself, in the same way that we have ads on the side or just before a video, not during the actual video itself.

If websites were able to pay their employees and other costs with just the revenue made from selling merch and the optioning PubClub, I'm sure they'd be more than happy to. The sad fact is that ad-revenue is still very much essential to keeping the site up and running.

 

[Flatfrog]

That way the Escapist can try and get less intrusive ads to buy up that space. Most of the Staff and Mods have the Pubclub option, so they can't see these kinds of ads when people complain about them unless they sign out and view it from that point of view.

Well, maybe that might be a good first step towards improving matters. Why not put the staff by default onto the free version so they can experience the site that way and see how irritating it is?

This discussion has made me slightly more willing to consider the Pub Club option, though. I've never really seen the point as it doesn't offer me anything I'm that interested in and while I do come here pretty frequently I'm still pretty much a casual. But since starting to AdBlock the site for reasons above stated, I suppose it's fair. It just seems very pricey to me and to some extent I feel blackmailed into it - 'why not subscribe? No? What about if we make every page shout something about floor cleaner at you? Will you subscribe now?'

 

[sky14kemea]

The fact that the team doesn't know these are present, yet have been on this site for at least half a year is somewhat troubling.

May I humbly suggest the Escapist staff try browsing the site as a regular user for a day to see what the experience is like?

snip

The problem is the Staff usually don't have time to do that, especially during their working hours. There's lots of stuff to do that doesn't involve going on the site itself. I can't speak personally about their actual schedule but I'd make a guess that they only really browse the forums when posting videos and checking for feedback. That's why they ask Moderators and users to report these issues, because chances are we'll see them way before they get the chance.

 

[Ytmh]

Perhaps once advertising companies and websites develop a standard for how web advertising is supposed to be like, rather than this wild-west type nonsense where everyone does whatever they can (regardless of good/bad and we're just supposed to trust them out of the kindness of our hearts,) people will actually stop needing to block ads.

 

[Tono Makt]

I do NOT use AdBlock... mostly because I've just never been arsed to install it. Most of the time when I'm browsing the forums I simply turn my speakers off. The ads may or may not play in the background, I don't know and it doesn't bother me enough to care. However, there are many times on the Escapist where I wish I would install it because audio ads play... during the video I'm trying to watch! And almost every time it's at a level that is far above the audio of the video I'm watching, like a Jimquisition, or Big Picture, or Top Five with Lisa, or the few times lately I actually decide to see how Yahtzee is insulting a game this week. When the ads play over the video that's when I seriously consider the adblock no matter what the ad is. (and most of them are entirely irrelevant to me)

 

[AstaresPanda]

But your my favorite tit, and i do love tits.

So, i love the honesty as always dude. The ads are getting out of hand and just somtimes just for a less then a min clip for a teaser trailer your having to sit thru some bullshit advert that lasted longer then the content you wanted in the first place.

But either way for you my fave tit and Emperor ill un adblock you Keep up the good work.
BAH WEEP GRAH NAH WEEP NINI BAH

 

[GonzoGamer]

As someone who once worked in advertising, I can attest that it is a horrible industry that tries to make people feel bad about themselves so they buy a bunch of crap.
But seriously, some hacker hasn't come up with a way to block the ads without it affecting whatever bean-counting thats going on? People have been blocking ads for years.

I don't use Adblock, nor do I plan to, nor do I advocate its use, but by god, The Escapist hasn't been making it easy for me the past few months. Video ads, which play on the sides and bottom of the page, starting themselves, with SOUND, which I then have to close everytime I open a new page, have occasionally made browsing the site a downright pain in the ass.

Those videos are annoying but don't have anything to do with this site. I don't get them for example and I don't use adblock; as crappy a connection as (I think) I have, it's never been a big problem. You probably downloaded something extra with a program or browser you were asked to update. Some free web game sites make you download a bunch of crap like that too. When I start seeing those ads, I just do a system restore to a date before I started seeing them.

 

[Ophiuchus]

I just checked and apparently I do have an ad blocker. I had to check because I vaguely remember installing it at some point, but regularly see ads these days regardless. I guess it's either not working very well or has had a big whitelist patched in at some point. Also, the fact that I noticed the ads and didn't bother to do anything about it suggests that I probably don't need to have it installed at all.

Not that any of this affects my viewing of The Escapist. I've had a PubClub membership since it first became available and will continue to renew (despite my decline in forum reading/participation these days) for as long as there's content that I enjoy. So that's a thing I'd recommend for a whole bunch of reasons. If a straight up 'fund the Jimquisition' thing ever happened, I'd throw money at that too.

 

[Tombfyre]

I rather like the Acceptable Ads program that appears to be still going through things like adblock. Good standards and practices with the ads, so they're not offensive or outright dangerous to users from malware and the like, and boom, it gets through adblock. Seems to work just fine for places like Reddit, and the like! A potentially happy medium, if nothing else.

 

[Barbas]

The fact that the team doesn't know these are present, yet have been on this site for at least half a year is somewhat troubling.

May I humbly suggest the Escapist staff try browsing the site as a regular user for a day to see what the experience is like?

When I dropped into the Tech Team chat a while back and mentioned that a lot of people's Escapist profiles weren't linking to their Steam profiles properly (because of a recent change to the Steam community URL layout), Kross said it was the first he'd heard of it. He promptly fixed the problem in short order. I guess the faster stuff gets passed along to 'em, the faster it gets solved.

 

[themilo504]

I never use ad block, I can understand why people do it but simply minimizing the browser so that only the video or text is shown is a very nice solution that still supports the people I?m watching.

 

[Aikayai]

I would like to NOT run AdBlock,but those shitty small ads which insist on playing their audio every fucking time a page loads just gets right up my arse, especially when watching the Jimquisition. Admittedly its only been in the last few weeks that I've had to take this action, but really I think the solution is just to get sponsors like Rev3 have and just play a sequence mid show or get a better ad host, because the one The Escapist uses is just awful.

 

[Reincarnatedwolfgod]

I already had the escapist white listed long before watching this video.
In related news that there is a weird anime ad about psycho's or crap like that. I will never look up what this anime even is about because if did that means the advertisers won.

 

[Kreett]

I turned off my adblock on the Escapist the moment you asked, Jimothy! ~3~