Jimquisition: The Adblock Episode

[deth2munkies]

I accidentally fell into adblock when my more computer savvy friend installed Ghostery on my computer after I got a malicious plugin installed. I've started whitelisting sites, but there are two that somewhat pain me not to unblock because I like the content producers, but I can't actually watch the fucking things properly without doing it: The Escapist and Twitch.

The site skins on The Escapist are incredibly annoying when attempting to navigate. I've accidently clicked on them dozens of times and found my way into a random site I didn't want to see. Combined with the "scroll over for sound" ads and that goddamned banner ad that moves with you on the bottom of the screen but sometimes gets caught in the middle and blocks everything till you close it, it's just infinitely easier to just run it on the site. Add to it that videos fail to load somewhat frequently, but the ads load no matter what. So on occasion I'll find myself watching an ad 3-4 times to get the video to run properly. This hasn't happened much lately, but it was a pain when it did.

The same thing happened with Twitch.tv: the ads would often break the stream and make me reload, watch another ad, then maybe get back to the stream I was watching. Add to it the fact that Twitch has been running into a ton of stream lag issues for no reason lately and it makes it virtually impossible to watch content I want to watch without adblock running.

That said, I realize how important it is and have whitelisted Youtube, Teamliquid, and other sites that I frequent to attempt to show my support. But if the ads prevent me from watching what I want to watch, it's a safe bet adblock is coming on.

 

[ryo02]

wall of text with bad grammar follows I am sorry feel free to just read the stuff under the "..." for my issues put more briefly and a couple of suggestions.

(oh wow 4 pages of posts in the time it took me to write this well this isn't likely to be read HAHA)

one problem I have with ads is when they are in your face and distracting I've seen ads on sites (most often wiki's) that actually cover up what your trying to read rendering it impossible and you cant get rid of them either.
some even follow you when you try to scroll down.

as for the escapist specifically one time (and I'm sure I mentioned this on a now long dead thread) there was a banner ad on the front page and another as the border for a trailer I wanted to watch and a video ad before the trailer all of which were for Brink and the trailer I was trying to watch was for Brink.

I'm no expert in ads but I'm pretty sure some of those were redundant if anything it made me not want to buy the game and I didn't and from what I hear I dodged a bullet.

...

in short don't have them covering things up don't have them in the way or being obnoxious and just let me watch the video and Ill keep ad blocker off from now on.

here's a thought take it as you will why not have the ad play after the show so people who want to watch the show and not have to sit through an ad can do so and those that want to show support can stick around after for the ad.

another suggestion would be to not put ads on trailers lets be honest here trailers are all ready ads in of them self don't make me watch an ad so I can watch an ad.

"skip ad" options are all ways nice if you have no interest in the product

 

[Glaice]

I'm fine with ads as long as they are non-intrusive on bottom/top/side but what I cannot tolerate are full screen ads, irritating flash ads with sound, false claims on adverts (I'm looking at you, Weather Channel!) and ads within videos.

This is not an admittance, these are my thoughts on what I will not deal with when it comes to advertisements on the internet.

 

[Moth_Monk]

My god this was an awkward video to watch. It felt like that scene from The Office where David Brent begs not to be fired from his job. Truly made me cringe >.<


There was no need to make this one Jim, I don't think. Especially just because of some troll in the forums. I'm kind of embarrassed for you, man. :/

 

[Carnagath]

To be fair, anyone with any substantial amount of technical expertise will tell you that Adblock and Noscript are pretty much as necessary as running an antivirus on your system if you spend a lot of time on the internet. I would not recommend browsing without them. Of course, whitelisting content that you want to support and find trustworthy and not too intrusive is also something that you should consider doing, and is not that big of a hassle.

 

[UsefulPlayer 1]

I feel like what you have said in this episode is in contradiction to what you said at the end of the "Early Access" video.

Link:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/8681-Early-Access

"You don't pay for the Jimquisition. Just think about that. This is free."

I don't mean to take quotes out of context, so I've provided a link; but you can't say that your videos are a free service and expect at the same time we do something for you. In the comment section of that video:

I feel like I do pay for Jimquisition. I sit through the god awful commercials that seem to plague this site more and more. And I think other people pay to have the commercials removed.

I also feel that "I'm immune from criticism because it's free" is a terrible argument, and one that Jim wouldn't put up with in other contexts. In fact, hasn't Jim done episodes bemoaning "free to play" games?

"Oh sure, our games are crippled to try to get you to buy in-game DLC - but you don't have to pay, so how can you criticise our game?"

 

[blackrave]

I'm glad we had this episode.
I wanted to ask this for long time- are there commercials shown before videos?
Because I don't get them.
And I don't mean as if I don't understand them
I mean that I've never seen a single ad prior to video on Escapist
I'm pretty sure I don't have an adblock installed.
Do Chrome blocks such ads by default?

 

[Tnno]

I whitelisted the escapist just for you Jim.

...I'd also fancy some more Khafnir.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

Yes, I should have made more mention of the fact (rather than just a still image) that The Escapist has a reasonable ad-free subscription service. This is also a really good way to support the site if you have some spare dubloons and want the ads gone.

Also, thanks so much for the frank and civil response thus far!

I'd prefer a mobile site, so I can check out escapist on the go. Happy to look at adds

 

[JoJo]

I've never used adblock, most of the sites I use regularly aren't too bad for ads really, or in the case of the Escapist I have the Pub Club, which I can't recommend enough by the way, for the price of half a bus ticket a month it's well worth investing in if you use the site regularly.

For those who don't have Pub Club, while I don't agree with ad-block I can really emphasise why someone might use it for this site, a few months back my subscription expired and I took a couple of days to renew it and damn, those video-playing ads with sound were horrible. I think just as the end-users have a responsibility to leave ad-block off if they want a site to continue providing them free entertainment, websites also have a responsibility not to host overly intrusive adverts or 'click here for free download!' type scam ads if they expect people to sit through them.

 

[JPArbiter]

I do have to agree with Jim, Ads are at best a minor inconvience. when I am at home and watching a video and an ad pops up mid stream, I get up and take a piss, grab a cola or play peakaboo with my 10 month old son.

SOME ads on sights are annoying as shit. those don't text and drive ads that would override anything on the site when the slightest pixel of your cursor moves over it made me want to drive to the HQ of that organization and burn it to the ground. or any time I see an add pop up in front of an article and I can not seem to get rid of it by hitting escape, clicking on a box, or dear god clicking on the ad itself. instead I gotta reload the page and go about my business. DAMN HITTING F5 IS SO HARD!.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

Also, slightly off-topic, but I am not sending you any dildos until you wear that Kirby shirt I got you at the last Expo XD (though it may be too big for you these days).

How could you Fappy? Withholding your dildos from Jim until he dresses the way you want him too?
-_- How cruel.

Anyway, I don't think I have add block. Is pop up blocker the same thing?
Though I understand why people would want it. Adds get pretty bad sometimes.

That said, the people who use it, brag about it, and complain to people like Jim about their content are just jerks.

As for me, like Jim and others have said, $20 bucks a year for no adds, no guilt, and bonus perks on the site.
Good deal.

Thank God for you, Jim.

 

[TheLastSamurai14]

You just convinced me to whitelist The Escapist, Jim! I had no idea so much of your revenue came from the ads themselves.

That being said, would you consider creating some way to have us donate if we feel so inclined?

 

[gigastar]

My two main issues with ads right now are autoplaying videos with unmutable audio, and flash-based "interactive" ads that begin pushing the flash plugin way past what its meant to handle.

A third, but lesser issue is the content of some of theese ads. For example on a News page tab ive got an ad for Virgin Media Internet/mobile phone package. Not only am i not a homeowner, and thus unable to purchase it, but my parents are already paying Virgin for my internet, satellite TV and the landline at a cheaper rate than is being advertised.

I use NoScript on my laptop purely for performance reasons, if i dont have it off then the flash plugin starts consuming all of the RAM until either the laptop doesnt have enough memory for anything else (forcing me to crash it via task manager), or the plugin crashes on its own. Obviously due to the nature of NoScript i must disable it when/if i decide watch a video from the Escapist on my laptop.

For the desktop i normally leave an Escapist tab open, unless theres a video ad that refuses to piss off. In which case i close it.

 

[Manthraxx]

Okay okay... Escapist is now white-listed... at least until I get tired of the fucking commercials playing all the time

 

[sky14kemea]

I do block ads. They screw up the formatting, they are noisy and they try to make you click there even if you do not want to. I could live with a couple of silent banners. I could dead with this *click to watch video* windows pops up with embedded video.

What I can absolutely fucking not accept is trying to watch a video, with an add being louder than the video and I have to invest work to close this add to enjoy my video. Or that you want to watch a video and have to watch another advertising video first.

I especially want to address you, Jim. In a way (yes, logic is flawed) the piracy offers better service than the legal way to obtain content (you will recognize this one).

The Escapist doesn't get to choose exactly which ads are played, that goes down to whoever is paying for the ad space. If you see really intrusive ads like that, you should report them to the Tech Team [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/contact/subject/tech], preferably with screenshots so they can see what you mean.

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.

 

[samuraiweasel]

One thing that does piss me off though is a 30 second ad that i have to watch before watching a trailer......seriously? The trailers are not HD, and you want me to watch a video ad for that? NO thanks. ill just go to youtube instead.
I dont mind watching ads for the video series like Jimquisition/Big Picture/ZP?Escape to the Movies.
But please dont have 3 different video on autoplay on different parts of the page or i will adblock you by default.

 

[Terwo]

Why don't you remove all ads from every page (ie, forums, videos, articles, etc) and move them all to a dedicated 'support us' page?

That way, I can enjoy my visit to the escapist (or any other website) without being harassed and annoyed by ads, and before I leave I could click on the support page, load all the ads you want me to see, and then close the tab and continue with my day? You get ad views and consumer goodwill, I get a better experience = win win?

Surely something like that would be far less intrusive and obnoxious than bloody ads spewed everywhere!