Poll: Do adverts Make you angry?

[The Mehster]

These new captcha things are really annoying you know with the ads and the code word or if you don't want to, you have to listen to some stupidly fast people spouting off letters and numbers. And it's the only way I get ads.
Edit to not get anger towards me: I just disabled my adblocker for escapist.

 

[evilneko]

You know you can click the button until it just gives you a straight up text captcha? True story.

 

[manic_depressive13]

Yes, they make me so completely furious. They are wasting valuable time which I could otherwise be spending productively surfing gaming forums and watching youtube videos.

 

[Kross]

I hate the obstrusctive ones that have recently plagued this site. Its one thing if its in the corner, but now you interrupt what Im doing!? I cant even click the x on the Dragon Age 2 one, so if it pops up, I have to refresh (and usually just get the ME2 one instead).

Can you please take a screenshot of this and post it in the Tech Team group [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/view/Tech-Team]? The ads shouldn't be obscuring the button to turn it off.

We're the first test market for the Gaikai streaming game stuff, so they are very much working on making them ads people want to see and play with. Not annoy them so they hate the game.

 

[Kross]

These new captcha things are really annoying you know with the ads and the code word or if you don't want to, you have to listen to some stupidly fast people spouting off letters and numbers. And it's the only way I get ads.
Edit to not get anger towards me: I just disabled my adblocker for escapist.

The new captchas were added because they seem to give more legible captchas then the oddball symbols recaptcha seems to like lately. They also pay us a bit for the ads, I don't know how much, but it does the job and gives us a little extra cash for something we need in place anyway. I hope typing about how awesome some brand is isn't too much worse then typing some other random non word. :/

Also, thanks! <3

 

[Saelune]

I hate the obstrusctive ones that have recently plagued this site. Its one thing if its in the corner, but now you interrupt what Im doing!? I cant even click the x on the Dragon Age 2 one, so if it pops up, I have to refresh (and usually just get the ME2 one instead).

Can you please take a screenshot of this and post it in the Tech Team group [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/view/Tech-Team]? The ads shouldn't be obscuring the button to turn it off.

We're the first test market for the Gaikai streaming game stuff, so they are very much working on making them ads people want to see and play with. Not annoy them so they hate the game.

Well, I think its an issue with my laptop, since this issue is present on other sites for other features. But even if it wasnt one, its still just rude to force feed an ad when Im trying to type a response in a forum.

 

[Virgil]

Another point I'd like to make is that Facepunch, a forum with probably twice the traffic Escapist has, does not have a subscription service and does not have anywhere near the volume of ads.

Yeah, it's pretty likely that a FARK clone on a discount hosting service [http://www.cloudflare.com/] has twice the traffic our site does....

OK, probably not. In fact, it's more likely all the traffic that site gets wouldn't even make a blip on our stats, regardless of your perception. The fact of the matter is that it costs more to keep a site of this size running per month than most people will ever hope to earn in a year, or a full 4-year tuition at a university. We go through multiple terabytes of bandwidth every day. We have a rack of servers that we need to maintain to keep everything running.

And the really shocking thing? We do everything we can ourselves to keep costs down - and we do it really well. We encode our own video, we manage our own servers, and we even moved/assembled all our own furniture in the new office space. Not only does it cost that much to run our site, but other sites are spending twice as much, with larger teams, to handle half the amount of traffic we do. We know this for a fact, because we've worked with some of these sites on various projects, and they are absolutely floored when they find out.

We don't have corporate backers, and we're not pulling down DotCom-crazy salaries or living a life of luxury. We're not becoming or making anyone rich by doing this. Most of us would work less and earn more at virtually any other job, but we're here because we love what we do. And we want to keep doing it. So that means whatever ads we need to run to keep the site running will be here, and we'll keep experimenting with new things to see what works best. And if you don't like it, you can pay your own way with a PubClub membership, which runs how we'd really like the site to. Otherwise, suck it up and deal with whatever we have to do to keep the site free for everyone, because the only other option is be a lot smaller and go subscription-only, and we really don't want that.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

I'm perfectly fine with ads on the internet and television and radio and newspapers and magazines. All of these are entertainment services and not vital for my continued existence. I can moderate my ad volume by choosing or not choosing to participate in activities where I know I'll be subject to advertising.

What pisses me off are the ads that intrude on my life. Billboards steal a piece of sky from me. The owner might have the deed to the land but what right does he have to take away everyone's view to make money? Telemarketers make my phone less useful. Spammers consume my and my ISPs resources. Direct mailers are destroying the planet and making my mailbox less useful.

I'm anti advertising to the point where if I see an ad for a product that automatically makes me less likely to buy it. The products that get the heaviest advertising are either a. crappy useless junk (axe perfume, razors with 5 blades), b. scams (work at home, cash for gold), c. could be cheaper if the company didn't spend money on advertising.

I'll just leave this here

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

I hope typing about how awesome some brand is isn't too much worse then typing some other random non word. :/

It is much much worse. The people who don't like ads in general may tolerate them if they pay for content that is good. But they are psychically pained by being forced to interact with an ad knowing some slimeball in a marketing department is counting that interaction as a "win". And if your goal is to prevent bots from posting these ad-captchas are infinitely inferior to a web of trust system.

 

[Kross]

I hope typing about how awesome some brand is isn't too much worse then typing some other random non word. :/

It is much much worse. The people who don't like ads in general may tolerate them if they pay for content that is good. But they are psychically pained by being forced to interact with an ad knowing some slimeball in a marketing department is counting that interaction as a "win". And if your goal is to prevent bots from posting these ad-captchas are infinitely inferior to a web of trust system.

My idea of requiring every user to sign my gpg keyring got shot down because people kept spelling gpg 'pgp'.

 

[Iskenator67]

They don't bother me. I won't disclose why due to the fact every time someone does they get suspended witch I don't understand. Are programs like adblock illegal or something? what violation have these people committed by using or saying they use these programs that's cause for a ban? I would like an answer & I hope I don't get suspended for asking.

 

[evilneko]

It's in the rules. Basically, you don't admit to using adblock on the escapist. It's not illegal, and you can use it all you want, just don't a) say you do or b) suggest someone else do so. They treat it kinda like Nexus treats piracy. Except piracy is actually, you know, illegal.

I think I figured out why Nexus gets away with their far less annoying ads though. They have a critical mass of users that Escapist doesn't have. Also thousands more non-forum pages means they don't have to pollute their forums with ads.

What I haven't figured it out is why Escapist needs so many captchas when not even Nexus needs but one...

 

[Allspice]

They don't bother me. I won't disclose why due to the fact every time someone does they get suspended witch I don't understand. Are programs like adblock illegal or something? what violation have these people committed by using or saying they use these programs that's cause for a ban? I would like an answer & I hope I don't get suspended for asking.

No they aren't illegal, it is just a rule here not to mention it. Their reasoning is the ads are the way they make money so if everyone used...that, no one would see the ads and there would be no money to keep the site going.

 

[Triality]

Only the video ads get my ire up; not because they're long (they're not), but because when this site does video ads it plays the same goddamn ad on every single video view, making me lose respect for the site and ensuring that I will never support the sponsor.

Put mandatory caps on repeating ads and you'll have my respect again.

 

[evilneko]

^ Don't use Hulu then. Ugh, same frikkin commercial like four times in a 30 minute show. Maybe if they had a wider variety, they wouldn't have to have four commercial spots in a 30 minute show! D:

 

[Crazy Zaul]

ppl do know u can skip the captcha ads? They're not that annoying.

What can be annoying is these interactive ads on 4OD and stuff. You go to kitchen or whatever while ads are on and its still there on screen 'red bull: who should get their wings' then u have to watch them all.

 

[Kross]

I think I figured out why Nexus gets away with their far less annoying ads though. They have a critical mass of users that Escapist doesn't have. Also thousands more non-forum pages means they don't have to pollute their forums with ads.

What I haven't figured it out is why Escapist needs so many captchas when not even Nexus needs but one...

We can only run the ads that people buy on our site. If we only have one person buying a video ad, then we only have one to run. It runs until the inventory they bought that month runs out, interspersed with our house ads to fill space.

The captchas happen approximately after your second and 20th post on a given day. Most people only post a couple times a day. A problem we have been experiencing is spammers (manually) registering multiple accounts, and then spamming as much as possible on various proxies. We do a lot behind the scenes and in the mod queue to shut them down, but the captchas help catch these users after their accounts have been registered and they start spamming. We have also had issues with older accounts with weak passwords or merely registered much in advance that are used to spam, which is why captchas are enabled on every account that takes 10 seconds to register for free.

Also, as far as non forum pages, forum page views are approximately 12% of our total page views.

 

[Crazy Zaul]

Does any get the idea the Captchas are sentient and trying to tell us something? I just had one that said 'Get out more'

 

[Iskenator67]

Only the video ads get my ire up; not because they're long (they're not), but because when this site does video ads it plays the same goddamn ad on every single video view, making me lose respect for the site and ensuring that I will never support the sponsor.

Put mandatory caps on repeating ads and you'll have my respect again.

Agreed. Try watching all of Daily Drop with those ads on. I'm watching more ads then video.
I know the publishers club has no ads, but I get the feeling that most people are not going to start paying for something that used to be free. The day they charge just to even be here I'm gone.

 

[trollnystan]

Does any get the idea the Captchas are sentient and trying to tell us something? I just had one that said 'Get out more'

My god, you're right! *puts on tinfoil hat*




And to avoid a low content post: Ads are a necessary evil, but it doesn't have to be a bloody annoying evil too. When I think about online adverts today I think about this Eddie Izzard bit:


Internet adverts are becoming like he mentions the old adverts were like, with the whole in-your-face-buy-it-now thing, pretending to be subtle. And failing at it.