From: Steve Mynott <stevem@tightrope.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1998 22:10:34 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: Advertising Creepiness
In-Reply-To: <199811072128.NAA19724@netcom13.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <19981108134525.A26515@tightrope.demon.co.uk>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



On Sat, Nov 07, 1998 at 11:50:05PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
 
> Myself, I try to mostly just snip out a few paragraphs of a story and
> comment on them, fair use and all.

I particularly dislike articles that are things forwarded from other
lists without comment (IP seems a particular offender here).  These are
rarely interesting.

> This is the new "blind spot"...that foveal region about a third of the way
> down a Web page screen that has dancing icons, "click on me" junk, and
> corporate logos. My guess is that nearly all of us skip this junk
> completely, and I think marketing studies will someday confirm this. (There
> have been tantalizing reports in places like the "Wall Street Journal" that
> basically almost nobody sees these ads, but the full message hasn't sunk
> in.)

Click through rates are something like 2%, so most are screening them out.
I rarely noticed what the ads actually said.

> (Yes, I tried the utilities which purport to flush banner ads, but they
> didn't work well (long delays, cruftiness).)

I don't know which ones you have tried but junkbuster 

http://www.junkbuster.org/ (a proxy on port 8000)

works _very_ well on my linux system, particularly with the "blank gif"
patch.

It blanks out 99% of banner gifs, which makes pages like metacrawler and
wired look more visually attractive and load faster.

Until I lost all the banner ads I hadn't realised how distracting all those
animated gifs at the top of the screen were and its now much faster and
easier to read the info you want, without them.

> Friends of mine routinely turn off all graphics, a point I'm about to reach.

I tried this but found it made the net too hard to use.

> So, Declan may think the banner ads at Wired.com pay the rent, and the bean
> counters may think this is so, but I doubt any of us are looking at the
> ads. Except the dummies.

It would give a brave browser manufactor (Opera?) quite an advantage if
they built the banner ad killer into the browser directly.

-- 
1024/D9C69DF9 steve mynott steve@tightrope.demon.co.uk http://www.pineal.com/

    i'm a programmer: i don't buy software, i write it.
    --tom christiansen