Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I don't see a problem as long as I have a choice as what I want to opt in for and what I don't
Interesting though.
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 3:42 pm (utc) on Jan. 27, 2006]
[edit reason] please, no blog links. [/edit]
We hear the "people hate these" line all the time, but the general surfer just keeps on clicking.
I've actually had a number of folks tell me the saw (and clicked on) these "cool little things" that floated into view on their screens.
Yeah, yeah, I hate dislike them too. Would I use them? Who knows, how much do they pay?
A couple of thoughts:
1) In her blog, Jen says that, if AdSense offered rich media to all publishers, it could hurt competitors offering similar rich-media formats because AdSense has so many publishers. That's probably true to some degree, but only for relatively low-priced run-of-network ads (the kinds of ads that people get from FastClick and Burst Media).
2) Jen also speculates that Google could expand its definition of "competitive ads" to include rich-media ads from companies like FastClick. It's worth noting that already has the ability to deliver display ads (what Google calls "image ads"), but it hasn't told publishers that they can't use display ads from the traditional banner networks. Allowing competing interstials and such is trickier for technical and practical reasons--you can't very well have two interstitials displaying at once, for example--so maybe publishers would have to make a choice by opting in or out of rich-media ads.
Overall, I think Google may do well with run-of-network ads (Ford, Coke, Tide, credit cards, etc.), but it's going to have a tougher time achieving successes in niches that are already served by specialist networks. The Travel Ad Network, for example, does a great job of selling ads to tourist offices, hotel chains, car-rental companies, etc. because its executives come from within the industry and have relationships with the major players.
There must be similar ad networks and rep firms in other sectors. Instead of competing with such networks and rep firms, which have far more expertise in their niches than Google does, maybe Google can find a way to work with them--for example, by aggregating and delivering impressions for AdSense publishers who can meet advertisers' quality standards but don't have enough circulation to interest the specialized ad networks and rep firms on their own.
I personally am not worried by the new formats being compulsory - image ads etc. are opt in and always have been, so I would imagine that these new ads would follow the same policy.
One other type of ad feature I'd like to see is text ads embedded as html server side .asp / .php so that people who disable javascript and/or use ad blockers will not be able to opt out of seeing ads. Sooner Google buys Norton and hits the delete key on the horrid program the better.
i presume that google did a little study (or a big one) of the average page displaying adsense text ads, and discovered a significant number of rich media ads. that money is going elsewhere, and google probably decided that they should be making that money.
I wrote several articles against unpolite ads disturbing the surfer.
This is shure not the sort of ad, I want to show on my sites.
floating and expanding ads could comply with this principle, whereas an interstitial at least prevents the user from reading the page by stealing users time and/or requiring an action to close.
but a good and consequent progress at google. there is a market, definitely.
expanding ads sounds interesting btw, because they await an interested user action to present, not a nerved one to shut down..
This may well hurt some of the companies already selling and running ads like these.
We hear the "people hate these" line all the time, but the general surfer just keeps on clicking.
Don't you find you just click on these horrible ads because you just can't get shut of them. I know one large News site I go to has one appearing right in the middle of the page and it usually takes 30 secs for the red cross to appear - I don't use that site anymore!
ricey
Don't you find you just click on these horrible ads because you just can't get shut of them.
Sure they annoy me. I can't recall ever clicking through on a pop-under, intrerstitial or floater. I'll close them if I can, or if I have to, use ctrl-alt-delete rather than click through on the ad.
But my point was that even though webmasters and seasoned surfers might find these things annoying, apparently not everyone does.
Same with pop-unders or pop-ups.
I kind of think that by the time a surfer gets to the point where they ae annoyed by these things, they aren't the "average user" anymore.
But my point was that even though webmasters and seasoned surfers might find these things annoying, apparently not everyone does.
Or they tolerate them because they feel that they don't have much choice. The reader of FORBES who really, really wants to read FORBES isn't going to bail out on FORBES because he's annoyed by an interstitial. The same is true of someone who's reading his metropolitan newspaper for local news.
That doesn't mean we can all risk alienating readers. Unless we have a brand name like FORBES or THE NEW YORK TIMES--and a loyal audience to go with it--we might not want to take a chance.
Case in point, no popups piss me off more than the ones on Major League Baseball's website. These just add to my growing discontent with baseball and contribute to me going to fewer and fewer games every year.
I purchased the site in question some time ago on ebay for around $500 and it now makes me, on average, $70 per day. It's the best thing I have ever bought apart from my iPod :)
And how much do you earn with your iPod? :-)
Dunno, though. Could I sleep at night knowing I was serving those floaty things or interstitials?
Tough call, folks. Very tough call. :-)
By the way, where did this info come from? The link was snipped before I got here. (No, I'm not asking that someone repost the link, but just to say, was it a reliable source or not? Like, is it showing up as Beta for some Adsense publishers already?)
[Edit: sorry, I'm assuming it's Jen's blog. Not sure how I missed that before.]
JK
I wonder how it will affect the perception of google ads. Today, adsense ads are rather unobtrusive compared to other types of ads out there.
Will it make Google more likely to be targetted by ad blockers? Will it affect the attitude of users toward Google ads?
I'll bet Microsoft would love to have a reason to block all Google ads in the next version of their browser. Not that they might not try it without a reason.
By the way, where did this info come from? The link was snipped before I got here.
I apologize to everyone. I hadn't realized we aren't supposed to link to blogs. I now understand the problem though. We would have a sea of blog spam on these forums without that rule.
As you may have guessed I got the information from a very reliable source. ;)
To fill everyone in, what Google AdSense is calling 'Rich Media' will include interstitials, expanding ads and floating ads. It appears select publishers will be doing the beta test. So I imagine it will be a while before these ads will be available to everyone.
This thread has been interesting to me. On a academic sites like mine they wouldn't work but on a less formal site, certainly game sites and such, I can see they might be a great addition.
With this move, I think the www as a whole is going to suffer a serious setback. All those sites which were once tolerable to surf are now going to be hell, thanks to this 'evil' plan by google.
