Forum Moderators: phranque
The video commercials are the result of a collaboration between online ad developers, Unicast, and software giant, Microsoft.
The video commercial is a full screen online ad format that plays a 2MB, 30 second, broadcast quality video, regardless of connection speed.
The commercial background loads whilest a visitor is on a site; uses some component in Media Player 9 and then I guess something popups and plays.
If 28% find something annoying when it is entirely new I can only imagine that this will rise to a very high level when the novelty wears off.
Well - off to optimise "how to remove video adverts" and "how to uninstall media player 9" pages...
Either way I am surprised its as low as 28%. All adverts are annoying!
Either way I am surprised its as low as 28%. All adverts are annoying!
No kidding.... which is why I (among millions I assume) use a MORE than decent blocker....
This goes along with absolutely REFUSING to talk to anyone who calls me to sell me something - um, telemarketers for those lucky enough to live somewhere this doesn't happen.... If I don't initiate the contact, believe me, YOU WILL GET THE DOOR SLAMMED IN YOUR FACE, THE PHONE SLAMMED IN YOUR EAR, OR YOUR ONLINE AD DRECK STOPPED BY MY BLOCKERS.
I actively DETEST this sort of thing, and I do NOT believe that just because the internet is an "open" sort of place that we should be subjected to it, any more than I believe that my email should be inundated with ads for male penile enhancements of various versions, or porn sites of women and varying animals.
SHEER stupidity.
plays a 2MB [...] video
I am sure this will turn quite a few modem users off. Even though more and more people have fast speed internet, there are enough visitors with low bandwith, that I would not want to lose.
Edit: [Hmm. Not sure that's possible. Maybe time to go elsewhere for an OS, regardless that the rest of them are kludgy and practically unusable - only SERIOUS programmer-heads could love them.... *sigh*]
You can re-name the executable, that is what I have done to Messenger.
I sincerely hope that works, because I really do NOT want to go to another OS. I am NOT a Microsoft basher, Bill Gates is NOT the devil in a 3-pc suit.... and the other available OS offerings are NOT my cuppa....
Disabling or uninstalling Media Player would have no effect on that (besides I quite like Media Player - it lets me organise my music, look up album info and burn audio or HighMAT CDs from one fairly simple interface).
The good news is that both of the Onion adverts have a 'Click here if not redirected' link - so if you want to skip the ad you can just click that.
PS Why have some of you renamed Messenger?
Websites have to make money, advertising is one of the best ways for a content site to do this. Advert blockers do cause problems for those sites, hosting and developing a site isn't free. But where is the balance? I personally feel that if money can be made through something as discrete as adsense then fine. But popup videos, flash drop downs that cover the content and make the site unusable deserve to be blocked.
If ad blockers start to become wide spread, advertisers will write code that blocks access to browsers that don't display the ad's. It will require some work from the ad provider, but it can be done... the start of a new arms race?
Having made that clear by using ad blocking/pop-up blocking tools, it is a waste of everyone's time, money and bandwidth trying to inflict adverts on me. I will not buy anything from them. Indeed, I am likely to have a negative opinion on those sites/advertisers. Save your bandwidth for those who arn't makeing a concious decision to block ads.
It's the same as with do-not-call lists - telesales are more efficient by not wasting time trying to sell me something.
Jon.
I wonder if this will cause people to stop using IE.Exactly. I very much doubt this will bother Opera/Mozilla users.
There is actually a way to uninstall messenger. You'll have to do a little searching. It's bascially a matter of editing a config file somewhere so it shows up in the add/remove dialog.
I personally did it because:
a) it autoloads everytime I use outlook or hotmail
b) a virus was circulating that was using a security flaw in messenger
c) I use GAIM - which means I can run Yahoo Messenger, MSN, AOL etc all from the same program.
