Firefox Users Bad For Advertisers 900
Posted
by
CowboyNeal
from the smart-clickers dept.
from the smart-clickers dept.
rocketjam writes "According to CNET, German advertising technology company Adtech reports that during the months of October and November, Internet Explorer users were more than four times as likely to click on ads than Firefox users were. During the period 0.5 percent of IE users clicked on ads compared to 0.11 percent of Firefox users. Speculation on reasons for the difference in click rates range from Firefox's integrated pop-up blocking to seeing the average Firefox user as more tech-savvy the average Internet Explorer user."
The users... (Score:5, Interesting)
A different way of advertising... (Score:1, Interesting)
Browser ID spoofing (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd be curious to see the figures on that.
Another reason (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't think that it's too devastating for the ad companies, but I think it will encourage them to change their ads to an acceptable format. Popup ads are not an acceptable form of advertisement. Google ads aren't blocked on my Firefox, but almost everything else is.
Re:AdBlock (Score:5, Interesting)
But I've been thinking lately -- is this going to change the Internet dramatically? How many web sites rely on advertising revenue, and won't get it anymore when everybody is filtering banners?
For instance, I now read Slashdot with no ads, and I'm not a subscriber. Adblock decreases the value proposition of a Slashdot subscription.
Re:What next? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think what this really should do is tell advertisers that if they get a click-through from a Firefox user, then it's a lot more meaningful in terms of potential sale than a click-through from an IE user. A Firefox user is far more likely to "mean it" if they click on an ad. An IE user's click is probably statistically close to indistinguishable from a random click :-)
There are a number of factors... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's important to consider which pages are most popular for IE and Firefox users; it's not a matter of browser but more a matter of the interests of the user. This click-ratio metric would only be relevant if we compared visitors to the same website, and know that the users have the same interests and are just as likely to click. This would be more accurately done in a controlled environment than using pagelogs.
That said, I do accept that Firefox and IE users have different attitudes towards internet use, but the point in TFA about IE users thinking the banner is a system notification made me laugh :)
Next battlefield: Rise of inline popups? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen a few of these in Firefox. They were actually advertisements for big-name movie releases. They were pretty intrustive and were usually animated, sailing across the page I was trying to view. They were relatively well-behaved, at least, offering a tiny "Close [x]" button in some corner of the ad. Of course there's no guarantee that future ads will be so generous.
Since they don't launch in separate windows, obviously current popup-blocking technology can't touch them. I wonder if this will be the next "big thing" since users and browsers are becoming more successful at blocking popups or tuning them out.
I also wonder how easy they'll be to block. Sadly, I didn't bother to look at the source, but I have a hunch they're served up via a Javascript include file that's hosted on the ad company's servers. If that's how they were done, I guess they would be easy to block... just filter out
Is Firefox unethical? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ya' think? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've had several people ask my if I was sure it wasn't spelled 'Enternet', since its icon is a big blue E... sigh...
Re:Many adverts don't display correctly on firefox (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably many more IE users accidentily click on ads or click on them and lose interest than firefox users who are much more likely to only click through on an advert if they are interested in buying. (this is a guess we don't breakdown by browser type at the moment)
Your guess holds true with me, at least. When I see an ad, I only click on it if I think it's something that interests me and that I stand a good (50%) chance of buying. Tech stuff appeals to me, as do some t-shirts. So ThinkGeek ads tend to get clickthroughs from me.
Re:AdBlock (Score:2, Interesting)
Blocking adverts benefits advertisers. (Score:3, Interesting)
When something is advertised by banner/popup/flash monstrosity/whatever is shoved in my face, at best its a waste of the advertisers paid for bandwidth. At worst, if its a product I'm interested in and they manage to get a brand name over to me then I'll check out their competitors first.
Essentially banner adverts & popups tell me "Low grade company, low grade product, probably a scam", and I'll no more consider following such adverts than I'd consider clicking "unsubscribe" in a spam mail (even if I did allow my mail client render HTML).
Re:AdBlock (Score:2, Interesting)
I quite like the idea of mirco payments, every page you hit gets a small amount of money (% of a penny) from that person (being slashdotted would be like pay day). So every 10 times you hit a site they get a penny...
But it would be a nightmare to implement on a WWW scale
Re:AdBlock (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is Firefox unethical? (Score:3, Interesting)
Advertisers have to accept that only a small portion of their ads are seen. If that is channel surfers or ad-blockers, so be it.
The market will find a way. TV has survived years of channel flippers. The internet will find a way as well.
Don't block ads, block popups , Flash, Anims, etc (Score:5, Interesting)
But I do have pop-ups blocked and I have installed flashblock(great plugin), which stops all annoying flash from playing, and I have shut down animated gifs. So my screen doesn't look like the all singing all dancing crap of the universe.
After the above settings I do use adblock plugin, to block something crappy that does sneak through. I have about 3 lines in my adblock file. One of them is *newegg* after some hideous unkillable flash they had annoyed me. Newegg doesn't sell to Canada anyway.
Lately I see more Ads flowed in the middle of text I am trying to read. These I generally just use nuke anything to get out of my way. Bother me enough and I will adblock the server.
Simple Rule guys: keep your ads from ruining my experience or I will. If you want me to even see your adverts, you better play nice.
Re:Is Firefox unethical? (Score:3, Interesting)
Providing content funded by advertising revenue is a dying business, webmasters need to face that. When the web began there was little if any advertising, perhaps we're heading back that way.
However, if you want to talk ethics, lets talk about advertising agencies that sell adverts for fraudulent products (iPod ponzi schemes, system tune-up software that doesn't work, adware removers that contain spyware, "your computer is proadcasting an IP address" popups). By blocking ads, FF users protect themselves from unscrupulous marketeers.
I'll shed no tears for a bankrupted ad-server
My experience with Google Adsense ads (Score:3, Interesting)
However...
Nearly all of my pay comes from clicks on my article about legal music downloading [goingware.com]. The ads are almost always for p2p apps, and I'm dismayed they often claim what they do is legal. But there is a clickthrough rate of over 20%, which is quite unheard of in web advertising.
Most of the site has more technical articles. My article on C++ style [goingware.com] is my second most popular (after the music downloading article), and gets ads for obviously useful and legitimate things like software development tools and training courses, but it has a clickthrough rate of just 0.1%. Rates for other technical articles are similar. In the three months I've published adsense ads, I've made only $10 from the ads in the C++ style article.
My experience running ads on other sites is that a typical response rate is 0.5% - 1%, so it seems technically-inclined readers click ads far below the average.
In between are some articles on marketing, web design and such, that get about a 1% response rate.
Although the ads on my music article pay well, I don't like what they're advertising, and feel they call my credibility into question. I've started approaching the manufacturers of mp3 players directly, to offer them ad space on the page, but have had no takers yet.
I don't think I could come up with another high-response article very easily, so my plan is actually to write more technical articles, with the hope that by posting new content regularly, I can encourage repeat visitors. It is very hard to get someone totally new to visit a website, but I don't think it's so hard to get a visitor to come back for a second time.
Also I'm going to completely change the page design to use a very nice CSS/XHTML design my wife Bonita made for me. Right now my pages look very homemade, and I expect some visitors hit the back button because my pages look so poor. Here's a peek [goingware.com] at the new design, I think once I have it up all over my site I will get more repeat visitors.
Re:AdBlock-Exactly (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:AdBlock (Score:3, Interesting)
The ads are small, suit the page style, and are 100% connected to the site's content. (Pocket PC games). Why do poeople block them? It's OK in my book to block pop-ups, but I think reading a website and deliberately blocking its adverts is akin to going into a shop, reading their newspaper, and putting it back on the shelf.
We've gone from having a 2% CTR to less than 0.25. The site costs $168/month to run, and my student loan, and not the advertising revenue, covers the bills.
Re:AdBlock (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it? The content provider is providing free content with a catch: you will view some ads. By removing the ads, you aren't holding up your end of this implicit contract. Don't like ads? Don't view the content.
Good! Time to decommercialise the Internet... (Score:5, Interesting)
The attitude of big business today seems to be that every human must be forced to stare at billboards, glossy pages in magazines, TV ads and Internet banners displaying product after product after product - even to the point where the 3" diameter circle on the top of a petrol pump at a petrol station has to display an ad for a bar of chocolate...
So, just as much as big business seems to be given the right to try to force-feed me endless advertising, I reserve the right to read a book on a tube train so I never have to stare up at the ads over the windows, the right to use my remote control to switch to another channel during the ad breaks and the right to use any goddamn browser and asblock program I want to keep this constant assault of visual garbage away from my eyes.
we need pay per view (Score:2, Interesting)
To be honest if I could pay $1 a year to make slashdot ad free I'd do it, but we still don't have micropayment services that are ubiquitous. And it would also have to be a roaming service so it block s at home and work.
Im not sure what the eocnomics of this all are, but if the subscription cost is VERY low, there are maybe 3 or 4 sites I'd happily pay to be ad free (bluesnews is another).
Re:AdBlock (Score:5, Interesting)
Its not a for-profit business model you need to consider. Its the model where a bunch of people want to communicate with each other.
There is a lot of good information/advice in the slashdot comments and no one is paying posters anything.
There are gigs and gigs of stuff on p2p and binary newsgroups and, again, no commerical benefit to those that post them.
The Internet will change, but it doens't have to be a for-profit model.
Re:AdBlock (Score:1, Interesting)
argh: mod me as a troll
Re:AdBlock (Score:3, Interesting)
What if I can't pay attention to the content because the ads are screaming for my attention? I get easily distracted by stuff moving in my peripheral vision, such that I can't concentrate on an article or whatever. It's not like magazines, where the ads just sit there, waiting patiently for your attention.
I personally like the Firefox/Mozilla extention "Click to Play" for Flash movies (though I'd like it to have a whitelist option). Also, the semi-hidden "image.animation_mode once" [google.com] configuration tweak's useful. Actually, it appears [ESC] will also stop animations (at least under Firefox on my Mac), which is also very useful. I need to try it under Moz, and on my Linux and Windows boxen.
I personally nearly never click on ads, because I'm just plain not interested in what they offer. I have, however, clicked on Google's text ads several times--they were actually relevant! Anyone who feels their product or service is more important than the reason I visited the site doesn't deserve my attention.
--JoeBad thing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:AdBlock (Score:3, Interesting)
We do know that some of the people are annoyed of the ads, but for the most part they are OK.
In case he ad revenue is gone, well, people have to pay. Simple enough. Our newspaper is the most successful in the country so we will survive even if people have to pay for net access.
But we don't want to chardge. We love to provide a really good newssite for free and the ads let us do that. It is the same principle as the local city papers that survive on ads. Remove ads, they will be gone and the selection will be severely reduced.
This is even more cruical on the net. Small sites can maintain the budget by adding some spare revenues and this lowers the publishing threshold for most people.
Comparing Percantages (Score:5, Interesting)
Advertisers should concentrate on what they are doing that only gets 0.5% of the most used broswer out there to click on their ads. Make the ads better (from the point of view of the *consumer*) and more people will click, regardless of the browser.
Re:AdBlock (Score:3, Interesting)
There sure as hell is a commercial benefit, just not a direct one. By posting items to p2p/ng, one encourages others to post items to p2p/ng. The more items on p2p/ng, the less one has to pay (music, movies, tv, apps, games, etc.). So, yes, no one is making money by p2p/ng, but they are, theoretically, "saving money".
Users *WANT* Ad Blocking. (Score:3, Interesting)
I also refuse to install Flash, it is a tool that has been abused by marketers. Transparent animation over page text was the last straw, that went WAY over the line for intrusion. Whenever I visit a Flash-only website, I complain to the webmaster for a non-Flash page. It usually gets results.
Re:AdBlock - will cause evolutionary 'Arms Race' (Score:5, Interesting)
e.g.: Take a page at url mysite.com/index.html . This page just consists of a bunch of iframes, which contain the page content, and the ads. The source of those iframes are from apparently random URLs that all look like mysite.com/?2pg904a82n84 . These content/ad URLs also change with each page reload. How do block the ads next time?
The only reason that a small 'elite' percentage of net users are able to surf Ad-free is that they're not yet a statistically significant group. Whey they become signficant, things will change. Enjoy the Ad-free content while you can!
Why clicks? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:That's not how ads work (Score:3, Interesting)
If brands do become completely irrelevant, then what?
Re:AdBlock (Score:2, Interesting)
Alertbox column on online ads (Score:4, Interesting)
There was a recent AlertBox article [useit.com] in which Nielsen described the most hated forms of Web advertising and how much they hurt users and, in turn, the aggressive advertisers and the sites that use them. It's a small article and quite worth a read.
The all singing all dancing crap of the universe (Score:2, Interesting)
I am what's left over after Jack spends money on things like food, shelter, taxes, and broadband.
You get to see me when you make Jack happy by giving him things like computer games, whisky, and lap dances.
When Jack gets pissed off, he hides me and you don't get to see me.
The (DHTML/CSS?) pops that flow over text perplex me. Do advertisers think that we're blocking popups accidentally?
As Tyler might say: "We've created generation of web users annoyed by popups. I'm wondering if another popup is the answer we really need."
Re:AdBlock (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree, I don't know how many times I surf while listening to MP3's in my headphones, when all of a sudden BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH comes through at maximum volume and almost temporarily defens me.
It's hard to find the perfect balance of audio between music files and Flash files, and it can not only be annoying, but can cause physical distress or damage.
I have little sympathy for the "surprise" ads anymore. If I am interested in something, a simple targeted ad from a search will get me to click it.
Re:Ads for sales vs. marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't know where I heard that, or if I'm quoting it correctly, but that's the gist of it.
Re:AdBlock - will cause evolutionary 'Arms Race' (Score:2, Interesting)