Fighting Ad Blockers With Captcha Ads 450
krou writes "Living in an ad-free internet thanks to ad blockers? That could be a thing of the past if software firm NuCaptcha has their way by making captchas into ads. 'Instead of the traditional squiggly word that users have to decipher, the new system shows them a video advert with a short message scrolling across it. The user has to identify and retype part of the message to proceed. Companies including Electronic Arts, Wrigley and Disney have already signed up.'"
A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, this is going to endear me to EA and Disney - basically not only making me wait through an ad, but FORCING me to pay attention to it.
So, what happens to the site.. (Score:1, Insightful)
after the users abondon the site because of the ridiculous advertisements that disturb their viewing experience?
Yeah, I wouldn't do it.
Shrinking Your Market (Score:5, Insightful)
No thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
If I see one of these, I think I'll just go somewhere else. It'd have to be something really compelling to make me endure that kind of abuse.
fine (Score:3, Insightful)
If a site is too obnoxious, i will just avoid it completely.
If we are reading... (Score:3, Insightful)
They want me on their site right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:5, Insightful)
You ever watched a Disney DVD or video? Their entire business is based around making you watch ads for their own products.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:4, Insightful)
It's an appeal to the authoritarian personality [wikipedia.org]. Some people really like being told what to do, and will respect a brand that makes them do uncomfortable things. Hm... or is that called BDSM [wikipedia.org]? Meh, same difference.
To everyone posting "We'll go elsewhere" (Score:4, Insightful)
goes against basic ad psychology (Score:5, Insightful)
an advertisement is essentially a form of seduction. that's why sex figures so large in advertising. you are trying to entice someone into buying your product, to woo them to come hither
so when you intrusively force someone to view your ad, you've just completely destroyed the psychology of what makes any advertisement work
you have in fact performed a pavlovian experiment: you've force someone into an unpleasant experience, then associated that unpleasant experience with your brand name. much as with pavlov's dogs who started salivating whenever they heard a bell because you always played a bell before feeding them, forced viewing associates the unpleasurable feeling of coercion with your brand name and products
so all these idiots have done is perfected the art of anti-advertising, of driving people away from your product
just make the ad nonintrusive, and anyone who is predisposed to your product might click. that's the best you can do. anything more intrusive simply destroys your brand name with the pavlovian association as described above
Oh do stop complaining (Score:5, Insightful)
Its about time that a lot of people on slashdot realised that money doesn't grow on trees and what they enjoy on the net eventually has to be paid for by someone. If putting up with a short advert means I can continue to enjoy a lot of free sites then thats fine by me and I suspect a lot of other people.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of people seem to block ads because they're too pushy and annoying. This goes too far. If it was just an image ad, then it wouldn't be so bad. I tend to block ads because they're video (on a largely static site), ugly, offensive, make noise or are otherwise excessively distracting. The site owners might not be in much position to make demands to advertisers, but it seems like they shouldn't be going along with these schemes that really dilute the quality of their content.
Anyone got a list of sites signing up for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
When mega rich multinational megacorps stop STEALING ALL MY BANDWIDTH then maybe I'll think about buying their product.
MAYBE.
Actively going out of your way to piss off your customers is NOT a good business model - one day you will learn.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:3, Insightful)
I generally play DVDs with mplayer, which happily skips past all that junk. I've seen a few Disney movies on VHS some years back, but that had rewinding.
Re:goes against basic ad psychology (Score:5, Insightful)
So you're saying that this is more like rape than like seduction?
Accessibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
Really.
Probably not. It's the advertising angle that's offensive.
Also, normal use of captchas works to my advantage, like helping ensure every third comment isn't an ad for Viagra. That I can cooperate with.
Re:Oh do stop complaining (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like you're assuming everyone here blocks every ad they come across. I respect that the people running sites I enjoy visiting want/need to turn a profit but I want those sites to respect me as well. Some ads are so obnoxious they overshadow the very content that got me to the site in the first place and those are the ones I block.
What about 56k? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ads don't make you buy stuff... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ads mostly exist to put their brand name in front of your eyeballs.
Later on, when you're out buying some stuff, you need some $foo. You see two packages, brand X and brand Y. You have seen X before, but Y is entirely unfamiliar to you. So you buy X. What you don't remember at the moment is that only reason why X is familiar is because you've seen it in ads.
Re:No thanks (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Even if these captchas actually turn out easier to use than the current ones? I mean no more guesstimating which bit of what overlapping miscoloured squiggles belong to which potential letters (and is that a 1 or an l? O or 0?), just a quick message and an easily identifiable word within it.
Yes, really. How long do think it's gonna be before they make it hard to get the right answer to force you to watch it again (or a different one).
Re:Oh do stop complaining (Score:3, Insightful)
It's about time that people on slashdot realized that we are not sheep to be fleeced and slaughtered by corporate overlords.
"Respect" is a two way street and usually starts by the corporate overlord not being an abusive jerk to begin with.
Commercial blocking techniques usually start and gain popularity because of advertisers being abusive jerks.
Re:To everyone posting "We'll go elsewhere" (Score:2, Insightful)
They don't care. The sort of folks who obsessively block ads aren't good customers anyway
Apparently they do care, or else they wouldn't be interested in unblockable ads, would they?
Re:Oh do stop complaining (Score:5, Insightful)
A *SHORT* Advert, meaning what?
A static image. A basic block of text. These will not be blocked by me. Jumping things. Blinking things. Moving things. Things that BLOCK the site I'm trying to read... those will go into the bit-bucket EVERY time.
Static images and blocks of text have actually led me to click them. Score 1 for tasteful advertisements.
Toxic Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, who is not getting this message? Why do ad-blockers exist at all?
How about finding a new revenue stream that doesn't annoy me to the point where I get off my ass and do something about it!
Re:Proxy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:ads don't make you buy stuff... (Score:5, Insightful)
ads don't make you buy stuff...your lack of self-control, willpower, and independent thought makes you buy stuff
It's not that simple. It has been scientifically proven that when seeing certain ads multiple times, even not consciously, can result in people having a positive opinion on a product. They forget the source of their opinion is actually an advertisement.
At first, I used ad blockers because of their distraction. Now, I use them mainly because I don't want marketeers pilfering in my mind.
Source: Hawks in sheep's clothing [psychologytoday.com].
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure I've said this at least one occasion before on /., but it bears repeating.
I wouldn't turn ads off if they weren't so idiotic, invasive, and everywhere.
Half of the websites I use are significantly faster because my browser isn't loading 8 flash instances for one page for all of the ads.
Then there's the ads that try and make themselves look like they're part of the site you're visiting to intentionally bait you into clicking on them.
Why not actually try and sell me shit I might actually want to buy, with tasteful or even funny ads that actually convey something about the product I might be interested in?
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:5, Insightful)
You ever watched a Disney DVD or video? Their entire business is based around making YOUR KIDS watch ads for their own products.
Fixed that for you.
Kids - the advertiser's force multiplier.
Still, as bad as Disney is, they're not as bad as the low-rent scum like Nickelodeon. Seriously - as kid's TV goes, PBS is tops, Disney is second, everything else is utter crap.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:4, Insightful)
Ocassionally I do watch trailers, when I'm interested in finding something new to watch. But what I'll do is rewinding a few seconds into it to skip past the titles, take a quick look to see if it looks interesting, if so rewind back, and if not skip to the next one. So an unskippable one would still annoy the heck out of me.
Some ads are indeed a work of art, like the car ad with the rube goldberg machine made from pieces. But I don't remember which company it was for, and don't particularly care about what's it advertising. When I buy a car, I'll still come up with a price I'm willing to pay, the features I need, find every model that matches those requirements then pick something from there.
Re:No thanks (Score:3, Insightful)
Who said anything about quick? 5 second ad, maybe I would tolerate it. But I imagine initially they will be short but progressively lengthen as people get use to them to epic advertising miniseries where the ad is longer then the video you wanted to watch.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:4, Insightful)
What determines how much you are willing to pay? How do you determine which features are must-have? If you think those decisions are not being constantly manipulated by others, guess again.
Re:ads don't make you buy stuff... (Score:3, Insightful)
"universally designed to mislead, it is quite simple to set your policy"
One line, you say we're incapable of independent thought and have weak willpower, then in another suggest that we use our strong willpower to consciously set effective policies even though you claim that an article showing that ads effect the unconscious in ways that we cannot control.
What is it with American companies? (Score:2, Insightful)
Its your time, your system, you're paying for everything in the first place.
Yet they have the RIGHT to stuff their "Advertising Messages" down your throat and you're not allowed to do anything to avoid having to take notice?
It makes me sick, cat sick.
And the programmer scum who prostitute their art to provide this shit will be next in line against the wall after the lawyers and bankers.
Expression of disgust censored by Slashdot wit the message "Filter error: Please use fewer 'junk' characters"
Why I block Ad's (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't block ads because I hate ads, I block them because I hate These. [google.com]
I don't trust Ad firms. Especially when most of them will take anybody's money that waves in front of their face and distribute their infected Flash/JavaScript file without question, and the rest get tricked into running them. Considering that a rogueware firm can buy tons of ads with just one fake antivirus buy, I trust them even less.
The day ad firms decided to allow flash and scripts in ads was the day they asked to be blocked.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:3, Insightful)
> What does that tell you about consumer choice?
That most consumers choose what they want, not what you think they should have.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, for one thing it tells me that you don't really understand what the phrase "consumer choice" means.
Not necessarily true (Score:3, Insightful)
If I have an ad-paid site, I wouldn't mind ad-blockers visiting. The theory is that if they enjoy the site, it's likely they'll spread the news to people who don't block ads. They tell people, link to it on their blogs and Facebook, etc. Thus even the people who don't make me more money directly would be making me more money indirectly. Bandwidth is cheap compared to the cost of word-of-mouth advertising.
It's kind of the same principle of how as file-sharing goes up, so does music industry revenues. Yes, file-sharer "lose" money for the industry when they don't pay for music. They also drive the industry by providing "buzz" and testimonial to what they listen to to their friends.
Re:Oh do stop complaining (Score:4, Insightful)
And don't forget the ones that make freaking noise when I've loaded the page into another tab to be read a few minutes later. Those are the ones that will get me to stop what I'm doing and update my custom ad blocker configuration (I use a hand-edited CSS configuration for blocking) so that nothing from the domain that served the ads (as in doubleclick, etc.) will ever be loaded by my browser ever again.
In fact, I find it both interesting and amusing when I get an ad that isn't blocked, and isn't annoying either.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite. Most consumers choose the smallest evil. It's not like you really have a choice anymore, what you really want rarely gets made.
Else everyone with half a brain would buy DVD players that let you skip ads or make digital copies of your DVDs. They don't exist. Why don't they exist, it's exactly what the customer wants.
It's because you're just the consumer. Not the customer.
Re:goes against basic ad psychology (Score:4, Insightful)
an advertisement is essentially a form of seduction. that's why sex figures so large in advertising. you are trying to entice someone into buying your product, to woo them to come hither
Sex figures large in advertising because it works, not because of any supposed parallel to sexual seduction. We look at sexual images because our brains want us to do that, it's a survival mechanism.
so when you intrusively force someone to view your ad, you've just completely destroyed the psychology of what makes any advertisement work
That's total bullshit, because advertisements work by increasing your familiarity with a product or trademark.
you have in fact performed a pavlovian experiment: you've force someone into an unpleasant experience, then associated that unpleasant experience with your brand name.
Unfortunately studies show that even these unpleasant experiences can increase purchases. The event was so trivial that you don't remember it when you go to make a purchase.
so all these idiots have done is perfected the art of anti-advertising, of driving people away from your product
Since even advertising like this works, I suspect that you are the idiot.
Yes and no (Score:5, Insightful)
The original poster is wrong. They do care, and you are wrong, because they care for the wrong reason.
The problem is that advertisers sell ads, not the product they are advertising. Ads themselves are the product advertising companies like the one in this article are selling. Those who buy ads are often as bamboozled as ordinary consumers with statistics made up on the spot being sold as facts.
At the core is a fundemental believe that ads work. This is not suprising since ads themselves often work on certain base believes. That a smell will attract scores of women. That cars are driven on open roads with not another car insight.
In this fantasy world, the idea that people REALLY DO NOT FUCKING WANT TO SEE YOUR GODDAMNED AD doesn't exist. And partly they are right. All those annoying flash ads? They work. They sell the product behind them. So naturally if you can make your ad even more annoying, even more intrusive, surely that would mean even bigger results?
And here the flaw comes in: Human beings operate on the "straw that broke the camels back" principle. They got a high tolerance but when it is broken it is completly gone. If you block ads because of the most annoying flash ad ever, you will block every ad from there on. Even the nicest completly unobstrusive ad.
But then these companies wonder why you ain't watching their nice ad. And want a solution.
Advertising is totally unregulated industry and they are paying the price for it. Ad blockers once installed don't care about relevancy or niceness of an ad. Block it all because some monkey ad broke the users back.
Site Broken, Moving On (Score:2, Insightful)
Since I won't even see the ad in the first place, it will appear to me that the site is broken and I will just move on to a site that isn't broken. These people have already lost me. For the people that do see the ad, I expect that the reaction of many people will be to immediately start seeking a circumvention. So, this escalation is just going to result in higher market share for ad blocking equipped browsers.
When pop-up ads got to be so obnoxious that people were abandoning IE for pop-up blocking browsers, even Microsoft put in a pop-up blocker. This proposal is so obnoxious that if it becomes widespread, you might even see Captcha circumvention built into the next version of Windows.
Re:They want me on their site right? (Score:3, Insightful)
1) The page has a video that is set to auto-play (even though you may not have come to the page for that video)
2) The video starts with an advertisement which disables the pause button
Best example of this is the page for House (the Fox show). I go there to check if I missed a show, not to see a preview. Instead it immediately plays a loud, unstoppable ad every time you go there. Thankfully there's Wikipedia.
Re:No thanks (Score:2, Insightful)
- What color was the stone in the tiara of the little princess? (Click "Play another AD" if you cannot recall)
Add that to the list of failed business practices. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, that’s likely to work out well in the end. Along with...
Ads
Flash ads
Popup ads
Ads
Goatse
Video ads
Flashing GIF ads
Ads
Goatse
Did I forget anything? (Probably. There are really too many to list.)
To view this page, please type the following:
Mmm yeah I love being anally raped! FUCK ME HARDER, DISNEY!
Well, that was disturbing. Enjoy the rest of your stay!
Re:No thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. I find it highly ironic that what we have here is a method to prevent advertising being used as an advertising medium.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:3, Insightful)
They seem to be missing the point. (Score:3, Insightful)
Advertising exists in order to create a demand for stuff people don't need.
People already know they need food, water and shelter. Nobody needs a steak from Outback or a new Disney toy.
They can't "force" anybody to do anything and if viewing specific content requires watching an ad, then I guess they'll have to get along without my business.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget the unscrupulous ad rotator "services" which allow their clients randomly drop ads with malicious JavaScript or Flash code, and do it in a way where the same IP and machine signature isn't hit twice.
I'm sorry, until ad spewing companies stop being an enabler to botnet installs, compromised code and machine infections, I will continue to make sure their stuff gets blocked. This is a security issue, plain and simple.
Re:Gee. Another website I can live without (Score:3, Insightful)
since i prefer not to run my browser as root (and keep my /etc unmoddifiable to my own user), i'd rather not have that feature
but yeah, for windows users, this might be a usefull idea
Note to Media companies: (Score:3, Insightful)
YOU ARE NOT THAT IMPORTANT.
If we're blocking your ads and you shove them down our throats, we simply won't visit. No biggie. The people who block ads have better things to do with their net usage than to fill out silly captchas just to get in.
Captchas as a means of fighting spam are already problematic and hostile to those with disabilities. To use them as a gateway is even more so.
Disney, you are not that important. Wrigley, you are not that important. The rest of you, you are not that important. It's no longer 1975 and everyone captive to 3 major television networks. We will go elsewhere.
Stop trying to shovel shit against the tide. You want us to see your ads? Stop them from being so obnoxious that we get so annoyed that we install the ad blockers. I will not punch your monkey.
Signed:
The smarter people of the Internet with disposable income.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:1, Insightful)
Advertising as used today is the most effective behavioral control mechanism every devised by man. There's nobody, not one person, who is not directly affected by advertising, in the way they live, the way they spend their money, the way they deal with other people.
If you think you are immune, or that you are capable of doing other than what the marketers want you to do after being exposed to their advertising, you are fooling yourself.
The things you like, the way you see yourself, the way you see the world, are all a product of advertising.
The only "harmless" advertisements are the ones you see on a bulletin board or a place like Craig's list. If an advertising agency was involved, it's much stronger than you are.