Re: ad-blocking software

From: Fred Showker <DTGNews_at_aol.com>
Date: Sun 19 Mar 2000 14:29:23 EST

Does anyone else agree with another poster's belief that:

JIM REARDON WROTE:
> ... when all the content-driven sites shut down
> because they can't afford to stay up, because ad
> stripping software is stripping their profit...
> there goes 50% of the benefit of the Internet.
> Actually, more.

Do internet users evaluate the "value" of content based
on the amount of banner ads at the site? (Not
according to GVU)

Are there any sites on the web with good content, who
do NOT have advertising?

> If the content "quality" of the advertiser
> supported "free" sites is such that people are
> unwilling to pay to receive it (either via watching
> ads or through subscriptions) those site will fade
> into black. And that will tell if there was really
> any quality there to begin with.

Is this statement true?

Something in this belief doesn't quite ring true.

I review 50 to 100 submitted sites each month.
Many, many have superb content but no ads.

I don't think you can make a blanket statement that if
internet surfers use "Ad Blocking Software" then the
content-driven sites will shut down.

There were already hundreds of thousands of superb
content sites up and happily running before the ad
craze hit.

I also don't think that "50% of the benefit of the
internet" will be lost if sites stop running
advertising.

Let's play devil's advocate here for a moment.

Yes, many good, content rich web sites carry
advertising. They may even manage to stay online
because of it. However, most of the ad-laden sites I've
seen either exist only for the advertising, or already
have substantial revenues and maintain a web site with
advertising to add increased revenue.

I personally don't mind seeing a good, tasteful,
targeted ad on a web site. I've even clicked on a few.

If you consider the high-noise sites however, you'll
discover that their purpose seems to be the purveyance
of advertising rather than the content.

Take Applelinks for an example. Since becoming a
high-noise site, their content and usability for the
user has actually diminished. Now you must click
through three pages, seeing 6 (unrelated) ads on each
page, to get to the content. Once there, the content is
exactly the same content you get at C|Net's
"Download.com" site, or Amug's BBS-In-A-Box site.

All things equal, Applelinks is merely a revenue site
driven by advertising. NOT content.

When testing the AdBin software, Applelinks was the
first site I went to. Arriving at the newly updated
Shareware roster now takes 1/3 the amount of time and
bandwidth. To some people this has value. It's a
reason to use ad-blocking software.

We then went back an analyzed the ads that would have
increased our time in the site, and online before
getting to the actual content by 300%

And the ads were...
* 10-cents long distance services...(5-cents is widly
  available)
* Dot-Com domain names ... (not a consumer item)
* Retirement services ... (Shareware is not traditionally
  a Senior activity)
* Windows VGA Cards ... (Duh... Applelinks is a Mac "only"
  site)
* Make Thousands On The Internet ... (LOL)
* Save Hundreds on Hardware ...
  (again a PC/Windows vendor, but the prices were higher
   than than PC Warehouse catalog)

The point here is people are becoming numb to ads
because of the poor targeting practices of advertisers
and the web site hosts, along with the over abundance
of ads.

This "Numbing" of the internet user is causing surfers
to find no-charge, no-ads sites to get their
information from as opposed to the spam sites. This, in
the long run will have a more negative effect on the
web than the spam-blocking software.

Fred

(By the way... Amug has the same shareware, actually
MORE than Applelinks, is only 1 click away from the
source, and does NOT take advertising at all. A good
example that good content sites will NOT cease to
exist if advertising diminishes.)





Received on Sun Mar 19 2000 - 13:29:23 CST