Circuit City pop-ups and animations on site

[eric_onore]

Recently, and tonight in particular, I have been getting continuous

animations across the screen for Circuit city (and once for Verizon).

I can't close these without an ad window opening and they hijack the

page. Clicking on a forum thread just gets me the advertising window.

I have no objection to advertising on the site; I understand the need

to generate revenue. However these ads make the site unusable for me.

I can't ignore them or get rid of them. My pop-up blocker is

ineffective against them. Please let me know if there is some way I

can block them. If not, I will not be able to use the site.

Eric Onore

[eric_onore]

I just want to add that the animation I am referring to is of a girl leaping across the page toward a heart or a camera, I don't remember which. In this session I have seen the ad at least fifteen times. If I had to see it once it would be tolerable, but tonight I am getting it continuously.

 

Eric Onore

[the shuttered eye]

Yes, this is particularly annoying. I'm a subscriber and I thought subscribers as suppoosed to spared this kind of thing. It is overly aggressive and disruptive. If this type of add is going to become commonplace on photo.net you are going to lose alot of members and vistors (including me).

 

What happened to the photo.net of old. Where did this excessive and greedy advertising streak come from? This used to be a great site, now it seems those in charge just want to make a million dollars on it by subjecting their loyal members to a barrage of ads. Yes, yes, "just trying to cover costs". But what do those costs include? And why werren't the necessary before when the per unit costs involved for bandwidth and equipment were actually smaller? Certaintly the range of services provided by the site hasn't really changed -- and their are more member and subscribers. What gives?

 

We are convinced to subscribe to minimize the need for the advertising and yet it still comes by the bucket-full. Further, as evidenced by the "What's New" articles, it has never been more biased.

 

Come on. Give us all a break.

[jennifer_spiller]

Subscribers should not be seeing these advertisements. Try logging out of your workspace and then logging back in.

[eric_onore]

Thanks Jennifer. It seemed to stop as abruptly as it started. Next time it occurs I will try your suggestion.

 

Eric

[bobatkins]

Jennifer - I see them all the time too. Not only that, but clicking on a photo.net link near the static ad after the dynamic ad has finally stopped often brings up the Circuit City website page. It's as though the dynamic goes transparent, but doesn't clear from the page, so clicking anywhere it's just been is just like clicking on it when you can see it. Sneaky and quite annoying.

[Michael R Freeman]

Might I suggest <a href="http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/"><i>this</i></a> ...<br><br>

I haven't seen an annoying pop-up / animation for over a year!

[bobatkins]

I think the point is not to avoid the ads, but to ensure that subscribers don't see them (or at least see less of them).

 

Ads are the lifeblood of photo.net. If everyone avoided seeing the ads, the site wouldn't be able to run. Subscribers already support the site, so they don't need to see many of them, but the last thing on earth that photo.net needs are ways to avoid any ads appering and telling non-subscibers how that can be done - unless you don't want photo.net to exist.

[keith turrill]

Lately I have had the same problem with other sites including USA Today. To some extent Firefox helps. However, some websites appear to check the browser type and simply replace the Flash animation with "click to continue" full page advertisements.

 

One of my computers has Norton Systemworks, another has McAfee. It seems I get the most annoyances on the McAfee equipped computer.

[Michael R Freeman]

"I think the point is not to avoid the ads, but to ensure that subscribers don't see them (or at least see less of them).

 

Ads are the lifeblood of photo.net." -- Bob Atkins

 

I would agree Bob. But pop-ups are annoying, aggressive and invasive and most users (including me) don't think much of having their PC hijacked by an ad that doesn't allow you to close it without going through contortions to avoid opening the advertisers site.

 

If they get annoying enough, a lot of non-subscribing visitors will simply avoid the site, and (respectfully) you can kiss that ad revenue goodbye.

 

BTW Firefox does NOT block the banner ads on the top of the page, or the side bar ads, or the Intellitxt hotlinks shown under the first post for non-subscribers. But it does effectively kill pop-ups.

[bobatkins]

Technically I don't think photo.net runs popups (at least I haven't seen any). It seems to be running animated flash(?) ads that overlay the content but that close on their own after a few seconds. A small distinction maybe. Popups are ads that open a new window which you have to close manually, or, I guess, flash ads that require you to click on them to close them.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Where are these adverts seen?<BR><BR> Are they are on some forums and not others?<BR><BR>Here I am not too swooft with spelling, and abit hardened to annoying threads and advertising. I mostly use dialup, PC based computers and Mozilla Firefox.<BR><BR>What annoys me is the lack of experimentation, the godzillion threads on "how big can I print a XXX file from my NiCanon Eos D1000" and still be a good photo type threads:). <BR><BR>I wonder if the moderators get tired of the ruckus over ratings threads too.<BR><BR>Maybe us olsder folks just tune out annoying stuff; like how hearing loss helps tune out whining kids? :)<BR?><BR>Seriously how does one find these "annoying popups"? I wonder what they look like. I see Phil's dog George in the lower corner, hee lloks pretty mellow too.

[mr.wind-upbird]

It's only a matter of time before switching browsers will be ineffective against this type of thing. The advertisers will inevitably find a way.

[bobatkins]

It's also very simple to prevent users who have ad blockers from seeing any pages at all. It takes just takes a couple of short, simple, javascript scripts and they can be taken to an alternate landing page. That page can have advertising that the ad blockers won't block (non standard size ad units, no javascript, text based Ads etc.).

[ken_thalheimer]

I suppose it depends on what system is used. I see the animated Circuit City, but only once, after the computer is turned on. I can re-visit PN various times and the ad does not appear so I don't find it a hassle at all

[kbreak]

Who was the (person) who says Firefox doesn't block ads?<BR><BR>Ever hear of the adblock extension?<BR><BR>How about the javascript killer extension?<BR><BR>No javascript runs without my permission, on any page. This is occasionally a nuisance... yes.<BR><BR>I didn't KNOW there were ads here until threads like this.<BR><BR> (Screen grab removed: too wide)

[kbreak]

btw before my post mysteriously disappears, whenever someone asks where to get a camera, I always say B&H simply because that's who I've always dealt with and I know the person will get a good deal and no snarkiness.<BR><BR>I'm sure that Adorama does a good job too.<BR><BR>I've also been using Circuit City as Best Buy's prices have become... not best anymore.<BR><BR>*looks around*

[leorossi]

See, your post is still there. There's a lot of 'Aperture' on pnet...

[bdpics]

Bob Atkins writes:

 

"It's also very simple to prevent users who have ad blockers from seeing any pages at all. It takes just takes a couple of short, simple, javascript scripts and they can be taken to an alternate landing page."

 

Try that, and see how many people continue to use Pnet (or ANY website for that matter......) You'd have to have nearly exclusive marketshare to make that pig fly.......

 

Advertising is war. Advertisers always have and always will continue to try and find creative ways to saturate our lives with their pesky ads--consumers always have and always will go to varying lengths to limit this intrusion into our lives. Why should consumers be expected to remain docile sheep who let advertisers have their way with us?

 

Every time they ramp up their efforts to shove more unwanted ads down my throat, I ramp up my efforts to minimize their intrusion.

 

And so it goes........

[joe baker pine bush ny]

i,am not a subcriber and i don,t see the ads you all are refering to, i can only wonder why not me, i don,t have a pop up blocker.

[kbreak]

what` kind` of` system~ are you using?

[mottershead]

Since about a third of the revenue of the site comes from advertisers, if any significant number of people start blocking ads, and we can't figure out a way to maintain the number of ad impressions that we deliver to advertisers and for which the advertisers pay us, then we would probably have to shut down the site.

 

I know that if we didn't have advertising revenue, photo.net wouldn't be able to pay me enough for my family and me to have health insurance, and probably several other luxuries.

 

If they are not subscribers, people who visit this site while blocking ads ought to stick that in their chaws and chew on it for a while. What do you reckon entitles you to use this site if you don't subscribe and you don't give any attention to the advertising? Who do you reckon is paying for this site, and why do they owe you free ad-free access to the site?

 

If ad-blocking became significant enough, I would have to figure out a way to bounce ad blockers from the site. As for whether they would go somewhere else, probably they would, but who cares? Let them suck the bandwidth of some other idiot's site. What good are they doing here, other than using up resources that we are paying for?

 

Saying we can't practically bounce ad-blockers if we have competitors is like saying that if a store starts prosecuting shoplifters they better be ready for the shoplifters to go to the competitors' stores. True, but how is that bad, exactly? Detecting ad-blockers is not that difficult, by the way. It is just inconvenient. For example, it isn't hard to count how many times an ad has been viewed by someone, and if the number of ad views isn't in a reasonable ratio with the number of page views, no more page views. The reason that web sites don't do this is that it is a hassle and inconvenient for visitors and treats all viewers as dishonest. As long as most people are honest, web sites don't want to treat their audiences as dishonest people who are trying to cheat them. It is one of those cases where the free-riders get to continue their free rides because most people are not free-riders. If that ever changes though, don't imagine that web sites won't try to counter ad-blocking, because the web economy is driven by advertising, whether you like it or not, and they won't have any choice.

 

As for subscribers -- well those people are paying so I won't say anything. But bragging about ad blocking and telling people how to do it is not in your interest if you care about the site being around to honor your subscriptions.

 

Concerning expandable ads, where a banner expands briefly out of its area: most of them are either exposure-limited to once per day, or initiated by a user action, such as mousing over the ad. I doubt most people have seen them even once. I can say this with some confidence because we get paid at a much higher rate for the expandable ads, and the number displayed on this site daily is in the low thousands, while there are nearly 200,000 visitors per day. For example, the Circuit CIty expandable ad has been displayed 1563 times today, so less than one visitor in a thousand has seen it. If I could arrange for every visitor to the site to see an expandable ad only once per month, our revenue would be quadrupled. Unfortunately, they are quite rarely used because they are so expensive for the advertisers, and because advertisers and publishers both know that they are more obtrusive than the typical ad, and that viewers' are willing to give only so much of their attention to ads before they get exasperated and leave.

 

If you are seeing an expandable ad more than once per day on this site, it is very unusual, and it is most probably because something is going wrong with the cookies on your browser, because cookies are used to control how many times a person sees various ads. When they expand out of the ad above the page header, subscribers will see them too, because at this point, the ad in the header is just about the only ad that subscribers do see.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Here I have no ad blocker that I know of installed, and missed the "Circuit City pop-ups and animations". I logged off and tried a different computer even to see what the ruckus/advert looks like, and used IE and Firefox, cleared old cache/cookies too. Are ads like these targeted to just some threads? How does one find one of these ads to see what the ruckus/concerns is about? Locally Circuit City is a decent store for digital cameras.

[mottershead]

When fewer than one person in a thousand sees the Circuit City expandable, it is amazing that one person would see it several times. First, one would assume that CC is exposure-limiting the ad so that nobody is supposed to see it more than once. They don't want to annoy people and they certainly don't want to waste their money on people whose reaction will be annoyance -- these ads cost more than five times the usual rate. So, for the exposure-limiting not to be working means probably that something is interefering with the cookies that are typically used to implement exposure-limiting.

 

But, next, it is still amazing that the same person would be selected repeatedly for the same type of expensive ad. We know from Tribal Fusion's privacy statement that they are not profiling particular users, so I doubt people are targetted on the basis of what other web sites they have visited. But there might be some kind of geo-targetting. Ad servers can figure out from your IP address where you live, and if you are coming in from Cleveland and the algorithm is looking at that moment for Cleveland hits, you might have a higher chance of being picked. And if your exposure-limiting is broken, you might keep getting picked until the algorithm is happy with the Cleveland situation.

 

In general, the ad distribution algorithms are mysterious and non-linear. If you come onto the site when the parameters on the ad are just so, you might get picked, and whatever was causing you to get picked once, might cause you to get picked repeatedly if the exposure limiting mechanism was broken.

[keith turrill]

Perhaps one of the issues is the deletion of browser cookies. As a general safeguard, I delete cookies and temporary internet content daily. I suspect that the deletion of cookies may cause some of the ads to repeat?