LWN advertising update

Posted Sep 3, 2007 20:02 UTC (Mon) by jordanb (guest, #45668)
Parent article: LWN advertising update

In-text ads are by far the most annoying ads I see (because I don't have Flash installed).

It breaks up the story and makes it difficult to read, with the different colors and double lines, plus having all the obnoxious javascript popups whenever you roll your mouse across the page.

Generally if I see a story with a bunch of those ads in it I'll just close the browser tab and go elsewhere. If I really want to read the story I'll paste the text into emacs or something to get rid of them.

I'm ambivalent to LWN doing this as I'm already a subscriber and won't have to see them, but as a practical matter, if you're really interested in taking a 'measured' approach to advertising, you're jumping straight from the pan into the fire with this one. I read LWN for a month or two without subscribing before deciding it was worth my money. If I had been subjected to in-text ads during that time, I would have left long before I got to that point.

LWN advertising update

Posted Sep 3, 2007 20:40 UTC (Mon) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] (2 responses)

Why don't you read the freakin' article? It is not "in-text" as in "a big ad breaks up the content." Read. It's easy. The second paragraph explains it all.

LWN advertising update

Posted Sep 3, 2007 20:57 UTC (Mon) by jordanb (guest, #45668) [Link]

Perhaps you should read my post. It should be quite clear that I know exactly what in-text advertising[1] is.

<http://www.dailyblogtips.com/stay-away-from-in-text-adver...>

LWN advertising update

Posted Sep 4, 2007 22:20 UTC (Tue) by ernest (guest, #2355) [Link]

Actually, the remark was imho quite clear and correct. It is you who may
need to "freakin'" read.

And I think in-text ads are annoying too, but they are not at the top of
the most annoying way of displaying ads by a significant margin (I
reserve that to in-windows, javascript, popup ads that scroll in view, in
the middle of the text, waiting until I press the little cross in their
corner, which I never do since I always leave the site as fast as I
possibly can).

Hopefully it will be easy to distinguished between normal references to
other articles and ads. I often click on these ads thinking they might
leed to some other interresting tid bits of information, and find myself
annoyed when I figure out where they actually go.

LWN advertising update

Posted Sep 3, 2007 21:18 UTC (Mon) by bartman (guest, #3476) [Link] (8 responses)

I second this.

In-text ads are my least favourite form of advertising.

LWN advertising update

Posted Sep 4, 2007 0:08 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

Animated ads are worse. Just. (Mind you my antipathy to ads is such that I
discarded TV a decade ago to avoid ads, and choose routes to work to avoid
ad billboards: maybe I'm extreme.)

Avoiding obnoxious advertising

Posted Sep 4, 2007 12:31 UTC (Tue) by tekNico (subscriber, #22) [Link]

Yes, you're extreme, and quite reasonable at the same time. You'll hopefully be less extreme, as time goes by, without you having to change anything. ;-)

LWN advertising update

Posted Sep 4, 2007 23:32 UTC (Tue) by riddochc (guest, #43) [Link]

If you're too extreme, then so am I. My TV exposure for the past couple years has been filtered through the lens of Netflix. I'd rather wait a year to watch an interesting show on DVD than subject myself to television advertising. I too believe there are better things I should use my brain for than soaking up ads.

That said, I've also decided it's important for me to support organizations financially that deserve it, like LWN, and to wield my purchasing power accordingly.

animation? np =)

Posted Sep 8, 2007 11:57 UTC (Sat) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]

You can stop animations in mozilla-based browsers by simple <Esc> keypress and having FlashBlock in place. JS runners would escape that but then again, I personally tend to just escape such sites.

PS: 2 lwn: maybe paid links, no?

LWN advertising update

Posted Sep 4, 2007 6:56 UTC (Tue) by hawk (subscriber, #3195) [Link] (3 responses)

I "third" this.

In-text ads makes the text into a minefield where you, if you accidentally point your mouse cursor at the "wrong" word, are interrupted in your reading.

I think the in-text ads are actually worse then having the ad visible in the text from the start (with the text going around the ad). That way it's at least obvious where the ad is and it doesn't really interfere with your reading much.

Now, if subscribers have to opt-in for this extra advertising, I guess it won't necessarily affect me much personally, but the in-text ad implementations I have seen on other sites have been truly frustrating.

I tried enabling it and see how it works in the LWN case, but didn't find any such advertising on the site yet.
I think that the key to having this advertising form work as well as possible (when it comes not to frustrate the reader) is to make the in-text ad words clearly marked (in a way that is not confused with regular clickable links).

LWN advertising update

Posted Sep 4, 2007 7:37 UTC (Tue) by IkeTo (subscriber, #2122) [Link]

Indeed, for many sites I won't care in-text ads, because links in those articles are useless, and I just remember to never click or move my mouse to anywhere near any text. But for LWN where useful links are the norm, I think I *really* don't like in-text ads.

LWN advertising update

Posted Sep 4, 2007 22:01 UTC (Tue) by mikov (guest, #33179) [Link] (1 responses)

I enabled it as an experiment and there are ads on the site - for example here: http://lwn.net/Articles/247788/

They are clearly marked, but that doesn't make them any less annoying, at least for me, because an accidental mouse movement pops them up.

LWN advertising update

Posted Sep 5, 2007 9:37 UTC (Wed) by hawk (subscriber, #3195) [Link]

I see the extra javascript if I look at the page source, but no words on that page are made into in-text advertisements when I go there.

Either way, I agree, that it's still an annoying form of advertising. I do however think that it's even worse in the cases where the in-text advertised words sort of look like regular links.
Which I take from your comment is not the case.

same here

Posted Sep 3, 2007 21:56 UTC (Mon) by i3839 (guest, #31386) [Link] (1 responses)

Most annoying form of ads ever, those in-text ads. They're slow too. All right, perhaps animated flash is worse.

Please don't do it, nothing wrong with image ads as long as they aren't too large and not animated (or abysmal colours).

same here

Posted Sep 4, 2007 9:29 UTC (Tue) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]

I already commented on this the first time I saw the in-text ads - they are by far the most annoying ads, after animated images/banners. Google-style text ads, even if in a box in middle or side of text, would be far better - in addition, such ads seem far better targetted and I'm therefore more likely to click on them.

Having an in-text ad that puts green underlines on 'IBM' means I will actively try to avoid clicking or mousing over that word, because the ad is entirely useless to me...

just say NO to in-text ads

Posted Sep 5, 2007 1:30 UTC (Wed) by grouch (guest, #27289) [Link]

I thoroughly despise in-text advertising. It is obnoxious and disruptive. It makes the author of each article appear to be a snake-oil salesman.

Plain text ads in the sidebar would be a better idea, IMO. I don't block those as I do with advertisers who use animations or glaring images. I don't 'blacklist' websites with text ads as I do those with pop-ups and mouseovers.