I found this interesting article which hopefully will start to get us away from some of the more annoying ad design patterns (and yes, I’m talking to you too, SPHQ). The linked blog posts look to be a little sketchy on the details, but I found the betterads link interesting reading on quick glance (I’ve got it bookmarked for further review later)
Kind of ironic that this is being announced by a company who has had advertising as a decent sized part of their business plan for so long, but I for one am all for it.
What does everyone think of the approach? Good idea? Bad idea? About freaking time?
It’s a bold and interesting idea. But I think I see the reasoning behind this, making a distinction between the “all or nothing” approach of a full Ad-Blocker, and this being a Ad-Filter, showing only compliant ads.
The effects of the out-and-out ad-blockers may have seen incomes shrink for some advertisers. In response, to do something about it, they target those without blocker who still see ads, with bolder, brasher and frankly more annoying ads.
But the on-by-default filter may encourage a different response from advertisers who want to recover their lost impressions and income. They may actually decide to tone down their ads to a sensible level in order to reach the wider audience who are using Chrome.
If it really works like that, it could be a smart move.
Some sites go way ott with the ads, take this news article from a local news site for example (with 10, yes 10 ads!):
Without ad-block active classing when the browser status bar doesn’t show any “loading” or “waiting for” status messages, for another page it’s taking so far (not “finished” loading) 1min 40secs and sites wonder why people use adblockers:rolling_eyes: