[Done] Criteria for "acceptable" advertising

Various discussions related to Adblock Plus development
anonymous74100
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Re: Criteria for "acceptable" advertising

Post by anonymous74100 »

Hubird wrote:I for one would be willing to wait longer for a forked build free of all objectionable code.
Me too.
So, who's going to fork it :?:
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fanboy
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Re: Criteria for "acceptable" advertising

Post by fanboy »

You don't need to fork it, just a patched version, with said changes removed
Wladimir Palant

Re: Criteria for "acceptable" advertising

Post by Wladimir Palant »

@Hubird: We are discussing whitelisting single webpages right now (ones that don't even have ads), nobody is talking about whitelisting ad servers. It's only marginally related to the discussion here however. We are not sure yet how we want to use the acceptable ads policy once we have it. We might offer an option to whitelist ad servers in future if we have an agreement with them that they only serve ads that meet required criteria. And - yes, we might also earn some money from that (at least that's the hope if the Adblock Plus project is to stay viable). We will definitely not allow ads that don't meet the criteria, regardless of what they are willing to pay.
Drake
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Re: Criteria for "acceptable" advertising

Post by Drake »

Advertising has been used in many ways to promote a particular company’s products or services. Many people are using the platform of advertising as a tool for spamming and it is important to block these advertisers to prevent people from getting looted.
Mike Rosoft

Re: Criteria for "acceptable" advertising

Post by Mike Rosoft »

Some users use Adblock to block other elements apart from adverts, such as poorly designed backgrounds or processor-heavy animations. (Not to mention that a website that doesn't serve ads today might start displaying them tomorrow.)

So please don't make decisions on behalf of your users. You said: "We are talking about adding a feature that can be disabled easily." That's the wrong way to go; any whitelisting must be strictly opt-in.


Mike Rosoft
ion496

Re: Criteria for "acceptable" advertising

Post by ion496 »

Mike Rosoft wrote:So please don't make decisions on behalf of your users. You said: "We are talking about adding a feature that can be disabled easily." That's the wrong way to go; any whitelisting must be strictly opt-in.
- Agreed, but to my actual criteria for acceptable ads.

1. It must be either an image or a text ad. No flash, popups, or anything.
2. It must be clearly distinguishable from the actual text.
3. It must not be overly intrusive. Putting it on the side of the page is okay, putting it right in the middle of the page, over the content is not.
4. A maximum of four advertisements per page.
5. The total bandwidth must be no more than 1 megabyte of data.
anonymous74100
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Re: Criteria for "acceptable" advertising

Post by anonymous74100 »

ion496 wrote:5. The total bandwidth must be no more than 1 megabyte of data.
1MB of ads for a site is way too much!
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andrewducker
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Re: Criteria for "acceptable" advertising

Post by andrewducker »

I would love to be able to whitelist text ads. I don't mind supporting the sites I use. I just object to animated images sucking my attention away from the information I'm there to see.

I know not everyone feels this way, but having an option to enable non-intrusive ads (maybe a drop-down with "none", "text only", "text and still images", "anything goes" in it) would be something I'd approve of.
anon123456

Re: Criteria for "acceptable" advertising

Post by anon123456 »

Hi!

I'm using AdBlock Plus for many years now and I really like it. I take the time to whitelist websites I want to support but I came to this forum because I wanted to suggest an option to disable filtering of all still (not animated) ads because without ads, many of the services we enjoy might die and even I can't whitelist everything that wouldn't disturb me. I just wanted to suggest something like "allow png, jpg and text ads, but still block flash and gif". Now I see there are many different perspectives here, what is acceptable and what not.

I think it would be quite easy, for a start of this stuff, to implement some basic and easy-to-implement stuff like allowing jpeg and text ads as (each) an option in Adblock settings menu. That will be done quickly and maybe draw some more users' attention to the topic of why ads are important for the internet. Some more complicated stuff like determining how big a file is or if a gif is animated or not should be done later.

In software developement it's like this: The smaller your steps are, the faster you move forward. So please, just make a little step for me :)
Virus

Re: Criteria for "acceptable" advertising

Post by Virus »

fanboy wrote:But good ads? to me they don't exist, ads are ads, delivery method might be different (text ads vs object/image), but ads are ads. Whats the point of an adblocker if we allow any ads through?
dito, good ads has never exist. I hope this stupid idea lands in the trash.
Till
ABP CEO
Posts: 242
Joined: Tue Oct 12, 2010 2:16 pm

Re: Criteria for "acceptable" advertising

Post by Till »

Again, the point of this idea is to provide a customization feature to users who feel differently about certain ad formats and want to support websites they like. Feel free not to use it - ABP will never force you to see ads if you don't want any.
Hungry Man
Posts: 22
Joined: Thu Feb 24, 2011 9:02 pm

Re: Criteria for "acceptable" advertising

Post by Hungry Man »

I think this is great. Google is doing the same thing (categorizing annoying ads so that they will be blocked) and it's an important way to change the web.
anonymous coward75

Re: Criteria for "acceptable" advertising

Post by anonymous coward75 »

Key points:

Advertising supports the internet (more or less), essentially making AdBlock users into free riders.

The ads served on most pages are obnoxious/band-width intensive/screenspace intensive/etc.

*****************
Assumption:

If ads were less _______, AdBlock users would be willing to see them.

*****************
Primary Solution?

Start simple at first. Allow users to choose from three levels:

No ads, text-only ads, text/image only ads.

******************
Secondary issues:

- The idea of limiting image ads to a fraction of screen real-estate seems reasonable.

- No JavaScript execution until a user clicks an ad (this should preempt tracking?)
lewisje
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Re: Criteria for "acceptable" advertising

Post by lewisje »

It sounds like the levels of blocking could be implemented with a pair of whitelist entries: To allow text ads through, whitelist all elements, and to let image ads through, whitelist images.

You can add them to your custom filters right now, and I imagine that if this sort of thing were added to the initial configuration dialog, it would merely add those whitelists.
There's a buzzin' in my brain I really can't explain; I think about it before they make me go to bed.
C

Re: Why do we block ads?

Post by C »

maybee wrote:Why do we block ads?
ads make users experience inconvenience...
Till wrote: ...the content of ads as well:
* No deceptive language...
* No misleading information...
I agree only 50 percent with Maybe.
The other half of why we block ads, is as Till implies:
ads frequently mis-inform and brainwash the viewer.
In a responsible society, no deceptive propaganda from Exxon-Mobile is acceptable, regardless of how proper and unobtrusive their html.
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