Non-intrusive: what about video ads for specific video sites

[Valeryan_24]

Hello,

I'm an Adblock user very reluctant to any form of ads and I prefer to pay premium for some sites I like to support them. I hate the flash / animated banner ads, or with sound.

Regarding discussion about non-intrusive ads integration in adblock, I was first totally against this feature, but in addition to manual site whitelisting, it could be a step to a virtuous development of more acceptable ads, beneficial for both webmasters, sellers and users.

I post here because I read yesterday a very interesting post from the marketing manager of sites : http://www.allocine.fr/ - http://www.screenrush.co.uk/ - http://www.filmstarts.de/ specialized in movies / TV series trailers, extracts etc... with a database of films / actors, TV diffusions.

http://www.guillaume-limare.com/2012/09 ... es-medias/ - https://twitter.com/@glimare

It's in french but easily understandable. He wrote to say that after last Adblock Chrome release which blocks now flash ads in videos and games, their rate of pre-roll video ads seen has dramatically decreased, which is problematic for financial balance.

What is very nice in his thread is that he is objective : he does not, like many others, accuse adblockers to be thieves or bad people, he does not say adblock should be banned, he tells he's a defender of opensource and argues a reflexion on how the situation could be improved.

He explains he knows about non-intrusive ads feature in adblock, but that of course does not help them as their specific ads do not fit the requirements : there are video ads showed just before the trailer that the user wants to see.

So here is his (and my) question : we all agree that video / flash / sound ads in "normal" sites are totally unacceptable as they disturb our navigation.

But what to decide for specific video sites which give an added value to the user, ie a small ad before the video displayed ? Is it something that could be discussed and perhaps accpeted (with very strict specific filters) by adblock non-intrusive program ?

Ex. of filters blocked when I go to the site :
||smart2.allocine.fr^$~object-subrequest,~subdocument
||smart2.allocine.fr^$third-party

Thanks for your answer !

[Guest]

He is a marketing manager. His job is to slow down web browsing with advertisements. He is not impartial and cannot do any better but to pay lip service to user comfort.

People who install ad blockers do not want to see advertisements. Most of them are not potential customers.

They need to think of ad blockers in a similar way to the "interests" sections of webmail sign up pages. There is nothing to be gained by sending a gardening letter to a user who does not check the interest box for gardening. It only wastes resources, irritates the user, and impairs the usability of the service.

Installing an ad blocker is like checking the box that a user is not interested in advertised things.

There are exceptions, but most of the people I know who block ads do so because they do not respond to injected advertising and therefore do not want it completely wasting their time.

The phone book companies have finally learned this after many years of wasted money and wasted trees. Where I live, one has to request a paper phone book. The people who ask for the phone books are the ones who will use them. The people who don't ask have no use for phone books and receive their number information elsewhere.

Marketroids suffer from a misperception that humans are universally responsive to advertising and only must be subjected to it in order to drive sales. Many people (and most ad blockers) do not respond to advertising. If anything, these people are put off by heavily advertised brands, and assume that a heavily advertised brand may be more expensive due to its high marketing costs. The number of people who are not responsive to advertising is growing by the month, as more people begin seeing advertising for the social ill it is, while others are taking to sources such as Amazon search and unbiased reviews to make rational decisions about meeting their own needs.

Anyone who believes that impressions==sales will whine about ad blockers to some degree, not understanding that the vast majority of impressions not served to clients with ad blockers were never potential customers in the first place.

[Guest]

I would also argue that video ads of any form are inherently intrusive and disruptive as they bleed off the user's time and substantial amount of bandwidth. There is no way to make a time delay which does not intrude on the browsing experience.

There has been quite a bit of arguing back and forth as to whether text ads in a side bar are intrusive or not. Regardless of opinions on those, interrupting browsing with a video ad is nothing like a text ad which sits silently off to the side. People can read a page with no interruption by ignoring text ads off to the side. All video ads necessarily interrupt viewing of the desired content.