back to article Aussie advertisers call for more bloat in web ads

If you’re watching a free-to-air television program, your direct financial input to the communications channel between you and the TV station is effectively zero. Whatever it costs the broadcaster to use its spectrum is paid by the broadcaster. When an advertiser yells out the latest TV, computer and carpet specials, it’s …

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  1. PassiveSmoking
    FAIL

    Two words

    Ad blocker.

    Seriously, are there any FireFox and Chrome users out there who haven't yet installed the AdBlockPlus extension? I'm sure that even IE provides some kind of mechanism for blocking ads too.

    1. hitmouse
      Unhappy

      Many

      Most users simply don't have a clue.

      Most likely they have the combination of 1) no blocking software, and 2) half a dozen malicious toolbars grabbing whatever they can.

  2. iffer
    Go

    sure - make them huge...

    Between noscript, flashblock and adblock there's pretty much no chance of a (huge) ad getting to my screen. I don't block all ads - but serve up one that annoys me and the ad vendor gets added to the Blackhole list.

    (hint - Flash ads, esp with sound, going to get dumped! Google style text block with links - love'em!)

  3. flibbertigibbet

    Too True

    He says: Australia has a great opportunity to start showing the world what we can do.

    Too true. We would be well on the way to having this highest installation rates of ad blockers on the planet. We already pay more than more most for our bytes, and they are delivered slow, so that would seem inevitable.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    showing the world what we can do.

    You shouldn't be doing things like that out in public. Think of the children!

  5. Alan Brown Silver badge
    FAIL

    Bigger bandwidth bills for hosters....

    ... and for users.

    I forsee increasing use of Flashblock, NoScript and AdBlockPro.

    1. Mark 65

      Maybe not

      Given they already state that the sites that host them push back for smaller ads so that pages load faster (for Google robots especially) I foresee them getting told to piss off.

      As for...

      "He also said that since the average Web page size is 1.3 MB, the increase was trivial overall."

      That is testament to the amount of shit on the internet these days. I just looked at a Reg page and it was 292kb uncompressed. Mind you I do ad-block. Sorry, but over the years I've just got sick of waiting for pages to render because some shite couldn't be picked up off of an ad-server.

  6. hitmouse
    Thumb Down

    Not unlimited

    Australia doesn't have the virtually unlimited download options that are common in the USA and Europe, so these can quickly penalise the innocent who are not aware of Flash blockers and the like. The internet is not only outrageously slow in Australia, but outrageously expensive per MB.

    These users also get hit hard by large updates from Microsoft, Apple and Adobe (which can't be easily consolidated across multiple machines in a single home).

  7. Matthew 3
    Thumb Down

    Connection speeds?

    I bet the folks coming up with these ideas are all city-based with access to 100MB connections. I'm guessing that there are plenty of Aussies too for whom distance from the exchange is all-important. They should be working out the impact of this kind of decision on those with the slowest links.

    Although, as pointed out already, adblocking means that the more dramatic the ad, the more likely it is to be hidden anyway. Simple text-based ads often get through when others would be suppressed.

  8. Tasogare
    Flame

    "...concerned that bigger ads..."

    "...would lead to bigger bandwidth bills for media owners and higher advertising prices."

    This seems to me a poor reason to be concerned.

    Most -- almost all -- advertising is either offensively obsequious, written by and for the mentally handicapped, or both. It makes a lot more sense to be concerned about all the brain cells that are murdered every time an advertisement is displayed.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    AdBlock...

    one sure hopes they won't make this plugin illegal, mate.

  10. MJI Silver badge

    Ads are responsible for their own demise.

    I am not bothered by non animated banner ads and have been known to visit the sites (specialist forums). But a few years ago I was forced to start blocking them.

    1) Popup adverts covering the site - kill them.

    2) Huge ads taking up too much screen.

    3) Animated ads - as bad as animated TV channel logos - evil.

    4) Ads with sound - **** off!

    5) Sites where we already pay - looking directly at Ebay here.

    And there you are, a lot of web users were happy with them until you started assulting us with them. We knew they paid for the site but we do not want to be assulted.

    HINT: TV ads if not watching a recording, due to advert volume I do not turn down the volume I MUTE.

    1. CD001

      Wow

      ----

      if not watching a recording

      ----

      Wow in the age of Sky/Virgin+ and PVRs - people still do that? ;)

      Although there is a setting in my TV that automatically turns the volume down whenever adverts are on to make them approximately the same volume as the programs.

      1. MJI Silver badge

        Yes occasionally watch live

        Sometimes you catch up, sometimes while skipping you see an interesting advert.

        Or children are watching CITV.

        It does happen even if you have 3 PVRs.

  11. Daniel 1
    Joke

    They should do what Blackberry do on this site

    Make the advert mostly black, stick it in the background of the site and suppress the mouse pointer from changing, as it hovers over the ad.

    After all, causing an irritated user to inadvertently click through to a website they didn't want to go to, had no positive interest in before they went there, and which they are likely to have an extremely adverse response to, in the future, is almost as good as selling them a phone, isn't it?

    1. SteveK

      @Daniel 1

      "Make the advert mostly black, stick it in the background of the site and suppress the mouse pointer from changing, as it hovers over the ad."

      Ah, it's not just me who frequently falls foul of that when I click focus back into my browser, careful to always click into the blank space outside the content area...

      Steve.

  12. Liam Thom
    WTF?

    How big?

    Quote: since the average Web page size is 1.3 MB

    That's just wrong. According to Google in May last year it was 320kB.

  13. -tim
    Pint

    People do click on ads...

    I had a very popular Aussie web site pointed to my server while someone removed what I assumed was beer from the its normal host. The web page that said "we aren't here, go away" had a few ads on it and it took in more in one week than the running site did in a year.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Average Web page size...

    "He also said that since the average Web page size is 1.3 MB, the increase was trivial overall."

    1.3Mb? Really? What have they got on those pages? Huge ads?

    Embedded video? A user might expect a bit of buffering before a video plays, but surely the page it is presented on should appear almost instantly.

    A page of content should be around 10K. That's why adverts are so annoying because they ARE a significant part of the page already. And they want to make it worse?

    Maybe Firefox 4 should ship with AdBlock Pro built in.

  15. Kevin7
    WTF?

    When will they understand?

    People just don't want their ads at any size. You aren't doing us a favour - merely congesting the bandwidth users pay for. One day I reckon there'll be an ISP radical enough to block them at the network level.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Iain McDonald?

    Did he take a break from his Arseholes Anonymous meetings to come feed us more bullshit about things the we, for the most part don't want or need - and have no desire to be force fed anything about?

    Stupid Man.

  17. Steve Brooks

    ads

    I live in Australia, but I have the usual impatiance of the general world populace regarding web pages, if they take more than a few seconds to load on my broadband connection I close them. I start loading a vid from a news site and an add stat playing first, I close it etc etc. All this means is that people will start using adblock etc more, not that they will see more, and more beautiful, ads.

    Rubbish

  18. Adam White
    Dead Vulture

    We may pay for Internet access...

    ...but we don't generally speaking pay for Web site access.

  19. RJ

    NBN?

    Er.....what?

  20. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    What are advertisers thinking?

    In order to make a move like this, my interpretation is that advertisers don't think they're getting the results from on-line advertising.

    Bigger, blinger, usually means better in the advertising world, after all.

    The thing at the back of my mind is that if advertisers lose their perception of value from internet advertising, (and lets face it, I can't understand how they have believed there is value in Internet advertising for so long, given that even before web add blockers, people like me were programming the servers in to our broadband router filter tables) then this could have an impact on all the free Internet jollies that go on.

  21. My Alter Ego
    Pint

    You've really got to feel for the Ozzies.

    They've an area the size of France & Germany* under water.

    They've been told what they are and aren't allowed to see on the internet.

    They've lost the Ashes, losing 3 tests by an innings

    Now they're going to have bloated "innovative, engaging and truly fabulous creative" content from advertisers foisted upon them

    I for one will be adopting an Ozzie today.

    * Source BBC

    Beer, this one's me.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Happy

      Clarification of inundated area?

      What's that in deluged Wales'?

      Also, how many Olympic-sized swimming pools' worth of water does it take to submerge that many Wales'?

    2. Gotno iShit Wantno iShit
      Coat

      @ You've really got to feel for the Ozzies.

      It's not all bad for the Aussies, they have won the one day series.

      Mind you, that is a series of no consequence whatever and they have racked up a large number of injuries in so doing right before a one day series that does matter.

      As you were then. Coat please.

  22. The BigYin

    The average web page...

    ....is 1.3mb? Is it? I show El Reg at around 260kb, YouTube around 500kb and b3ta waddles in at around 1.5mb. And 1.3mb is the *average*?

    Even if that were true, your browser does not download the entire page every time (unless you force it), it only downloads the changes. So after the first 1.3mb spurt into your cache, the next updates will be a few kb here and there, making 100kb a significant overhead.

    Anyway, the average appears to be nearer 320kb (http://code.google.com/speed/articles/web-metrics.html) and probably around the 500kb mark (http://techattitude.com/internet/average-webpage-size-increased-five-folds-since-2003/). So that ad size increase of 60kb just bloated your page size by about 10=>20%. Nice.

    I think that Mr. McDonald is full of a metric-fuck-tonne of crap.

    Run something like Privoxy to kill ads at source. And if that is too much hassle, use NoScript, Flashblock and AdBlock to kill them one the page. If they had not made their ads so annoying, I would not feel compelled to block them. They only have themselves to blame.

    What kind of advertising works? Getting the product right. I don't recall ever seeing an advert for Edimax, but their cards were reported to work well. I plugged one it, it worked perfectly. Then Edimax added offical support for Linux. I will now go to Edimax first when I need network trickery. Why? Ronseal principle. No bullshit, no bling, just get the effin' job done.

    1. Chemist

      "Then Edimax added offical support for Linux...."

      "I will now go to Edimax first"

      Me too.

  23. Gilbert Wham

    What is it?

    With the Australians' propensity for doing stupid shit with the Internet?

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