The elephant-sized ad in the room
By Ryan Block 
posted November 20th 2007 5:41PM
posted November 20th 2007 5:41PM
We hear that the experimental ad might be causing some issues, though, specifically audio problems, browser crashes, or might be especially taxing on some people's computers. We've been informed that the appropriate ad people have been dispatched and are trying to fix the issue for everyone. But we know that doesn't help you in the here and now, so if you're having problems with the ads you might try turning off Flash. (For your convenience we've posted a few ways to do that after the break.) In the mean time feel free to vent in comments -- we're totally here for you.
Switching off Flash in your browser
IE is kind of complicated. Everyone says use IE7Pro, so that probably is the tool you want to use. (We've also seen a couple of solutions, but nothing else turn-key.)
For Firefox we suggest Flashblock. You can also use AdBlock, but if you do that all the other ads on Engadget won't load, and if enough people turn off all the ads then Engadget ceases to exist. So, you know, do what you think is right.
If you're using Safari try out SafariPlus.
And our personal fave, Opera, makes things pretty simple. You can add an enable / disable plugins check box to your toolbar, or you can go to preferences -> advanced -> content -> (uncheck) enable plugins.
Oh, and there's also a CSS hack or two to do this as well. Let us know if we forgot anything in comments!
Adblock here I come....
I don't see the big deal... i've had absolutely zero problems with either safari 3 or firefox (and yes i see the ad, quite humorous). Must be because I'm running os x to begin with...
RYAN!!!!!!!
Is there a way to support Engadget through alternative means to clicking ads? I use AdBlock, but I still want to support you guys for being the best tech blog around.
Sorry, not today. Our business is built around one thing: free, ad-supported content.
Loved the ad...
AdBlock user here too... Anyone got a pic?
Don't really see what the problem is... Didn't slow down my macbook running FF at all, and operated properly. Kinda cool how they used the banner at the top.
Funny how microsoft fans get all antsy about the supposed monopolistic/monolithic tendencies of Apple. Pot/kettle, huh?
My computer is old, and it had a rough time yesterday. Suddenly I heard "Hello I'm a Mac... and I'm a PC" and Firefox struggled to keep up with it and was suffering from CPU overload. I had to locate the tab with the ad and close it. It took a minute or so before Firefox responded. Could you please not use us as an experimental test ground, then I'd be grateful.
All I can say is that the ADD RULED! Took me a while to understand they where really watching to something, but that added value to the add. I played it at least a dozen times.
I'm sure the add payed off for engadget. I think it is very stupid for the editors to tell users how to turn off adds. That is like lowering your own paycheck.
I for one will NEVER turn off adds, that is what keeps many many many sites alive. I even click on them once in a while.
I didn't click on the apple add thought (only on the sound button) I have enough ipods to make a cluster of them and see what happens.
I PUT MY RANT IN THE SONY OLED SECTION ON TOP OF THE PAGE!!!!
ENGADGET NEXT TIME FOR GOD SAKES MAKE THE AD WITH THE DAMNED AUDIO OFF AND THE PAUSE BUTTON HUGE!!!!!
I AM NOT GOING TO USE ADBLOCK OR ANY OTHER 3RD PARTY SOFTWARE BECAUSE YOU OF ALL PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW BETTER!
WHEN I WAKE UP TOMORROW AND THIS FUCKING AD IS STILL ON YOUR SITE CRASHING PEOPLES SYSTEMS YOU WILL HAVE LOST ONE MORE ACTIVE READER!!!!!
WAS THAT WORTH IT YOU FUCKING MARKETING ASSHOLES?!?
FUCKERS!
I'd probably mind if it was anyone other than the Lovely Justin Long gracing my monitor. He's so *cute*! I'd never buy a Mac (I love opening up my box and tinkering too much) but I regularly go to the apple website just to catch the latest Justin Long ads. Thankyou, Engadget Advertising Team, for making my Engadget Experience that much more aesthetically pleasing!
;) Charlotte
Aren't the guys that read Engadget supposed to be at least somewhat smart???
I totally agree that no sound should EVER be played without users content/approval and I would even go as far as video as well. But using adblock and other shit like that to prevent ALL ads from showing will just backfire quite soon.
Honestly, I would pay big bucs just to see your faces when all the free sites start charging membership fees because they are no longer making a profit from ads...
Even in this article you can see "You can also use AdBlock, but if you do that all the other ads on Engadget won't load, and if enough people turn off all the ads then Engadget ceases to exist."
Other than Audio/Video and some aggressive Animated GIFs, there is absolutely no logical reason to turn off ALL ads. So stop being spoiled little brats and use your brain if you have it before we all start paying for EVERYTHING on the net!
Well, I'm using a relatively massive HOSTS file now for the first time on this rocket 3.4GHz P4 XP machine and Engadget (as well as numerous other sites (*)) is loading faster than it ever has since I've been reading it.
In the not-that-far-distant past, Engadget would bring this rocket to a crawl, probably due to an amazing number of Flash-based ads. That had ALWAYS - since Day One - been irritating and was the cause of an anomalous surfing behavior on my part. I usually open a new tab to visit sites I've bookmarked (right click on Bookmark (Firefox), Open in New Tab). For sites I visit a large number of times during the day I usually leave that tab in existence. But never for Engadget - always I would close the tab to remove the slowdown irritation (and, always, I was aghast that this rocket actually could get slowed down!).
That big ad that played unwanted sound, sometimes TWICE as a chorus as noted by others here, simply was the proverbial last straw. Each time I visited Endgadget I'd IMMEDIATELY stop the ad with the "pause" control and considered about 5 times to fire off a complaint to Engadget's webmaster when...tada!...THIS article appeared.
Now, though, it appears that I can visit Engadget without any crawl so undoubtedly will leave it up in its own tab for regular frequent refresh as I read it anew. Unfortunately, the step I took - that massive HOSTS file - might note be reversible unless I find some important-to-me site(s) that don't work UNLESS ads are displayed; I don't believe this is MY loss...
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(*) I usually have a lot of Yahoo tabs open as well as CNN - those sites, too, seem to LOVE Flash ads and often cause a noticeable slowdown in this rocket. But even MULTIPLE tabs of those sites were NOTHING compared to a single instance of Engadget. Isn't that amazing?
I didn't read through all 200+ comments but from what I read here is my piece:
1. Large flash video can be extremely taxing on older machines (PIII, G3, etc) especially on Linux and Mac OS were Flash seems more sluggish in general. I'm guessing these types of machines make up a small but significant portion of the readership. I would imagine dial-up users might also find it painful. For these reasons, running this ad was likely a poor decision.
2. Like it or not, the decision to block ads has ethical implications. Blocking ads bypasses the mechanism by which this supports itself. It's basically like walking into a store and taking merchandise without paying.
There are certainly types of ads on the web that cross the line of what users will consider appropriate (ie sound, popups, etc). Using ad blocking software is not the only option available to you. You can simply choose to not visit the site. Choosing one method over the other is more than a choice of convenience. It's a decision with moral implications.
Nonsense.
I regularly turn off the sound during commercials when watching TV. I listen to commercial-free Radio Paradise throughout the day. I flip past ads in the newspaper and in magazines often without even a glance. In the past I =never= considered blocking ad sites completely - as with magazines I'd "flip" through web pages without much of a glance at the ads.
But things have changed.
Obviously.
Advertising minions aren't just placing pretty-picture-based hotlinks on web pages anymore. Now they're using MY cpu resources with ads that move and make sound and react to my mouse (GAWD - I =hate= THAT when I swipe my mouse across an ad accidentally and it OPENS something that I have to manually close! BTW, it took WELL over a minute to load Engadget this morning during a test on a 600MHz PIII Ubuntu box - and that was with NO OTHER windows nor even browser tabs open! That machine doesn't have an ad-site-blocking Hosts file...yet).
I have NO moral issue with blocking those ads, nor the unfortunate others that get caught in the same net.
Because those advertisers couldn't care less how they affect my computing environment.
@ Herman Manfred
Hear, Hear!!
Dont usually have sound on but turned it on and presto, loud, annoying and loading from 2 tabs at the same time!!
Also, as its a chunky flash file, its loading while everything else. For those on a shyty internet connection (like me) it makes the main page content load slower. Cant it be like the videos in posts and show the first frame with a play option and if they user wants to view the add they can play it? No big loading or annoying sounds.
Sure, it *could* just show the first frame and only play if the user explicitly played it, but I'm sure Apple paid big bucks for engadget to play it automatically. Business is business, I understand that, but I am about to install adblock for the first time, as this ad takes the cake for annoyance and waste of my cpu resources.
it sure as hell breaks the site using the opera browser on my Nokia 770 tablet (2006 s/w edition) - I can now only read the site using the RSS reader, all the content vanishes off the page in the web browser soon after loading.
Respectfully, the point of my post was to say that the choice to view ads is not as simple as "on or off". The folks at engadget have put forth a value proposition for their content in the form of the number, size and behavior of their ads... just like Best Buy or Target would by affixing price tags below their products. In the case of the brick and mortar store your choices are to either agree to the price and leave with a product or leave with your money empty handed.
Technically, the medium of the web affords you more choices. You are well within your rights to block content embedded within the HTML but that doesn't change the fact that there exists consequences to your decision. Perhaps the shear number of ads that appear on sites these days is to maximize the exposure to those who do not block ads because of those who do. Whether that's being a smart consumer or unfair to others I can't say definitively. I'm sure my example is an oversimplification but I use it to illustrate a point.
I completely agree with you that the choice to run the apple ad basically snubs users of lower end machines. It forces these uses to choose between filtering the content of the site (whether it be all ad content or just flash) or not viewing the site at all. All users are entitled to their choice but nobody is exempt from the fact that their decision carries consequences.
Anyone not blocking Flash without clicking on said Flash should get off the Net.
Easy method: Use Safari 3 for a pure surfing experience. The fonts look great on LCD monitors. But you might suddenly find a YouTube video that looks interesting. Start Firefox (ignore the skinny hard-to-read fonts), unblock the Flash and you're ready to watch!
Works great!
OK, I may be the only guy in North America who really supports this ad - but I think it's brilliant. Of course it's condescending, and snarky - but it's in the same vein as the rest of their campaign - as a long time PC guy, who got his start on the Mac, (and who is really thinking of buying a mac for home) I love the whole approach. Second, I think the synchronization of the flash video with the banner is brilliant - although I initially missed the connection, it is innovative. (Now, if mortgage companies and Viagra resellers start using that trick, I may vomit.)
I love the ad, its so hilarious. Now If the ad wasn't a funny apple ad I wouldn't have liked it so much =) Showed it around the office and we were all rolling!
fix the damn thing already, or remove it until you do. i'm cosing my engadget tab until tomorrow- hopefully it's fixed by then. i wont deal with it in order to read your site.
i'm out.
The Engadget editorial team doesn't sell ads because they AREN'T AD SALESMEN, they're an EDITORIAL TEAM. Hate to break it to you, but not having anything to do with the ad sales process doesn't increase integrity. Do you still see ad revenue statements? It increases profitability. How much you making off that Apple ad? Just curious.
Here's the thing:
>We hear that the experimental ad might be causing
>some issues, though, specifically audio problems,
>browser crashes, or might be especially taxing on
>some people's computers. We've been informed that
>the appropriate ad people have been dispatched
>and are trying to fix the issue for everyone.
This isn't a massively important bug fix. This isn't an impressive new feature. This isn't a vital news story that you have to break. This isn't the closure of the site. This isn't notification that you're starting to charge. In short, this isn't something you NEED to immediately post.
SORT THE BUGS OUT FIRST, THEN PLACE THE AD ON THE PAGE.
Using FF and XP at work. The damn thing sounded like a hellish chorus when I opened about 3 tabs of Engadget, slowed FF down and finally had to close and reopen the browser. Horribly shitty piece of work by an advertising operation trying to be 'innovative'. If they can't create a technically competent flash ad, they should just stick with what they can do.
Actually, on my now ad-site-blocked rocket P4 XP box as WELL as on my allow-all-that-crap not-now-rocket PIII Ubuntu box, I can view Engadget okay. The Ubuntu box required DISABLING the "powernowd" daemon that apparently was trying to adjust CPU speed when Engadget was brought up (undoubtedly trying to INCREASE CPU speed...). Since that particular box isn't lacking power nor is overclocked, there is no need to try to adjust CPU speed on-the-fly.
Thanks for the suggestion, though.
The irony is I have a Mac, and the Mac ad on Engadget consistently crashes an all-Mac software stack: OS 10.4.11 running Safari 3.0.4 (523.12), on MacBook Core 2 Duo 2GHz.
Solution: read Engadget via RSS feed.
I'm not even sure if it's that ad causing the issue, I just know I get application compatibility crashes in IE and Windows tells me it might be spyware or something malicious running. Faulty determination as this is a fairly secure PC at work, but I know if I open multiple pages and have an engadget page open, inevitably IE will crash.
On my work computer I can't install any ad blockers so I'm stuck with an ad that takes up half the screen. Come on Engadget, don't do this.
I don’t know what is up but the ad just goes nuts on my computer. If I open a second engadget window or anything with an embedded video the audio starts playing about 100 times with microsecond delays and the video does not work. It sound like a thousand voices all saying the same thing. Not to mention the high pitched voice of the window guy makes it just that much worse and the add is just plain dumb in makes no sense. This all causes my processor to hit 100% usage and ie to start using will over 250 MB of memory.
Looks like a bug.
Not to mention I always open linked pages in another window. It is VEYY annoying to have to flip back and mute an ad when I am trying to watch a linked video to find that it does not work. I have to close the window with engadget. I love the site and dont mind static ads but these videos are just not worth the trouble they cause.
The annoyance to me isn't so much how much space on the page the ad takes up or its pc-hating content, it's the fact that the ad uses more bandwidth and requires me to wait longer before I can read the articles.
I still don't understand all this fuss about ad blockers. Still webmasters blocking firefox for the anti-ad extension and what not.
**What ever happened to an updated hosts.ini file?**
I have been using this method for several years with no ill effect, other than not being able to click on google ad-words. Pages all display cleanly, and in addition they load faster because your computer isn't waiting to contact all the ad servers.
I thought we were a bunch of geeks here after all!
(FYI you can find a replacement hosts file by googling 'hosts' 'ads' and 'block' there are a number of files available that block more or less of the ad servers.)
I actually liked the ad.
Yes, it kind of hosed IE for me, but it was easily the most interesting web ad I've seen in years.
I also liked that this was a VERY web-specific ad, that wouldn't translate particularly well to other media.
And, yes, it made me laugh. Or chuckle, at least.
PLEASE PULL this flash the thing keeps both staxking some how between any two windows or tabs so it play like 8 at once with each get LOADER!!!!!!!!!!! not appreciated in a lab area considering i neither clicked on it or turned on the sound.... GTrrrrr
"The editorial team is separate from the advertising team"-the same dreary drone we heard from the newspaper editors for years-while they turned their ethical backs to the massive cigarette ads in their daily editions.
Do the Apple ads mean Engadget's Apple comments are irrelevant-no. Do they mean they are presented with an unspoken caveat-yes, to pretend otherwise just ads to the milieu of cynicism.
get a huge ass Vista advert too and we'll call it even.
What is really funny is how many of the PC users can't even see the ad. Works fine on my 5 year old Mac. The great irony is all the people running PCs that crap out trying to run the ad, and complaining that Apple is incompetent for placing an ad that creates so many problems for so many users. Sounds more like a platform problem to me. Don't know which I laughed harder at, the ad itself (which is brilliant) or all the whiny rants from the frustrated masses who couldn't get their PCs to run a simple ad.