Ad problems fixed -- game on!
By Ryan Block 
posted Nov 21st 2007 2:33PM
posted Nov 21st 2007 2:33PM
Just a quick word to our readers: we're sorry for the trouble caused, but thanks and much love for being good sports. We got a ton of really interesting and useful feedback, and we know you wouldn't care if you didn't love Engadget and have high standards for our site. (Of course, we'd also like to give a shout out to everyone on the business side who jumped in to help out and fix this thing.) So, you know, feel free to disengage your ad blockers, the coast is clear.
I actually thought it was funny and creative when I disabled the ad-block to watch it.
Did you say disable Adblock? now that you told me about it.... I find it difficult to act like that didn't happen. I love this thing. Less clutter. Less commercialism. Less crap.
I agree. My web pages still load much quicker when the Adblock is enabled. Sorry, keepin' it on.
Yeah I'm with you, I found it funny when I disabled adblock. It is staying on though. It speeds up my internet, my computer, and stops all the flashing ads that hurt my eyes. Oh btw there is an addon for adblock called element hider. It allows you to disable certain parts of websites at will. I use it to streamline the look of myspace.
Why would I want to remove AdBlock?
I disabled it to see what all the fuss was... but it was almost immediately re-enabled.
You can watch it in action on YouTube though :)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RZ7SWFxx0WE
adblock FTW
I actually have decided to disable AdBlock on sites I read regularly (IE: Engadget, Autoblog, Autobloggreen) however if there is an annoying ad like yesterday's, it's going back on for minimum 1 week.
That way I win if it's annoying and intrusive and Engadget wins if it's not.
For the bulk of websites none of this applies, AdBlock is my way of dealing with that bandwidth crunch slated to start in 2010 as reported yesterday on this blog. I'll leave that chunk of the tubes open for suckers who don't know about AdBlock.
Is there a way to turn off adblock for certain websites?
I love Engadget, and don't mind watching ads to support it, but not if it mean turning adblock on and off every time I go on it.
Think i'll keep Adblock on, just in case ;) Engadget looks so purdy without ads!
but thanks for sorting the issue guys, most sites would just leave it and hope the "pester power" gets them more revenue. Even if you dont actually care, this gives the impression that you care...and thats good enough for me.
Keep up the most excellent work,
G
Now the ad's boring :( I thought it was quite good the old ad, oh well :)
Disengage adblocking? Why? So I can listen to another tired Mac ad bash my personal choice of an operating system that is particularly useful in my professional field and personal life?
Yeah, I'd probably be a little more receptive to a Mac Ad that told me what Mac's did, instead of constantly slagging the competition.
You don't have to listen to it ;)
Actually, after a certain timeout, it started playing automatically. So..
So... when you listen to the radio or watch TV, do you mute the commercials or do you feel like you MUST listen to them?
?? I don't mute the commercials. But most of the commercials don't infer that I'm a dumbass, except those stupid Hardees commercials -- which is why I refuse to eat there.
I've used FireFox with adblock for so long now, I don't even remember how to turn it off. ;)
I just started using it yesterday after getting fed up with the ad, since it kept auto-playing after a not very long timeout. Extremely annoying. And yet I think I too "forgot" how to turn it off already.
Blocking ads has become almost addictive.
I knew u guys were always nice :)
but adblock is not going off :)
its a cruel world out there !
I personally liked the ad, kudos to those who try new things. Status quo gets us nowhere people. And at least it wasn't one of those screen takeover ads. Two blog posts about an Apple ad? Apple def got their money's worth from you guys.
Remember engadget, the loudest people in any group are the minority. If it messed up their computers, maybe they should take the ads advice and upgrade :)
Except it was crashing Mac browsers, too! It wasn't a platform issue, it was a problem with the ad itself.
Look... I personally prefer PC/Windows over Apple. (I'm actually pro-Apple too, as a consumer, i love competition!)
But if it was an anti-Apple, Windows advertisement crapping up my engadget experience, i'd have written them an email just as fast.
I also don't think the "minority" was as small as you think. Sounds like it was screwing a lot of people's browsers/PCs up.
You think Engadget's biased in FAVOR of Sony?
Yeah, I understand what you're saying, but you guys realize that we kind of run on the honor system, right?
We give our content away for free on the site and in full, unabridged RSS, and in return we serve ads. Yes, you can block those (and no, we're not going to make a big stink about it), but do realize that the more people that block ads, the worse off Engadget is. Not to be dramatic, but if enough people blocked ads Engadget would cease to exist, so use your best judgment.
Who do you blame, the advertising companies for making obnoxious ads or the users that actually buy the product being sold enforcing the idea that these ads work?
Anyway, advertising has gotten ridiculous and ad-block is proof of that. If advertisements weren't so intrusive, people wouldn't even install it. I know you guys have no control over it but I really thought that Mac ad was hilarious and well done [I do Actionscript programming in my spare time and I never thought about syncing two banners in such a way. It was brilliant ;)]
Aren't the articles basically all ads?
And don't you get kickbacks for them?
Be honest..
I love how you tell us to block ads, and then tell us to unblock ads so we can be fed information on what apple thinks we should buy. I've been running adblock in different forms for 3 years. The marketers did it themselves when they started using popups
Wwhat, absolutely not. Never. We follow the same editorial standards as the New York Times, and the Wall St. Journal.
I don't think you understand how severe an accusation like that is to someone who writes and reviews for a living.
So, what you're saying is....continue to use adblockers on Gizmodo?
I'm not an adblocking nazi, but I do adblock when I see an annoying ad. The old version of Adblock would let you just click below the ad you want to remove, and add just that one. The new version doesn't seem to do that (at least, not by default). So when there's an annoying ad, I end up blocking a lot of things trying to catch just the one.
Anyway, I guess the moral of the story is: Don't let an obnoxious ad on the site, because it only serves to encourage people to install and run ad blocking software. Keep 'em civil and most people won't care.
I treat this website like some good ole friend after a minor understanding.
Didnt use adblock on it, just disabled Flash temporarily.
MISunderstanding I mean.
Hi, I'm Kyle Hanson from Illinois, and I may be a troll, but even trolls hate to get spammed. So please don't spam my email address, which is hanooter@gmail.com
To those who leave their ad block thing on, the less ads you see, the less funds engadget gets to run its site. Don't be so selfish. Its like saying "I quit my job, But I still expect my paycheck every Friday!"
I block the flash ads. I still see the static ads.
Who are you to impose what people do with their own computers? It's a great technology! If you want to see ads, be my guest. :)
And what's with the paycheck analogy? It doesn't really fit because most of us never even worked for Engadget.
I love reading Engadget and all, but if my blocking of ads puts them under, then I'll probably just move on to one of the my many other favorite sites out there that don't bother me about ads.
I could never tell the difference, I always had AdBlock on!
My question today is, "What's an ad?"
I will always remember that it was an Apple ad on engadget that turned me on to IE7Pro with Ad Blocker.
I will never have to looks at stupid ads again. For this, I can never re-pay you.
Unfortunately its a double edged sword. :( And the less annoying edge totally wins.
I still totally wub you guys tho.
Yes yes yes, me too. Never heard of it before yesterday...
I use IE7Pro to block the offensive advertising. I thought the ad was atrocious when unblocked to check.
I wonder if advertisers still pay per impression and do they realize most Engadget readers probably block their ads.
I didn't use one until that really homely chick on the at&t ads started showing up. She was so ugly it drove me to get an ad blocker.
It's not just the ad impressions. They track with cookies too. That's why I block about 98% of the cookies that are sent to my machine as well. In the privacy settings in Firefox, I have it set to accept cookies, but to ask me every time. I usually only allow session cookies and use the cookie button on the status bar for finer grained control. If I block cookies for a site, they are blocked all the time.
Also, be sure to check the blockable items for a page. There will be non-visible things to block, like scripts and 1 pixel gifs that are not part of the website.
I about twitch when I have to help someone with their PC and there are ads.
BTW, if a site goes under because of lack of ad revenue, it's usually no great loss as there are about 14,000 other sites with that information still available. That will probably never be a problem though. Most people can't be bothered to change from what they know.
This is sad, it's not like this is the only site who is running the ad, people with shit-tastic computers and browsers shouldn't ruin a clever ad for the rest of us.
Get with the times, your p3 800 and ie 6 won't cut it anymore.
@David
A Dell D620 running an Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 @ 1.83 GHz per core and Windows XP is pretty craptacular I know, but it's my work laptop. I figure it should be able to handle a Flash web ad, no?
you fail-
P4 2.66GHz
1GB RAM
w/ IE7 (now with IE7Pro! haha)
That is my computer at work, where I first noticed the problem. My comp at home blows my shitty work PC out of the water. The ad looped at home, too.
The only thing that is "shit-tastic" is your blind hatred for competition and your man-love for Bill Gates (or your penis envy for Steve Jobs). Either way, grow up.
I entirely disagree with the commercial and advertisement model. Honestly, ads and commercials piss me off. Want people to buy your product? Give samples of it to media outlets (like Engadget), and oh yeah, make it a solid product. These companies are plugging holes in their market coverage by slamming out mediocre products, which then require massive advertising campaigns to cover up blemishes.
If companies want their product to succeed in any environment not filled with mocha-frappuchino-slurping emo hipsters, they should:
- make a solid product
- give product samples to review sites
- provide simple product comparisons, which admittedly work best for me (a la OSX vs Vista vs Ubuntu vs...). I buy lots of computer equipment for several companies and I want to know quickly why I should care, without you proselytizing to me.
- keep it simple: "Here's what our product does, here's what their product does..."
I understand I'm probably in the tiny minority of users who likes to keep their head basically uncluttered, but... until an ad can call me what I want to know, companies that bombard me with their crappy ads can shove it, and I'll stick to my Adblock thank you very much.
A quick question for those who appose advertising: How would you propose Engadget should pay the bills? Assuming their business is sustained by more than love and magic dust, what model would you propose for them to stay in business?
Would you be willing pay a subscription fee? I personally wouldn't want to.
Maybe people should create a blog where people put together the content for free and make it available without ads. Great. Where is that site and why are you here?
I don't like ads anymore than anyone but everything has a cost. If you think that's negotiable try not paying your rent for a while. I'm sure your landlord's cool.
There is nothing wrong with ads. Web sites used to have ads. Nice colorful pretty static ads.
But now they have shows. Loud intrusive shows. And Engadget has/had so many that, even without that monster show, they significantly affected my use of my computer.
I don't want shows.
I don't mind ads.
I can't easily have ads and no shows without harming my use of sites that have shows I =want= to see (like YouTube for Flash shows).
So I now (as of last night) choose not to have either.
I have regained a small but significant part of my computer - everything I do is faster now.
This is good.
I don't use adblocker most of the time. Engadget is a site that has more than hosting fees to pay, and it gets the money from people who want their ads displayed rather than taking money directly from me. The apple ad was just obnoxious with the massive "DON'T GIVE UP ON VISTA" text. The actual main ad itself wasn't so bad, as without sound it wasn't there to insult me. But really, your ad contract people should really think about doing stuff like that more carefully, because in the end, who pays you does change how you work.
Ryan, long time reader (and podcast listener) here. I would love to turn my ad-blocker off (just started it a few weeks ago), since I completely accept your business model as a concept. But, to tell you the truth, it was Engadget that caused me to get the ad-blocker in the first place. I had stopped reading Engadget altogether when the ads got so bad that it was painful to visit the site. Then, during a discussion on BOL, I heard about how ad-blockers could help (they were not advocating it, of course). Now, I can visit Engadget and enjoy the content again.
If the ads were scaled back to a point where the site was workable for me, I would not need ad-blocker, so it may just be a matter of "greed is not good" in your advertising department. You realize that there is a tipping-point when it comes to ads on a web-site, and I think Engadget has gone way past that point. My ad-blocking software says that there are 18 items that it is blocking, which is dramatically more than any other site I have visited and tested (if the number is low, I actually turn off ad-blocker for that site, in an attempt to play by the rules).
You are right about the "honor system", but that goes for the site as well. In the unspoken rules of engagement for ad-supported sites, if the site goes too far with their ads, then all is fair, I think. I say this as a big Engadget fan, so please take it as constructive criticism.
Oh, and btw, if you do decide to scale back the ads, please let us know. I, for one, would be happy to then turn off the ad-blocker and give it a test run.
And, I wanted to add that you do get credit for communicating with your readership on this issue.
Funny story.
My 360 is set up so that it routes audio through my computer, so the same set of speakers outputs both my computer and 360's sound. Often I'll browse the Internet and play 360 at the same time. So yesterday, I was playing Oblivion when all the sudden I heard this cacophony of voices. I've gotten the rare audio bug with that game, specifically with the lockpicking mini-game, so I thought nothing of it. The voices didn't sound like the normal voices you hear in Oblivion, but I thought nothing of it. You get used to finding minor bugs when playing a game for literally hundreds of hours. Figured I'd just finish my business about the Imperial City then go back to the main menu and reload, like I usually do. Then I starting hearing the word "upgrade" and thought, "Hm, why would the people in Cyrodill talk about upgrades? Armor upgrades, I guess." Kept running around. Then I heard someone say XP, and not the leveling experience kind. I stopped and started listening. Then I heard XP again. I started to freak out a little. At this point, I was wondering, "What the hell is going on? Have I stumbled on some secret audio track?" I was so into the game at that point that the breaking of the fourth wall momentarily frightened me. Then it hits me. I've had the Engadget page open for the last hour, and the buggy Apple ad that I was reading about just suddenly decided to activate itself three minutes ago.
This might get me banned, but it's my pet peeve. If you can't take constructive criticism, then I don't want to be here, anyway. "We follow the same editorial standards as the New York Times, and the Wall St. Journal." You are a blog. A member of Weblogs, Inc. Please do not compare yourself to the two bastions of American professional journalism (at least until Murdoch finishes the takeover of the Journal.) If you want to be a news site, make one. You serve a different function than a news site. The Wall Street Journal, in all my years of reading it, has never posted a picture of the Terminator as the article picture. They have not come up with witty sayings like, "I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords." I'm not saying you guys aren't journalists. Despite the amount of time I've read this blog, I don't know enough about your backgrounds to make that call. You do fall under freedom of press, but that's another issue. But, the only thing that really distinguishes your blog from some guy in his basement in his underwear writing about his favorite comic books is popularity. There are other differences, but that is the core difference. Just because you get lots of advertising and interviews with famous people does not make you better than the comic book guy. He is not a loser blogger, and you are not "teh awesomez" just because more people read your blog. You both perform the same task, just in different spheres of influence with different levels of success.
I do like your site. Really, I do. I'm not trying to sound mean or condesending. But please don't forget the point of sites like these. They are different from professional news sources for a reason. There are professional tech news sources. We choose to come to Engadget, rather than those sites, for a reason.
You are misinterpreting his comment. He isn't saying "Engadget is as good as the New York Times," he is saying "We have the same policy as the New York Times."
That policy is: Group A sells ads, Group B writes stories. They don't influence each other.
Am I the only one, or is it still making things lag like shit.
It's definately NOT fixed.
Definitely not fixed, I opened an article in another tab, and was graced an infinite-sound-abortion-of-justice, thanks. Fix it or get rid of it please.
It reappeared for an hour or so, the people handling the ad systems are all out of the office for the holiday and their emergency fill-ins didn't quite get the job done right. Should be all better now.
It was gone. Now it's back and as broken as ever. Never used an ad blocker on engadget before but I'm getting the plugin now. Bye bye, mac ad.
Oddly enough, I had no problems with the original ad (really coincidental prior to hearing the issue, and once I heard about it, I didn't go looking for it), but there's some stupid-ass radio-shack ad that pops up whenever I'm looking at the Samsung Flipshot gallery that prevents me from clicking on links until I roll over the stupid thing. Not only is it annoying, but it's also an ad for what has to be what has turned out to be the most useless electronics store ever. At least the brick & mortar ones are useless for me.
The ad doesn't play for me. Strange...
So just for fun, I deleted all entries from adblock. I forgot about the number one most annoying thing about the ads on Engadget and other sites, and came across this while looking for a fix (other than just blocking):
http://publicobject.com/2007/05/some-flash-ads-break-mousewheel.html
Seriously, fix that and you'll see a lot less adblock usage.
I'm on a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo with 3GB of RAM... And the ad KILLED my browser.
That's not hard to do when it starts looping the audio track over and over, even to the point of it looping over itself.
This wasn't about computer power. It was about bad implementation of an ad.
Huh...
Seems the ad is back, and is slow as ever.
I never bothered with things like AdBlock before (since I just ignore the ads to the point that I don't even notice them at all), but this ad is definitely tempting me to do so. The thing is huge, slow, and only amusing the first time.
Agreed, and it's gone in ten minutes. As I explained above, it's been on and off throuhg the afternoon, the people at the ad delivery firm messed this one up, we were supposed to get the correct ads at about noon ET. Sigh.
Why block ads? Support your publishers!
ads? what ads? oh joys of living in an ad free world
Ryan, your original post made it pretty clear that some people at your end were aware the ad was going to cause technical issues. Why did anyone even consider putting it live BEFORE these were fixed?
I don't mind advertising on sites in principle, but things like this make me more and more likely to put AdBlock on this machine.
In the comments of the OTHER article on the outrageous ad I mentioned that I had installed that large HOSTS file (from mvps.com?) and would keep it in place if there weren't undesired side-effects.
The HOSTS-file-based adblocking unfortunately DOES break certain websites - my daughter was trying to surf down into http://www.neopets.com and certain features - like video playing - were broken by that method of adblocking. Since that HOSTS file is massive it would be essentially WAY too time-consuming to find the blocked site that neopets needs.
So, I'm back to no HOSTS file and excruciatingly-long load times for Engadget et al...
that damn "i am a mac ad" almost got me fired. started playing when my boss walked in. loud. I was like wtf?