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Beware the Flash blocker
Amy Gahran installed a Flash blocker for her Firefox browser and now foresees peril for online display advertising.
I wonder.
See, ad blockers in some form have been around a while. You can find pop-up blockers everywhere, and they generally work well -- pretty much killing off that most annoying of ad methods. And old-fashioned online ad blockers can strip out animated GIFs that happen to be the dimensions commonly used for advertising (for example, 468 pixels by 60 pixels).
But Flash blockers don't always discriminate accurately, and ads done in Flash don't always follow conventional dimensions. That means a Flash blocker, to be effective at killing ads, also has to kill other content types -- much the way an overzealous spam filter catches legitimate e-mail.
Forget about news sites, which do unfortunately tend to display a majority of their rich-media work in the ad spaces. So much of what makes up the "entertainment Web" nowadays is done in Flash. And Flash has gone from one of the worst ways to serve video to one of the best in the past two years. So I bet you'll see more and more video content embedded in Flash objects.
Thus I believe a Flash blocker may be more annoying over time than the content Gahran is trying to suppress, much the way a JavaScript blocker makes the Web a very irritating place nowadays.
She says:
"In the bigger picture, maybe it's time to start figuring out ways to make advertising and marketing less annoying and more relevant, especially online.
"Remember: Poynter's Eyetrack III study found that 'Text ads were viewed most intently, of all the types we tested. On our test pages, text ads got an average eye duration time of nearly 7 seconds; the best display-type ad got only 1.6 seconds, on average.'"
And I say not all display advertising is annoying, especially if it is served to people who have indicated interest in the subject matter. Text ads do seem to work when they are targeted to users' goals, but they are not well suited for all forms of advertising messages.
A site full of news articles seldom offers ad targeting capabilities nearly as precise as a search engine -- where users' intent is often quite clear from the keywords they employ. Thus, we all know that AdWords works better than AdSense.
I agree we must continue to find better ways to deliver advertisers' messages to the best prospects -- that's how we are paid. And we should scrap the obviously annoying and easily defeated delivery methods, such as pop-ups. But we should not dismiss the more balanced ad formats of today assuming that most Web customers will follow Gahran's lead.
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Hmm, I never actually thought of myself as technically astute, but thanks anyway. But one reason why I tend to disable Javascript in particular, or Java or whatever, is because our computer is running on one of those old steam-powered dial-up connections. So one man's fast loading Flash gizmo can take an eternity to load on our machine; and I have experienced the occasional crash when encountering a Java application which (and this is the important part) the webmaster put on his/her site without warning that is was there. This is of course basic accessibility: if possible, give the end user the choice of whether to accept or decline. Same goes for links that open in new windows etc etc. I have nothing against Flash or javascript or Java (well maybe that last one), I just want to use the Web at my own probably rather pedestrian pace, and some of the available blocking tools give me that ability. (The truth is, I secretly hanker for the return of the old ZX Spectrum days, but I know they will never return :-)
OK, Chris, but you are obviously technically astute.
I would never recommend that any designer working on sites for broad audiences assume most people have a high level of technical proficiency.
I doubt most folks know how, or care to know how, to switch Flash or JavaScript blockers on and off on specific UI components.
Without JavaScript, Ajax stuff doesn't work. Without Flash, Flash video doesn't work. An everyday user probably doesn't even think about which technology enables Google Maps, for example -- he or she just wants it to work.
I agree that a site should have core navigation that does not rely on plug-ins or client-side scripting. That's good practice for search optimization as well as user experience.
I've been using Flashblock for about six weeks now and have not found any major problems with it. I can still view Flash based sites by clicking on the arrow to allow Flash. So the only people that theoretically lose out are the ad makers. If their ubiquitous ads were not so 'in your face' people wouldn't use these ad blockers, so they have only themselves to blame.
I also strongly disagree about javascript blocking. With the Firefox Webdeveloper extension, JS is so easy to enable and disable that I block JS regularly, especially when visiting online newspapers, who seem to be some of the biggest offenders when it comes to delivering unwanted ads. If you have a website whose navigation only works with javascript, then you need to rethink the way you design your site. JS should only be used for extras and enhancements, not for the essentials.
And as for Java, I block that dinosaur all the time. Why on earth does it still exist?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. Actually, after I posted about FlashBlock, someone recommended the Adblock Firefox extension to me, which is geekier to configure but more targeted toward ads and nukes them entirely rather than leaving awkward holes in the page layout. It also leaves Flash-based navigation and content/graphics intact.
I wrote about that here:
As to whether graphic ads work, my guid on that is Poynter's Eyetrack study, which showed that graphic ads get the least amount of attention online and people actively avoid looking at them.
That's not to say that ALL graphic ads are useless, of course. There are probably exceptions, and it pays to know your target audience well and choose your ad venues wisely. But generally, from what I've seen, they're usually a waste of money for the advertiser and an annoyance to the audience. I think often advertisers create that format of ad because that's what they're used to thinking an ad is.
Advertising is supposed to be a "creative" profession, after all. I think all those creative people can come up with a better idea.
IMHO, of course.
- Amy Gahran
I am comfortable with the flash blocker. You can click on the panel if you expect a flash item, like the news or a movie. But any flash you don't expect, don't click. I'm not going to mind missing out on some flash item I didn't ask for, and no one else is either.
Advertising is offensive.
Jay, I started here, went to Amy's blog and returned. I find the discussion fascinating because it touches on variety of important subjects way beyond Flash blocking/Ad blocking. I can't address them all here but I will in a blog that I am starting and trackback.
People have been tinkering with blocking ads from way back. The Hosts file at www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm is a perfect example. AdBlock (for Mozilla) is another.
In Amy's blog, the comments focused how Mozilla users (8%) have it so good and Explorer user (87%)so bad. When we looked at this issue a year or so ago, we realized that if you are willing to spend a lot of time and energy, you can pretty much block out ads regardless of which browser you use. But it is an arms race that no individual can really win--the community database is the key to antivirus programs and it is the same with ads. Adblock is great if you like rolling your own but it gets tedious.
The fear of this tedium and sheer cussedness at the IAB's (to be written in blog to be) is what drove us to develop and distribute sQusi as a free solution that could leverage the collective experience and disseminate (with oversight) to all users.
Do visit at www.squsi.com. The links on the home page document the drivers for our approach.
I wll also be posting this comment on Amy's Blog to see if I can encourage her to give sQusi a try.
Advertising is an evil necessity for a lot of sites to pay for their hosting. However it should be targeted to the specific audience and should always be clear that it is an advert and not part of the site content.
The main reason I wanted to post is that I completely agree with Chris that any website that requires javascript, flash/shockwave, java etc for essential things like navigation is, by definition, BAD design. Very few sites actually NEED this as such.
There should always be an alternative so people using text readers or text only browsers (LINX still around?) can still navigate the site and understand the content.
An example is the ALT command within the IMG command in HTML for alternative text/description, so people that are not able to see the graphics (they may be blind, use a text only browser, screen reader etc.) get a label that explains the image content and whether it is a link.
OK, Rant over, before this becomes a web design thread!
My point is adverts are a pain and if advertisers want people to read them they should be nice about it or there will be an ad blocker that blocks the ads but not the content.
Oh? You can't make a living if I block your ads? You can't make a living dumping trash on my living room floor so why do you think you should be able to make a living dumping trash in my computer? If you don't like it, don't put your crappy stuff on the Internet. Get a real job and actually EARN your keep!