Google makes using Thunderbird for your Gmail possible. If they had a check-off box that said "Show No Ads", there'd be nothing wrong with checking it. However, that's a wholly different thing than going to lengths to disable the very unobtrusive ads shown in exchange for using the web client.
Not all ads are paid-per-click, some are paid-per-view. And even for those that are paid-per-click you can often get into better ad programs if you have more ad views.
I just don't understand this. I hardly ever see the ads and when I do, they don't bother me. Why take such extreme measures? If the ads bother someone that much, why not use a different service or pay for one? Seems to me the cure is worse than the disease.
The thing that bothers me most is that Google's obviously trying to be sensitive in not displaying ads to people who might be in mourning and this "hack" exploits that. It's like hitting on women at a funeral.
Am I the only person who was reminded of Ryan O'Neil? (For those who don't know, he accidentally hit on his own daughter at his SO's funeral not long ago.)
But back to the point, I agree that exploiting Google's desire to be sensitive is tacky.
Obviously I was being unclear. My point is that Google's behaviour is already like 'hitting at women at a funeral'. Do you honestly believe they are taking trouble to 'respect sensitivities' out of sheer goodness? Hell no, the budget for that was approved by the PR department. It's already a case of exploiting cultural sensitivities.
To me the hack is not about wanting to hide the ads, it's about revealing the details of Google's decision and algorithm to hide ads on "tragic" emails. (I especially love the fact that you need one tragic word for every 167 non-tragic words.)
I was asked a related question during an interview at Google. As an example, the interviewer told me of a time their ads drew an especially vile reaction: they had placed luggage ads on a news story about a serial killer who chopped up his victims bodies and stuffed them into suitcases.
The interviewer said they'd be happy to just not show any ads on such pages and asked me how I'd go about detecting them. Apparently they've (mostly) figured that out by now!
Embrace the ads people. They pay for all of Google's free services, which these ad-hating people obviously are using.
Also, I find that whenever I glance at the GMail ads there's always something interesting or amusing there (more of the latter).
I had the same thought, but this strikes me as a pretty clever "hack" nevertheless: it exploits a functionality of the service to circumvent the service itself.
On a related topic: what do people think about ad blocking technology from an ethical viewpoint?
For me, I think I use the same screwy morality that I use when I'm downloading music...I don't mind stealing from wildly successful artists/businesses, but I'll gladly pay full price for a CD or click on an ad for someone who's just trying to pay the bills.
I don't block ads because I like sites being free, and I want to do my small part to help keep them that way (and to encourage others to put out free content). So I guess you could call it ethics, but it's the self-serving sort.
I don't do it, as I occasionally find ads relevant and useful - maybe once a month at most. On the other hand, I avoid sites where there are lots of intrusive ads. The harder it is for me to read the content I came to read, the less likely I am to return. In fact, I wish I had a bookmarklet to produce a form message saying 'the ads on your page at [URL] are so obnoxious that I have auto-blocked myself from your site for a month in protest.'
Most advertising people I have met seem rather dense to me...although I suppose it can be argued that there are more poorly-educated, undiscriminating people out there who are drawn to eye-candy and so forth. Sure, repetition works, you need to create X impressions before people remember your brand. I get that. But overdoing it will cause them to remember your brand in a negative or (worse) unserious way.
You should write that bookmarklet. As a site owner, I can tell you I'd probably ignore it if it's only one person, but if several people are complaining, I'd look into it and discuss the problem with one or a few of them. And I would be grateful for the feedback.
Constructive feedback is always good. "Your ad in location XY is loading very slowly." "The ad for product Z is misbehaving and causing a redirect/hang/whatever." As long as it isn't annoying comments like "I don't like ads, you should remove them" or "It moves. Can't you just use ads that I don't notice?" Those are pointless, because they hinge on the concept that ads are fine as long as nobody sees them, which goes against the whole point of ads.
If all you're doing is clicking, the reality is that you aren't helping the site with that ad. The "quality" of the ad clicks is also measured (e.g. percentage of people who clicked on the ad that also purchased something).
Click on things you are legitimately interested in.
On a related topic: what do people think about ad blocking technology from an ethical viewpoint?
I don't think I've clicked an ad since I was first introduced to the internet at around age ~5 (maybe with a few exceptions for accidental misclicks), and I don't intend to click on one in the future either. As a result, I am saving them bandwidth by blocking their ads.
Activating an ad-blocking device is equivalent to stating "I do not intend to click on your ads," and as a result it cannot possibly be losing the advertiser money.
(If the site charges per impression instead of per click, that's another thing, but those are rare these days.)
Cost-per-impression isn't that rare. We have a nice deal that does just that. In fact that whole network does only cost-per-impression.
But even for cost-per-click views matter. If you have more views, you can get into better programs.
But most of all, you deprive the site and the advertiser of the opportunity to make money of off you. If you don't click a specific advertisement: fine. Then it's the publisher's job or the advertiser's job to find ads that do get them value out of your visit. If you "opt-out" of ads, they don't have that opportunity and you've become worthless to them. A freeloader with no potential of ever being worth something. The site would be better of by blocking you...
(unfortunately had to make a new account to say this)
I block ads for two main reasons:
Annoying Advertising
Very few of these "rich advertising media" campaigns are any good. The few that are good are overshadowed by the really crappy ones with flashy imagery and music and generally breaking your web browsing flow by overlaying junk across your page. What makes it worse is that the people that commission these things think that this stuff is great and nobody in their "bubble" thinks different. The worst ones in my opinion are those keywords which you accidently hovered over and your browser locked up for 2 seconds.
Crap performance
Ad networks are an utter joke in terms of performance. As they said at velocity conference a few years ago "If you work for an ad network, shame on you." Ad networks don't do simple things like putting scripts on a CDN, not using gzip, still using document.write, not optimizing javascript/images - basically the whole Yslow rulebook.
Privoxy block data
26880 out of 283845 requests have been blocked, which equals a block rate of 9.47%.
(Interestingly enough it never gets much higher than 10%)
A lot of the time each advert takes 1second+ to load. I'm not sure right now about the uptime on this PC but assuming each ad takes 1 second to load each ad that's been blocked that's 7.5 hours of time waiting for ads to load.
If the site charges per ad served and you never click, you merely shift the 'ethical burden' of 'stealing from the website' to '"stealing" from the guy who paid for ads'.
If the ads are presented in a nice way (no animated flash popups with sound (or any subset)), are for something good and not delivered through a data-mining ad network, I don't mind. Those will often get through my ad blocking filters all by themselves.
But the ads only pay if people click on them. I don't click on ads, EVER. I never have, and have never even been close to. Some people do click them, obviously. Since I'm not clicking them, anyway - me using an ad blocker only saves the advertiser bandwidth money.
I have only clicked an ad once in my life. I was searching Amazon but couldn't find anything suitable. Then I noticed they were showing me an ad from a 3rd-party site for exactly what I was looking for. I clicked it, and bought the product. So at this rate, ads help me out about once every 15 years.
I explicitly said "there are people that click on those ads". Those people don't have Ad Blockers. I don't click on those ads, so I have an Ad Blocker. All I was saying was that it doesn't present an ethical problem.
I block flash ads on my solaris box -- the z ordering is all screwed up with flash, and it gets in the way of content. Also, it makes firefox (by its own fault or by the plugin) crash, often.
On other machines, only those ads with movement get blocked. Look, if you can't get a message that's interesting in text while I'm alreadyreading, then you don't have a product I'd want to buy.
To the extent that I'm freeloading by continuing to patronize sites after blocking ads, I justify by directing other people to those sites when I see interesting content.
Happy users tend to share links with friends, and depending on the site, contribute content. If keeping a user happy means a decline in impressions and a bump in click-though rate, so be it.
Good for lifehacker readers. I use Gmail for it's simplicity (even with ads). I won't ever block those non-intrusive text as an honor to the good service.
When I 'm satisfied of your service I won't to give back something. Maybe I don't have money, but something I can contribute.
First we find out we've been living in a world where most people will give away their privacy freely because they don't think it's worth anything. Then a few large companies finding a way to capitalize on it are not just tolerated but admired. Now one guy treats one of them with the contempt it deserves and is criticized as unethical or ungenerous. WTF?
I think most of us are missing the point. The author is not implying that he discovered a "hack" or "secret code", it's that Google consciously chooses to not match advertisements to text such as this. You can rephrase the sentences all you'd like, and Google will still not render ads.
i agree, i don't find the sidebar ads to be obtrusive. i don't even notice them. i do notice the ad above the email contents on occasion and they've been pretty useful to me.
