Deceptive adbanners on B3D

it's always frustrating trying to run a website and keep it free only to have the users screw you over on your only source of income by blocking the ads.

There aren't many that can pull it off, but I think B3D is "special" enough where it could go it as a subscriber-only site. Even though I don't post much, I know I would certainly pay to be here.

 

Well enough to know you when you post here Rev, even the "dumb" ones like me!

 

Even really big or specialist sites with big reps haven't been able to survive the move to pay only membership. A lot of sites have thought that (eg Motley Fool), but as soon as you make it pay only, your demographic usually changes for the worse, and in turn less people want to come here as less people post. As GO has pointed out above, a lot of what this forum is and why it is attractive is because of the way people give of their time and energy to post.

Probably the only people who have made it work are the porn sites and the occasional torrent site, but I think those people are getting a lot out (in a material sense) and not putting much effort into the community of a website.

 

Alright, you got me. I'm "Reverend".

 

Well, at least it shows you haven't done this kind of thing much, or you'd be better at it.

 

I think exclusive pay membership would be a bad move, for obvious reasons. Even if we all stayed and paid, eventually it'd get stale. Some of us would find other things to do, leaving the rest of us to repeat ourselves to each other. Never mind what was said in the AEG thread about hoping for more nVidia (or any other) developers to come contribute to the board...

However, I'd still love to get a membership option, to be able to remove ads without feeling guilty about it.

 

This is the first time I have been mistaken for someone else on the Internet and since you gave such compelling and unarguable reasons, I have no choice other than confess.

This will be interesting.

 

OMG, that was my exact thought too!

 

Lol....I got my first popup here. It made me jump

 

Thanks for the image Micron. With that the ad company were able to identify and remove that campaign.

 

Cool

 

I've gotten a different one. Here are two screenies.

http://www.users.on.net/~triforce/b3dpopup.png <- I scrolled to the bottom of that page and the popup blocked message appeared
http://www.users.on.net/~triforce/b3dpopup2.png <- this is what the popup did. It is a javascript created dialog

 

I'v never seen an ad on Beyond3D I have felt tempted to click on, infact up untill receantly it would always show me one telling me about "Next Generation IM smilies". I'v always been puzzeled by the adverts on B3D.

Just incase your wondering the only adverts I ever click on are for computer games I have never heard of, it seems that clicking on any other adverts is futile. I'm certainly not clicking on the Crucial memory ad, I like cheap ram.

 

I seem to get a lot of those. Clearly the advert system knows I'm running XP

 

I got a few of those yesterday and the day before that. Colourless' post in this thread refers to the same ad.

 

Not that I care too much about this site but I found the following ad very disturbing regardless of whether it appeared here or anywhere else, due to (a) it's totally in Jawi, something I don't understand; (b) the images below suggests something totally disagreeable to me, if it means what I think it means :

http://3dpulpit.hostingisfree.com/misc/b3d_ad/b3d_ad.gif

PS. Originally a Shockwave file, changed it to a GIF. Will delete the above files tomorrow. Sorry for disturbing the peace of some folks by posting here.

 

It appears to be this: http://www.10million.org/

I can only guess what you thot it was, but it appears to be a reward aimed at leading to the recovery of these missing men.

 

As another useless datapoint, I'll add that even in recent months I get frequent pop-ups at B3D (frequent as in it happens typically at least once a week, usually in groups where I get several in one day and nothing for a week or two, not as frequent as in every few minutes consistently). I also get multimedia ads with the most obnoxious music about as often. This has been the case for as long as I can remember.

I use a popup blocker, but it isn't foolproof apparently, as some get through even here at B3D. Many more I see are blocked. It wouldn't surprise me if I get these because of some malware on my system - even being careful about where I go, I'm exposed enough to the net that it is nearly impossible to prevent everything from getting in. I've long been suspicious that there is adware out there with the sole purpose of activating certain ads (i.e., from certain companies) when you happen to run across them. In that way you don't have anything obvious enough to think you are infected, but they still get their ads through and you figure it is just a failure of your adblocking or popup blocking.

On a side note, I never click on ads. Not because I don't want to support the site, but really, it just isn't something I'm in the habit of doing. Certainly there is never anything in the ads of interest - it is just a conditioned reaction to ignore them completely. Maybe I should write a script that is active only when surfing B3D, that searches for banner ads and opens them to a new background window and then immediately closes it, and continues to do that as I'm surfing. Hmm...

 

Another note - something keeps trying to load over, and over, and over while I'm browsing B3D. Happens on every page. Don't get a popup-blocked message, but I do get a click as if a link has been selected (or page refresh, or whatever... the standard IE click) and I see the blue status bar (towards the right on the bottom of the IE frame) quickly scan across as if something has loaded.

Any ideas as to what that is?