Advertisements On Phoronix

[Michael]

At Phoronix, we work very hard to provide you with quality content and the very latest Linux Hardware news and reviews.

I would like to bring to your attention that advertisements comprise 100% of our revenue. We do not currently ask for donations or sponsorships or require subscriptions to see the latest content. Our revenue is suffering every day because of adblock users. We are proud that the majority of our user base supports and uses Firefox and other open-source web browsers. Unfortunately, along with Firefox's many capabilities it also gives users an easy way to block advertisements and banners. Since our user base is more tech savvy (we are proud of this I might add) than our Windows equivalent sites they do not feel the effects of ad blocking as profoundly as we do -- we are taking a tremendous loss that does hamper our growth.

While we understand advertisements can be annoying at times, we only serve minimal and needed advertisements. Really it comes down to one along the top of the site and forum, and one at the left. There are a few Google advertisements and shopping advertisements also present on article pages. We do not (and never will) serve pop-ups, pop-unders, advertisements that talk to you and give you heart attacks, or annoying shoot the monkey ads that bounce across your screen. Our content is and always will be the our top priority, and we will never let our advertisements become intrusive.

What I am asking of you is simple. If you like what you read at Phoronix, support us by taking a minute disabling AdBlock or white-listing our site.

Sincerely,
Michael Larabel

[David]

bump to top

[thoemy]

You should disable the flash advertisements in the forum because they are over the pop-up menus.

[W.Russell]

I do not mind any advertisements that are simple and text-based but the animated and flash ones do get aggravating at times. But so far, none of the advertisements on this website are bad.

[clicks]

Turned off Ad-Block for phoronix.com, it's worth it.

[SamsLembas]

A way of removing the ads by donating would be very nice. I would like to support the site, but the ads are just too damn annoying.

At the very least, a method of just donating would suffice. Adblock Plus with a few extra filters takes care of removing all the ads anyways.

EDIT: Perhaps donating could give you access to a RSS feed with the full content in it as well?

[Michael]

A way of removing the ads by donating would be very nice. I would like to support the site, but the ads are just too damn annoying.

At the very least, a method of just donating would suffice. Adblock Plus with a few extra filters takes care of removing all the ads anyways.

EDIT: Perhaps donating could give you access to a RSS feed with the full content in it as well?

We are looking at ways to do some of what you mentioned... As once I roll out our new (yet to be rolled out) ads, if you try to just use AdBlock Plus, it just won't work. And if you just become ultra liberal with the ad block settings, it will then block all of the images inside an article too.

[Pabloh]

Ok. Phoronix.com has been added to my whitelist.
:)

[Michael]

See: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=phoronix_premium

[SamsLembas]

I must say, the prices are higher than I had anticipated. Still, I will probably end up getting one.

Any chances of a full-content RSS feed being one of the "future additions"? That would be one feature that would, in my mind, completely justify the high price. But perhaps it is impossible to limit the access to a RSS feed as would be required.

[Michael]

I must say, the prices are higher than I had anticipated. Still, I will probably end up getting one.

Any chances of a full-content RSS feed being one of the "future additions"? That would be one feature that would, in my mind, completely justify the high price. But perhaps it is impossible to limit the access to a RSS feed as would be required.

It's actually cheaper than LWN and other places :D

We may introduce a full-content RSS feed for news. It would be rather hard to limit the RSS adoption, but if Phoronix Premium proves to work out we will likely adopt full news in the RSS.

[smack]

I'm not speaking for anyone else. I'm just letting your know what is on one of your readers mind (namely me).

I am not tollerant at all of this pervasive new advertising method. What I am willing to tollerate are relevant banner advertisements with images hosted from the phoronix.com domain.

I like your content on the website, most especially your benchmarks and noveau updates. If I personally needed to resort to such advertisement methods I would sooner go offline. Of course you are not me, this statement is intended to further explain my position.

I'm going to subscribe to this thread. Your website is not going to be among my daily news anymore.

[Michael]

pervasive new advertising method.

What is this new pervasive new advertising method you're referring to?

[smack]

What is this new pervasive new advertising method you're referring to?

I should have specified. I was thinking about making a new thread but it seemed like my thread would have been close to this topic.

I consider replacing random words with "content links" as they're labeled to be pervasive and annoying. I also consider any type of flash advertisement to be annoying although not neccessarily pervasive.

[Michael]

I should have specified. I was thinking about making a new thread but it seemed like my thread would have been close to this topic.

I consider replacing random words with "content links" as they're labeled to be pervasive and annoying. I also consider any type of flash advertisement to be annoying although not neccessarily pervasive.

There are people who feel those embedded contextual advertisements are annoying, but you're literally the first person in over a month to complain about Kontera ContentLinks on Phoronix. These ads wouldn't be there if they weren't needed, but the fact of the matter is right now they are needed for the well being of this site's existence.

If you don't like those ads, you could always remove all ads by using a premium account: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=phoronix_premium

We do serve a few scare Flash advertisements, but that is simply the way the Internet advertising industry is turning to... We do have a strict policy about not serving any flashing or otherwise obtrusive Flash ads, and if one of our ad networks does serve one, we request its removal from the queue ASAP.

[smack]

Oh, my ad block must have been filtering out the contentlinks because I hadn't had one pop up on me on this website before.

Anyways.. I've said everything I've wanted to.

[mattmatteh]

i am not a fan of this new advertising, but you do what you have to do.

first let me say i dont bother with ad blocking, if the ads are that obnoxious ill close the page and forget it.

i guess what i find strange is "Phoronix Premium: Ad-Free Browsing" one the home page, which is loaded with advertisements.

i dont know if you just use goolge adds or if you have control, but the first add is microsoft search. kinda sad for a linix site, but perhaps a freebie add since no one here would use that :P

i just hope your adds support free software. (microsoft should not be on that list)

matt

[Michael]

Bills need to be paid and right now Microsoft's advertisements are some of the highest paying ads, unfortunately.

[grantek]

lol - Microsoft taxes so many people who'd prefer not to use their stuff on PCs, it's about time we taxed them back :p

[mattmatteh]

lol - Microsoft taxes so many people who'd prefer not to use their stuff on PCs, it's about time we taxed them back :p
... the plague :(

[bridgman]

The joy of Google word matching....

I just brought up the forum main page, and what did I see an advertisement for ? The Shanghai Leader Catalyst company, promoting a new polyethylene catalyst for high volume plastics manufacturing.

Makes sense though, right ? We talk about Shanghai, we talk about Catalyst...

[grantek]

Dude, you're paid to be here! Surely AMD can fork out for a Phoronix Premium account :)

(Quick Michael, set up a $5000 Phoronix Premium Business Vista Ultimate Corporate Edition!)

[bridgman]

I did actually pay for a premium account (renewed on Feb 8) but some of the ads are still showing up. Michael is checking into it.

[jeffro-tull]

ah, the beauty of Flash being a piece of crap: I don't have a Premium Account, I don't have AdBlock set-up, and I STILL don't have ads showing up on these pages. I've just got a couple blank white rectangles.

[Michael]

I don't have a Premium Account, I don't have AdBlock set-up, and I STILL don't have ads showing up on these pages. I've just got a couple blank white rectangles.

....while stealing from publishers.

[grantek]

Lynx is also great for stealing content - it's the only way I post from the office :)

Michael, I don't know if you've looked into it, but fully-disclosed commission links could also be a good way to make money without annoying people, eg. "This product is currently available from the friendly dudes at VendorX for the low low price of $3. Using this link (thislink) will help support Phoronix at no extra cost to you!"

Seems to work well for a popular Aussie journalist (Dan from dansdata.com).

If you could find a partner that does Windows-less computers and optional OS preinstalls you'd be practically feeding each other, generating a lot of interest/hype in the process :)

[jeffro-tull]

....while stealing from publishers.
wait, what? stealing? did I miss something?

[grantek]

I bet he runs CentOS, stealing from the poor folk at Red Hat http://home.exetel.com.au/grantek/img/shakefist.gif

[mattmatteh]

ah, the beauty of Flash being a piece of crap: I don't have a Premium Account, I don't have AdBlock set-up, and I STILL don't have ads showing up on these pages. I've just got a couple blank white rectangles.same here... why block when you dont have to. and still dont get what the big deal is with flash, its only used for adds.... and the videos in the reviews. ( i still can not download a theora video. a site that supports open source, but still uses a propriety video codec and container)

[mattmatteh]

....while stealing from publishers.thats not stealing. thats a poorly written web page. if the add should be there, the web page should account for no java, no javascript, and no proprietary flash :)

[jeffro-tull]

Yeah, I still don't understand. The guys with Flashblock or AdBlock or whatever get "guys, come on. Throw us a bone." I don't use that stuff, Flash just craps out because it doesn't work worth a crap and I get "hey, you're stealing!"

Unless I'm missing something, that's not stealing. Think of this: it's the holiday season, you go to Wal-Mart or $LARGE_STORE and see the Salvation Army at the entrance taking donations. You realize that you have zero cash, only credit/debit cards. You're not going to throw your credit card in the donation container, are you? Of course not. So you walk by without making a donation.

Did you steal from them? No. You didn't give them any money, but you sure as hell didn't take money from their donation container.

Look, guys, I'm not blocking your adds. I'm not blocking Flash. I'm not NOT clicking on your adds to be an asshole. Flash craps out, so nothing gets displayed, and I cannot interact with anything that SHOULD be displayed.

So, I don't know, maybe instead of accusing me of stealing you could go to your advertising partners and see if they could use .jpeg's, .gif's, .png's, or $IMAGE_FILE for the advertisements instead of God-awful Flash that doesn't fucking know how to play well with browsers that aren't Firefox?

[energyman]

yeah, so I made konqueror flash aware. I get some white rectangles. I right click on them and get the usual standard adobe flash menu - but nothing is displayed. My fault? I don't think so.

The standard google ads are displayed. So I don't feel like stealing.

[tronath]

I use Firefox and AdBlock, but I did donate :)

[Ant P.]

I've never gone out of my way to block ads (except in retaliation for some sites that go out of their way to be annoying).

But I do use swfdec, so most flash ads don't work for me anyway. If you've got a problem with that... patches are welcome ;)

[Michael]

I use Firefox and AdBlock, but I did donate :)

Thank you kind reader :)

[MAXX]

Seriously, I had all the non popup ads enabled up to this day, because I don't mind seeing the ads at all.
Today though I blocked out all the googleads links, since there was one single advertisement that was driving me fkin mad.

It's a German ad for some non-trustworthy "deathwatch" site where you "answer question" and then it "tells you how long you're going to live". Well, at least the add already mentions the fee of 5 bucks and the subscription that you take with it and you don't have to go to the site to see that bullshit.
The ad shows a little grimreaper and whenever it pops up, you hear that annoying thing laughing, high pitched...
Whenever your mouse touches the ad you hear that annoying laughing sound and also randomly when you read something on the site...

I tried to block out just the add but thanks to the architecture of google ads, you have to block out all the googleads sites, well, maybe feeding the site to the firewall would have worked too, but i don't feel like experimenting with that stuff when i can just block it out so easy...

If the sound would at least be optional and turned off by default then it'd be okay, but nah, you have to hear that thing... and believe me, i heard it at least 100 times over the past few days...

I also kind of hate the animated ads that try to mimic a game.

So to summarize this, ads yes, intrusive ads no....


It also seems like not all your ads are by googleads, since I still see some non annoying once, like one for "hotels.com" and naother one by sun. Also one for some english course and multiple ones for google chrome... I'd think that the chrome ones would run through google ads, but google ads is devinately blocked...
So apparently the ads i see come from "http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/*" and "http://ad.amgdgt.com/*"
And the annoying ones were from "googleads.g.doubleclick.net/*"

[Ant P.]

^ googlesyndication is ok, that server is only used for google's text ads. Doubleclick though... I see they haven't changed their ways even after being bought by google. Still as annoying as ever.

I can only imagine the horror when ad servers like DC discover <video> tags a few years from now... let's hope firefox 3.6 has a global mute button by then.

[Heiko]

Since today I saw a bad add (something like `the folks in IT are heroes') that drops down over the text, but does not disappear (the area covered by the drop down stays white). Therefore I can't read half of the text of news items and the forum is quite unreadable as well.

I hope something is done about these kind of adds. While I don't mind looking at adds, they shouldn't make the site unusable.

edit: installed an add blocker specially for this add, it seems to block the add (haven't blocked other adds though). Oh.. and using Firefox 3.0.13 in Ubuntu for what it matters.

[stevenaaus]

Sorry to nag guys, but these new text pop-up ads are quite an eyesore..
I have admiration for phoronix.com, and i now projects like this cost money
- but when crap likes this goes down, it's hard to keep coming back.
If i wanted to playing "dodge the advert" , i'd boot up Xp and play
Plants Vs Zombies.

[energyman]

stevenaaus, you could always pay - that way you don't get adverts.

[Michael]

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=phoronix_premium

[stevenaaus]

stevenaaus, you could always pay - that way you don't get adverts.
Ummm, yes. I do like to support Linux. In the past i've bought loki games, plenty
of lxf magazines, and redhat and slak boxed distros. But to me ... the web is
free, Linux is free, and the projects i write are all GPL and free, so it's kind-of hard.

I looked at the premium prices, but they're too pricey imho.
I guess i don't have the tech respect for Phx that'd make me hand
over the cash. But it's a great site, interesting community. Cheers ;>