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Starting Off 2015 With An Improved Experience For Phoronix Readers

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  • Starting Off 2015 With An Improved Experience For Phoronix Readers

    Phoronix: Starting Off 2015 With An Improved Experience For Phoronix Readers

    For those celebrating Christmas today, Merry Christmas! Whether or not you are, there's some goodies for all Phoronix readers today...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Overlay ads

    Long time reader, first time poster.

    I've used adblock software for the past few years because of one specific type of ad: The modal overlay that completely breaks my focus and forces me to acknowledge it before I can get back to reading the actual site content (screenshot attached for clarity). I can tune out sidebar ads, top banner ads, footer ads, even banners between paragraphs. But the moment I see a modal overlay ad, I decide right then and there that the site cares more about its advertisers than the content it produces or the audience who reads it. Besides the fact that it's extremely annoying on full web browsers, it completely breaks mobile browsers, causing the reader to have to click the ad itself and launch the advertiser's site, just to make it go away.

    You have implored us to turn off ad blocking even if we don't want to pay for a Premium account. So, when I turned off my adblock software and reloaded this article, I was confronted with an overlay ad about halfway into re-reading the first sentence. This alone made me not want to read Phoronix ever again. And on top of that, you're asking us to sign up for premium accounts? Maybe it's just me, but slapping me in the face, then telling me that if I pay up I won't be slapped anymore, is not the way to win over paying customers. I have the option to turn my back on you and walk away instead of paying you, since that also means I won't get slapped.

    I for one am choosing to walk away. It sucks because this is an exhaustively informative site, one that I was happy to read with ad blocking turned on. But seeing how you treat your non-adblock using readers simply blows my mind. If all I had seen upon disabling the ad blocker were a few banner ads (that you claim to make money off of just on impressions), I wouldn't have batted an eye. The fact that I felt compelled to create a forum account and post all of this should tell you something about the hideous modal ads that are probably hurting your business more than you know.

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    • #3
      I have re-enabled the advertising services and I can confirm that I did not have any too-annoying-ones.

      But whenever there is talk about ads on phoronix, it's always only about acceptable annoyance. The other big topic I'm missing in such articles is privacy. When I disable all blocking mechanics, I have 6(!) different advertising services and if that would not be enough, I have 14 (in words fourteen!) other services like trackers, widgets, beacons, social networks and analyzing services, that all inject script code and all get requests from my browser and are able to create (super)cookies, track me around the web, analyse my behavior across many web pages and what else they want to do.

      For visitor analysing you could self-host something like Piwik and I think there must be a way to only use one advertising service to serve all the ads you need.

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      • #4
        Correction: 14 is the complete count of questionable third-party services, it does not add to the 6 advertising providers.

        Tho 14 services are still at least 12 too much.

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        • #5
          redirects from ads on mobile browsers

          I've been a Phoronix reader for years (best linux-related website around, imho) and I decided to create a forum account just to let you know that the ads on this website are constantly causing unwanted redirects on mobile browser.
          I've tested this both on Chrome for Android and Firefox for Android: I'm reading a Phoronix article and suddenly the browser gets redirected to a different website. The redirect doesn't happen until the ads in the page have been loaded, and it only originates from certain (random) articles. This is only happening for me on mobile browsers, and only on Phoronix, and it is really, REALLY, annoying. Is anyone else experiencing the same?

          I hope you will be able to further investigate this issue!

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by DuckSoup View Post
            I've been a Phoronix reader for years (best linux-related website around, imho) and I decided to create a forum account just to let you know that the ads on this website are constantly causing unwanted redirects on mobile browser.
            I've tested this both on Chrome for Android and Firefox for Android: I'm reading a Phoronix article and suddenly the browser gets redirected to a different website. The redirect doesn't happen until the ads in the page have been loaded, and it only originates from certain (random) articles. This is only happening for me on mobile browsers, and only on Phoronix, and it is really, REALLY, annoying. Is anyone else experiencing the same?

            I hope you will be able to further investigate this issue!
            I have yet to encounter this so if you're able to get a URL of the redirect or any other information it would be highly useful. Thanks.
            Michael Larabel
            https://www.michaellarabel.com/

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by sleeksorrow View Post
              I think there must be a way to only use one advertising service to serve all the ads you need.
              Unfortunately there is not at this time, due to too much supply and not enough demand for Linux advertisers.... Thus lots of the traffic gets passed around until it finds an ad network with a relevant enough ad to show, etc. There's three primary ad partners/networks I deal with but from there they each have their own fallbacks when not being able to serve enough direct ads.
              Michael Larabel
              https://www.michaellarabel.com/

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by kaidenshi View Post
                Long time reader, first time poster.

                I've used adblock software for the past few years because of one specific type of ad: The modal overlay that completely breaks my focus and forces me to acknowledge it before I can get back to reading the actual site content (screenshot attached for clarity). I can tune out sidebar ads, top banner ads, footer ads, even banners between paragraphs. But the moment I see a modal overlay ad, I decide right then and there that the site cares more about its advertisers than the content it produces or the audience who reads it. Besides the fact that it's extremely annoying on full web browsers, it completely breaks mobile browsers, causing the reader to have to click the ad itself and launch the advertiser's site, just to make it go away.
                You don't have to click on the ad but anywhere on the screen. Those ads are only shown once per 24 hours to readers in select geographies when having a tech sponsor, as they pay significantly higher more than normal ads (around ~20x more) so they do a lot more to help out the site and are limited to once per day and usually on first page load to try to minimize any annoyance.
                Michael Larabel
                https://www.michaellarabel.com/

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Michael View Post
                  I have yet to encounter this so if you're able to get a URL of the redirect or any other information it would be highly useful. Thanks.
                  This is the most common I've been getting lately: http://msplash-it.musiklub.com/adv-v...iliate_id=3522

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    perhaps you could try using Grapeshot for advertising ( www.grapeshot.co.uk ) as their advertising system gets a better ratio of relevant to irrelevant adverts.

                    disclaimer: I am a former employee of theirs, and in a very very small way, a shareholder.

                    Comment

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