The Internet Is Killing The Internet

I use to read news on line. Google, Yahoo and others were very good for letting me scan the stories and the various categories I was interested in. Then I could click on what I wanted to read and with little problem I could actually read the article. But as of late I have been noticing that it is all but impossible to actually read any kind of news story on line.

Problems are:

• Adds are placed with in the news story listings making scanning the real news difficult.

• When you click on a news story adds or surveys are either blocking the story or take so long to load that I just don't read it. The latest thing is for some sort of add or survey to pop up and it will not let you read what you want to read unless you take the survey. Sorry but that is just not going to happen. Google / Yahoo you loose. You really need to do a better job of filtering your content as it is killing your brand.

Here is a news flash Google, Yahoo and other information sites. Your killing your brands content with all the other crap you are trying to stuff in front of us to the point that your sites are now useless.

I am seriously considering going back to the old school news paper. I actually purchased one at lunch today and it was so nice to be able to actually read an article about something with out all the internet crap getting in the way.

I agree with you there.. the ads are getting -very- annoying

I also agree. I am just waiting for them to stop with the interrupt style of advertising and go to a product placement.

The killer went into the house just as the family was finishing their Domino Pizza Deluxe (only 5.99 for a limited time)

Our witness was just finishing his Icy Cold Coke when he noticed the flood water rising.

Are you guys not blocking like 99% of this stuff with software. I have yet to see an add on a site that I have not white-listed in a decade.

I do.. but reading news on the phone makes it quite clear that there are a lot of really badly written ad scripts out there

I block everything on my laptops. I haven't come up with a add blocker for the phone yet. I just don't use it for sites like that.

Serious question...

How would you suggest they pay for all that free stuff?

I think Internet users are killing the internet with their dogged determination to get everything for nothing.

In reply to SVreX:

I don't really care how they pay for it. If they get too obnoxious I just don't frequent their sites or block their adds. GRM does a pretty good job with add placement. I don't block theirs.

SVreX wrote: Serious question... How would you suggest they pay for all that free stuff? I think Internet users are killing the internet with their dogged determination to get everything for nothing.

Unobtrusive ads are fine. However the ad networks are very insecure and prone to being exploited to the frustration of the users. There are SOME sites that are chasing short-term advertising dollars more than they are trying to provide viable content to the users that could draw more users back to the sites.

I still use RSS. I subscribe to the feeds I want, scan the headlines, and pick what I want. Some sites have ads, some don't. These days I'm using Digg Reader.

The click-bait on THE WEATHER CHANNEL website defies the imagination.

I understand the need for advertising but when the adds actually prevent me from getting the content I want they have failed. Not only am I irritated with the site but the product or service that is being advertised has now pissed me off and i will go out of my way to black list it.

Advertisers are walking a slippery slope between product promotion and irritating there audience to the point of putting there advertised product in a negatively associated experience.

Why the internet is going to kill the internet.

This trend will correct itself just as it did in the early/mid 2000s.

So many sites today load so slow i don't even bother anymore, due to the absolutely insane amount of ads and stupid crap crammed into them.

The "mobile-friendly" sites are beyond frustrating to navigate on a PC, and most of them are too busy or ad-riddled to work properly on a phone either. It's not like i have a slow phone, i have an LG G3.

The internet was much faster a decade ago.

I agree and would like to add that most news sites seem to be converting to videos or slideshows with lots of ads. I read new in between tasks at work and don't want to listen/see to a video, just read a couple snippets and get back on task. Not watch a video newscaster. Let alone some of the videos are blocked at work.

Mini Rant - the pop up adds that have sound drive me nuts. When I am researching something I use a lot of 'open in new tab' and when they all start going off it is infuriating. Worse one I came across recently was Marky Mark shilling Indians. I vow now to never own an Indian. There was 1 add every half page, I had to shut down 4 or 5 per page to try and read it.

I hope those marketers get stuck frequently in elevators...and the music is still playing

Unobtrusive ads are unproductive.

Advertisers are learning this more and more, and find it unacceptable that they pay for your internet content, and you buy nothing from them.

The old ad model (radio and TV) was that a certain amount of money got you a certain number of eyeballs. Not so with the internet.

I am not suggesting that obtrusive ads are a good idea, but rather that revenues have been diluted enough that it no longer makes sense for advertisers, and they are searching for alternative methods.

There are other revenue models. Most content providers have simply not figured out the formulas that work.

I'll bet (though I don't know) that even GRM can't define what they make on internet advertising, and that it may even be offered to print advertisers as an added value service. Pretty sure they would not be able to sustain on the internet only ad revenue.

So, which paid model would work for you? Subscription? Pay for content? Product? Other? None?

Bottom line is that internet users need to pay for internet content. Free speech ain't free. How we get there is the question.

Appleseed wrote: The click-bait on THE WEATHER CHANNEL website defies the imagination.

I came here to say the same thing. I just want to look at the damn weather, not 10 VIDEOS YOU MUST SEE and MIRACLE FOOD MAKES DIETING OBSOLETE ads that dominate the page.

I feel like in the near future, any type of broadcast media will be overrun but ads, squeezing the actual content to a small section, ala the TV show in Idiocracy:

I pay a E36 M3load of money just to have internet access. You could draw the parallel of leasing a car, AND having to put gas in it to use it, but i hate the idea of that in the first place, so....

In reply to Swank Force One:

Internet access is different than internet content.

You pay money to a service provider.

How are you willing to pay for the content provided?

On mobile, Firefox for Android supports ad blocking extensions. It's what I use, though it has quirks on the GRM mobile site. On the desktop, I like using Firefox with the Request Policy add-on. Request Policy lets you create rules that define which sites are allowed to reference resources on which sites. So, you can say that weather.com is allowed to cause requests for resources from, say, weathercdn.com. Unless you say otherwise, it cannot make requests to, say, ads.doubleclick.net.

There is a learning curve, but if you're willing to learn it, request policy is pretty powerful.

Same here... Firefox for Android, BlueHell Firewall, AdBlockPlus, Something else that blocks flash unless I actually click it to play.

I get very little in the way of unwanted stuff... but yet I manage to find all the products I need when I need them. Imagine that.

SVreX wrote: Unobtrusive ads are unproductive. Advertisers are learning this more and more, and find it unacceptable that they pay for your internet content, and you buy nothing from them. The old ad model (radio and TV) was that a certain amount of money got you a certain number of eyeballs. Not so with the internet. I am not suggesting that obtrusive ads are a good idea, but rather that revenues have been diluted enough that it no longer makes sense for advertisers, and they are searching for alternative methods.

Having worked in TV and Radio.. I do not blame the advertisers.. but the people allowing the ads on their sites. In radio and TV, you only have so many minutes of add time.. usually about 16 minutes or so in Radio, a few more in TV.. so not only do the ads stand out more, but the time they are available is limited and not cheap.

In the internet, a website can host as many ads as they can fit, this makes them -really- cheap and really easy to overlook.. so they start getting more and more annoying in an attempt to grab your attention.

In Idiocracy, you see that TV with all the ads around the outside and the content in a small section in the middle. In that (mostly?) fictional world, how many people watching that screen even notice the ads?

SVreX wrote: In reply to Swank Force One: Internet access is different than internet content. You pay money to a service provider. How are you willing to pay for the content provided?

I'm aware it's different, that's why i made the analogy i did.

Still sucks.

I don't pay a subscription to any internet services. It's not worth the investment to me. If this forum went to a pay-to-play model, you'd never see me again.

So i guess the answer is: I'm not.

My solution: ISP pays for content, not me. (Granted the money will still be coming from me, so i'm still paying in the end.) They can treat it like cable TV "Look at all the places you can go with your money!".

They should have enough money. I'm paying about 3x as much today for internet 50% as fast as i was a decade ago. They have the money to throw around.

To be clear, i have NO problem with ads, and i'll even click them from time to time. What i DO have a problem with is E36 M3ty websites that are completely overrun with ads and click-bait that takes you to videos that never load because there's too much E36 M3 going on on the page. I DO have a problem with all these re-designs that just don't work worth a damn on ANY device, and it drives me NUTS that as the years go by, everything gets slower and less effective. This isn't progress. This is a fast slide backwards.

Can i do anything about it? No.

Will i do anything about it? Nope.

Will i bitch on the internet for free? Absolutely.

SVreX wrote: Unobtrusive ads are unproductive. Advertisers are learning this more and more, and find it unacceptable that they pay for your internet content, and you buy nothing from them. The old ad model (radio and TV) was that a certain amount of money got you a certain number of eyeballs. Not so with the internet. I am not suggesting that obtrusive ads are a good idea, but rather that revenues have been diluted enough that it no longer makes sense for advertisers, and they are searching for alternative methods. There are other revenue models. Most content providers have simply not figured out the formulas that work. I'll bet (though I don't know) that even GRM can't define what they make on internet advertising, and that it may even be offered to print advertisers as an added value service. Pretty sure they would not be able to sustain on the internet only ad revenue. So, which paid model would work for you? Subscription? Pay for content? Product? Other? None? Bottom line is that internet users need to pay for internet content. Free speech ain't free. How we get there is the question.