Ad Revenues Hit Nearly $7 Billion in Q1

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John_Keck

Limp Gawd
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May 3, 2010
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US Online advertising revenues hit $5.9 Billion for Q1 2010, showing a 7.5% increase over Q1 2009. US internet users helped achieve this by receiving 1.1 trillion display ads, a 15% increase over a year ago. Woohoo unhealthy amounts of surfing, record-breaking high-five!

Hopefully seeing some of these huge numbers helps remind you guys that advertising is how websites like [H] survive, and AdBlock cripples them.
 
I don't know about you guys but I've never been sold on buying a product based on advertisements. I didn't buy a Ratpadz just cause HardOCP had the ad.

Oh what's that, a Gigabyte AMD motherboard? I could use one of those.
 
I am not an implosive buyer.

Oh nice, I could use a Thermalright cooler with my new motherboard.
 
Advertising has nothing to do with impulse buying. It isn't meant as "see an ad, buy the product". It's all about mindshare. When you DO want to buy something, your tendancy will be to pick from things you've seen lots of ads for. People don't buy Pepsi every time they see an ad, but when they're thirsty, they pick Pepsi because it's a known product. Even if they've never had it before, they know it because they see ads everywhere. Goober cola might be picked because it costs half as much, but Goober cola won't make as much per can, either.
 
Ashbringer said:
I don't know about you guys but I've never been sold on buying a product based on advertisements. I didn't buy a Ratpadz just cause HardOCP had the ad.

Oh what's that, a Gigabyte AMD motherboard? I could use one of those.
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Generic spam ads?

No.

Targeted ads? Well, yeah. I've bought SEVERAL hard drives, video cards, or CPUs based (mostly) on targeted emails advertising a sale I would not have otherwise known about.

And I have bought something (I think a video card, actually) from a banner ad on [H] - IIRC, a Radeon 5670, as I'd been out of the loop for a few weeks, knew I'd want one whenever they came out, and hadn't noticed they were available until the ad.

So targeted ads DO work.
 
Vryce said:
Advertising has nothing to do with impulse buying. It isn't meant as "see an ad, buy the product". It's all about mindshare. When you DO want to buy something, your tendancy will be to pick from things you've seen lots of ads for. People don't buy Pepsi every time they see an ad, but when they're thirsty, they pick Pepsi because it's a known product. Even if they've never had it before, they know it because they see ads everywhere. Goober cola might be picked because it costs half as much, but Goober cola won't make as much per can, either.
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Definitely. Picking the big-boy on the block is usually less risky.
 
This is why I made the decision to use two browsers. One for play (ChromePlus no ad blocking) and one for work (Firefox+ABP+NoScript).
 
John_Keck said:
US Online advertising revenues hit $5.9 Billion for Q1 2010, showing a 7.5% increase over Q1 2009. US internet users helped achieve this by receiving 1.1 trillion display ads, a 15% increase over a year ago. Woohoo unhealthy amounts of surfing, record-breaking high-five!

Hopefully seeing some of these huge numbers helps remind you guys that advertising is how websites like [H] survive, and AdBlock cripples them.
Click to expand...

Actually, what hurts Hard OCP, at least in my case, is not Ad Block. It's FLASH! I block virtually all Java Script and Flash, and virtually all [H] ads require Flash as well as various Google scripts. I don't mind banner ads, so long as they're not annoying flashy ads and as long as they don't require flash. It wasn't that long ago that Anandtech was serving up malware, thanks to a compromised ad server. Since I blocked all scripts, it didn't affect me.

In the case of [H], I'm not sure why Flash is required, since the ads themselves are don't appear to be Flash
 
John_Keck said:
Hopefully seeing some of these huge numbers helps remind you guys that advertising is how websites like [H] survive, and AdBlock cripples them.
Click to expand...

Anyone else see this as the equivilant of banks charging you monthly account fees and then posting $billion profits? I suppose though at least they give me back 6% interest on my netbank savings account. ;) Where's our share back from this revenue? Yes yes, HUGE NUMBERS defintily makes us think of how poor you are.

Just thought I'd post from that perspective as I think that's a pretty poorly put statement.
 
I'll stop using adblock when ads go back to plain animated Gifs. Flash, Video, Sound, Pop up, Pop under, screen takeover, etc.. It's ridiculous.

If adblock really hurts Hard, than where is the paypal donate button? I'd probably drop $20 a year to Hard.
 
Personally I will tolerate some ads on a site like the [H], which I enjoy, simply because I know that helps Kyle and Co. pay the bills and get new "crap"... :D
 
Deviationer said:
I'll stop using adblock when ads go back to plain animated Gifs. Flash, Video, Sound, Pop up, Pop under, screen takeover, etc.. It's ridiculous.

If adblock really hurts Hard, than where is the paypal donate button? I'd probably drop $20 a year to Hard.
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TSRH.

When the ads are malware (compromised servers or intentionally injecting malware), which a large enough percentage are on ANY ad-driven site, including this one, then ABP and such are a must, period. If it's taking away from your revenue, then it may behoove you to take a long look at those you're pandering to, and perhaps protect the real people who support you, your customers aka your readers.

Until you can guarantee my computing safety, adblock remains, as well as flashblock.
 
Deviationer said:
I'll stop using adblock when ads go back to plain animated Gifs. Flash, Video, Sound, Pop up, Pop under, screen takeover, etc.. It's ridiculous.

If adblock really hurts Hard, than where is the paypal donate button? I'd probably drop $20 a year to Hard.
Click to expand...
Yep, except that's why I subscribed instead :)
 
To all those that use AdBlock using malware as the reason, stop. ABP is incomplete as a protection measure. Use NoScript. It really is all you need. It blocks flash, pop-ups, audio, exploits, cross-site scripting, and all kinds of other scripting garbage. It blocks even what they haven't thought of yet since it is a whitelist, not a blacklist. And best of all, when the advertisers stop using flash and put up basic banners, it just works! You don't need to change a thing.

But as has already been pointed out above, I see no ads on these pages. I try to click through to Newegg when I need some new tech gadget, but I don't see ads anymore. Help me help you, give me some plain banners please!

Oh, and I've whitelisted hardocp.com, so if the ads are hosted locally, they'd work.
 
<3 Adblock and NoScript. Sorry H.

Atmalinks is the worst effin POS on the damn web IMO. I HATE IT.
 
Its not the ads on HardOCP and other sites that I worry about with my network.
Its the referral links and rotating ads using other sites which are widely known to be easily beat with ads hosting malware.

Funny, I use to have 20+ cases a week of driveby ads with AV2010 and the like.
The cases dropped to less than 1 every month once I activated the spyware blocker in my firewall.

I use Untangle at work, and using the community driven lists, if blocks most things rather well.

Amazon affiliate links and such still work.

If anything, sites need to be cognizant of what is being blocked and how to work with it, not try to make it work when it clearly wont.
We are so damned overworked and understaffed, that the last thing I care to get working right is a stupid web redirect if I click on an ad. I imagine most IT departments are the same.

BTW, I do whitelist H at home, so its not like I am against H making money.
 
WasntMe said:
<3 Adblock and NoScript. Sorry H.
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Anyone who says this is basically saying "I love the idea of websites I love switching to subscription based models instead of being ad supported."

Go buy the subscription or at least buy a Ratpad you bum.
 
Never had any problem with hardocp.com ads here
They don't hijack the screen or make any annoying pop up, so no reason to lump hardocp together with other sites that have those annoying ads.
 
No problem with [H] myself, but third-party sites can and do get compromised. All it takes is one lucky hack to ruin your day. My biggest complaint about web pages as they are now, as opposed to when they were simple html without java script, is that a web page is not just the site you're looking at. There can be any number of other sites serving content up, not just the site in the URL in the address bar. While [H] might be fine, how do I know the site serving up the ad is not compromised? That's the primary reason I use NoScript and ABP. I have zero tolerance for malware risk, and my machines have never once been taken down with an infection as a result. With all the OS and browser exploits going around, erring on the side of paranoia has its benefits.

So... I'll pass on the ads, but now that I know there's a donate link I'll certainly send some cash your way. I'd rather support [H] directly than through a third party anyway.
 
Thing is, I see no reason to AdBlock unless you just want to avoid ads completely. There was a spat between the Easylist operators and NoScript a year or two ago, and I had to choose between them. Security was more important to me than convenience. NoScript blocks all the bad parts of ads that are really inconvenient anyway. With NoScript installed, the only reason to use ABP is for spite. Get rid of every last trace of advertising. Why?

I know more than most about this(still easily less than a lot here though), but most certainly should not need to know that these ads come from other domains. The ads here seem to be safe, but once I heard about MLB.com serving bad ads, that was it. I heard about TomsHardware, was that Anadtech instead? Or as well? Point is, no place is safe.

I've never been one to frequent these forums, just read the reviews. So haven't been inclined to buy a subscription. I did buy three Ratpadz though. But I cannot argue my point without proving that ad revenue is not the reason, so I just subscribed.
 
John_Keck said:
Hopefully seeing some of these huge numbers helps remind you guys that advertising is how websites like [H] survive, and AdBlock cripples them.
Click to expand...

To me, it shows that AdBlock isn't hurting anyone. 15% increase from a year ago? Considering that ad blocking is more prevalent than ever, this just proves that there's really no problem with it.

This reminds me of the RIAA and MPAA. They say piracy destroys their revenue. Well, we all know it doesn't. Poor content does.

Blocking ads doesn't either, as proved by the OP.
 
Don't blame ad blocking because you guys are being treated like fools by the advertisers.

No other medium bases advertising income on views. At least nowhere near as directly as on the web. The media offers advertisers POTENTIAL viewers and they are more than happy with that, even in media where the number of viewers is readily available at least in general (number of issues sold of a particular magazine edition for example).

So why do sites like this accept bullshit terms like 1c per ad view?

If sites like this said no more - you pay the same way you do for every other medium or you don't advertise on our site... well maybe THAT would do far more for H than asking me to disable my security...

It would be far more likely to be successful, that's for sure.

The fact is, web advertising was invented in a time when there really was no such thing as a major web site. Sites like this simply couldn't pull the number of viewers a newspaper could.

That has changed BIG TIME, with newspapers actually going out of business for lack of circulation. So why do the web sites like this one still act like the small fry of the mid 90's struggling to create a new medium?

The hard work has been done - half the world regularly uses the internet now, so stop acting like noobs and start dictating terms to the advertisers. They need you a lot more than you need them, because their newspaper and TV/Radio advertising is reaching fewer and fewer people and costing more and more. They almost have no choice. It's the web, or they miss too many potential customers.. especially in the tech world!

Oh one other added benefit of doing things this way... no more need for ad serving sites that monitor views. Thus, simple locally hosted and safe gif ads could be used, which I would be far more likely to allow than scripted ads from 3rd party sites with in some cases a history of compromising viewers computers. Of course you take the bandwidth hit as well, then... but then you might not be so against adblockers!

Basically, don't blame me if you let your advertisers walk all over you. Grow a pair and make them pay the same way they pay everyone else. Don't expect me to have to go out of my way to make it possible for you to scrape by on the deals you get now...
 
I don't mind ads when they're not crazy annoying. Most of the time it seems like H has some of the more annoying ads. I want to support the site because I get lots of my tech info from here, but I shouldn't have to endure eye melting, annoying ads. If they were reasonable I wouldn't complain. *shrugs* Google text ads are the most reasonable and they're actually targeted too... which just makes more sense these days.
 
Sorry for double posting, but I thought of something I wanted to add, and I can't edit.

The article linked to describes an experiment where users with adblockers were blocked from seeing content as well. What he doesn't mention when he tells you they've decided not to do it is that they know that at least part of their revenue DOES come from people who adblock... You can be damn sure they are counted in the page views setting for the rates!

So what happened when they blocked content too? Well most likely is the majority of people using ad blockers stopped using that site, rather than disable adblocking. That HURTS the site far more!

Would H prefer to tell advertisers we get 300 page views a day from people who HAVE to view our ads... or 3000 page views a day from POTENTIAL ad viewers?

We know what every other medium does...
 
KarmakazeNZ said:
Sorry for double posting, but I thought of something I wanted to add, and I can't edit.

The article linked to describes an experiment where users with adblockers were blocked from seeing content as well. What he doesn't mention when he tells you they've decided not to do it is that they know that at least part of their revenue DOES come from people who adblock... You can be damn sure they are counted in the page views setting for the rates!

So what happened when they blocked content too? Well most likely is the majority of people using ad blockers stopped using that site, rather than disable adblocking. That HURTS the site far more!

Would H prefer to tell advertisers we get 300 page views a day from people who HAVE to view our ads... or 3000 page views a day from POTENTIAL ad viewers?

We know what every other medium does...
Click to expand...

I believe your argument is flawed. If [h] blocked content when ads are blocked, and that left only 300 readers, then that's the only readers that are generating revenue. Everyone else is an expense.
 
Pageviews measured by external scripts require the external source to be open and not blocked.

The [H] hasn't got millions of hits from normal people without adblockers, those people go to big sites covering other things, news and social networks.

Don't be a douche, enable ads on the [H] and support the small guys. Here there are no flash ads blocking your view, breaking the page, making noise or infecting an unsecured browser. There is no reason to block.

You're a douche-bag, WasntMe.
 
Disabling ad-blocking is like tipping at a restaurant, it makes you a decent human being who cares for others.
 
nilepez said:
Actually, what hurts Hard OCP, at least in my case, is not Ad Block. It's FLASH! I block virtually all Java Script and Flash, and virtually all [H] ads require Flash as well as various Google scripts. I don't mind banner ads, so long as they're not annoying flashy ads and as long as they don't require flash. It wasn't that long ago that Anandtech was serving up malware, thanks to a compromised ad server. Since I blocked all scripts, it didn't affect me.

In the case of [H], I'm not sure why Flash is required, since the ads themselves are don't appear to be Flash
Click to expand...

Ditto. I don't use adblock but I won't let HardOCP's horrible flash garbage ruin my internet surfing experience. Stop hosting ads that give me a headache and I'll let noscript run that garbage and you can make your money.... Or better yet, just keep whining and complaining Kyle, Steve, et. al... cause complaining is obviously working on us so well...

:rolleyes:

google-analytics and googleadservices are not trusted sites by me and I won't let that garbage run on my system. The one thing you guys always will get from me is I will click a newegg link from hardocp instead of going straight to newegg for all my purchases. I can only imagine that has made you far more money than blocking those two scripts that nobody should run since I spend thousands and thousands of dollars there every year.
 
Ok so I disabled Adblock on Hardforums. but if I have never clicked on a ad since 1999 2000 how is that going to help you. I if im not the consumer but just to consume then what.
 
WasntMe said:
<3 Adblock and NoScript. Sorry H.

Atmalinks is the worst effin POS on the damn web IMO. I HATE IT.
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(23) Any discussion of AD BLOCKING software or instruction for using ad blocking regarding this forum or any other discussion in general of attempting to block advertisement will result in a no questions asked permanent ban on your account. This is not done lightly, rather deliberately to deny access to those who choose to utilize this forum, but not support our sponsors. It takes money to finance the cost of bandwidth, especially a forum of this size and if you don't care enough to support us through our advertisers, then we don't need your business. This will be the only warning with no discussion.
 
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