News sites that deliver Flash-based ads (and there are oh-so-many of you), take notice: you're now wasting your time with me. I no longer see your ads. I've subtracted myself from a huge portion of your business model.
I've just installed an excellent extension called Flashblock for the open-source Web browser Firefox. Now, whenever a site attempts to display any Flash components, I see a blank spot with this simple logo in the center:
What does that mean for a news site? As an example, here's what Flashblock does to the top section of a recent Denver Post story page. (Note that Flashblock also prevented a pop-up on this page.) And, on the downside, here's what Flashblock did to the eye-catching rotating sidecar navigation at the top of USA Today's home page.
If for any reason I wish to view a particular Flash animation, I just click that logo to download only that piece of Flash. I'll do that for sites that rely on Flash for navigation (like Exploration, an excellent research magazine from Vanderbilt University), or for Flash-based content such as EPIC 2014. But I won't bother for ads. They're an annoyance to me more than anything else.
I'm sorry if Flash-based ads are a cornerstone of your online business model. But frankly, basing your business model on something that annoys people is probably not a sound approach in an age where audiences exercise ever-finer control over the media they receive. Fighting human nature is always bad business in the long run.
According to NetApplications, Firefox currently comprises 11 percent of the overall Web browser market, although some venues report that a quarter or more of their visitors use Firefox. Expect Firefox to keep getting more popular, and other more popular browsers (such as Internet Explorer and Safari) to continue to introduce new features that emulate features pioneered by Firefox. Obviously, blocking Flash has wide potential appeal.
If you're using Flash to deliver any part of your site (ads, navigation, art, or content), it might be a good idea to also deliver alt text that will display to briefly describe the function of each piece of Flash in case the user chooses to block Flash. That way, more people who are blocking Flash might notice and click on Flash navigation or content.
...In the bigger picture, maybe it's time to start figuring out ways to make advertising and marketing less annoying and more relevant, especially online. Remember: Poynter's Eyetrack III study found that "Text ads were viewed most intently, of all the types we tested. On our test pages, text ads got an average eye duration time of nearly 7 seconds; the best display-type ad got only 1.6 seconds, on average."
Steve wrote: "but the other 85% of us who are...
