Tweaktown popup to disable adblocker?

[Solaris17]

Not really, because they are usually always 100% against any advertising. And will reject simple things even like watching a short video every 24 hours. So, we will use technology to control who views our content.

well this went well.

 

[Caring1]

If they aren't displaying the ads, then they aren't making revenue anyway.

If you like the site and appreciate the content, add it to your whitelist, or watch the freaking ad once a day so they can at least make a little money.

People just always want everything for free. Sorry, but people have to make a living.

Then do like TPU has and get paid a percentage of each link posted or purchase made off a link. There isn't a need to blast ads all over the place.
I imagine TPU isn't suffering, and it's reputation isn't either.

 

[yotano211]

I dont know how long TT has been up and running but from their forums it seems many years. The TT forums seems to be pretty much dead. I like to go to a tech site where the forums are alive with members and sharing ideas, talking about stuff.

I read some of the reviews and the reviews are incomplete, the laptop reviews dont have anything on power draw or screen quality. I want to know how bright is the screen or how are the colors. And temperatures, I dont want to see how the external surface temperatures will be, I want to know the maximum temperature the laptop will get at 100%. Your so called gaming laptop review are kinda of a joke with the surface temperature. Laptop gamers want the max temps. If you like ideas go to http://www.notebookcheck.net/ They have a complete reviews about laptops and other tech things.

The hard drives dont have power draw either. I want to know how much power draw a certain HD or SSD will produce.

Overall TT is not bad or not great tech review site from what I saw, I give it a "under average" tech review site. Maybe the owner shouldnt be mocking people and instead learning in why people dont like the website.

 

[R-T-B]

Not really, because they are usually always 100% against any advertising. And will reject simple things even like watching a short video every 24 hours. So, we will use technology to control who views our content.

Frankly, I object to being forced into watching a video period.

So yeah, I guess I'm not using your site. Too bad because I find other kinds of advertising acceptable.

EDIT: Oh, you mean if people block ads they'll get that? Ok... I don't mind that so much as long as the primary ads are not explosively in my face.

 

[Mussels]

So how does one circumvent this other than to stop reading at their site?

I don't want to watch a promo ad and I will not disable ad-blocker.
The heavy handed crap has to stop.

i unfollowed their facebook page because their website wouldnt work on mobile, and then they've pulled this shit on desktop - despite liking their content i just wont use their site now.

 

[yotano211]

i unfollowed their facebook page because their website wouldnt work on mobile, and then they've pulled this shit on desktop - despite liking their content i just wont use their site now.

Does the mobile page also have ads. Just wondering, I do like some of their news reporting.

 

[newtekie1]

Then do like TPU has and get paid a percentage of each link posted or purchase made off a link. There isn't a need to blast ads all over the place.
I imagine TPU isn't suffering, and it's reputation isn't either.

I do have to agree, the amount of ads is a little over the top on TT. If it was two or three ads per page, it would be more acceptable. But when you go to an article and there are 4 paragraphs on each page, and 9 ads, that's crazy. One or two ads is all that is acceptable there. And several of them are not only changing and animated, but actually changing size, so the page elements jump around to adjust to the size of the ad, that is annoying.

Honestly, I'd gladly watch a short advertisement video once every 24 hours to avoid that mess...

Now, here is an interesting thing I just noticed. I use Adblock Plus, but I have the option enabled to allow "non-intrusive" ads. When I'm on TT, a few ads do load(maybe 1 per page), and I have not received the pop-up about using adblock and asking me to watch the video. So maybe that is the key. And, honestly, I think it is fair for TT. I'm still viewing some ads, so there is some revenue from my visit, but all their annoying ads get blocked. If they want more revenue from me, and other visitors, get rid of the annoying ads and put in acceptable ads instead.

 

[rtwjunkie]

In an attempt to lighten the mood, I do have a fond memory of TT. I remember they used to do recommended settings for various games. It's what first got me visiting them. That and game reviews were very good.

For some reason, idk what, I haven't been back in a couple years. I was unaware of this new ad positioning. I have to say, I can not begrudge them needing to make income. Websites aren't exactly free to produce and maintain. Still, the blocking out of the whole screen every minute if you have an ad blocker seems excessive. That's what it did to me yesterday.

 

[basco]

i think i have a good example with computerbase.de and videos.
if you want to look 3 or more videos you get the same 20 to 30 sec advertisement at each video-makes me crazy!

and tweaktown i dont go there anymore-little bit ad is ok for me like on tpu(where we were kindly asked to disable our adblocker- and i did)

 

[SomeOne99h]

In an attempt to lighten the mood, I do have a fond memory of TT. I remember they used to do recommended settings for various games. It's what first got me visiting them. That and game reviews were very good...

Off-topic: Recommended Settings is something good to have with reviews, some game settings are overrated and not much bring much graphics wise while killing the performance :\.
For Example Fallout 4, drop Shadow distance to medium and God Rays set to high, set any other thing to max and you get 60FPS most of the time without having super clocked Intel CPU and absurdly high frequency memory.

 

[Maban]

Now, here is an interesting thing I just noticed. I use Adblock Plus, but I have the option enabled to allow "non-intrusive" ads. When I'm on TT, a few ads do load(maybe 1 per page), and I have not received the pop-up about using adblock and asking me to watch the video. So maybe that is the key. And, honestly, I think it is fair for TT. I'm still viewing some ads, so there is some revenue from my visit, but all their annoying ads get blocked. If they want more revenue from me, and other visitors, get rid of the annoying ads and put in acceptable ads instead.

The last time I visited TT in June I had non-intrusive ads allowed with ABP and I still got the full page block. Maybe they changed it since then or maybe you just got lucky. If I had been allowed to visit TT with non-intrusive ads allowed, I would have kept going there. I have no problem with the concept of ads. What I have a problem with is the amount, the placement, and the behavior of them.

If there are ads...

• between every paragraph or between every front page news summary or anywhere in-line in a review
  
• that make sound
• that expand if I do anything other than actually clicking on it. I just visited TT with uBlock disabled and I had a Home Depot ad try to expand just by hovering over it. It failed for some reason but I am definitely counting that as unacceptable. I may put my cursor in some random place on a page, but that doesn't mean I want anything to do with what it's resting on.
• that are way bigger than they should be. I just had a giant 1050 pixel high Toshiba/Newegg ad inside a review between "Next Page" and "Content Page Summary"
  
• that appear when I hover over an image that is part of the news post. This one was a huge annoyance to me on TT. They embedded ads into every single in-line image on a page.
  
• that use an excessive amount of system resources. I have three TT pages open in Firefox. One on the home page, one in an article index, and one inside a review. There was several Flash ads, one video (making sound), and a dozen or two rotating image ads all refreshing constantly. Firefox was using 15% CPU on average (stock 3930K HT-off). I closed the tabs and it instantly went down to 0% usage.

...I'm going to block them.

TT has been in the past or is still guilty of all of these. These are terrible ad practices. If I ever visit a site like that, you better damn believe I am going to block every single one of the offending ads. If you try to tell me to disable my ad blocker, I'm just going to laugh in your face and never visit your site again and recommend others not to as well.

 

[Frick]

Am there right now, whitelisted on both Adblock and Ghostery, and it's not so bad for a sub-par site (which I always have considered them to be). The ads inside the articles are a bit too much, and the two ads you have to scroll through to get down to the comments are also too much. But it plays well with the theme of the site I guess.

The last time I visited TT in June I had non-intrusive ads allowed with ABP and I still got the full page block. Maybe they changed it since then or maybe you just got lucky. If I had been allowed to visit TT with non-intrusive ads allowed, I would have kept going there. I have no problem with the concept of ads. What I have a problem with is the amount, the placement, and the behavior of them.

If there are ads...

• that expand if I do anything other than actually clicking on it. I just visited TT with uBlock disabled and I had a Home Depot ad try to expand just by hovering over it. It failed for some reason but I am definitely counting that as unacceptable. I

Those I am actually fine with, as long as it's not over the top. At TT right now there is a purple bubble inside one ad that slightly expands when I hover over it. Hardly intrusive IMO.

 

[Maban]

Am there right now, whitelisted on both Adblock and Ghostery, and it's not so bad for a sub-par site (which I always have considered them to be). The ads inside the articles are a bit too much, and the two ads you have to scroll through to get down to the comments are also too much. But it plays well with the theme of the site I guess.

Those I am actually fine with, as long as it's not over the top. At TT right now there is a purple bubble inside one ad that slightly expands when I hover over it. Hardly intrusive IMO.

Well it failed to open so I don't know exactly what it would have looked like. On TT I've never experienced (that I remember) an expanding ad anything near how Tom's Hardware would have. You know the ones, hover over it for more that a tenth of a second and it expands to half the screen. TT gets a point for that but they are very much in the red from the other violations.

 

[Vayra86]

2) About our ad recovery system, it's new and there are some bugs we are working on fixing right as we speak. For the past few months, we have been forcing ad recovery. We are trying a new ad recovery system that asks ad blocking users to watch a short video every 24 hours. After watching the video, you get ad-free access to our content for 24 hours. Is this such a bad thing? We are completely anti subscription as we believe content on the internet should be free of charge, but we also need to pay our awesome reviewers and reporters. If you can't accept that, sorry, but no worries, don't visit TweakTown.

Yes, it's a bad thing. Forcing your users onto anything on a website is generally a bad thing. Our government even came back on it not too long ago with regards to a cookie popup. It is widely considered one/some of the more annoying things to deal with on a website.

If you want visitors to generate revenue, create a community that is willing and able to put in work. That starts with a warm welcome above anything else. If you want to make money off ads, you need to find a way to make people want to watch them. The battle needs to be fought with advertisers, not with users.

 

[jsfitz54]

The forced ads are back. @CamWilmot : Cameron Wilmot no doubt pulled the forced ads to quiet down the protest for 2 days then reinstated them today.

 

[qubit]

The forced ads are back. @CamWilmot : Cameron Wilmot no doubt pulled the forced ads to quiet down the protest for 2 days then reinstated them today.

I'll check how it works with my ad blocker when I get to my PC later today. Sounds like fun.

 

[Vayra86]

The forced ads are back. @CamWilmot : Cameron Wilmot no doubt pulled the forced ads to quiet down the protest for 2 days then reinstated them today.

WeakTown

 

[dorsetknob]

WeakTown

More Appropiate would be
Twerktown

Because they are making Ass's of themselves

 

[Bones]

You are not the 1% of the world. You are 50% and sometimes higher. And if you are blocking ads, you are actually costing us money to serve your views. So, to be frank, I don't mind you not visiting.

Neither do I - Bye.

 

[qubit]

Not really, because they are usually always 100% against any advertising. And will reject simple things even like watching a short video every 24 hours. So, we will use technology to control who views our content.

I got the prompt to watch the video to continue. I clicked ok to watch it like (I said previously that I didn't mind this) but the video never showed up and the site remained greyed out (in blue) and inaccessible, even with a refresh. I didn't bother troubleshooting it and went elsewhere. You need to fix this or you'll lose traffic and goodwill.

EDIT: just tried it again now. Got that ad block prompt again. I clicked watch video, where all that happened is that the sound started playing, but there was no video window. Again, this is a fail that you need to address.

 

[dorsetknob]

I'm happy to directly answer any questions anyone has here.

And last Seen
CamWilmot was last seen:
Saturday at 9:02 PM

He Replied To a couple of people ( not that Respectfully )
After Reading some of the posted Comments of people trying to get on his site you got to wonder if the above quote was made with any sincerity

"he's out of here"
we are all freetards for Running Add Blockers
Given that this is an Indicator of how he treats Forum posters
I Sincerely wonder how long his Site will Survive as he .........meh not worth further comments he aint coming back to read them

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

I pretty much stopped watching TV because of the adverts. I hate to have advertising forced on me.

Long live Youtube and the BBC

 

[qubit]

I pretty much stopped watching TV because of the adverts. I hate to have advertising forced on me.

Long live Youtube and the BBC


View attachment 81318

Alas, YT have ads getting in the way of their videos nowadays, some dismissable after 5 seconds and some that go the whole hog of 30 seconds, plus interrupting in the middle of the video which really irks me. They also have a banner ad which pops up a few seconds after pressing play that doesn't go away unless it's dismissed. I guess this is how they're "monetizing" their platform now, horrible word. This is all very annoying for me and I hope there's a way around this, but I'm not too optimistic.

 

[Vayra86]

Again, this is a fail

Fixed that for you ^^

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Look at the reasons Ad Blockers came into being, look at what they block. If it wasnt for tracking and the collection of personal information there wouldnt be a need for them. As malware became easy to distribute thru ads, the need for ad and script blockers had become the only answer. Ad servers can never, ever, be trusted. If website owners and marketers cant understand this, they must not care shit for their consumer/user/customers so they dont need my traffic.

The thing I like about No Script addon, it shows the adservers, same with Ublock, you can mark those server to be block permanently. The last time I ever went to Tweaktown for anything was to get a healthy dose of malware that said "nyah, nyah, dont you come back no more, no more, no more!".

And I didnt. Their content isnt unique enough that it cant be found on other tech sites.