Skip to main content

An Open Letter to #Mashable, #Nerdist, #MamaMia and other sites that over use Auto Play Video Ads

Dear #Mashable, #Nerdist, #MamaMia and other sites that over use Auto Play Video Ads,

Remember back in the early days of the internet when display ads, pop-up ads and pop-unders ads were largely frowned upon but we eventually got used to these things because they helped make content free?

Well I can assure you the same is never going to be said for embeded Auto Play Video Ads. Especially when they're used so poorly by sites such as yours.



I"m not opposed to advertising. I'm not even opposed to video advertising. Heck I earn income from ads myself. What I object to is multiple embeded video ads on one page, all set to auto play, along with embeded display ads, fly out menus, additional featured story lists and comment loaders all trying to display their part of the page whilst getting completely in the way of the page's ability to load the content I actually clicked over to see.

I'm sick of trying to play a featured video on a site when up to four other auto play video ads are all trying to load and play even though they're not even on screen. Often the ad players will all be trying to play the same ads. What happens then is the actual video I came to see takes ages to load, if at all. When the video does play it stops and starts, buffers constantly, and only plays every 10th frame if I"m lucky.

If I try to read the accompanying article whilst I'm waiting the page refuses to scroll because the ads and video ads are still loading causing the entire page to slow down. If it does scroll at all it'll jump down a page at a time even though I'm not using the page down feature. Trying to scroll back up meets with a similar issue making reading the article virtually impossible.

And don't even get me started on your next to useless mobile sites that try to display some of the ad content, often failing miserably and almost as often crashing the browser on my mobile devices.

Enough already.

Remember 'content is king'. That hasn't changed. I'm far beyond losing count of the number of times I've clicked onto your sites, with your click bait headlines, and then had so much trouble accessing the content I came to see. It's enough time for me to think to myself... "You know what? I don't actually care what this article was about." I shut down the page. Content unseen. Ads ignored.

Way to go. I hope your poor implementation of video ads is only affecting a minority because I'd hate to think of all the ad revenue you might be earning if you know... you didn't cripple your content with auto play video ads and other plug-ins.

Regards

TET


Click image to enlarge.

Comments

  1. I don't know about all that but I used to get videos starting on my page automatically which added to me using too much of my internet or whatever it was, until I changed to having more for less money which doesn't affect me now.

    I think it was you who told me I could go select for the videos not to start auto, but I don't know if that's what you're talking about. I can't remember where it was I went into now, but it would be Settings I expect and that fixed that up. What I get now is when they send me things in an email from Twitter to see the most poplar videos, they start playing as you scroll, but, as I found out, you have to click them to hear the sound. This can divert you sometimes to looking at some stuff until you realise and either close or delete the email.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm talking about on Face Book of course.

      Delete
    2. I'm talking about on regular Magazine/blog/Newspaper style websites which don't come with settings you can adjust - would be great if they did.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated by an actual human (me, TET) and may not publish right away. I do read all comments and only reject those not directly related to the post or are spam/scams (I'm looking at you Illuminati recruiters... I mean scammers. Stop commenting on my Illuminati post!).

Buy Whimsical Cat Art Prints by TET (Redbubble Store)

Enjoy Your Favorite TET Art Up Close, Interactive, and so Relaxing!

Enjoy Your Favorite TET Art Up Close, Interactive, and so Relaxing!
Relax and Challenge Yourself with a Fun, Whimsical Cat Art Jigsaw - 30-1000 pieces. Click Image for More.

Popular posts from this blog

Australian Federal Election 2025 - World's Most Boring Government Re-elected by Landside - We're Even More Fine!

Anthony Albanese Victory by ChatGPT and TET. W hen I started writing about the 2025 Federal election the polls were suggesting the world's most boring government was crusing to a defeat . As it turns out, boring is good, and Australia wants more of it, handing the current government a landslide win with a majority vote. Anthony Albanese became the first PM since John Howard to win a consecutive term, and the first Labor PM since Bob Hawke to do so. Some of that comes down to the leadership revolving door both major parties had through the mid 2000s. Although Anthony is my preferred PM over Dutton the irony is Dutton sounds more like a leader with a fairly commanding voice and an ability to speak well, without sounding like he's waffling and dodging questions, even if he is. Anthony, on the other hand, does have the ability (and speech writer) to say a lot of inspiring things but it gets lost in the delivery. He doesn't seem to know when to emphasise a point for effect. In h...

Review: Beware the Batman - Animated TV Series

I first wrote about the 26 part TV series, Beware the Batman in my Animation and Video blog when the initial trailer was released back in June of 2013. At the time I was underwhelmed with the shows CGI and almost immaculate Gotham City streets. For some reason the show was only ever aired at odd times on late night TV here in Australia, which seems to have been it's fate for the second half of the series in the USA too. As a result I only ever caught two or three episodes before the show disappeared. Apparently being declared a financial failure by Cartoon Network .

James Gunn's Social Media Monkeys Joke Was a Highlight of His Superman Movie For Me

B efore James Gunn's Superman Movie was released there was a whole rumor going around that the movie would feature monkeys on computers trolling Superman's social media, sparking much outrage. #supersh*t. I didn't know this was even a thing until just prior to writing this article. I did a search to see if anyone had posted a clip of the monkeys scene from the movie and got pages of discourse featuring videos and articles prior to the film. Most of it from Gunn detractors (let's say) seeing it as some kind of childish swipe at them... well not them specifically but, you know, those other people who have every right to hate on anything sight unseen. Anyway, I'm not going to give even one such example a link or air because it's kind of sad watching someone devote so much commentary to a throw away gag that is absolutely a nod to James Gunn's Superman trolls.  The whole reason this post exists, is to say I loved the joke, because fourteen years ago, and I...

Commodore Computers Are On Their Way Back With a New CEO and Many of the Original Team Founders

Commodore 64 Ultimate: Starlight Edition. An updated C64 for today. C hances are, if you grew up in the 1970s and 80's, the first computer your family owned was a Commodore 64 (or possibly the Vic-20, also by Commodore, that preceded it). I taught myself to code in BASIC on our Commodore 64 (C64), making ASCII based games (i.e. graphics made from the letters and symbols assigned to the various keyboard keys). I coded a Tic Tac Toe two player game, a simple shooting gallery game, and a flash card game to help me learn the Periodic Table, which (much to my... I want to say horror... got me bumped up to an advanced science class in high school). Later I'd go on to dabbling in true 8 bit, and 16 and 32 bit, graphical games, when we upgraded to the C128, Amiga 500, then Amiga 600, but I never actually finished anything because, by then I'd gotten into skateboarding, so I was trying to make my ultimate skateboard game - ambitious much? It was Commodore machines that showed me mak...

TV Series Review: 12 Monkeys (2015 - Season 1 ) *Spoiler Free*

Being a fan of the 1995, Terry Gilliam movie, Twelve Monkeys , when I discovered SyFy channel had adapted it into a TV series, 12 Monkeys , I was interested to see how that would pan out. Although the show has been aired in Australia on free to air TV (I'm pretty sure I've seen it listed there at ridiculous hours on occasion), it's only recently that the first two seasons were added to Australian Netflix. So I added it to my list of shows to watch. This article is not so much a review of the show, rather it's my thoughts on adapting to the TV version after being a big fan of the film. At this point, I've only seen all of season one and the first episode of season two. Going into the TV series I literally went in cold, not knowing anything about the approach to this adaptation from pre-publicity or trailers beforehand. I didn't really have any expectations other than wondering if the show would stick to the movie plot lines closely and, if they did, how w...

Big Hero 6, Baymax and Real Inflatable Robotics

Baymax - a fictional example of a 'Soft' robot. Baymax , the inflatable robot from the animated Disney movie, Big Hero 6 is probably the most famous 'soft' robot in the world of fictional robots today. I didn't really give it much thought when I saw the film but it's not too surprising that Baymax is inspired by real research into the potential of soft robots. I realize I'm a bit late to the party as Mashable wrote about this very subject in their post  'Big Hero 6' star Baymax was inspired by a real robot back in November of 2014 (which is where I first discovered real world soft robotics). However, since I'm somewhat obsessed with the almost certain robot uprising of the not too distant future, I thought it best to bring soft robotics to your attention.

Tesla Unveils Optimus Robot Prototype and Second Generation Prototype - Movie, iRobot, May Be a Documentary?

Tesla Optimus Prototype One, Development Platform. September 30th finally rolled around along with Tesla A.I. day and the unveiling of not one but two Tesla Optimus Robot prototypes. Which was quite a bonus since we hadn't heard anything much about these robots when I wrote about them in July of 2022. Before revealing the first prototype, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, made a point of managing everyone's expectations, just in case anyone was thinking they were about to see anything close to the actual human concept 'robot' we saw last year. I honestly don't think anyone was expecting that. Prototype One - Development Platform The prototype that walked out on stage, for the very first time without ever being tethered to anything (apparently), was still incredibly impressive despite not being streamlined and highly refined in its capability. It walked quite well - eerily similar to the first generation robots in the 2004, Will Smith movie, iRobot , and even did a bit of a dan...