Are Opera Users the Most Valuable?
Thanks to Sarah from Infolinks, we have received an exclusive study (that will be published in the official Infolinks Metrics Center sometime next week) on browser users behavior.
About the study
By using data from over 30 000 publishers that generated over 40 million banner impressions, Infolinks monitored Click Through Rate (CTR) and Cost Per Thousand (CPM) ratios to find out, which browser users tend to click/view ads more often.
Results (as from study documents)
The CTR of Opera is approximately 50% higher than Chrome and Safari, 40% higher than FireFox, and it’s 35% higher than Explorer
The Opera eCPM is 35% higher than Firefox and Chrome, and it’s around 10% higher than Safari and Explorer.
So here you have it, when it comes to advertising, Opera users may be more valuable than Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or Safari users.
What are your thoughts on this?
Download report (.docx | hosted at FavBrowser.com)
[digg-reddit-me]
About (Author Profile)
Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism career back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.
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Interesting, at first I thought It might be that Opera users see ads often. Usually case is – see add, then block it – no automatic subscriptions like in AdBlock or others (urlfilter.ini requires a little bit more skills – and people are lazy). But I don’t know – is there some advanced AdBlock for IE or Safari? I guess there is for Chrome…
You can’t really deduce a reason from this. You could just as easily say that Opera users are more supportive of the sites they regularly visits, so they are more willing to click through on ads. Is it true? Who knows?
Those bars are clicks not views.
clicks can only happen if an ad is visible. given how popular and easy to install AdblockPlus it is no wonder that firefox users see less commercials and then click them less. not mentioning plethora of other extensions that limit ads (noscript), chance of someone having at least one of them is quite high.
chrome is mostly installed by power users still so they also can get rid of unwanted ads
as for safari, safari 5 supports adblocking extensions, and safari on mac still can have minor issues with flash 10 ads, causing them to ie. miss-click (not register clicks). also some ad networks might completely ignore safari in their scripts, but this is rather unlikely
but why opera users are so inclined to click on flashy ads i have no idea, few years ago it might be because opera + flash generally worked poorly, but now it is all ok i think
First, nothing here says anything about flash . Second, your points don’t explain IE users stats, unless I’m missing something
ads ARE flash.80% or more of ads are flash, remaining 20% are google adsense. disable your flash plugin and see it yourself
explorer has popup blocker and (i presume) rudimentary hosts based solution, nothing fancy. and to be brutaly honest – most of ie users are quite ‘fresh’ still and they believe in many ‘you ve won, click the monkey to claim the prize’ scams.
@nobody By that reasoning, wouldn’t you expect IE users to have the highest click-through?
@nobody Flash/Rich media ads are 40%, not 80%
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Flash-Ads-Make-Up-40-Percent-of-the-Display-Ads-Impressions-145817.shtml
it might be so, because some ads are sent in both ways, to support mobile users, that do not have a flash. webpages fallback to images if they cannot init flash.
but yes, it is a lower percentage then i was aware of, thanks for link
If you dare to click on the Infolinks link above, you’ll see that Infolinks adds are not flash, but some sort of In Text Advertising, which in fact don’t get blocked by AdBlock Plus neither. So your point about flash or adblockers don’t hold.
But I guess this shows well the difference between Opera users (like me) or other users. Opera users know what they are doing and don’t mind to click on link and to read some text to find out what’s really going on.
/me
I would like to say that, as an avid Opera user, opera has had inbuilt ad-blocking for a long, long time. As in, you don’t need to install anything to get adblock. ;)
urlfilter.ini is where opera stores blocked ads, no need of advanced skills. The fact that you see ads does not equal to automatic block nor does it means you will click on them.
Interesting, webdevs should take note of this :D
I do hope for this myself. Some websites deliberately block or hinder Opera for whatever reason. Perhaps this could procure an end to such heinous actions?
for 2 % of Internet users … okayyyyyy
Who cares about 2% of ~2 billions people anyways ?
Also, it’s more like 3-4% on desktop, and more on mobile.
My own personal perspective on this, as an Opera user myself:
I can’t speak AT ALL for any other Opera users, but while Opera’s built-in ad-blocking capabilities are the best of any browser, and there’s also tools such as “Fanboy’s list” and “BlockIt” available, I don’t personally block ads. Without ads on the web currently, a lot of free services that are provided wouldn’t be possible – ad-blocking seems to refuse to acknowledge this flat-out, which I don’t think is particularly helpful.
If I see an ad that interests me, I have absolutely no inhibitions about clicking on it directly and investigating what it’s advertising. I don’t really understand why others are averse to doing this on sites they use daily which in some cases rely on advertising revenue. That said, I don’t click on ads that don’t interest me just to give a site some click-through.
Another thing I’d point out – while Opera may not have an “official” extensions framework, it is highly extensible. Developing an direct port of AdBlock+ (a highly popular add-on) is 100% possible in Opera, yet noone’s done it. I’ve considered doing it myself, but I’d never use it personally so hardly see the point. I could be wrong about this, but could it be possible that no Opera users have bothered developing an ABP port because they don’t feel they need it – because they wouldn’t use it?
Ad-blocking generally seems to me to be something done by people who don’t really stop too long to thing of *why* they’re doing it. Opera users in my experience are the type of people who stop to think about their options (which is of course why they’re using Opera).
good post, but it isnt possible to create full copy of adblock plus for opera yet.
limitations in what opera allows users to do, methods that are open to use and – most importantly – the GUI available are not enough.
there are several attempts, but all of them require users at some point to edit ini files in some hidden system folders. hello, we are now in 2010, not 1991.. common users will immediately drop this if they are asked to open ‘opera_config.ini in %user%/bla/blaabla/opera/blabla…
given how many such attempts are out there, and how popular was the wish for adblocker in opera i gently refuse to believe, that all opera users are angels and altruists that will willingly stare at ads. i might even guess that majority would gladly get rid of ads and see how fast internet can be without them. (and without 10000s of tracking scripts).
Trust me, it is very possible. I’ve been considering writing a forum post on my.opera about it in fact (which would be easier than developing it myself tbh, as Wladimir Palant has done incredible work on that add-on).
Trust me though, it’s entirely possible to develop. I’m just baffled by the fact that noone has.
try to use adblock plus before making such claims. it does a little bit more than hide some stuff.
remember, that there are many versions of ‘adblock’ for opera, some constantly developed and improved, and yet not even a combination of all of them can cover the entire functionality that adblock plus has. many talented people tried to do it, they even tried to do ‘autoupdate for filters’ that seems to (barely) work. they all failed.
What has been done and what can be done are two very different things. Both lucideer and I are Opera users who could make something like it in Unite (although lucideer knows far more about Unite so he could do it much faster, but that’s besides the point). Combine it with some UserJS and perhaps some macros for the necessary GUI, and done. But neither of us is interested for pretty much the same reasons[1], nor are most of the other people who could do it. The failing you speak of is mostly lack of interest, not some kind of inherent limitation. I don’t know why you consider it such a great thing to block the money supply of most sites you visit.
One thing I did consider working into a UserJS was something along the lines of the Stop Autoplay Fx extension, but with Enable On Demand Plugin that’s now a native option in Opera. This has more to do with places like YouTube automatically playing videos (and just a YT UserJS wouldn’t help on some other place I may visit) than with advertisements, but to some extent it may overlap. For the most part I don’t even use this, but I do consider audio playing without your explicit permission far more annoying than anything that may or may not happen on screen. What I do want to block are stupid lightboxes and replace them with links straight to the picture, document, or whatever is being lightboxed, but that is another matter altogether. Any developments with lightboxes seem the opposite of what I’d want, given the prevalence of Greased Lightbox and such.
[1] Though I would add that I’m also of the opinion that if ads on a site annoy me for whatever reason, unless their content is damn good I simply won’t visit said site.
so you are claiming that you both are superior to all others that tried to create adblock for software?
sorry, but i do not believe. show me that you are capable of such stuff.
opera is uncapable of oh so many things that AdblockPlus requires.
how will you schedule anything without cron/winScheduler? how can you edit and keep edits with external program if opera.exe is owner of urlfiler.ini? you can only replace it when opera is off. what with list of blockable items, live preview and stats, of what filters work and what do not? even opera’s own (crap) webdeveloper tools cannot do that. and you claim that you are magical and you can? sorry i do not believe.
Again, I claimed that lucideer is “superior” to me. xErath is some kind of über Javascript wizard compared to me. What’s your point again?
The technicalities of whether something is a “proper” scheduler are irrelevant. You could just use setTimeout() or some such for all I care.
You can edit any (or at least most) INI files perfectly fine while Opera is running. The problem would be that Opera will overwrite such a file if a user changed something manually. Whether that behavior is precisely the same for any INI file I don’t know, given that I mostly dabble with the keyboard and menu ones (which can also easily be reloaded without restarting), but I doubt the generic principle is very different.
You would need to combine UserJS with Unite, possibly coupled with some kind of macro in a menu or a button.
Now you’re claiming that DragonFly should act like an adblocker? Why don’t you just happily use Firefox without claiming that just because something doesn’t things the way you like, it’s inferior?
There is a autoupdating adblocker for Opera Windows here:
If you use Linux/Unix anything else, then you should be used to writing a shell script to automate things there…
http://my.opera.com/mgillespie/blog/index.dml/tag/adblock
Opera’s content blocker is the most powerful of all the browsers, you just need to invest a little time in how to use it.
what could be the problem? just edit adblock easylist, copy all the entries and paste them in urlfilter.ini in your opera profile directory.
besides adblocks isnt the only source, there are many lists available for opera and as it uses “*” they arent so long.
actually I can email you a copy of my own urlfilter.ini no problem doing so.
Hello-ooo we are Opera users. We can open a file and edit it. We are not IE guys.
If you honestly believe your claim that “Opera’s built-in ad-blocking capabilities are the best of any browser”, perhaps you should actually try to fire up other browsers for the first time in years, and give their ad-blocking mechanisms a run.
All Opera offers is basic adblocking; managing your filters, updating subscriptions, and element hiding all lag behind what Firefox, Chrome, and Safari offer. The fact is that, short of IE8’s InPrivate Filtering, Opera has the most cumbersome ad-blocking capability of the five major browsers.
@solcroft
OK, maybe I’m wrong here – I don’t have a copy of Safari installed, but as far as I can tell neither the Chrome nor the Firefox versions that I have here have any built-in ad-blocking at all – you need to install some extension to get the feature. Am I missing something?
installing these extensions is very very easy to do. once you’ve heard that something like this exists it is a breeze to find and install it. type adblock in google and you are set. two clicks later you are set.
it is very close to built in (but yes, semanticaly it isnt built in). no .ini files to edit, seamless updates, no hassle.
But it’s not built in, so lucideer is still right.
I was honestly waiting for someone to blurt this out.
Seems like you fell for the trap.
Good Show.
Not really. He talks about Opera’s adblocking capabilities, which were built-in (“Opera’s built-in ad-blocking capabilities…”), but nowhere in his post did he restrict other browsers only to built-in features. Opera’s adblocking capabilities, which although are built-in, are hardly superior over any competitor other than IE.
If that was supposed to be a semantics trap, it was a very poorly-constructed one.
<blockquote> but while Opera’s built-in ad-blocking </blockquote>
<blockquote> but as far as I can tell neither the Chrome nor the Firefox versions that I have here have any<b> built-in ad-blocking at all</b>
You were saying?
I guess you are over analysing things. Also, maybe you take matters a tad to literally.
Eek! Forgot the commenting changed.
Hey man we really need an Edit function here.
Combine it with a cronned Mercurial pull & update (for Fanboy’s list) and there are your automatic updates. The question then becomes why do the other browsers make it so hard to use the built-in tools of your OS? Why doesn’t Google use the scheduling service of Windows to execute some updater application instead of running it as a service all the time? Etc.
And AdBlock for Chrome? Last I tried it due to a similar claim it was impossible to block URL ranges manually and besides it still downloaded everything and merely applied display:none or some such. Highly superior.
As mentioned, Opers users for windows can use this.
http://my.opera.com/mgillespie/blog/index.dml/tag/adblock
2 clicks and they have AdBlock+ style autoupdating goodness….
I wasn’t aware of that application, but yes, that is exactly the principle I was referring to.
you call this TWO CLICKS solution? it is f.. laughable that this sort of crap is called ‘a solution’
it is a windows service! it is dumb as hell, it cannot do anything more than download one file, and it is for moronos! just a quote:
“If you manually block stuff using Opera’s built in “Block Content” it will be overwritten when the new list comes down and gets installed.”
sorry, this is POS. and if opera fanatics think that settling for such flawed and incomplete solution is ok, then opera WILL NEVER BE SUCCESSFUL!.
opera proposes to users sub-par quality from last decade. editing .ini files, stupid limitations, no GUI and no sort of market-oriented approach. this makes it a 2% browser.
So you need to create a separate cronjob or system service? What if you want to subscribe to multiple filters at once? Uh oh. And if you want to maintain separate user filters, you need to figure out the appropriate filter string by yourself, navigate to your browser profile folder, and manually edit a file with a text editor, instead of simply right-clicking the offending element?
Wow, that really sounds so superior.
Your comments about Chrome suffer from the same flaw as lucideer’s, in that it’s been so long since you’ve educated yourself about anything non-Opera, that you’re speaking based on ignorant and outdated information.
In Opera you can either use your own way of doing things with the OS, or you can utilize a currently non-existent WIMPy method that you subscribe to. I’m not necessarily against WIMPy methods, but they all too often come at a cost, which in Firefox profiles is really no different. After you finally locate whichever subdirectory was used to store the GM or Stylish stuff (or AdBlock Plus), you still face all kinds of barely usable files with cryptic names.
I much prefer to only block one single element that slows down loading or plays annoying audio than mercilessly target all ads, whether benevolent or even good (i.e. content-appropriate). For the record, I haven’t done even that in years.
Concerns about Flash are legitimate, since it can affect stability, CPU usage, memory usage, and play annoying audio. Things like Stop Autoplay or FlashBlock are great for that purpose. I don’t do this either, but especially on Linux it may make a significant difference. If ads on a website are so annoying to you that you have to block them, seriously, just don’t visit that place. They’re going to be paying for bandwidth while you’re stealing their revenue.
And your comments about Chrome are false, even if the situation improved somewhat compared to a little over half a year ago. I quote from Chrome’s AdBlock extension:
Um, since when do you need to deal with “barely usable files with cryptic names” with Greasemonkey, Stylish, or ABP? It looks like your whole notion of Opera’s superiority is based on your utter ignorance regarding other browsers. What you’re describing is the backward and archaic Opera way. For Firefox and Chrome, it’s all point-and-click.
For practical purposes, it hardly matters anymore. The 1% of elements that are hidden instead of blocked are more of an academic argument used to score points on paper. In real life, the bandwidth and resource use that result from these slipped elements are inconsequential.
And even if they weren’t, the polish and usability of Opera’s ad-blocking capabilities is still years behind Chrome (along with Firefox and Safari). Heck, I just discovered something called Simple Adblock that puts even IE above Opera, when it comes to ad-blocking.
If we look at facts instead of basing the discussion on your astounding ignorance regarding anything non-Opera, Opera’s superiority is simply a figment of your wishful imagination.
If you actually create (and modify) things, rather than merely consuming things others made.
The only one who’s using words like superiority is you. What I’m describing is what’s best for me (i.e. more or less the way things are done in Opera), and while I would be perfectly happy to have that supplemented by some WIMPy stuff I’d barely use, I don’t want that to come at the expense of doing things the way I consider simplest. You consider a WIMPy way of doing things best. It’s not the end-all solution for everyone, so just get over it.
The entire strawman you’re attacking is simply a figment of your wishful imagination. Now let’s look at what I actually said:
in one short sentence you are simply RATIONALIZING to yourself your inabilities and lack of tools opera provides, to be OK with your choice.
and i do not believe that you can work around opera inherent limitations with some unite application. if it could be possible, then others would succeed. to be honest others that tried provided proof that they are capable of doing stuff, i do not remember you actually producing anything. if you know a lot about opera/unite (and you have to to spread such claims) where are your unite services? where are services that give you the right to brag about you being superior to oh so many others that tried and failed?
Actually, I used to use Proxomitron before I changed my stance on the matter of ads (probably also helped by the switch to broadband, a faster computer, and the rise of more civilized ads). The filters I had in Proxomitron were a heck of a lot more advanced that what you can do in either Opera or AdBlock Plus (although you can do roughly similar things when combined with UserJS/GreaseMonkey). My choice is not to visit any websites where I think the ads are too annoying.
I already outlined my position: sometimes blocking ads is necessary due to the nature of the ads, but for the most part it is not the right thing to do. When it is necessary to block ads, typically this is because they’re Flash, and the thing you really want to block is thus Flash, not just Flash ads. Opening, say, YouTube in the background can have the same devastating and annoying effects as any random Flash ad.
Incidentally, Ars Technica wrote an article about this a few months ago that roughly aligns with my views (though they seem to forget about the fact that too many ads seem completely random and that too many consist of Flash) http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars
The only inherent limitation I can think of is that site preferences potentially aren’t comprehensive enough for some things that some might want.
I already wrote, “lucideer knows far more about Unite so he could do it much faster, but that’s besides the point.”
What on earth are you talking about? If anyone “tried and failed” I bet they just got bored or didn’t have enough time, but the only things I’ve actually seen (not that I follow the Unite community very intently) are things that aren’t trying to replicate AdBlock Plus, presumably because they feel no reason to, so the only so-called failing involved is that they don’t do precisely what you want, but just what the authors consider useful.
You’re being delusional. Only things that don’t replicate ABP exist, because it’s IMPOSSIBLE to replicate ABP functionality in Opera. The best one can do is try to hack inelegant workarounds that are a shadow of the functionality and ease of use that ABP offers.
You won’t be able to do all the things you might be able to do with a near-native GUI approach such as XUL, true, but I don’t know if that makes it a mere shadow. Besides, point & click has been emphasized as opposed to utilizing the keyboard, which pretty much eradicates the potential advantages of XUL.
I’m not saying I wouldn’t like it if a bit more were possible, and of course you can’t replicate things 1:1 as it is, but you are underestimating what can be done with Unite.
It does, for reasons already explained and which you would be aware of if you actually crawl out from beneath your rock and use anything other than Opera. And besides, why would point-and-click eradicate the potential advantages of XUL? Are you sure you even know what XUL does?
Unite? You mean the technology that Opera released almost a year ago and claimed would “re-invent the Internet” (or some such, I can’t exactly remember the silly hype they touted for it), but has to date accomplished nothing that has more than zero significance?
@solcroft
Unite is very different to XUL – they’re entirely different things really. XUL is many times more powerful than Unite, it can do many things that are completely impossible in Opera full stop. XUL is a wonderfully powerful technology – in particular, XULRunner is a vastly underappreciated platform, it’s inclusion in Firefox 3.0 should really be better advertised as I’m sure it would be of interest to many developers who are unaware they already have it on their systems (particularly non-Firefox users like myself who have no real active interest in developing extensions – seriously, if you’re not a Firefox user, but have it installed, you can run xulrunner with the -app switch and develop super simple, quick GUI apps with it, it’s sweet).
However, that said, XUL serves a very different purpose to Unite. I’d highly recommend you yourself “crawl out from underneath your rock” and actually have a look at what Unite actually is before attempting to make arguments on a subject about which you quite evidently haven’t got a clue.
If you’re too lazy to look into it (which you seem to be), a very quick overview of the main things that enable what myself and Frenzie described above (Unite+UserJS stuff):
Unite has local file access – this is far more limited than XUL’s for security reasons, it can’t read/write ANY files on your system, only ones the user selectively permits it to, however it enables a lot of persistence, settings access/storage/etc.
Unite has cross-domain access – XUL obviously does too, as does Greasemonkey (since UserJS is inevitably involved here), both serve their respective purposes
UserJS has direct access to the page it executes on and can also set event listeners for resources – Greasemonkey can’t do this, and this makes UserJS a lot more powerful than GM – XUL can obviously do this quite easily however
So, as I said, XUL is vastly more powerful than Unite. XUL can also do things like executing arbitrary native code, which enables people to develop (or include) native libraries for use in extensions and make seriously powerful add-ons – something that’s not at all possible in Opera by any means. However, the fact that you can do more in XUL doesn’t mean that Unite is useless – what I’ve mentioned just above is more than enough to do what needs doing.
The idea that Opera users somehow don’t have a clue what happens outside their isolated “Opera world” does seem a fairly prevalent one oddly enough, it’s quite funny given that most Opera users I know switched from Firefox, and those that didn’t switched from something more obscure than Opera – Opera users are generally the type that shop around a LOT more than others I find. Just my 3¢…
Please excuse the poor formatting above, I have yet to learn the mysterious ways of favbrowser commenting (an edit button would be nice).
yeah.
i know that you were replying somebody else, but i’d like you to honestly tell me – what unite is for? i was almost killed by opera fanbois when i told them, that this is a sharing tool (and most sharing tools are already built-in) and nothing else. what makes unite so special in your opinion, if xul can do the same and can do it better and easier?
because in all honesty, i think that unite is something that was created because someone at opera management DESPERATELY wanted opera to be unique and do not have extensions like every other browser. problem is, that this technology is now saturated, developers couldn care less and users are not using it (look at number of downloads and active services – with 50mln users 200 active unite services is equal to ZERO adoption rate)
Well, there’s the fact that XUL isn’t built into the browser I use, while Unite is (I use Opera for MANY MANY reasons that are not related to extensibility). Unite is far more secure than XUL (I’m not saying XUL has bugs or security holes, just that Unite has a far more restrictive and paranoid security policy), Unite has UPnP built in which allows pretty amazing networking capabilities (someone could develop UPnP support for XUL using native libraries and such but I’ve no idea how, and it would probably be a fairly complex task), Unite has service-discovery on top of that and is supported by Opera’s proxy services (these are things I don’t think are possible with XUL without setting up your own persistent services – though I suppose there is things like AppEngine that could help there).
Also, you say XUL can do the same better and easier. I never said either of those things, and I would disagree. I said you can do far more with XUL, but that doesn’t mean it’s easier to do those things – Unite is FAR FAR easier and quicker to develop for than XUL, it’s APIs are vastly simpler. Some of its limited features are also individually better in various ways, particularly given it’s built on Carakan which I personally prefer to develop for over Sea/Trace/Jäger-monkey – that’s purely a personal preference and I can completely understand people who think the opposite – I prefer Seamonkey to V8 for example, so it’s not a speed issue anyway.
Opera is able to do a few tricks that adblock in firefox can’t.
The urlfilter can stop many ad scripts from ever being downloaded, and we have window.opera.defineMagicVariable, window.opera.defineMagicFunction, and BeforeJavascriptURL, so we can override any part of a script or just completely replace the script with our own.
ArsTechnia deployed an advert script that was able to prevent access to people with adblock. I just used a quick look at there script and was able to defeat it in under 5 minutes.
do you have any proof that firefox with adblock DOWNLOADS blocked content? because common knowledge is that IT DOESNT
only thing says to me is Opera users are most open minded to view anything they might be interested in.
Only thing I see is, that I wouldn’t trust a study that releases infographics with major spelling mistakes: “Beheviour”? seriously?
Let’s have a look on the Facts that are given in the post:
–It’s about clicks, not views.
–to click something, you have to see it first
–my personal experience is that only a minor percentage of Firefox or Chrome Users install any extension at all (if they do the most well known are Firebug, Adblock and Noscript)
So we could now easily make a ranking in how likely users are to see ads at all:
Chrome, Firefox: Blacklist-Extensions like Adblock, Noscript etc… few ads
Safari: same as above but only in the latest version.
Opera: Ability to block ads with a few clicks. Ability to import blacklists.
IE: No real adblocking at all.
Ok… remember you have to see ads in order to click them. This would mean that IE would have the most clicks. Just… this is not the case…
My explanation: Opera users are more likely to click on ads because they only see the ones they WANT to see because they are place in a not-disturbing way, because they want to support the website and so on.
IE users without ad-blocking are basically tending to totally ignoring all ads because they did not chose to see them.
I as an Opera user think that ads are just the way the websites generate money and if they understand to place their ads in a way they don’t disturb me while surfing the real content, I won’t block them (basically it happens quite often that I don’t even recognize that there is an ad at all).
So I am not disturbed by the ad and therefore are much more willing to click on it if I see something that appeals me.
Let’s not forget context-relevant ads. In (paper) magazines the ads are often related to the content of the magazine in one way or another whereas on the Internet I just see “get a slim stomach in 3 weeks” advertisements everywhere. Ads that are actually related to the things I read (e.g. not slimming guides that prescribe flawed methods) are far more likely to not be annoying if you ask me. Though I’d say the primary causes of annoyance are Flash crashes/slowness, unauthorized sound, and to a lesser extent distracting movement.
Yep, but Opera has FlashBlocker and Grafik Blocker at one click away. So, no need for stupid add ons, who sometimes crashes.
these stupid addons can do many many many times more than ‘stupid built in, basic, not extensible’ opera blocker.
and if your browser crash, and this is firefox 3.6 i urge you to check your cooling, because ff crashed in the past. now it is mostly user fault.
or, most probably, you do not know how recent firefox looks like and never tried ADP
I completely agree with lucideer. I’m an Opera user since a couple of years and yes, I click on ads. Not every ads. But I like ads on a website, because I’m curious. I already tried to block them, but why should I block them ?
And for nobody who said
“there are several attempts, but all of them require users at some point to edit ini files in some hidden system folders. hello, we are now in 2010, not 1991.. common users will immediately drop this if they are asked to open ‘opera_config.ini in %user%/bla/blaabla/opera/blabla…”
I don’t think that there is a problem to edit an ini file. It’s easy to do. And people who are using Opera usually knows what they are doing and are kinda geek.
wow, it seems like clicking ads is cool now
“””I don’t think that there is a problem to edit an ini file. It’s easy to do. And people who are using Opera usually knows what they are doing and are kinda geek.”””
then you are completely out of touch with the world. in 2010 people are NOT editing ini files, they do not see it EASY. they simply dont. maybe some geeks that are rationalizing their previous choice, or people, who really did not try anything else, can live up with it. but rest of us dont. .ini files were funny in 90’s, early 90’s mind you. if you see it ok, and insist on it staying this way, you are effectively helping keep opera at ~2% marketshare. this is the ammount of people willing to settle for sub-par quality of UI and UX, just to feel superior.
I’m not a tech guy, but even I can do that. It’s easy. :p
yeah, i also can do that. but while i CAN do that, why should i do something HARDER to achieve LESS? not mentioning the pain of what opera calls upgrade.
firefox addons expire with upgrade (the most popular ones do not as they are tested with nightlies and already compatible) but after they are upgraded, browser ITSELF downloads the new version, and at worst you are one or two days without your extensions. with opera, stuff is much more messy. MUCH MUCH more messy.
do you really think that ammount of hassle opera requires to maintain, use and ‘extent’ is justifiable in 2010? other browser are.. how to say this.. a bit more modern? like by 10 years?
I would trust it more if behaviour was spelled correctly on the first slide
I use Opera and I have not seen an Ad in a few years, thanks to content blocking and other ad blocking tools in Opera. I forget what ads look like lol People get so funny when they read an article they take it like a gosspel. FYI 95% of articles written on the internet are marketing tools nothing more.
Maybe all those ad clickers are Safari and Chrome users who have their User-Agent string set to spoof Opera. Anyone who takes a simplistic survey like this literally in today’s Internet world (where everyone is pretending to be someone else) is pretty naive in my opinion. Although I’m an Opera user my own User-Agent is set to Firefox (better for avoiding fingerprinting). I also haven’t seen any ad in years, thanks to Proxomitron (highly customised), Tor, Polipo and 3proxy.
Firstly, given that some sites still browser-sniff and block Opera in various ways, I doubt any non-Opera user would be masking as Opera – generally one masks as a browser more popular than one’s own.
Secondly, masking Opera as Firefox won’t thwart fingerprinting – in fact it could make fingerprinting easier as your UA will be inconsistent with other uniquely Opera attributes of the browser, like the Opera object or the presence of other attributes that Firefox doesn’t support.
Proximitron is an excellent app though.
Download report .docx << this really blew the whole article
Simple no one in der their right mind uses Opera and no one in their right mind clicks random web ads = crazy people using Opera and randomly clicking web ads cause they think they won a million bucks ;-)
i guess opera users are more willing to click on ads because they ‘cost’ less in terms of effort or stress to click through than in other browsers. This , in my opinion, is down to it’s speed and ease of use. You’re more willing to try something new if it’s less clunky and smoother to do and undo – i find as i use mouse geustures all the time and i find it makes my browsing experience at least twice as fast as if i was using a different browser where you have to keep going to the top of the screen, aiming at a back button and clicking it… also it’s really fast just to open up an ad in the background or in a new tab in the same way. i mean hold RMB + UP > DOWN = easier than click RMB > aim > Open in New Tab….
And i must say that yes, because of this i find it less daunting to open up adverts which look kinda interesting and i wouldn’t normally consider them in other browsers… etc… even the silly facebook ads sometimes lol.
interesting indeed :) i expected chrome to be on top of all browsers when it comes to ads…opera hmmm nice one :D