Feedback on Tom's Hardware Videos

[Jsimenhoff]

Look Tom's Hardare. We learned in the '90s that auto playing video was a bad idea. Knock it off soon or I take you off my Feedly and never visit again.

Look Tom's Hardare. We learned in the '90s that auto playing video was a bad idea. Knock it off soon or I take you off my Feedly and never visit again.

What videos? Hmmff...Learn what adblock+/ghostery are. Or if embedded crap maybe youtube hd which gives you control of what plays auto or not. Though again, I do not even SEE the vids you're talking about.

I'll go on record as saying that slideshow article crap needs to die also. I shouldn't need to hit "read more" to see the full text repeatedly...How dumb is that? Is there a person on earth that enjoys that format?

Good luck blocking

Look Tom's Hardare. We learned in the '90s that auto playing video was a bad idea. Knock it off soon or I take you off my Feedly and never visit again.

What videos? Hmmff...Learn what adblock+/ghostery are. Or if embedded crap maybe youtube hd which gives you control of what plays auto or not. Though again, I do not even SEE the vids you're talking about.

I'll go on record as saying that slideshow article crap needs to die also. I shouldn't need to hit "read more" to see the full text repeatedly...How dumb is that? Is there a person on earth that enjoys that format?

Good luck blocking

I don't use an ad-blocker because the ads support the free sites i like to visit, however I'm not offended that you do.

I agree with CaedenV, autoplay videos are bogus, and suspect that Tom's is GLAD to get this feedback rather than have CaedenV just leave without saying why,

Look Tom's Hardare. We learned in the '90s that auto playing video was a bad idea. Knock it off soon or I take you off my Feedly and never visit again.

If you read this editorial, you will understand why Tom's isn't likely to change.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/ad-blocking-is-stealing,news-20962.html

Day 5: The Doom video is still in every article. Rations are low. Morale is deteriorating. I'm afraid we'll have to resort to cannibalism before long.

That Doom video clearly is annoying. I turned off my adblocker and realized the website is still as spammy as before. Before long the white article background will be replaced with ads.

I'd pay $1 a month to be able to access ad free...

I would go somewhere else if I knew of a half decent website that hit this same tech/nerd/game type of information. Tomshardware has gone the way of yahoo on garbage UI/UX. Ads are fine when sensibly presented. This is f--king horrible and it interferes with content consumption.

Blows my mind this stuff is allowed to happen, but here I am I guess. The suits at the top dont read their own content I reckon.

tomshardware replacement hunt begins now.

I would go somewhere else if I knew of a half decent website that hit this same tech/nerd/game type of information. Tomshardware has gone the way of yahoo on garbage UI/UX. Ads are fine when sensibly presented. This is f--king horrible and it interferes with content consumption.

Blows my mind this stuff is allowed to happen, but here I am I guess. The suits at the top dont read their own content I reckon.

tomshardware replacement hunt begins now.

On the Doom video, we managed to replace it by suggesting some other, newer videos be put into that spot. I realize that doesn't really fix the overall problem of a giant video playing in the article, but at least for now the videos should be a bit more relevant (if not just temporarily different), and I am told that the company is looking into what to do on the video player front in short order.

I would go somewhere else if I knew of a half decent website that hit this same tech/nerd/game type of information. Tomshardware has gone the way of yahoo on garbage UI/UX. Ads are fine when sensibly presented. This is f--king horrible and it interferes with content consumption.

Blows my mind this stuff is allowed to happen, but here I am I guess. The suits at the top dont read their own content I reckon.

tomshardware replacement hunt begins now.

On the Doom video, we managed to replace it by suggesting some other, newer videos be put into that spot. I realize that doesn't really fix the overall problem of a giant video playing in the article, but at least for now the videos should be a bit more relevant (if not just temporarily different), and I am told that the company is looking into what to do on the video player front in short order.

Your response is encouraging. The DOOM video is just a single symptomatic manifestation of the real problem; you've (whoever is directing the site's structure) put quantity of advertisement content at the top of your priority list, over the user's experience. I'm here because of habit, but thats easy enough to break. There are a lot of quality content options, I've just been too lazy to seek them out. From Reddit to TechCrunch etc.

Succinctly, there is no "safe-space" for the user on your site from ads. From keyword hover-spam to obtrusive ever-present video-bombs, consuming the content becomes more work than its worth, and its this site-design that drove the mass adoption of ad-blockers, which is hurting your bottom line in the long run. I forget how painful your site is to browse till I visit it on public computers without my personal browser plugins. Its seriously a user-experience nightmare.

Anyways, I'm just one person. Hopefully you are able to find something amicably satisfying for the $uits and the users. Best of luck.

 

[ssddx]

i happen to agree, videos set to autoplay is a bad tactic and only serves to piss off a userbase. this should be abolished.

i dont particularly mind embedded videos in general (useful ones which help the story, not ads) as sometimes the video content (for articles, etc) is quite good, useful, enjoyable or relevant but it should be up to the user to determine if they want to load and play the video. video ads on a static website are a no-go.

why?

- malware can be present in video and with companies not checking ads it opens the door to possible issues.
- the content in some videos is questionable
- pages load slower and are not slower connection friendly
- random videos playing and making noise whenever you load a new page is extremely irritating

----

as far as the "using adblock is stealing" article is concerned...

i do and will continue to use adblock. i do and will continue to run anti-anti-adblock scripts or blacklist sites running anti-adblock programs.

with that said, i do also fully support ads and revenue from ads as a valid source of site income.

if that is the case then dont my two statements conflict? why would i still run adblock?

- many ads are of objectionable content. penile enhancement drug ads, fake how to get skinny ads, or worse.
- some ads are scare-tactics. flashing windows saying you have a virus and need a program, etc.
- some ads are too obtrusive. flashing ads, audio ads, pop up ads or text link popup ads, etc
- some ads contain redirects to shady sites or contain outright malware which loads on viewing.
- the sheer quantity or layout of ads on some sites makes browsing them a nightmare or like minefields
- some ads highly interrupt page loading speeds

if a site can keep malware-free, safe-content, quality ads from respectable vendors in a nice ordered manner without having a page as 50% adspace i will gladly view them and support a website on ad revenue. heck, i would support things like adfly links as well if i could trust them to be safe (which cant). i may not click them as i am not interested in many products being advertised, but i will not block them if they are safe and reasonable. heck, i've even seen sites push ads past adblock before (manually inserted and checked not from an ad server) and i've glady viewed them since they were all clean. all it takes is a little effort.

it all boils down to trust and with how ads are today there is very little of that going around. i will not risk my web security nor waste my time with questionable content.

many sites will complain about loss of revenue due to adblock and try to resort to other more devious means (anti-adblock, adblock redirects, coding ads to bypass adblock) of dealing with this instead of working at why people run adblock in the first place. getting reputable ads without virus infection, flashy, pop up or obtrusive style ads, scareware fake virus scan ads, bottom-of-the-barrel content or similar all need to be addressed. give us safe, quality content that we as users can trust and people might stop using adblock. in fact, if whitelisting some ads on adblock via paying is what it takes to get a person involved to quality check then that might be a fix or at least a start to addressing the problem with ads today.

this one hits a little closer to home. i'm sad to say but as much as i support TH/TG and want them continue to grow their ads completely fail for every single reason i listed above in the bullet lists and practically nothing i've seen seems to address that actively. this is why i will continue to run adblock here on TH/TG and why any complaints about loss of revenue i will ignore and not feel sorry about. as much as i would love to support the site's articles with ad viewing its a literal 50% adspace minefield of intrusive ads which at times (albiet rarely) are malware infested due to them coming from an ad server. these points really need to be addressed