Several years ago, the appearance of advertisements on Internet Web sites prompted dismayed Prodigy users to stick black electrician' s tape on monitor screens to mask the new annoyances.Internet ads -- flashing, snapping, scrolling and sapping bandwidth -- are embedded today in virtually every commercial Web site, much to the consternation of purists They don't appear in just one spot on t he screen anymore. They're ubiquitous. And their existence, to some, is the very reason to avoid taking the cyber-plunge.

"The Internet's all ads," says first-time computer owner Carl Mayo of Dallas. "At least that was my impression."Neophytes will be heartened to know that's not true. But if they must frequent sites that use multiple advertisements as a central design theme, there is help.

A handful of inexpensive software add-ons -- ad filtering programs -- have begun hitting the market with promises to wipe out the electronic footprints of Madison Avenue.

Several performed remarkably well during a recent test drive. However, huge search engine portals such as Yahoo have little to worry about. Unless these ad-whackers are adopted by Netscape or Internet Explorer, average desktop users will find their installation complicated and fraught with peril.

Indeed, the anti-ad forces have a tough fight ahead. Advertisers will spend an estimated $1.3 billion this year on display ads aimed at the 71 million Americans online.

Yahoo's revenue from advertising tripled o $71. million in a single year, helping to propel the Wall Street rush thatproduced a stunning $7.85 billion in stock sales.

Forrester Research Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., predicts that online advertising will explode to $15 billion within four years. If the public truly wants to avoid advertising, it is not demonstrating that preference with its pocketbook.

A Yahoo spokesman points out that ad-stripping programs have been available since about 1994. They have had no appreciable impact on the site, its revenue or traffic, he says.

Adds Dale Peskin, vice president forWeb operations at The Dallas Morning News (www.dallasnews.com ):"We've had no complaints from any company or individual that this was ever important to them.

"I think the important thing to remember is people get on the Web to get information. And the ads are a part of that information.

"Ultimately, people may use software of that sort to personalize their experience. But I don't see it as a threat to our [advertising- based] model or what we are doing."

Conditioned to ads

Belly-aching aside, small-business Internet consultant James S. McMullen says Americans are conditioned to accept advertising as part of their daily routines. The Internet is no different, he writes in a recent Internet news-group discussion.

"Remember, just because the Internet is a relatively new medium doesn't mean that the general principles of marketing, developed over centuries, aren't applicable," he writes."We're not inventing a whole new wheel here. We're simply adapting it to a new vehicle."

The anti-ad forces may have found allies, particularly with academic and scientific computer users who dominated the Internet for the years that preceded graphical browsers.

They have coalesced at sites such as Jason Katlett's Junkbuster (www.junkbuster.com), where they exchange information on new ad-whacking techniques and filters.

Mr. Katlett's motto: "I'm not against advertising, just dumb advertising."

Unfortunately, an IQ-based ad filter is not among Mr. Katlett's touted programs. What you will find are small software downloads that can excise certain types of irritating images and sounds from your browsing experience. Most are shareware -- free for the test drive and fully installable for a registration fee of about $20.

Other alternatives

Of course, there are less complicated ways to get rid of display ads. Most browsers can be configured to ignore all image downloads, thus speeding up surfing on slow systems and bad connections.

Another alternative is to run Opera ( www.operasoftware.com/), the shareware browser that allows you to load text pages quickly and then hit a single key to load graphics after you've determined your interest.

Opera will also load graphics but kill animations. For those reasons, Opera has become one of the leading alternative browsing tools being downloaded today.

Ad-stripping programs have evolved nicely from their earlydevelopment as cumbersome manipulation of server code. Two of the newest products, AdsOff! and interMute, offer users a range of options.

InterMute's control panel, for example, allows computer users to shut off ads, animations, cookies, pop-up windows, automatic background music, Java and JavaScript.Each kind of filtering can be individually enabled or disabled on all sites or on a site-by-site scheme.

Versions are available for all operating systems except the Mac' s. But a company release promises Mac applications are in the works.

AdsOff!, available only for Windows-based systems, significantly speeds up browsing when configured at even its least intrusive settings.

Collapsing pages

As with any software, there can be glitches. You won't get a perfectly stripped page every try. In many cases, Web page builders have configured their code so that, without an ad, the page literally falls apart in front of the viewer's eyes.

In most cases, these programs remove the annoying images and leave a blank spot or hyperlink in its place.

Linked images (those you click on to go somewhere else), therefore, remain accessible.

AdsOff! remains available for duty if it misses an ad. Once you install the program and get it running, a little spray paint icon stays in the task bar, ready for quick use.

If everyone used this sort of software, the advertising Internet models currently driving the stock market and e-commerce would perish.

Critics of the industry contend advertisers should be forced to develop more innovative uses of the Internet medium, rather than rely on the same tired broadcast and print models.

One of them, J. Modlin, an Internet advertising executive, says he hopes that wiping out ads might force public relations agencies to develop more imaginative approaches.

"Ads will have to utilize the unique features of the Internet to a greater degree than is seen at present," writes Mr. Modlin in a recent advertising discussion group.

"Also, more creativity will be required to survive -- not to be filtered out by future anti-advertising programs," he said.

"The end result would be that advertising will ultimately be more entertaining, and that's not a bad thing."

AD-STRIPPING SOFTWARE

AdsOff!

www. intercantech com

$15.95

Works automatically in the background with Microsoft, Opera and Netscape Web browsers on Windows 957/88 and NT 4. Includes optional filtering for pop-up windows and now includes Fem to Fast! technology for the fastest browsing possible.

PopOff!

www.intercantech.com

A free utility that works in the background while you are browsing to disable automatic pop-up windows before they open. AdsOff! also includes this function. PopOff! is recommended only for users not interested in advertisement filtering.

AdWiper

www.adwiper.com

$17.50 shareware (test drive for free) Works only with Internet Explorer. Filters using a scoring system set by user. Edit the filter to eliminate all banners and graphics, or just the ,moving ones.

InterMute

www. intermute. com

$19.95 Can stop animated GIFs, kill all graphics and silence background sounds. It can also snuff ads and control your acceptance of cookies, Java and JavaScript. Installs as a proxy server, in front of your browser, and it works with Internet Explorer, Navigator and even Opera- although it would be largely redundant with Opera's capabilities. It's written in Java, so it may require an upgrade to the JavaVM.

Webwasher

www.siemens.de/servers wwash/

Free Removes ads on Web pages while you surf. Filters pop-up windows. Speeds loading, saves "up to 45 percent of network bandwidth." WebWasher is free for home users and educational institutions. Commercial users can test WebWasher for 30 days.

© 1999 The Dallas Morning News All Rights Reserved

©1998 The Dallas Morning News

 
 

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