Please remove the "Live Free or Die Hard" ad

Fairly often (maybe on as much as 25% of my page views here recently) the ad displayed reads “for testing purposes only” and promotes the movie “Live Free or Die Hard.” When you mouseover it, it expands and runs the movie trailer.

Normally flash ads – even these fancy expanding ones – don’t bother me so much unless they make noise without user intervention. Hell, everybody’s got to make a living. But in the context (Kontext? hehe) of Kongregate, there’s a significant problem:

When this ad expands, it blocks your view of the game area. In a mouse-controlled game, if you overshoot in an up & right direction while this ad is displayed, you’ve got a pretty good chance of screwing up your progress, losing a life, etc. while you hunt around frantically for the “close” button.

Please remove it.

I’m happy in general to see your ads, especially considering you share the revenue they provide with the game developers.

Aside: Is this even a real ad? It says “for testing purposes” and promotes a movie from last summer.

[edit: used double-hyphens to fake em dashes, but textile or whatever interprets these as strikethrough. removed.]

Well, you could always install AdBlock Plus.

But, I see your point, and I wholeheartedly agree. I’ve had it happen to me several times before, just with a different ad.

I hate the expanding and noise making ads. Any other ads I don’t really have a problem with though. All they do is generate money for Kong.

bq.”Well, you could always install AdBlock Plus.”

I’m aware of that. There are also FF extensions like Nuke Anything that will remove elements from a page one at a time. I could also screw around with my hosts file. That’s not the point.

I’m willing – even happy – to support Kongregate and its game developers with my ad impressions or clickthroughs. This ad in particular causes functionality issues with games on Kongregate.

If they don’t change it, would you use adblock?

there’s an option when developers upload games to disable the ads that expand on mouseover on their page :X

edit: oh it’s actually on the edit screen after the game is uploaded. we should probably include that when you first go through it. but still! the dev can disable it for their game.

there’s an option when developers upload games to disable the ads that expand on mouseover on their page :X

Why would they not want that option? Like, why is it not enabled by default? edit: ah.

I’ve just gotta say, I agree 100% with the OP, I surf the web a lot and never even bothered with Adblock before until I came to Kongregate and those stupid ads started fullscreening on me all the time.

I’ve never really bothered to complain about this, but thank god, you decided to, and yes, I completely agree with this, because even if you have Adblock Plus, its really annoying if you forget to block it and it appears, thus screwing up your game _. Yea, I agree. Remove the ad, or make it a non-mouseover ad.

I believe that those expanding ads might pay slightly more ad revenue. So if it’s not likely that your users are going to accidentally set it off, or it’s not going to significantly disadvantage them if they do, you’d probably want to leave them on.

If you don’t want them messing up a game, send the dev an email asking them to turn off expanding ads for that game.

well these ads help kongregate pay to run the site and to keep it running so just try to ignore them and just remember these help kongregate!

well these ads help kongregate pay to run the site and to keep it running so just try to ignore them and just remember these help kongregate!

People are still going to install Adblock, thus reducing the revenue from the offending ad and all future ads. Wouldn’t it be a better idea to replace the ad with something less intrusive?

You adblock the single ad, not the entire thing.

Maggotheart:

If they don’t change it, would you use adblock?

Probably not. I’d say that most of the web sites I frequent derive a good portion of their revenue from advertising. I’m not interested in depriving their operators of that.

Jabor:

If you don’t want them messing up a game, send the dev an email asking them to turn off expanding ads for that game.

It’s hard to say this without it coming out sounding selfish or whatever, but I really don’t think it’s my responsibility to contact every developer on Kongregate.

MrKytra:

well these ads help kongregate pay to run the site and to keep it running so just try to ignore them and just remember these help kongregate!

The problem isn’t with advertising on Kongregate. It’s with this one ad (or maybe ads that expand over the game area on mouseover, but this is the only one I recall seeing here).

In any event, I’m still wondering if this is even a real ad at all. Because it reads “for testing purposes” and it promotes a movie that hasn’t been in theatres for a year or so, I wonder if it’s not just the default built into whatever ad service Kongregate uses. If that’s the case, there’s even less justification for it to be part of the cycle.

You adblock the single ad, not the entire thing.

Maybe. The point remains the same?

Hmm odd, never happened to me. Maybe firefox automatically blocked it?

Btw I hope mkozaqii changes the avatar, everytime i see that red and white thing i automatically associate it with raneman64 and thinks.. “fuck he’s posting crap again, not going to read.”

Carados:

You adblock the single ad, not the entire thing.

You posted that while I was looking up how to format quotes properly, so I didn’t see it. The problem with that suggestion is that If I block it and you block it and a bunch of other folks block it (and it’s a real ad, which I’m not even sure of – see above), the overall effect is that Kong and developers that contribute games here wouldn’t get the revenue which they’d otherwise get if the ad was simply replaced by another one that wouldn’t inspire people to use Adblock in the first place.

I’m actually more interested in your response to matt’s point.

if the ad was simply replaced by another one that wouldn’t inspire people to use Adblock in the first place.

Exactly.

Carados:

I’m actually more interested in your response to matt’s point.

matt:

there’s an option when developers upload games to disable the ads that expand on mouseover on their page

Well, it’s pretty much what I said in response to Jabor: Why is it my responsibility to contact every developer on Kong?

Because you don’t like it, while its obvious others don’t seem to mind?

Well, it’s pretty much what I said in response to Jabor: Why is it my responsibility to contact every developer on Kong?

i don’t know, why?

IS THIS A TRICK QUESTION?

Btw I hope mkozaqii changes the avatar, everytime i see that red and white thing i automatically associate it with raneman64 and thinks.. “fuck he’s posting crap again, not going to read.”

Default avvy. Many many people have it, but not as many as they used to.

Anyway, I think it’s annoying, but I support/respect web developers enough to never use any form of an adblocker.

i dont have any adds i have some add blocker lol

Seems pretty simple to me:

If you don’t want to see it expand, don’t mouse over it.