The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

Don't know if anyone else has commented on this, I'm not going to read through five pages. You should not be having troubles with page load times with the ads on here, as I assume your internet is at least a little better than dialup...

I don't use adblockers because I don't really see the point, and I am aware of the implications that having one can have. Slow page loading is just a poor excuse, I wouldn't be surprised those using adblockers using the slowdown excuse brag elsewhere of their superfast 100 MBit/S+ internet connection. Unfortunately there will also be a whole heap of people that just don't care, or don't believe their de-adblocking contribution will make a difference.

 

Whitelisted!

 

guru3d.com whitelisted in uBlock.

 

Because you use 3rd party scripts for your advertising you have no way to guarantee our safety. Asking us to remove noscript and adblocking software is a security risk especially for users in a corporate environment. You guys at Guru3d aren't interested in computer security but if you were you'd know security researchers are calling this "the age of malvertising" where the vast majority of system infections come through man-in-the-middle attacks against advertising networks.

You need to take down this front page article immediately and issue a public apology to your userbase for attempting to coerce them into getting their computers infected. Crying about your dwindling ad revenue is basically a social engineering attack as can be seen by the multitude of posts before mine blindly turning off their browser protection putting themselves at risk.

Next you'll be asking your users to click on shortened links leading to unsigned executables. This place is basically a phishing site now.

Send me an email when you've issued your apology.
Goodbye.

~Scizyr

 

Doesn't slow page load times on my PC, but on my phone having no ads speeds up the browsing experience quite significantly and provides better battery life, which is why I opted to donate.

 

40 Euro. 3YY70010JP470715F (Donate really is under Contact menu, where I never had need to go.)

HH, I care little to what use you put that towards.

 

Whitelisted!

 

Hello Hilbert, i always turned off ADB on your site as i appreciate your work.

I am not here to tell you how to do your business but you should expand the guru3d website to other media focused trend, like youtube videos, using Patreon for loyal members that would directly donate you money every month.

For example Websites like Hardware Canucks have a site, but they focus their stuff on youtube, video reviews are now more consumable, and youtube can be an income summed to the site rev.

Even people that worked in IGN a very popular company left the company to make their own media based content. (kinda funny games)

My advice is for you to take action while guru3d is relevant, and still has a strong viewer base, you claim visitor views are 200k, if you had a patreon account, and promote the patreon on social media/website/YT/twitter and start a campain, let just say you claim $1 from patreon donations from 1/3 of that view base, it is still a considerable amount of money.

Take advantage of what you have done on your own, before is too late. Cheers.


This is not my personal opinion, but many have said to me

Why would i READ a website reviewing a 980gtx ti, wen i can find the same review on youtube and listen/view it on my way to work/home/etc?

and to be honest the only reason i lurk into guru3d, is that nostalgic feel and the great work you put out, but many other value their time more and want information to be handed out fast and easy with no opening browsers, and reading.

Is sad, but is true. But being practical is now a trend.

 

Ads

Love your site! Been on it steadily since about 2006ish. I get the best updates on new hardware/software from here. I'll disable the ad blocker if you need to. Though I will say in the old days ads use to come on the page and not open a separate page. But that's just me showing my age lol.

 

It might be easy to ignore the advice of xodius, but a lot of what he is suggesting is devastatingly accurate.
Guru3D has skirted by doing the same thing for over a decade. While impressive, a company unwilling to change spells doom.

This isn't a community run place like overclock dot net, it is more a company like HW Canucks. To survive you need to change with the times.

This brings to mind recent events with Jim Sterling on Youtube. He traditionally was a written game reviewer and scoffed at the idea of making videos and hated it when he was forced to make them. But he saw the change in the winds, went independent on Youtube, and ended up connecting with his own audience personally and directly.
He uses patreon, and disables ads on his own Youtube videos.

Due to this type of arrangement you create a deeper community, more then what a forum can offer, and the money you make holds you directly responsible to your audience.
In the end, Jim made more money.

Unfortunately 90% of Guru3D is copy pasta articles. Quality unique content is great on Guru3D but not often enough to warrant a subscription patreon type arrangement, and what keeps people coming back is the Forums.

Understand first that you don't need to burn your bridges to do something new, keep this going and try some new ideas. For the most part it's risk free, unlike people like Jim Sterling who quit their old job. Try a Youtube with ads. Practice making quality videos. Good tech Youtube channels are new and far between. Once you get better, consider going ad-less and using the patreon route.

 

I prefer written review. Because it is source of information much easier to absorb, go back and fort through.

Review may have YT video attached for some particular purpose, like noise comparison, of item showcase. But that is not necessity for serious review. And here we have quality stuff + placing anything of value on YT means, it will be abused. And its comment section would have to be disabled to prevent YT-trolls.

As I said, All what is needed is having easily, but not intrusively visible donation option. And forum subsection similar to FAH.

 

Like I added. You can easily go both.

I hate to keep using Jim as an example, but he also does this.
http://www.thejimquisition.com/

I don't like the idea of a donation, Guru3D aint a f'kin charity. I would love forking over some money for less ads, or some exclusive features.

 

Well, I tried to unblock Guru3d.com, then I press F5 (to re-read the site), and then Malware-Bytes gave me this warning:

Ads from other servers are out of control from Guru3D it seems. As much as I would like to support Guru3D (and other HW-sites) by let them showing _some_ ads, I don't want to connect to unsafe servers just for ads.

NB: The text on the pic is in Danish, as I am from Denmark neeye:

 

This is what you get by bashing IE for years and making even common users to go to browsers which make ad blocking super easy and effective... The main feature blogs and news sites advertise why everybody should avoid IE is ad blocking, which is kind of ironic as they live from the ads themselves.

Me myself, I only block everything I can which is traceable to Google. Other ads should work just fine

 

I've been a long time lurker here ( Jeebus!!! Over 10 years apparently ) I'm not as active as some but G3D is on my very short list of websites I visit several times a day and I would hate to see it struggle, let alone go under. I never donate to things but I would probably consider donating to this website and I've only just now learned that this is an option which is apparently hidden somewhere in the "contact us" section of the website as stated by another user so perhaps consider making it a bit more obvious ?

As for Ads, I run no blockers because I know the revenue keeps sites running and if I stumble upon a site where the ads have been done in an intrusive way or some sort of way that I dislike then my choice is simple and I just leave the site.

G3D does ads in a very subtle way and some days when I have the luxury of taking my time while browsing the forums I do often hover over adds and view them to give a tiny bit of support, my only problem is that the ads aren't exactly targeted to me unlike on other websites and some of the tech websites that do get advertised seem a bit fishy sometimes.

 

Done!

Thanks Hilbert for all the articles over the years, always enjoy reading them. One of best PC HW site imo, now all you need is to make peace with E..a and we are on horse :=)

Stay cool!

 

Ok i've had a look at adblock for chrome and it say that you can apply for your website to be added to their whitelist and it takes about 10 days , see below....

(How can I get my website whitelisted?

The process of getting your ads whitelisted takes about 10 working days:

If your website has ads that comply with the Acceptable Ads criteria, simply fill out this form.
Someone from Eyeo, the company behind Adblock Plus, will contact you to determine the exact ads, and check whether they comply with our criteria.
After you have made any necessary changes, both sides sign an agreement.
We submit the whitelisting proposal in the forum and the ads are whitelisted at the same time. The topic will stay open in order for the community to declare concerns if and when the candidate does not meet the requirements.)

https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads

but i'm sure Guru already know this maybe .

Ive now disabled adblock for this site and ads are now showing , im very happy to support Guru3d as its my daily read

 

Agree 100%. Reading a review is much better, like you said it's easier to absorb the information. Having all the comparisons to other products is also something I like to look at. I have watched video reviews but I soon forget what was said about the product, when I read something that doesn't happen, plus it easier to go back if you do forget.

On topic, some people here are far too paranoid about what the ads do. I have AV protection so if by the tiny chance something came up it would soon be removed anyway.

 

Could we get update at some point for what type of increase request like this makes?
..just curious ^^

 

Removed Ad-Block from Guru3D