multi-processing

[cellio]

Recently I found myself discussing web sites that force an ad at you for some amount of time before you can get to the content. (Some comics sites do this intermittently.) I said that this doesn't bother me, as I'll just do something else (read the next piece of email, launch another browser window, whatever) and check back in a minute. The ad gets a very small slice of my attention; by keeping it there for 15 seconds they don't get anything like 15 seconds' worth of my eybeall time. The person I was talking with found this approach unusual, but I suspect it's fairly common among my friends.

Once upon a time multi-processing was harder. I remember the days of a terminal (not computer!) connected to the ARPANet via 1200-baud modem, watching the next Usenet article sloooowly appear on the screen. It's not like I could do anything else electronic in parallel. Sometimes I did menial tasks like paying bills in parallel, but mostly I think I put up with it. Windowing systems set us free.

Now, I'm often doing a bunch of things at once, and this sort of thing is a minor speed bump rather than a noticable problem. In fact, my morning routine pretty much consists of, in parallel: reading two streams of email, checking half a dozen comics, checking the company Wiki, checking the day's meetings, updating and compiling my source tree, and reading news headlines. If the folks who came up with the ad strategy aren't just desperately guessing, they must have reasons to believe that people will sit and wait for their comic strip. Do enough people really do that?

Comments

[kayre]

I nearly always have several browser windows open and several different programs running as well; when I finish in one window, I cycle through the others until I find real content. I can't imagine actually sitting and looking at the ads. Even when my dialup connection is so bad that I can't run more than one window, I read while I wait.

[geekosaur]

I've been doing that for years. (Even with old text-mode dialups, there was screen(1) --- if not on the remote machine, then on the local one. (Or moral equivalent thereof.) :)

[cellio]

I use virtual desktops so I can keep groups of related windows together without having lots of desktop clutter. So maybe it means I have a dozen shells and half a dozen emacs windows open (and several browser windows); the CPU can handle it. :-)

[ealdthryth.livejournal.com]

I used to have several windows open on Windows 3.0. People would tell me you couldn't multitask and I would crash the system, but it worked fine for me. Now, I have several windows and switch back and forth if something is slow.

[cellio]

I did that on Windows 3.1 too. (I never ran 3.0.) Didn't have enough screen real estate to do all that much without getting annoying (this was before I'd heard of virtual desktops), but I was never a one-application-at-a-time person.

[madfilkentist]

If it helps to pay for the material, it's only a minor annoyance for me. I'd much rather have an ad delay than registration.

[cellio]

Oh, I don't mind the ads (except the ones that make noise); I think they should pay for their site with them if they can. I'm just surprised that it works given how easy it is to switch to some other task for a minute.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

I have waited for ads before, but only infrequently when I didn't have anything else obvious to do, such as when I had already browsed all the other pages I'd been wanting to read.

[jducoeur]

I'm a multi-processor like you -- indeed, most of my LJ reading is done one comment at a time as things compile. But I do get the impression that most of the populace isn't there yet, especially the older parts of it. Savvy multi-processing seems to be one of those habits you pick up as you get really used to the online life. (Which means that these interstitial ads are doomed in the long run, as the online generation gets bigger.)

[siderea]

Sometimes I do something else.

Sometimes I invest that time in figuring out how to defeat the ad for next time I visit the site.