slacker (s@lack.er) on 4/21/12 wrote:
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>iz (i@z.x) on 4/21/12 wrote:
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>>So you watch all ads on the telly too? You never look or walk away, or skip channels
>>when ads come up? You don't skip ads when watching recordings either I suppose.
>
>Please see Paul Clayton's post. When you block ads, you categorically deny any
>chance of a website earning any income. That said, the television advertiser model
>is going to have to change, given the reduced number of people who watch commercials
>due to technologies like personal video records.


How is using an ad blocker any different than using a DVR and fast forwarding through all commercials? In both cases, some people hate the ads enough they make an effort to avoid them, but many people do not. IIRC about 50% of DVR users skip ads as a matter of course. Stats on browser ad blocking are harder to come by, but looks to be measured in the high single digit or low double digit percentage. These people won't buy the product, so advertisers shouldn't want them anyway. A site may display more ads if people don't block, but the click thru percentage is lower so I can't see how they would realize any more revenue (unless the advertiser's being stupid with how they pay sites)

I'd say mobile browsers are a much bigger problem for sites that live off of ad revenue, because you don't have much real estate to display ads. Users scroll around to see the content and if there's too many ads in the way (or worse yet, those super-annoying popover/hover ads) they'll vote with their feet in far greater numbers than desktop users would, and patronize a site that isn't so infested with ads. I assume Android phones already have ad blocking software for its browser. I'd certainly use it if it was available for my iPhone, even if all it could do was kill the popover/hover ads because those are so offensive and seem to inordinately slow down Safari.

I'm totally fine with free ad-supported apps that have the permanent banner ad at the top or bottom, if web standards were modernized and allowed a site to interface with a mobile browser to include a similar banner ad I think few would complain, but sites that are sized for a desktop (1024x768 or greater) but are 50% ads are pretty much broken for mobile use. If they're nice all the banners are top/bottom and/or to one side so you pretty much don't see them once you zoom and vertical scroll the content. But some are mish mashed all over the place, and you have to do a lot of horizontal scrolling in addition to vertical scrolling, and they tend to be sites I avoid visiting as a result.

Site owners can moan all they want, but there's no way to force end users to see your ads, let alone click on them or buy the product. You can use cookies so that users who don't download the ads don't see your content, but that would be easily fixed with ad blocking software that downloaded all the content while simply skipping displaying the ads. You could make your website accessible only to IE 10 users running on the Windows 8 Metro desktop, since IE running under Metro doesn't permit any extensions, and therefore will be incapable of blocking ads. But you'll have to hope against hope that people will adopt Metro in huge numbers :)

If everyone used an ad blocker then I'm sure the web would change. I couldn't see individual web sites (other than a few really major ones) charging for access. There's a reason why you can't buy access to one individual cable channel, the same would apply for web sites. You'd buy access to a network of them, so if (just as an example) RWT wasn't in your network but Ace's Hardware was, you'd use Ace's, unless you REALLY liked this site. Just like if your cable package includes ESPN but not FSN, unless you're really into sports you probably don't pay extra for the package that includes FSN. Unlike TV channels, where if you want to a see a particular show or a particular sports team you MUST have that channel, websites are essentially interchangeable. I adjusted from comp.arch on Usenet to this site. If I couldn't use RWT anymore I'd switch to Ace's or somewhere else. The only ones I consider completely irreplaceable are Google and Wikipedia. That's the real problem website owners face if they tried to get people to pay, they don't have anything like the pull a Big Ten football, Desperate Housewives or Jersey Shore has that fans will demand to see.