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.

Neither of you answered my question. Do you watch all TV ads or not? Because the moral argument is the same.

When I watched TV I consciously avoided buying products with annoying ads. Now I don't have a TV and can barely watch it because I can't stand the ads any more. (And now I buy products that do have annoying ads, because I didn't know they had.)

Anyway, I didn't block ads for years. The few times I actually was interested, they didn't ship internationally or it was something only for USA residents.

So sorry, websites had their chance and they blew it.

I started the blocking when they started with those horrible javascript hove over linking ads all over the place. This in addition to never returning to those sites that had them.

> 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.

If TV ads would be of good quality and only between programs and at most once during a program, then people wouldn't bother avoiding them. And as a result the ads would actually be much more effective.

But people are stupid and they think more is better, so now both viewers and the advertisers get ripped off by the broadcasters. The actual content is destroyed and ads are useless because there's an overload of them.

>
>
>>If websites want me to see their ads they have to make them unobtrusive and fast
>>enough. If they use javascript based random ad displays, it's usually too annoying
>>and it gets blocked. If sites host quality ads on their own server then it's fine
>>and I won't block it. But they almost never do.
>
>Careful - you're almost falling in to a 'No True Scotsman' fallacy. The only sites
>which can viably host ads on their own servers would probably fall under the top
>1% of websites (by traffic). Unless you're serving millions of pageviews per day,
>sellers aren't going to directly deal with you. There's no option other than to
>go through advertising networks. So, if you block all non-self-hosted ads, that's probably 95% of ads being blocked.

If I visit a website, I do that because I want to visit THAT website, not some random crap on the internet. By not hosting the ads yourself you don't take responsibility for them (and also slowing down the loading).

That you go through an advertising network doesn't mean you can't host (and select) the ads yourself. Maybe they don't give that option, but it's technically possible. I'd call it quality and content control, but if you don't care about that for your site, fine. But don't whine I'm not loading random crap from the internet.

>
>I sympathize with you in regards to slow javascript. Many websites are coded poorly,
>and they use blocking javascript (which delays the loading of the primary page content).
>I agree, this is annoying. I block Flash content for similar reasons (eats too much
>memory when I have many browser windows open).
>
>My initial comment in this thread was mainly directed towards people who use Ad-blockers
>100% of the time on ~100% of websites.
>
>
>>If websites want money from me then they have to offer a reasonable subscription.
>
>I think it's very hard for the little guy to carve out a living in this way.

It's also very hard for the little guy to carve out a living with ad revenue. But it can't hurt to give the option, can it?