The Morality of Web Advertisement Blocking 974
An anonymous reader writes "There has been some recent coverage of the over-hyped boycott of Firefox, in response to the rising popularity of the Adblock Plus Firefox extension. A recent editorial on CNET looks into the issue, and explores the moral and legal issues involved in client-side web advertisement blocking. Whereas TiVo users freeload on the relatively fixed broadcasting costs paid by TV networks, users of web ad-blocking technology are actively denying website owners revenue that would otherwise go to pay for the bandwidth costs of serving up those web pages. If the website designer has to pay for bits each time you view their website without viewing their banner ads, are you engaged in theft? Is this right? "
Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Insightful)
When you site warns me that it's going to resize my browser, install software and watch everything I do I'll stop blocking it.
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Insightful)
adblock subscription (Score:4, Informative)
I don't sift through every page and Adblock everything.
Check into AdBlock Plus subscriptions [mozilla.org]. You won't have to sift through any pages. The ads will be blocked automagically. That's what this discussion is mostly about.
Seth
Re: (Score:3)
Like all matters of ethics, there is a certain amount of trust between the two parties. On one side, there are the people who block ads, and on the other side there are the people who produce ads.
Most people don't block informative and tasteful ads that don't hamper their bro
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, I agree with you completely... if they need a click to generate revenue, they aren't going to get it from me anyway.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Insightful)
You had me up until this bit. When I go to a website, I am not engaging in any sort of bargain with the webmaster. I never negotiate what I will do or demand what I will get from them. There is no agreement that I explicitly agree to saying I will look at their ads. If there was such a EULA on a website, I would quickly opt out and not go to their site.
Some of the youngsters on
As to your stealing soliloquy, come on. What has been stolen? Did I break into someone's house and remove the ad profit from them? No. There is no physical thing that they have lost. They lost a potential profit. A profit that they are not entitled to. They can not demand that that I look at an ad, or download one. If they want to force people to pay for their web page, then they need to ask them for money. The subscription model has worked for a long time.
It's like saying that you are stealing from Walmart if you walk into their store and you don't buy anything. In this scenario, they may want you to buy their crap. Their whole business model is predicated upon people buying their crap. And you are using their employees' time, taking up valuable parking real estate, and a whole host of other expenses. Their costs are the same regardless of how many people come into the store. But since you did not buy anything, you have stolen from them more egregiously than any mp3 copying, EULA violating, device unlocking pirates. Right?
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. I never agreed to download the ad. I never agreed to even view the ad. I have no obligation to do anything just because the webmaster placed the ad on his publically accessible webserver, wanted me to view the ad, and placed an img tag to the ad on his page. My actions are not wrong and thus are not immoral.
Again, I have no responsibility to download ad files from websites I visit. I have no responsibility to view those ad files. That's my bandwidth I'm saving, which the webmaster wants to use. I have a right to control my bandwidth, thank you very much. My actions are not wrong and thus are not immoral.
YOU webmasters are attempting to create a responsibility where NONE exists. YOU webmasters offered these pages free for ANYONE to view. And now YOU webmasters are intimidating people unless they download your ads down OUR bandwidth and view your ads on OUR time. Last time I checked, that is called extortion. So sorry, if anyone is in the wrong it is YOU webmasters. That is where the immorality lies.
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually that is when I block the entire site, not just the advertisements.
It is when the advertisements covered up the site so you could not access the content (X-10 cams?) is when I got serious about blocking advertisements. Yahoo news was almost unreadable due to all the junk floating over the page. It was as welcome as reading a used newspaper after someone used it to mop up a spilled bottle of catchup. The flash floaties were so bad, I went to the extreme to fully remove flash from my machine so I could read the articles. Later other tools came out to deal with the problem, the best being flashblock. That gave me the best of both worlds. I could view flash content and control the ugly spills on the articles.
It was obtrusive advertising that started this mess.
Once flashblock was working it was a small step to find discussions regarding the problem and solutions. The solutions would not have had a market if there were not a serious problem to deal with. The advertising hasn't improved, except Google came along and showed the world that a page full of banner advertisements isn't required to have effective advertising. Search engines have for the most part have cleaned up their act, but most news sites haven't caught on and are playing games with flash advertising for those who haven't blocked it yet, article keyword advertisements, and the old standby banner advertisements.
A hint for advertisers is to be there in the search results. Provide lots of great sponsored content. When I need soething, I'll come looking for you. That is the best kind of consumer, ones that want your product. As an example I was looking for information on a failing lamp in my laptop. Do I replace the laptop? Can I replace the lamp? Is it expensive? Is it hard to replace?
A Google search gave me the answers and a vendor with reasonable prices. The vendor didn't need to buy a bunch of banner or flash advertisements to get my business. They just needed to provide the info I needed and a good catalog of the proper parts.
Here is the tutorial that got me to the vendor's site;
http://www.ccfldirect.com/lcdtutorial.html [ccfldirect.com]
Here is the table that told me what lamp I needed;
http://www.ccfldirect.com/lcdrepair.html [ccfldirect.com]
And from the table, here is the lamp I need and the price;
http://www.ccfldirect.com/2x29fuspccla.html [ccfldirect.com]
I found my bulk inkjet supplier and fuser supplier for my old laserjet the same way. I looked into how to refill cartridges, how to reset the ink level indicator, and such. The supplier with the info got my order. I found them from a Google search. I did not respond to a flash or banner advertisement. Those advertisements simply don't contain the info needed. Most click-through advertisements simply put you into a data mine site. They gather information on the hot new lead instead of providing the information you seek. Bad move. I'm not signing up to everyone's email list just to get questions answered. Visit the above example for the laptop lamps. Notice the total lack of data mining. They don't ask your age, income, e-mail, profession, etc. They simply provide an open door. From there I placed my order and supplied the information needed for the order. Notice who got the sale and who didn't.
Ad blocking isn't evil. It's just an efficient way to toss the electronic 3rd class mail in bulk that you never open or respond to anyway. The free samples of catchup not spilled on your web page is a bonus. You shouldn't let advertisers spill gooey messy stuff all over your pretty web page.
From a former ad profiteer... (Score:5, Interesting)
I knew of folks using ad blocking software (hell, I use adblock plus myself!) and would never have done anything to that group for the sole reason that I wasn't going to make money on them anyway and might as well make em happy instead of mad.
Oh - and I determined that most of my ad-clicks were unregistered folks who visited my site for the first time - one of those dirty little industry secrets.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You may run your Web site however you wish, but you cross a line when you complain about how I use my own property. Who are you, as a webmaster, to dictate what I can and can
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Insightful)
As a site publisher I understand the angle that it "blocks advertising", but as a web surfer I definitely understand. I don't put intrusive ads on my page, but if people want to block them, I understand.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Find another business model.
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Insightful)
The short story is, it's not theft; the user agent is just configured to ignore certain elements that match a pattern. It's the user agent doing it's job of presenting the content in an efficient manner to the user.
If you want to force people to view the content so rigidly, use a PNG or PDF.
Costs me money too (Score:5, Insightful)
This means that each advert on a page causes my computer to actively send and then receive additional data.
This results in real additional bandwidth usage on my part.
If I am using any kind of metered access, or even if I am using unmetered access but with one of the major ISP's who arbitrarily enforce unofficial bandwith caps, then I incur a real cost for viewing that advert.
So, me configuring my computer to not waste resources in that way is no more immoral than the web site configuring their page such that viewing the advertisements makes use of my resources.
...and SAVES the site owner money, too (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems quite reasonable and equitable to me.
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Interesting)
He used it for a month. We noticed in the logs that the traffic actually dropped. Only a handful of IPs actually sent a request for anything but the main page, a couple of which were myself and the site owner.
An interesting detail about the version of apache we used at the time.. Sometimes, when a user hits stop in the browser and the connection is reset is a specific but common way, the entry goes to errorlog instead of accesslog.
The 'less page hits' was compared to html (not all hits like images etc) on the old site, to both access and error entrys together for the new.
Anyways, needless to say, afterward he replaced that mess with his old website, however a few more ads to makeup for lost visitors. The traffic level dropped due to using html instead of one jpg, then rose slowly, but never came close to what it was before all the changes.
Just thought i'd share that experence.
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not like TV, where all you get is what the broadcasters send to you. You are the one who requests data from them. If all I want is the text (say, I want to read in a terminal via Lynx), then that's my prerogative and nobody else's. If I don't want Flash or JavaScript on my machine, then who is anyone else to tell me otherwise?
As the user has total control of the browsing experience, online adverts were an inherently broken revenue model from the beginning. The fact that users are just now being empowered in this respect does not change the inherent flaws of the advertisers' plan.
Well you're half right. (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other end there's another persons server, content and bandwidth. If they don't want to serve you pages, then they don't have to.
Everybody's happy.
Re:Well you're half right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Very true. He has every right not to serve me pages if he doesn't want to, and I won't complain if does that. What he does *not* have the right to do is to serve me pages and then bitch about how I view them.
Chris Mattern
Re:Well you're half right. (Score:4, Insightful)
He's got every right to bitch about how you view his pages. He just doesn't have any right to do anything about it besides refactoring his pages so the ads are harder to block.
Re:Well you're half right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is how we ended up with sophisticated ad-blocking in the first place. When it was a picture here, or a link there, nobody cared. But then the ads got more desparate and we got little shaking boxes, pop ups, great big chunks of Flash (which we pay for out of our bandwidth costs as well, incidentally). The ads become a big detraction to the website that we actually want to see. So naturally ad-blockers arise and become hugely popular. I put one in ages ago to try it out and then after a re-install, I didn't bother for a long, long time. But a couple of months ago, after visiting
If advertisers had been a little less greedy or desparate, they wouldn't be in this mess. But I have every right to not download things I don't want. And it's very, very easy to do that.
Re:Well you're half right. (Score:4, Interesting)
Better explaination. I surf xyz.com which has links to ad4crap.com and urdata.com. If you send the correct url with the forward from (what is the name of the tag?) tag in the header, xyz.com will get credit for a referal. The ad blocker can just throw away any results from the URL.
Re:Well you're half right. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well you're half right. (Score:4, Interesting)
When they had 8 minutes of commercials per hour it was no big deal.
For one of the recent alias special episodes they had 24 minutes of commercials for 38 minutes of programming. They actually started it a minute early and ran it a minute late to do this.
And they wonder why we are blocking/zipping through commercials?
An 1" x 5" ad for 1000 words of text would not be a big deal.
Dividing the same article into 4 pages (as a recent mythbusters did), each of which had 5 to 7 ads and only about 800 words in the entire article (so 200 words per page maybe) is just asinine and begging for ad blocking.
Re:Well you're half right. (Score:5, Insightful)
You see, my problem isn't with a site trying to make a profit, but rather with advertising. If CmdrTaco wants to hold a bake sale in the Slashdot corporate office, fine. If /. sells t-shirts or offers paid premium accounts, that's cool. But I object to adverts on principle, as I imagine many here do. I know what I want to buy, so there's no need to convince me that Shiny New Widget is what I need today. I come for the tech news (consolidated from other sources) and the chatter amongst other users, not for ads.
I don't pay for a /. sub, and I unabashedly filter ads while here (and everywhere else). If /. folds, well, them's the breaks I guess. I'll go back to USENET or some other site for my daily dose of tech ramblings and gossip. Seemed to work well back in the BBS days when most sites were free and most operators were glad to spend money on their labor of love. Sure, the dial-up BBS couldn't have hundreds of thousands us users online at any given time, so it was a different beast. But really, it wasn't that much different.
This site is cool, no doubt. It's a shame that there's no real valid business model for it to keep it from running in the red. It's one thing for sites with real original content to sell subscriptions (research publications, newletters, newspapers, etc.), but trying to charge for a site where the content itself is provided by all of us? When you think about it, it's one of those cases where "Step #2: ?????" doesn't really exist.
Re:Well you're half right. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well you're half right. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not your web server. (Score:5, Interesting)
With that in mind, the web page is on a private server which is open to the public. However, the owner of the machine has every right to block users who do not allow for advertisements.
See, with big sites such as CNN, I feel that their service is an auxiliary mode of delivering information in addition to their other services. However, with smaller sites such as communities, etc., I allow their advertising to pass through because I realize that for most of them, the advertising is the only thing keeping their servers up.
That's my logic. Feel free to disagree, but I feel it's probably more accurate than the parent post.
Re:It's not your web server. (Score:5, Insightful)
Chris Mattern
Re:It's not your web server. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not your web server. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a couple of sites I go to that are sponsored. That is, specific, RELEVANT companies support the site. The site displays the advertiser's logo and provides a link to their store. Guess what? I BUY stuff from that sponsor occasionally! I've never, ever bought something from one of these random, always changing ads. Not that I see them much anymore....
a better mantra (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:a better mantra (Score:5, Funny)
Re:a better mantra (Score:5, Funny)
Forget the t-shirts, it should be stamped on every MBA diploma and integrated into every word processor. Finally Clippy has found his purpose!
"It looks you are making a business plan. You do realize no one is obligated to behave in the manner required to make your business profitable, right?"
Re:a better mantra (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php/archives/2005/04/11/your-wish-is-my-command/ [paulbeard.org]
Well no. (Score:4, Insightful)
HTML isn't like television. Television is 25 still images a second; there is nothing to filter out except the entire stream. HTML is discrete chunks, and I can very easily tell my browser that I only want to view certain chunks...It's part of the design. I can change the fonts on the pages, I can reset the background color. I can turn off flash or javascript. Don't tell me I HAVE to view it like they "intented"...Hell, using Firefox it's often enough that you can't do that anyway because of some IE only horseshit.
Re:Well no. (Score:4, Insightful)
We filter *everything*. If the business model doesn't work, it doesn't work. Whining that it is "immoral" to not view adverts because a freely offered web page has the ads clipped from it is plainly stupid. Take the corners of Las Vegas in the evening as an example. People stand there and offer various cards for "evening companionship" to all passersby. Would they whine if someone took a card (freely offered by any of these vendors), and clipped the ads from them to only keep the picture?
Even viewed from other angles, the argument is fallacious. If that form of advertising is not working for you, choose another. If your sole goal is to present free information to all passersby, then do so. If your goal is to make money, and the offering of free web pages have their ads blocked... move on. Examples of this on the web are rampant. You log in to purchase items from many web vendors. If you do not read their adverts, so what? They don't care. Newegg never complains to me that while purchasing my new hard drive that I blocked the other adverts along with my purchase. If they did, I just wouldn't buy anything there and move on to a vendor who was not confused about their ultimate goal.
So tell me again why a browser that blocks images is a "gray area"? Since no morality is involved (see above paragraph) it just means that the user wishes to use a perfectly valid browser to enjoy what internet content interests them. Ad content does not interest me, and I block almost all of it. I watch television (what little I do watch) via Tivo. The adverts are annoying (usually oppressively loud after a quiet portion of a program), and I am uninterested in their content. I pay a cable provider, who in turn pays the originator of the program.
The same applies to the internet. I pay a provider to get information I wish. If I need to support sites that I enjoy special content from, I do so. If their only manner of gaining revenue is from the adverts, *and* they are giving the pages away in hopes of you paying attention; tough. Poor business decisions are not my problem. It is the responsibility of a good business to decide their ultimate goal, and format their decisions to accomplish that. A local store gives free samples on the weekends to anyone who visits. They don't complain when you don't buy the product, nor when you do not even inquire as to the company that provides the sample.
Why should the internet be different?
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Insightful)
And blocking ads from your computer is not wrong. Your comment is null and void.
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Insightful)
If you shine a light in my window, annoying me,
I cant draw the blinds? Because your commercial
interests are affected?
Bugger off, make some ads that are not offensive.
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Informative)
I block ads from most big banner providers because I hate them. For sites that depend on that revenue I tend to buy their stuff, or subscribe, or donate, or whatever.
For small providers or people who host their own ads? I don't block 'em. They're usually not as annoying to me as the interminable "Punch the Monkey to Win an XBox/iPod/Whore" ads and I don't mind giving them my business. Hell, to use an over-wrought example, look at Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com]...They put thought into the ads they choose to host, and the ads are relevant and informative to the people who frequent their site.
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, that's the real rub. I have adblock, but I've got a bunch of sites actually whitelisted because I don't mind their ads and I don't want to have a bunch of empty space all over the place (which, without the whitelist, I'm never sure would be ads or something else I'm missing). And I wouldn't even have adblock at all if it weren't for a few really bad apples that forced me into it.
Adblock is not something that everybody just has, and that's as simple to use as flicking a switch. Remember that most people - and I don't mean most people here, I mean most people in the world - have no clue what a "Firefox Extension" even is or how to install one. You need to make an actual effort to find out about this, to download it, to install it, to configure it so that it blocks what you want it to block. Even people who have the technical ability to figure this out are not going to do it unless pushed. It's not like everybody who hits the web for the first time immediately says "ok! I'm ready to start surfing! But first, how do I block the ads?"
Look at Google's model (at least to this point). They're making plenty of money on ads, and so are all the sites that rely on them. And I guarantee you they're not having any problem with adblock. Their revenue numbers certainly don't seem to show any. Why? Because their ads are not intrusive, in fact they occasionally even border on useful. I have clicked Google ads a few times myself.
It's both funny and strange to me that people still think the way you make money on ads is to be as annoying as possible, when the biggest company on the net became as successful as they are by doing exactly the opposite. Don't people ever learn anything?
If you ask me, any site whose model is to present you with the most annoying ads possible deserves to have a user set that relies on adblock. If you've got a problem with adblock, it's because you as a webmaster brought it on yourself.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So charge for access to the site and find how much your content is *really* worth. The best content sites are the ones that have quality original content and can charge for subscriptions (Wall Street Journal comes to mind). Failing that you might try to convince your readers that
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Interesting)
1. The ad servers didn't overload all the time and slow the page load to a crawl. I can't count the number of times I've had to block an ad server just to get a page to LOAD.
2. The ads weren't so obnoxious. Sound is an absolute no-no. Animation is almost as bad, but at least doesn't startle you half to death at 3am when you aren't expecting it. It does however tend to slow the page down, especially if there are multiple animated ads all dancing around and asking you to punch the monkey.
If they toned down the ads a couple of notches, and made sure their infrastructure could handle the number of ads they are serving I think a lot of people would be more than happy to put up with the ads in exchange for the free content. But it seems like no matter how much you say this the advertisers don't want to listen. They're stuck in the old TV mentality where they try to push as much dazzling crap at you as they can. The problem is Internet users aren't TV viewers; we don't want things shoved in our faces constantly. If we did, we'd watch TV. Instead of getting "mind share" they're just pissing everyone off.
(and speaking of TV will someone please bitchslap the people who compress the audio of TV commercials to make it sound obnoxiously loud?)
I think this is quite true (Score:4, Insightful)
I've found that when you have ads that don't have this problem, not only do I not mind, I can even be happy with them. Google ads are an example. They hold the record as the only online ads I've ever bought something from. More, I've done it several times. I don't mind them at all. The servers seem to be fully capable of handling the load, so they aren't slow, the ads are very unobtrusive and on Google itself blend right in, and they are very relevant to what I'm doing.
For example I'll search for something I'm interested in purchasing and rather than looking at the normal search results, I look at the ads. Here is a list of people willing to sell me what I want. The ad usually takes me right to the relevant page. Now that's useful.
However that's not how most advertisers want to do it. For some reason everything they know about advertising seems to fall out of their brain when it comes ot the web, and they believe that the answer is invariably make it more obtrusive and it'll work.
Not Insightful. (not even a little) (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure there's some fancy latin term for this fallacy, but I'll just call it the War Games defense. (The only winning move is not to play.)
The parent poster is saying if an ad is static text or image--no flash--and doesn't track you past the single page displaying the ad, then it is immoral to block the ad. Interesting.
I say, my stand on blocking ads has nothing to do with the ads. My argument doesn't depend on ads being obtrusive or anything else. I simply say, I control what I download. I choose not to download from certain sources.
You see, I don't get into a debate on types of ads. I don't even really address the issue of ads at all. I just say, I download what I want to download. If I think I'll never have any reason to request data from a domain, I might use a HOSTS file to direct requests for that domain to 0.0.0.0 just to protect myself from any inadvertent requests I may make.
Someone who wants to take the position that there is something wrong with not viewing ads on a web page has to play on my field and explain why the ISP connection and the computer I pay for are obligated to accept someone else's data without my request.
When I _can't_ go to the godammned site (Score:3, Insightful)
PLONK! goes that ad-server's IP!
Oh my. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to live in a fantasy world where I'm simply entitled by default to ad revenue, and I only have to deal with insidious "users of web ad-blocking technology" who are "actively denying" me my solid gold razor scooter. Fortunately for users, in the real world, a webmaster has to earn ad revenue by finding content that users want and ads they are willing to accept -- not by taking it for granted that they will just gaze longingly into the CRT clicking on everything that swirls.
For a long time, advertisers were able to support a huge number of frivolous web sites, partly because they could bombard the user with page after page of obnoxious flashing garbage for which no technical countermeasures existed. The collapse of the dot-com bubble eliminated the most unviable popup-pushers, and the rest are beginning to get the message. Popup blockers are normal mainstream software, and Google has had significant success selling all-text advertisements.
The website owners seem to think that we've pushed back hard enough, and should just deal with the sea of repellant Flash banners they want to drown us in. I guess those website owners are wrong, because clearly there are plenty of people who are not willing to tolerate the barrage of useless ads. We'll find a balance eventually, somewhere in between no ads at all and the websites whose masters believe they are entitled to a tithe every time their server sends a 200 status.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What drives me absolutely bonkers are sites that insist on using popups, especially those that work to circumvent any popup blocker I have installed. Sites that use CSS/Flash ads that glide over the screen, obscure text, etc. are equally annoying as they detract from the site itself.
Ot
Re:Oh my. (Score:4, Insightful)
How exactly will a webmaster find ads that users are willing to accept if the ads are blocked and nobody ever sees them? I agree with TFA that ad-blocking software poses an issue for web sites and for the users of the web in general. In the Webs current state the ads are what is supporting the production of most of the content you see. What happens when that support gets pulled out from under the web site owners? (Webmasters could get around the issue by inserting the ads directly in to the content instead of having them served by a third party.)
On the other hand, I wouldn't equate ad-blocking with theft. Websites are posting content in a public infrastructure where the viewing public has a great deal of control over how they see that content. If they don't like it then they can just charge for access, or engage in an ever escalating (and losing) technology war against the user.
next step? (Score:5, Insightful)
What about my bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
With a pipe, there ARE two ends to it you know.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What about my bandwidth? (Score:4, Insightful)
So here's the thing; you want to, for example, read an article on CNN. The article will be several thousand characters of data. The images for advertising are typically several times that or more. So when we watch TV, we get like 11 minutes of actual content for 4 minutes of ads. Even that's intrusive, if you ask me, but let's say we accept that. Your bandwidth basically gives you about 3 parts content to 1 part advertising.
On a website, your bandwidth often gives you 1 part content to 5 or 6 parts adverstising.
Too bad. The thing is, people used to accept TV ads for the content they got, then Reagan (rightfully, IMO, even though it ended up ruining things) deregulated TV. So now we have MythTV boxes and Tivos and avoid the ads altogether. The day they start sending signals to make it so I can't bypass the commercials is the day I cancel my Tivo subscription. If Myth somehow couldn't do it, I'd be better off not watching anything anyway.
So if websites keep getting more and more intrusive, and if they somehow manage to force these horrible, overbearing ads on me, I'd be better off not surfing at all. As far as I'm concerned, they have every right... but will be surprised to learn the only thing it earns them is disdain. The things that are REALLY important; the intranet at work, banking and investing, shopping... these are the only things I really want anyway, everything else (like slashdot) is just time wasting fluff.
Re:next step? (Score:4, Insightful)
Like a lot of others here, I didn't bother with adblock until the ads started actively interfering with my browsing.
That said, I think this whole issue is just a troll for the purpose of, naturally, driving more traffic to another fluffy ad-laden website.
Is it theft? (Score:5, Insightful)
No more theft than it would be if you were viewing web content with a browser that couldn't physically render the content. What if everyone used Lynx, [browser.org] for example?
Exactly. (Score:5, Insightful)
No. If you do not get the reaction you expected from me, then you have simply lost that portion of your investment. I have not stolen anything from you.
Next up on Slashdot, if she won't blow you after you buy her a drink, is she guilty of "theft of resources"?
Re:Exactly. (Score:5, Funny)
Next up on Slashdot, if she won't blow you after you buy her a drink, is she guilty of "theft of resources"?
No, that is "denial of service".
And if it happens with every woman in the bar, it's "distributed denial of service".
Re:Is it theft? (Score:5, Insightful)
Would I miss a free
Re:Is it theft? (Score:5, Interesting)
Although
"Would I miss a free
Maybe you'd just go somewhere else? I was more than happy with the interweb before the last dotbomb, I don't understand why people seem to think it should become another content media platform, if I wanted to watch shite I'd turn the TV on.
Actually I do... but I wont go into the American rhetoric of make a fast buck out of everything you can get your hands on and then some.
differences in not dl ad vs. not seeing it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Shift the example (Score:4, Insightful)
A non-issue ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A non-issue ... (Score:5, Informative)
You didn't even read the slashdot summary, much less the article obviously. The newspaper gets paid for including the ad, not for you viewing it. Websites often get paid by impressions, so if the ads aren't received by the customers then the revenue isn't received by the site. Totally different from the newspaper, who gets an "impression" with every paper sold guaranteed.
Still not necessarily wrong given how parasitic a lot of ads are now, hogging resources and making annoying sounds. But lets focus on the actual argument raised in TFA.
Re:A non-issue ... (Score:5, Funny)
Still not necessarily wrong given how parasitic a lot of ads are now, hogging resources and making annoying sounds. But lets focus on the actual argument raised in TFA.
I hope that clears things up.
Depends on what kind of ads they are (Score:5, Interesting)
I go to websites primarily for content, and if thats disrupted by advertisement then I'm not getting what I went there for.
Re:Depends on what kind of ads they are (Score:5, Insightful)
What this might cause, eventually, is for ads to be served through the same server and directories as content (to avoid URL pattern matching), for content to be served through the ads (like a flash file that provides both the ad and text content) or that ads sneak inside content (which they already do, in the form of sponsored articles, sponsored tv shows, on-screen banners during shows, etc.)
It'd probably be in the best interest of consumers to find a good middle ground.
And (Score:5, Insightful)
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ads? (Score:5, Funny)
We're using their bits? They're using my CPU. (Score:5, Interesting)
As soon as people learn that annoying (and often intrusive) Flash ads aren't appreciated, then there won't be a major reason for adblock.
Sounds like the MAFIAA (Score:5, Insightful)
Pay-per-view is dead, isn't it? (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I understand it, the pay-per-view advertising model has gone the way of the dodo, and they're all pay-per-click now. Telling me I have to let the ads through on a site, when I have zero intention of ever clicking on them, is pointless. In fact, since I'm never going to click on them, by not displaying them, I'm saving the advertiser bandwidth.
The Economics of Blocking Ads (Score:5, Interesting)
The Economics of Blocking Ads
Preface:
I have nothing against advertisers or advertising. I have no interest in eliminating advertisements from the internet as a whole. Filterset.G is a tool, and is not tied to an ideology; there is no ulterior motive. Many people believe that Adblock, Filterset.G, and similar projects will be "the death of the free internet", and attack people developing tools to block ads (including myself). I have no desire to "destroy" the internet or advertising.
Reducing Costs to Suppliers and Consumers
Advertisements are unwanted distractions to many people (i.e. those who don't buy from ads), and ad-blockers provide an easy way to remove them. Transferring advertisements to people who ignore or don't buy from them is costly to both advertiser and advertisee. Bandwidth isn't free, and the bits often travel thousands of miles through dozens of machines to reach consumers. For those who have no intention of buying advertised products in response to ads, it is a waste, and can become very expensive. The host of the ad pays to transfer it, and many ISPs charge users by the amount of data transferred, so they pay to see it. Advertisers rarely pay sites for ads based on impressions (views, not clicks/sales) anymore, due to the difficulty in gauging its success, so passive ad-viewers (who look, but don't click), needn't be considered.
Increasing Profit Margins
People who don't buy from ads are negative in the expense/profit ratio for advertisers. Eliminating the cost of advertising to non-purchasers increases profits given a constant userbase. The risk, of course, is that people who buy occasionally might also block ads and thereby decrease profits. For this reason, I strongly urge people not to install ad-blocking software on other people's computers unless they express a desire for it. The greatest threat from ad-blocking is from people pushing it on those who do buy from ads.
Demand Keeps Suppliers in Business
Let's hypothetically say that all internet advertising was eliminated overnight (which is not going to happen). That would cut a major source of funding for web sites, which would force many to close, decreasing supply. Demand, however, would still exist. As supply decreases, demand would bring capital to the "best" remaining suppliers. Subscriptions, donations, grants, and sales keep many ad-free sites alive today, and can easily continue to do so in the future. Hosting a small web site is fairly cheap, and the increasing userbase that drives up costs also increases the number of potential donors, subscribers, and purchasers. A worst-case scenario would be a drastic reduction of economically unsustainable sites, which definitionally provide too little benefit to users to warrant their covering the costs of operating it. Many people would call this a "best-case" scenario, separating the wheat from the chaff, though I take no stance.
Making Ads Less Obtrusive
If public perception of ads becomes increasingly negative, they will become decreasingly effective. Advertising strategies will necessarily shift to less offensive and distracting forms. Many users vocally support the replacement of banners and other obtrusive advertising methods by text ads in areas distinct from page content. Unobtrusive, low-bandwidth ads may not be as eye-catching, but they are well tolerated by all but the most aggressive anti-ad folks.
Forcing Ads
Many advertisers and site owners are researching methods of bypassing ad-blocking software. If ad-blocking is only done by those who do not buy from ads, the outcome will become increasingly negative as their efforts increase. Many people are becoming more and more fed-up with in-your-face ads, and are starting to boycott co
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No. (Score:5, Interesting)
In order for me to view their banner ads, my browser must actively request the data for that banner in a separate transaction from the one used to get the rest of the contents of the page. I see no reason for me, as the computer's owner and operator, not to forbid the browser from doing so.
As a good citizen of the internet, I think it a good thing that I don't clog the tubes with advertising bandwidth which I do not care to see.
then Quit screaming at me. (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Have sound. If it does your so forever block from my browser and wallet its not even funny
2. Overlay what I am reading. Having to click your ad away from the article text means I know exactly who I am never buying from.
3. Pop a window, over or under, its the same, your gone.
4. Any ad which causes my HD to spin up to load the damn support required for it, aka Flash and JAVA. If it pauses my experience it ends your chances.
5. Heaven forbid you dare ask me to download something.
You want might business. Then target those pages with simple and to the point banners and block ads. Do not animate my webpage. Put in bold letters why I should even pay attention to you. If you animate, make noise, or otherwise disturb my surfing you are intruding into my life and don't have that right
Re: (Score:3)
6. It better not move or animate in any way. Static pictures only.
Theft? (Score:3, Insightful)
Are we going to start getting take down notices from ad agencies now too due to this twisted logic?
No guaranteed business model (Score:4, Interesting)
These businesses (and many others) have been built on the assumption that in return for content, consumers are willing to be exposed to advertising. If that assumption proves to be false, then they are going to either have to find a new business model, or else convince the consumers that they should watch the adds. If the business is build on people looking at advertisements, and the consumers are refusing to look at advertisements, there is a basic disconnect there that does not bode well.
The other side is that if consumers as a whole refuse to support add supported business, we are going to have to pay in some other way. Figuring out the balance of this struggle isn't just important for websites. It is the same disconnect that we are seeing right now in television.
Yes, it's exactly right (Score:3, Interesting)
No one has to read someone else's ads.
It's obvious that some television ads are being made much more interesting and clever to combat the tivos. They have to MAKE you WANT TO WATCH THE ADS.
They have been succesfull. I watch more ads now than I did 2 years ago.
Largely gone are the brief playlets and illustrated lectures on the purchase of consumer goods.
If web ads were more interesting and less obnoxious perhaps they would be more successful.
The worst:
Intellitext popup ads.
Catch the monkey animated ads
Those ridiculous floating ads that sit in front of the site and scroll with you.
I put those in adblock right away!
Freeloading TiVo users? (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, before TiVo people used to skip ads by (1) going to the bathroom, (2) getting a snack, (3) changing the channel, or (4) talking. Does that make OTA tv-watchers freeloaders too?
This attitude is irritating. Over the air content is provided for free. There is nothing that says "to watch this TV show you must watch the commercials." Same with radio. Radio content is provided for free. There is no implied contract that I must listen to advertisements to enjoy the content.
It is my choice whether to watch/listen to the ads or not. This isn't a question of morality at all. It's also my choice whether I buy a product or not. Does not buying mean I'm being immoral?
If a car dealer says "If you don't buy this car, I'll starve and you'll kill my family," would you still buy the car?
Many analogies (Score:5, Insightful)
Arby's has a "five for five" deal where you buy five items for five bucks because they *hope* you will spend five dollars instead of, say, two dollars. You, being a clever person, realize you only want two of the five items, so you spend $2.50 on two items and leave.
Circuit City sells printers for only $30 because they *hope* you are going to pay $20 for a high-margin Monster Cable. You, being a clever person, buy the cheap printer and purchase a generic cable for $2 from Fry's.
CNN.com offers their content for free because they *hope* you will click on their ads (or at least glance at them) while you visit. You, being a clever person, ignore the ads or disable them outright.
The point is, any free or below-cost business model is a risk that the provider has accepted, and they are inherently providing these extra "benefits" at *no obligation* to the consumer. If the provider isn't willing to run the risk of people not following their suggestions, then it is time to turn that suggestion into an obligation (pay websites, or otherwise restricted-access websites). This is not a morality issue for the consumer, it is a business issue for the provider.
Who will be the first... (Score:3, Funny)
As a publisher and an advertiser: so what? (Score:5, Interesting)
We openly advertise that our ads are blockable, and that users who are not interested in ads SHOULD block them. For us, users who are not interested in the advertisers products should block the ads so that our click-through rate is actually higher. When one of our users blocks ads they won't click, our CTR goes up. When our CTR goes up, our direct customers pay MORE for the outreach than if we forced ads on everyone, even those who don't want ads.
We've been slowly updating our sites to actively disable ads for anyone who logs in and sets their ads to "none" (even if they aren't subscribers). Again, this is no concern to us.
The clicks we do provide to our advertisers are generally good clicks, with users interested in the site or product. This makes our site even more valuable, as we have had more than a few dozen advertisers submit bids for our sites specifically, rather than just random appearances because of the site being "on topic" for the ads. Directly bid ads get us a LOT more CPC or CPM (sometimes in the $1-$2+ range), so again it is good that non-interested readers would disable ads, making our click-through even higher for those direct ads.
Considering that we're making a decent 5 figures annually, more than 1/2 of that from direct advertisers rather than random AdSense ads, I think it's a win-win situation. Users who like what we write will either pay, or accept ads. Users who don't want ads don't display them, but they still give us a profit by being responsive to things written via e-mail or combox responses. I'd rather get 5 minutes of a person's time to respond than $0.15 for some random ad click.
When you run an ad-sponsored site, you have two choices: get a lot of crappy traffic and get low CPM (barely covering your hosting cost), or get GOOD limited traffic and get a high CPM from those accepting ads (or getting a profit through a subscription or an intellectual profit from a reply or an e-mail).
How about radio and TV advertizements? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then, corporate greed took over when TV stations (licensed to use other portions of the PUBLIC's electromagnetic spectrum) started claiming it was THEIR medium and that if you didn't watch the commercials but only the content they were broadcasting YOU were a THIEF. Absurd. They can transmit content and commercials but no one, absolutely NO ONE, has to watch every photon they transmit during any particular time period. That's the risk they take, especially if their ad content is so trivial or dishonest or begins consuming too large a segment of the time period.
There was a time when commercials took only about 6 to 10 minutes of every hour. Now they take 20 minutes or more, and in the case of Infomercials the full 60 minutes. It's NOT uncommon now for 6 or more commercials to run during every commercial break, with some breaks exceeding 10 minutes in length with only 2 or 3 minutes of show in between.
Infomercials should be outlawed. The cable companies are double dipping. They charge the advertiser for channel, and they bill the cable customer for "offering" the infomercial channel as part of the cable lineup. Are we stealing if we don't watch the Infomercial?
To make matters worse, the TV shows deliberately focus cameras on brand name advertisements and include product hype within the script of the show itself. And they not stealing time from us?
Look at it this way: (Score:5, Interesting)
When I transfer a + c bytes, that's OK. When I transfer only c bytes, I'm stealing. So in this case, it's stealing when I take less than normal?
Re:There will come a breaking point.... (Score:4, Insightful)