Is ad blocking stealing from sites we love?

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beowuuf
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Is ad blocking stealing from sites we love?

Post by beowuuf »

Interesting article from arstechnica.

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/20 ... roblogging

Ever since the newest firefox I've been blissfully advert free, assuming that page views still = ad revenue to some of the smaller sites I like. I actually didn't realise ad blockers stopped the adverts from even being served, instead of simply stopping them from being displayed.
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Sophia
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Re: Is ad blocking stealign from sites we love?

Post by Sophia »

Yeah, and for every site that is just trying to make a legitimate amount of revenue showing you legitimate ads, there are two that are trying to use every Javascript trick and browser exploit to shove ever-more garish ads into your face in ever-greater amounts. What I really want is a plugin that will disable audio in your browser, period, unless you give permission for it to work. Ads with sound are the worst...
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beowuuf
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Re: Is ad blocking stealign from sites we love?

Post by beowuuf »

Of course, go to either extreme and people take advantage. However, at the very least firefox lets you disable the ad block on a site by site basis. So any sites you use, and trust, you can selectively allow.

Also, even legitimate sites gets crap ads thrown at them. The good ones I've seen actually get rid of those, or even disable their ads services for a while to get rid of them.

Anyway, that's what I've done, go through my most visited sites that I care about and re-enabled ads for them.
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Re: Is ad blocking stealign from sites we love?

Post by PaulH »

I use IE (yes, start...), and have DLed an add on that blocks the ads. Bliss. I only did this for the reasons Sophia says, nasty, full in yer face ads.
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Re: Is ad blocking stealign from sites we love?

Post by Gambit37 »

One of the main reasons I block ads isn't because they're ads, it's because they can be so bloated that they slow your browsing down.

I use Chrome for general surfing these days and it now has extensions -- with an ad blocker. Which was great until I realised that it's not clever the way it is in Firefox: ads are still served, they just are hidden from display using a simple CSS instruction. So no benefit to speed at all.

To be honest, I don't feel guilty for disabling ads. I spend plenty of money online on sites big and small. If there's a service I want to use, I'll pay for it. An advert isn't going to change my mind one way or the other.
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beowuuf
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Re: Is ad blocking stealing from sites we love?

Post by beowuuf »

Indeed I hate those on incidental sites I go to. On the proboards forum I formed, there started to be irritating 'roll over and explode' adds I hated, so I actually paid for a while for being add free for everyone, though google made it an irritating and unfair process.

However, proboards pulled the ads themselves, went ad free for a while, and are back with reasonable ads.

Considering the forums I use there are completely free and functional and they're usually pretty efficient with anything they do, I don't mind turning off ad blocking there. Similarly for some of the webcomics I browse, or one or two of the free website tools I use.
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Re: Is ad blocking stealing from sites we love?

Post by beowuuf »

@Gambit: Funny that the google browser would still let the ads get served... :D

Unless this was a third party extension, in which case never mind!
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Re: Is ad blocking stealing from sites we love?

Post by Gambit37 »

Yep, third party, sorry didn't make that clear.
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Re: Is ad blocking stealing from sites we love?

Post by Joramun »

I use Chrome for general surfing these days and it now has extensions -- with an ad blocker. Which was great until I realised that it's not clever the way it is in Firefox: ads are still served, they just are hidden from display using a simple CSS instruction. So no benefit to speed at all.
At some point, if everyone uses ad-block, the business model of the internet will crumble.

I guess the guy from Dwarf Fortress has anticipated that, and he is making decent money with pay-pal contributions !
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beowuuf
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Re: Is ad blocking stealing from sites we love?

Post by beowuuf »

So has Kingdom of Loathing for another I can think of, but the donation model (or ransom model) only goes so far and so not viable for most businesses. I think the article already showed what will happen - the source for content will be served in the same way as the ads, so you'll have to disable ad block to see the content. Recently this happened with Penny Arcade's PATV, simply because people#s ad blocks were blocking the ad streaming at the start, so the actual show couldn't load after.

The chrome feature gambit hates for speed is the necessary step for everyone to be happy - serving ads but then not showing them. Like having tv commercials, but not being forced to watch them.
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Re: Is ad blocking stealing from sites we love?

Post by sucinum »

I wouldn't buy anything anyways, so the ads would be lost on me. And those ads are financed by the revenues they create and not by the views, so I don't feel bad about blocking.
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Re: Is ad blocking stealing from sites we love?

Post by beowuuf »

That's exactly the point of the article - they're not. If clickthroughs were the only means of revenue generation many small sites would get nothing worth the hassle. Like many advertising methods, adverts also pay money just for the 'face time', represented by the page views generated by each site, ads as you say they put through some filter of 'x pageviews surely equal y smaller base of consumers reached. Except those views are actually based on the ads served, not just by how many views a website can boast. So if less ads are served due to adblock, it does register. And due to the metric of serve x to get y, all our null views actually count.

Anyway, just something i hadn't appreciated - i counted on adblocking to provide less pain to me as a consumer while not screwing over anyone who i actually want to support passively.

The trouble is that if it's perceived as a problem, server sides have many ways to make adverts intrude and start that war (isn't it bad enough pirates and games companies are in a progressively more annoying DRM pissing war) and we lose many cool 'free' sites that for the moment require a releatively painless way to be subsidised by us.
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