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There was an article on the BBC last week that asked if ad-blockers were heralding the end of the free internet with more sites choosing to charge for their use. Didn't bother reading it.
I see it like this.
In earlier days of slower connections ads were consuming lots of bandwidth and slowing down pages.
Nowadays such things wouldn't be an issue, but ads all too often block or interfere with use of a site.
Ad-blockers are not there (for most people) because they object to seeing ads, they are there because people object to crap web design that prevents them using sites properly.
A website I occasionally browse that is essentially a number of message boards recently bared users who had adblocking enabled. Thousands of users stopped using the site. They removed their adblocking blocking.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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chriselst wrote: message boards recently bared users who had adblocking enabled
That's taking the whole revenge pr0n thing a bit far isn't it?
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I use an adblocker because mostly the ads are a distraction: they animate, they flash, they annoy the heck out of me. Some are even deliberately designed to look like part of the website, so I click on it by mistake.
If I like a site and it's ad supported, then it can go on my adblock whitelist. But that will be rescinded if the ads are too intrusive. I've seen sites where it's hard to find the damn content without a blocker!
If a site won't let me in because of my use of an adblocker - there are plenty of sites out there that will...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Same here, to which I'll ad I also use ad blockers when the page is slow to load because of all the 3rd party crap they're bringing in (taboola clickbait container can EOADIAF). I'm also increasingly writing rules to get rid of native html that interferes with my use of the site: Historically links to random other articles injected in the middle of an article were the top offender for breaking the flow of my reading. Closely followed by divs that tried to follow as I scrolled down the article but moved jerkily or lagged the scroll noticeably (visual distractions). More recently, site headers and top of article graphics so big that they push the text to the bottom of the screen or off entirely are taking the bulk of my new block rules. Since most of the offenders do at least occasionally put something useful in the graphic that means I end up decapitating them and ripping all the site header information off instead.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Advertisers pay for views not for responses. The higher your 'circulation' the more you can charge. Ad blockers prevent 'impressions' so the page view does not count towards the 'circulation' figure. If the figures are sufficiently affected then advertisers will simply go elsewhere (TV, radio, print etc.) where they know they are not being 'censored'. It's no skin off their nose but it would effectively disable the Internet making it a luxury that only the wealthy (relatively) can afford.
It is not the purpose of the largest advertisers to pick up passing trade but to get brand recognition so that when you do need or want something that they supply at some later date theirs is the first name you think of. So clicks are almost irrelevant (what are the chances that they'll be advertising exactly what you want at exactly the time that you want it?) They want to be seen, even it's just in your peripheral vision or merely subliminal. Ad blockers mean that they don't get what they are paying for. Would you keep going back to a shop where you can buy anything you want as long as you don't remove it from the shelf?
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Member 9082365 wrote: Advertisers pay for views not for responses
Advertisers pay for views, or clicks, or downloads, or registrations, or visits to their site, or views of their webinar, or increased awareness of their product.
The days of pay-per-view ads being the dominant model are long, long gone.
Member 9082365 wrote: So clicks are almost irrelevant
Again I beg to differ: Cost-per-click is the primary business model of Google.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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It's the ones with sound that annoy the heck out of me. Videos that play or adverts that display over the content of the page that render so badly on mobile browsers, where you have to scroll to finds the 'X' to close it.
If they could go back to the banner/sidebar ads, I don't think anyone would be bothered about blocking them.
Then there's the fact that more people use mobiles now, and many of those have data limits, and I'm guessing adverts use more data than content on many pages.
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Seeing a trend whenever a discussion like this comes up... People don't block ads because they're ads... They block them because:
1) They're an increasingly-popular malware vector
2) Audio/Video ads are incredibly annoying and need to die
3) Ads that pretend to be part of the site are annoying and need to die
The mobile data argument is somewhat valid, but only really matters when category #2 above also applies, since a static image usually isn't that big a deal, assuming it's compressed properly.
So if sites would just go back to static images that don't try to trick you into clicking them, people probably wouldn't block them as much... Like some other geeks, I whitelist the sites that show reasonable ads, like CP...
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Totally agree, ad's have a place, after all, everything has a price, but some advertisers got greedy, which may lead to their own downfall.
It's only history repeating itself, again and again and again.
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It amazes me how "marketing types" think the Internet was created just as a portal for them to shove crap in my face. I've been in I.T. since 1982, and I can tell you the Internet got along just fine for the many years before ads first appeared.
99% of websites are just pulling content from other sites and slathering their stupid ads on top of it. Just do a search for a phone number. It's all garbage sites that just list every phone number so Google will pick up their page and show ads. That's what the Internet is becoming.
You want to block me because I block your ads? Go for it, I wouldn't want to visit a site like that anyway. What we need to do is create new content, by like minded people, create open source software, ad free sites running on open source OS and webservers, and marginalize the marketing jerks into oblivion where they belong.
Ads are the reason I junked my TV years ago. They are why I went Asterisk for my phone system so I could write my own telemarketer-jammer software. I won't allow a new computer to get on the open Internet until all ad-blocking software is in place and ready.
I HATE ads. It's WAR as far as I am concerned!
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Basildane wrote: What we need to do is create new content, by like minded people, create open source software, ad free sites running on open source OS and webservers
Well, yeah. Good luck with that. And while you're at it you can then "open source" the hardware and the rent for the space in a data center as well (or build a data center for free). Oh, and don't forget the power plants, as you'll need some electricity to power all those server. Oh wait, all these things don't run by themselves. Lets hire some people to manage the servers, etc. I'm sure they aren't expecting any pay at all!! 
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Basildane wrote: It's WAR as far as I am concerned
Forgive me if I'm wrong here, but I bet you don't hate ads.
I think you hate ads that are annoying and being shown in obnoxious places when and where you don't want them on topics that are of no interest to you.
Let's say, however, that you're in the market for a new toy. The Fun-o-matic 3000. You've read the reviews, you've mucked around with an older version, and you know the new version is coming out. Imagine if you saw an ad telling you that it had just been released and was 20% off? You're ready to buy, you're about to head out to get one, but here's an announcement that would save you a couple of hundred.
I'm assuming you wouldn't hate that ad. Assuming it was shown in a sensible place and didn't interrupt your viewing experience.
Ads, to me, are like the proverbial gun. Ads don't kill your viewing pleasure; Crappy obnoxious ads that make your viewing experience awful kill your viewing pleasure.
Because of the actions of a few advertisers the entire industry pays - and pays dearly.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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AdBlock Plus is effectively the same as you paying a company to erect blinds in front of storefronts in a Mall while you wander past the store. There's a side door that allows you to get into the store, but you need to know it's there.
Doing this in a Mall would get you arrested and charged with a number of things including Obstruction of Business.
Rage wrote: People do not click on online ads
People do click on online ads. The better the ad, the more they click. The more relevant to the site, the more they click. The more aligned with a person's interest, the more they click.
<rant mode>
I have a huge issue with people saying "they hate ads". We hate annoying, off-topic and obnoxious ads that interrupt our experience, but we don't hate ads. We actually like some ads - especially when they save you a ton of money, or alert you to a solution you didn't even know existed, or is related to products you really care about. New clothes, new toys, new gadgets; upcoming events in your hometown you would hate to have missed. The release of the next Star Wars. Some ads are doing us a favour.
There is a group of advertisers who have put a blight on advertising. Their ads are trumpet blasts designed to shock you into clicking. They buy the cheapest ad inventory and do not care, one bit, about how their ad affects your experience.
These are the guys who made AdBLock possible.
The other advertisers are people like you and I. We build something. We want to share it. We want to make an honest business out of our craft and want to show our ads to those we feel would deeply benefit. They advertise and choose sites and targeting criteria that minimise over-spray in order to not annoy people. Except because of the slime balls selling their One Simple Trick ads their ads are blocked.
Online Advertising is crucial for the online economy. It helps the publishers, the companies making the products, and the consumers looking for their products and services to continue building their own products and services.
We should not be blocking ads. We should be working to make advertising better. More considerate, more informative, more of a conversation. If an advertiser can't have a mature conversation it should be banished to advertising hell.
But throwing the baby out with the bathwater is a knee-jerk and damaging reaction.
</rant>
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I agree, but... even some ads here on CP I find annoying. Mostly if it has a picture of a person looking at me -- I really don't like that. The ones with a pretty girl are, of course, generally less irksome. Particularly the recent one with the big word "BI" beside her. 
I do not use a blocker, other than IE's "ActiveX filtering" if that counts as a blocker. But only because I find third-party crap even less appealing than the ads I see.
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Movie Quote Of The Day
That little wimp. He wouldn't know a new idea if it hit him in the Pachenga.
Which movie?
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The Microsoft Story?
veni bibi saltavi
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The Apple Story? 
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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The Facebook Story
veni bibi saltavi
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My colleague, who sits right next to me
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QA: The Askers Story.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Car noises.
When do we want them?
Neeeeeooooooow
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You just ran over that cat, you realize?
"I had the right to remain silent, but I didn't have the ability!"
Ron White, Comedian
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Stop before you become PompeyFour
veni bibi saltavi
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