
Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love - pavs
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars
======
motters
I've no real objections to advertising online, so for a long time I didn't use
an ad blocker. However, in the last two or three years some adverts on sites
which I visit often have been becoming increasingly offensive. Flashing
animated images, pictures of the inside of people's mouths, and semi-
pornographic ads are something which degrades my web viewing experience and if
a technical solution to this problem exists then I have no hesitation about
using it. For the foreseeable future it seems that ad blocking will remain
necessary.

Perhaps the solution is some sort of code of conduct for advertisers. If ads
are discreet and respectful of the viewer then I'd certainly be prepared to
stop blocking them.

~~~
romland
_If ads are discreet and respectful of the viewer then I'd certainly be
prepared to stop blocking them._

I can only speak for myself but a solution does not seem that far off (at
least not to get me to see your ads). While I agree that some sort of code of
conduct may be a good idea, I don't really see it working out in the long run
what with everyone always being willing to sacrifice good will for a quick
buck.

That said, I use NoScript in Firefox and I run it for other reasons than
blocking advertisements and I don't have an ad-blocker installed. If I white
list a website it means I made a deliberate choice to trust whatever it is
going to throw at me. The most important thing here is that I did _not_ allow
any third party to serve me some random code (plain markup is fine). I have no
way of telling whether the site I just white listed in fact knows what their
external advertisers actually serve. And this is proven again and again by how
site owners expect visitors to contact the site when they see an ad that is
intrusive so that they can "nuke it". This to me makes it a no deal.

To kill two birds with one stone: Serve your advertisements from your own
servers and if I want to read your content I have to make a choice whether to
trust you and your webserver(s). If you violate my trust then I will go
elsewhere and I am no longer a waste of your resources and you are not a waste
of mine.

If I have for some reason decided to not let you run dynamic content on
whatever device I am currently on you simply have to respect that or I leave.
You still have the opportunity to serve me static ads, surely that's got to be
worth something. You don't know my reasons for not white listing you (as this
article states as well). What surprised me about this link was that I did not
see a single advertisement on the page. This means they are all using
JavaScript or Flash. Sorry, your loss. And eventually my loss as well since
the website might not live to see another day due to lack of income.

Incidentally, easy white listing [of script execution] for sites is also the
only thing stopping me from switching to Chrome today.

~~~
mattmcknight
"Serve your advertisements from your own servers and if I want to read your
content I have to make a choice whether to trust you and your webserver(s)."

Unfortunately, the advertiser then has to trust the publisher on how many
users visited the site (or come up with something less intrusive that counts
views).

~~~
romland
Absolutely.

Amazingly this trust has worked well enough for television and radio (and its
advertisers) for decades.

~~~
mbreese
No, the advertisers in radio and tv are in the same boat as the stations
themselves... no one really knows how many people really saw/heard an ad. They
just both choose to trust a third party (neilson/arbitron) to give them the
ratings. It just isn't possible to know for sure how many people saw an ad
from a broadcast. Cable/sat and DVRs make it a bit easier, but only a bit.

On the web though, it's ridiculously easy to verify each request that there is
no need for the trusted third party.

------
psadauskas
Host your own ads, that way they won't be in my ad-blocker's blacklist. If
your adds become annoying, then they go in the blacklist.

I'm wondering if, between ad-blocking and tivo, separate ads and commercials
will be going away soon. I'm perfectly OK with the judges of American Idol
with Coke glasses on their desk, or a sentence at the bottom of a blog post:
"This post brought to you by FizzBuzz.com". I also don't mind the ads at the
front of some podcasts, spoken by the same people that narrate the podcast
itself. <http://ruby5.envylabs.com/> is a good example of advertising that I
don't mind one bit. Similar to how old radio shows were "sponsored", and the
sponsor got a mention a few times throughout the show.

~~~
lucifer
Exactly: win win for all (except Big Brother).

How about this as an alternative:

Modify the plugin to route the GETs for the ad content through an anonymizer
server.

------
gkefalas
When it comes to ads online, though, isn't the right cliché "the cat's out of
the bag?" For years before ad-blocking became widespread, the more tech-savvy
users complained and warned that the more aggressive ads became, what with
popups/unders, talking ads, etc., the more likely they would be blocked. (I
seem to remember we were poo-pooed by the marketers saying that "real users
don't care," though this may be a nerd-chip-on-shoulder revisionist memory.)
But, here we are.

It's unfortunate that there's the collateral damage that affects non-obnoxious
sites; and, while I whitelist the sites I frequent, and many here may as well,
I'm sure we're the minority.

That being said, here's about as close to a real-world analogue for my
thoughts as I can get: in NYC, I'm sure there are people in Times Square
trying to gain signups for Greenpeace and other "ethical" purposes mixed in
with the other people hustling CDs, comedy club tickets, and the like, but I
just ignore everyone as I walk by, wholesale, because stopping and seeing what
everyone's about will turn a brief walk into a pain in the ass.

I'm not sure what the answer is; perhaps the various adblocking technologies
could make whitelisting a site even more obvious? With AdBlock Plus, you hit
the drop-down and choose Disable on foobar.com, but it requires an active
interaction to seek that out. GlimmerBlocker for the Mac is even more buried
(as it's a proxy, it's in System Preferences.) Maybe switching to putting
placeholders where the ads _would_ be with a short message and a single click
to whitelist would make it a little easier for users to both see how many ads
a site's pushing as well as whitelist the site with the minimum amount of
effort? I donno.

~~~
hga
A better phrase, especially in connotation, might be "the well has already
been poisoned". After abusive ads have prompted you to install an ad-blocker
you're not likely to look back. Nor are you likely to have sympathy for a site
like Ars Technica that _admits_ they serve abusive ads (" _sometimes we have
to accept those ads_ ").

------
aneesh
I'm not sure sympathy is an effective business model. If the ads are annoying
enough to make lots of people block them, maybe there's something wrong with
the ads, not the people.

~~~
el_dot
Exactly. There is a major opportunity lurking here. Online ads suck, actually
ads in general suck, but how does one fix them? Sounds like a good challenge.

~~~
axod
Only a tiny amount of people think ads suck. It's a very small minority.

~~~
_delirium
Hmm, if you mean people opposing the very concept of advertising, then I
agree, most people don't. But I hear complaints about the increasingly
offensive/intrusive nature of online ads in particular from pretty much
everyone I know, including elderly relatives. I think a lot more people would
use AdBlock if they knew it existed / knew how to install it.

~~~
axod
I disagree. It's a small niche thing. Like people who don't own a TV.

adBlock is fundamentally bad for the web. I think a lot less people would use
it if they understood that.

~~~
_delirium
If you're going to make a TV comparison, I'd say it's more like people who own
a TiVO.

------
mortenjorck
The most important thing to sustain an ad-supported business model, above and
beyond anything else, is the quality of the ads. Ads that pay well but drive
your userbase to block them or leave will no longer pay when the impressions
drop, but ads that look nice, aren't intrusive, and are relevant to your
audience will keep people coming back.

Look at sites on The Deck's network. They each have one ad, targeted to
creative and tech professionals. The ads tend to look more like something the
Iconfactory would put together than the average "1 rule 2 a flat belly" dreck.
They give both the site _and_ the ad an ethos of premium quality.

~~~
fuzzmeister
The problem is, having an ad blocker installed means you won't see the ad in
the first place to make a determination of quality.

~~~
viraptor
Only if you block using a 3rd party provided list. Many people simply install
ABP and block only the most annoying things.

~~~
natrius
For sufficiently small values of "many". I don't think that's a very common
practice, and _those_ are the people who are treating the sites they enjoy
unfairly.

------
Willie_Dynamite
Well, if websites stop serving their ads via centralized servers tracking my
every move across the web, I might consider not blocking them anymore
(provided they're not animated and/or huge).

~~~
enjo
The point still holds.

If you don't like it, don't consume the resources of the site serving the
adds. This idea that your entitled to the content, without actually 'paying'
for it (you pay by giving up a bit of privacy to heighten the value of the
ads) is just wrong in my world view.

It's not stealing. It's not piracy. It's just the wrong thing to do.

~~~
Willie_Dynamite
Pft, that gentleman's agreement was broken when they sold my privacy down the
river.

~~~
ErrantX
They are not selling your privacy, don't be dramatic.

~~~
djcapelis
Given that they are in fact exchanging his privacy for money, I'm not sure
your assertion holds... perhaps the poster is being over-dramatic about it,
but I don't see how they're not selling privacy to some extent.

Selling people's privacy is part of an ad company's revenue stream. Ad
networks pay sites to post ads. Sites make money, in part, from selling their
user's privacy.

One can quibble whether or not this is a big deal, but I don't think one can
say it simply doesn't happen.

~~~
ErrantX
It doesn't really happen though; to _sell privacy_ you have to remove a
portion of it to sell.

Now we can argue the semantics of whether the act of visiting a website is
considered private knowledge. I'd argue not - it's like walking into a shop,
the shop has the right to say "hey you know who was here earlier?". But at the
end of the day "they are selling my privacy" is over dramatizing what is
happening. By visiting any website you run the risk - how do you know they are
not selling the IP logs directly etc.

Visiting websites is just, within reason, public knowledge.

I also wonder how many advertisers actually use the data to target ads - and
how much of it is used simply for numbers tracking (I dont know either way but
it would be interested to see). I mention this because, when I run w/o ad
blockers I don't really see anything actively targeted at me.

This incessant use of the word "privacy" in contexts where it doesn't really
apply frustrates me: because it dumbs down situations where privacy is
actually affected.

~~~
BrandonM
The point is not a single visit to a single site. When you have a large ad
network advertising all across the web, they are serving you ads on all kinds
of sites. A big enough ad provider (think doubleclick or google) gets to see
every site you visit and what order you visit them in. They know what times
and what days you browse. If that's not an invasion of privacy, then it's at
least akin to stalking.

Regardless of what you call it I'm not comfortable with it, and I'm not going
to disable my ad blocker any time soon. The only reason I even went to ars
technica was to read this article; I'll be happy to not return.

~~~
prodigal_erik
In fact there is an entire sub-industry of behavioral targeting information
brokers out there, reselling your history to ad networks who don't have enough
data about you in their own logs.

------
isopod
Know what's worse than online ads? Guilt trips. No Firefox plugin to filter
those.

~~~
natrius
This is considered a valuable comment? A site is telling its readers that
their actions are hurting its ability to produce content they enjoy. Believing
that they should find a different source of income is a perfectly valid
position, but if you just _don't care_ that content you enjoy might stop being
produced, as your comment suggests, then you're unreasonable.

------
ggrot
The argument here is that even if the user never would have responded to any
of the ads anyway, the website loses money when users don't view the ads. I
call bullshit.

An advertiser is going to pay as much for ads as they can profit from them. At
the end of the day, the advertiser wants to spend less on ads than they make
in profit from running those ads - they don't care about # impressions, #
clicks, or whatever. If an advertiser can make $1.01 profit for every 1,000
random ad impressions, they'll pay $1 or less for those 1,000 impressions. If
I can identify half my audience that will never respond to the ad, I'm
essentially making $1 for 500 impressions instead of 1,000. I'll happily pay
$2 for 1,000 of those more effective impressions.

I don't care if you get paid CPM, CPC, or CPA. You aren't making money of the
users who don't _respond_ to the ads.

~~~
wanderr
As someone who works on a site largely funded through banner advertising, I
can confirm that this is true; CPM is tied directly to CTR. A higher CTR means
not only a higher CPM but also higher quality ads, so it is in everyone's best
interest to not show ads to users who won't click on them.

The question then, for a for-profit site, how do you monetize the freeloaders?
I thing the answer is: 1\. Try to get them to upgrade to a paid subscription.
2\. Create highly targeted ads based on the content, and integrate them with
that content (ie not from ad servers). Unfortunately, this is only a cost-
effective option if you get a high volume of traffic). 3\. Restrict
freeloaders from using your most expensive resources. I don't imagine a site
like Ars is very bandwidth intensive, but if an adblocking user is costing
them a lot in bandwidth for some reason, they could provide the content
without the images, for example.

Sites also should consider how important it is to monetize _every_ user
directly. How much of your cost is fixed vs goes up per user? If most of your
costs are fixed (paying writers for editorial content, for example) and the
cost of providing content to users is low, it may be better to try to maximize
readers aven if some of those are freeloaders; users talk and share
information and links, so user A with adblock installed, whose visits cost you
almost nothing, might result in users B, C and D who don't have adblock
installed visiting your site.

------
kevingadd
Until recently, I refused to use adblock on principle, because I wanted to
support ad-supported websites, even if I didn't like the ads.

Then PDF and flash player exploits started showing up in ads on high-traffic
websites. After a couple close calls (only averted thanks to my particular
system configuration), I installed AdBlock and FlashBlock. I blacklist both
ads and flash content by default.

Websites I can trust to serve me ads that aren't going to try and root my
machine get whitelisted so that all their content shows up. All ads based on
Project Wonderful fall into this category, since they only serve text and
images. Google Ads would have also fallen into this category, but they're not
safe anymore since I've seen them serving up Flash.

I'm perfectly happy with sites not liking my approach. They can show me a
message asking me to turn off my ad-blocker (and I might, if I'm willing to
give them a chance and I'm interested in their content), or refuse to serve me
content entirely. That's fine.

If content providers are upset with the current state of things, maybe they
should think about how we got here: ad networks are, in general, a wild west
in which you serve up unknown advertisements to your visitors without any
knowledge of its content. Content providers that care about their customers
tend to block any advertisements they get complaints about - which is great -
but by using ad networks that run on a 'blacklist only' system, they're
knowingly putting their visitors at risk in order to generate ad revenue. By
the time a flash exploit makes it onto your advertisement blacklist, your
customers have already been hurt.

------
axod
I think we'll see more of this if adblock usage increases...

    
    
      if (user.usingAdBlock()) {
         showMessageTellingThemWhyItsBad();
         ShowDonationOptions();
         offerDegradedExperience();
      }

~~~
MartinCron
Absolutely. I've heard talk of some sites degrading entirely for users who are
using adBlock.

I would expect that to be met with a pretty harsh backlash, though. Even
though it's a small minority of people who use adBlock, they are a vocal and
persuasive minority.

~~~
rick888
"I would expect that to be met with a pretty harsh backlash, though. Even
though it's a small minority of people who use adBlock, they are a vocal and
persuasive minority."

So this group decides to block ads and when the content producers decide to
degrade their content (which is their right), they get pissed?

It sounds like a bunch of entitled kids. It reminds me of an article I read
recently about the new generation of kids...

~~~
_delirium
It seems perfectly fair to me on all sides. It's the user's right to modify
their browser to load/display only portions of content on their computer if
they want; it's website providers' right to display users different content if
they do so; and it's the users' right to avoid visiting and linking to the
website if they do that.

All sides come out having some reasonable points and some entitled-kids
feeling IMO. In particular, the "wahh, my ads were blocked" websites sound a
lot like the RIAA at times (though Ars avoids most of the more annoying
rhetoric), attempting to blame someone else for the fact that their business
model no longer works, instead of finding a new business model.

~~~
rick888
"All sides come out having some reasonable points and some entitled-kids
feeling IMO. In particular, the "wahh, my ads were blocked" websites sound a
lot like the RIAA at times"

eventually, people will be saying "wahh..why do I have to pay for my favorite
site..it used to be free".

My problem isn't that ads are blocked. If you want to block a site's ads, this
is fine. However, these adblockers are blocking ads on pretty much every site
that uses them. Many ads are getting blocked on sites that the user has never
even seen. How do you know that they are intrusive if you have never even seen
the ads?

"(though Ars avoids most of the more annoying rhetoric), attempting to blame
someone else for the fact that their business model no longer works, instead
of finding a new business model."

If the majority if users coming to their site are using an adblocker, and they
make their money on ads, it's the adblocker that is preventing them from
making money, not the model. You may say that those people wouldn't have
clicked on those ads, but many people I know installed an adblocker in their
friends/family members computers. Those people don't even know that there are
ads on many of the sites where they are blocked. If this trend
continues,advertising will no longer be profitable, not because it doesn't
work, but because it's being blocked.

------
jfager
"Does that mean that there are the occasional intrusive ads, expanding this
way and that? Yes, sometimes we have to accept those ads."

Then I'm going to run an ad blocker. I visit how many sites a day? What
percent at any given time are in their "sometimes" phase?

You run annoying ads, I get annoyed, I do what I can to stop being annoyed.
Don't run annoying ads, I don't get annoyed, I don't take action to avoid the
thing that isn't annoying me. Done.

The fact that you picked a business model that relies on me being willing to
be annoyed isn't my problem. Stop serving me content if it bothers you so much
- I'll survive, I promise.

------
herf
I have many ad servers blocked at DNS mostly because of cross-domain tracking.
Browsers (by default) allow third-party cookies, and while I don't mind if a
site runs ads, I do think cross-site tracking and profiling has to be more
controllable by users.

The firefox extension "requestpolicy" <http://www.requestpolicy.com/> is a
fascinating view of the web. It's too strict to use every day, but is much
more an "opt-in" view that everyone should try for a day.

~~~
munctional
> Browsers (by default) allow third-party cookies

Internet Explorer and Safari do not. If you have Flash installed, supercookies
can still be used anyways.

~~~
Hoff
Using a Flash Blocker and resetting the cookie values inside of Flash alter
that behavior.

------
jsz0
I don't actively use AdBlock anymore. I keep it installed just in case I need
it but it's usually disabled. Banner/text ads don't bother me. I don't even
notice them. Click2Flash is my preferred weapon of choice. I have no guilt
blocking Flash ads. They're annoying, invasive, and make my browser slow. Just
not willing to make that sacrifice.

------
rubidium
"We made the mistake of assuming that everyone who is blocking ads at Ars is
doing so with malice."

How'd they do that? Ads are annoying, and many people I know never click on
internet ads. For us (perhaps a minority, I don't know) ad-blocking leads to a
better internet. We're probably the ones referred to in the article who are
happy to help a website out if they ask for it in another way.

On a different note: Maybe car windshields could someday block billboards...

~~~
mikedouglas
_Ads are annoying, and many people I know never click on internet ads._

Addressed at the start of the second paragraph: "There is an oft-stated
misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won't
hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of
ours, are paid on a per view basis."

~~~
dschobel
But doesn't that reflect a broken model then? If you really and truly never
click on ads, what value does the advertiser get from the view (vs a click)?

~~~
boundlessdreamz
Brand recall (just like an ad on TV)

~~~
JulianMorrison
I consider attempts to subvert my unconscious mind to be the human equivalent
of privilege escalation exploits - they are malicious hacks, I have no
tolerance and no sympathy for them.

~~~
bad_user
Then don't use that service, or pay a subscription that frees you from
watching ads.

------
almost
What we need is some sort of voluntary rating system for ads. Tag the
massively annoying (sounds, movement etc) or horribly disgusting (rotting
teeth etc) ones as such and I'll happily use adblock software that only blocks
those. It could kind of work, there'd need to be a way to block adnets/sites
that lie about the type of ads of course and... well maybe it wouldn't work
but it would be a good start.

But no, I'm not going to disable adblock while there are still so many ads
that clearly cross the line of what is aceptable. Sure I feel bad about it but
that's just the way it is given that the other options are a) not using the
internet or b) constantly seeing pictures of other peoples yellowing teeth.

------
qjz
Advertising is a risk, and always has been. I'm tired of advertisers (and
content providers that depend on advertising) trying to shift responsibility
to the consumer. If you spend money on a campaign and it delivers results
beyond your initial expenditure, then the campaign was successful. There's no
guarantee against failure, and it's absolutely certain that the majority of
consumers simply won't care about your ads. It's part of the game. Accept it,
or look for alternatives.

------
makecheck
There seem to be two schools of business; one that tries to beat customers
over the head with things, and one that tries to respect the customer as much
as possible.

Historically, most web ads seem to have the first view. "Why, of course! All I
have to do is treat the visitor like crap: store 75 cookies, throw up new
windows, flash some animations, play loud noises, and trick them into clicking
on things. Then they'll surely want to shell out cash for my products!"

The problem is, after seeing a few of these, I'm not going to spend time
weeding out the good from the bad: it's like junk mail, after awhile it's just
thrown away, and it doesn't even matter anymore if there might be a hidden
gem.

I can only assume that a scam is being pulled: that there are ad managers who
create annoying systems to meet artificial quotas, and then show their
employers how many "millions of clicks or page views" they received. That way,
they can demand huge sums of money for all the "exposure"; in reality, I'd be
surprised if the ads do much good. If a site is "dying", it's not because
visitors block ads, it's because companies are falling for the scam and paying
advertisers who are essentially being offensive and misleading about their
numbers.

Here are examples of effective ads:

\- Hulu, because they made reasonable compromises to respect visitors. For
example, they have _far fewer_ commercials than an equivalent TV show, and an
ad is often displayed "up front" to minimize interruptions later.

\- Google, because they make plain text ads that stay out of the way. Not
irritating? Good, now I'll actually read it.

------
strebler
Does this mean it's immoral to use Lynx? No Google sponsored links, no images,
no flash. Lynx will destroy the Internet!

~~~
c00ki3s
Lynx and blind people depending on screen readers.

------
dschobel
So Ars Technica has the same fundamental problem as every publisher on earth--
how do you allow your content to reach the most eyes across the most channels
and platforms while still maintaing full control (only showing your content
with your ads intact).

I'm not sure you can have it both ways. You either have to trade in the
open/free variable or accept it and some of the loss of revenue it entails as
a tradeoff to the gained visibility.

------
eplanit
Just like how Tivo has destroyed the television industry, right? I find it
amazing that anyone believes they have a moral obligation to view
advertisements.

------
nickpp
Relax. Soon everybody will browse from iPads, which do not have ad-block for
Safari (that I am aware of).

The perfect platform for paying for stuff: music, software, books and web
reading...

Not sure if I am sarcastic or realistic here, you know?!

------
xenophanes
I don't like ads, and I don't like subscribing. What you need to offer is
micropayments. Figure out a way I can pay one cent (maybe 5 or 10, no more)
when I like an article and I'll pay you sometimes, and that will be more money
than you get showing me ads.

It needs to be something I only set up once, not once per website. It should
probably be integrated into my browser so I don't have to find the button on
the webpage (and then type in my password or something -- it better be one
click).

Of course feel free to continue with ads for the people who don't block them.

You may object that people don't care and won't pay. But the article is saying
"please don't block ads as a way to voluntarily pay". If you think sympathy or
voluntary payment will work, set this up as a superior option for people to
pay with.

Doing sufficiently good micropayments is a lot of work, but there are a hell
of a lot of other websites with the same problem Ars has, so either license it
to them or get them to help create it.

~~~
nradov
Micropayments have been tried and failed several times already but I think
maybe it's time for someone to take another run at the problem. Jakob Nielsen
had some relevant ideas. <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980125.html>

------
windsurfer
I practically have to use AdBlock on my N900 just to use some sites. Some
flash advertisements are so processor intensive that my phone slows to a
crawl.

------
djcapelis
I'm willing to whitelist them on my ad blocker, I'm not willing to whitelist
their ad companies on my javascript filter. I don't trust their ad companies
to run arbitrary javascript on my machine.

There's got to be a better way...

------
rue
Alternate title: "Business Model Based on Ad Views Is Devastating to the Sites
You Like."

~~~
irons
Your insightful rejoinder is addressed in the article.

~~~
rue
Not really. They do seem convinced that the model is workable and dismiss
criticism out of hand.

Then, funnily, they offer this analogy: "Imagine running a restaurant where
40% of the people who came and ate didn't pay. In a way, that's what ad
blocking is doing to us."

Imagine running a restaurant where the food is free, and your business model
is getting a cut of the mariachi band's tips.

~~~
bad_user
Their business isn't free to operate and that's their point ... a business is
run by people that have families and need a regular income.

> _Imagine running a restaurant where the food is free, and your business
> model is getting a cut of the mariachi band's tips._

I would like such a restaurant and would gladly give the mariachi a tip. What
I definitely wouldn't do is go there with a smug on my face as if it's my
right to eat there for free.

I don't use ad-blocking at all ... websites that get too offensive I just stop
visiting. Tried an ad-blocker for a month ... but with an ad-blocker active
it's harder to punish the bad guys, while rewarding the respectful businesses.
And flashy advertising is also a good indicator for (the lack of) quality.

If it stops working for publishers, they'll move more and more to a
subscription-based model, and we will see a bigger push for DRMed content, not
to mention that the Internet will probably stop being used as a distribution
channel for professional journalism.

~~~
rue
_> Their business isn't free to operate and that's their point ... a business
is run by people that have families and need a regular income._

I understand. I do not begrudge trying to make a living. I am merely
disagreeing that the business model they chose for that purpose is a good one.

------
extension
The notion that I should feel _obligated_ to _let someone try to persuade me
of something_ is absurd.

Advertisers, the people who bought the ad, are paying for impressions in the
hope of converting them into revenue. An impression spent on me has absolutely
_zero_ chance of ever generating any revenue or any other kind of value. This
is a safe assumption that has held true in my decade or so of browsing the
web. The impressions that I block are spent on someone else, where they have
at least the potential to lead to conversions. Thus, I am helping the
advertiser make more money.

The ones who lose out in this situation are the middle men: the agencies,
networks and content providers. Though their impressions become more valuable,
they have less of them to sell and this apparently works out to a loss.
However, appealing to my sympathy about this is nonsensical. _They are simply
asking me to help them sell worthless impressions to some third party_. I
would never feel inclined to do that, no matter how indebted I felt to the
content provider.

Ad supported sites who complain about blocking fail to see the big picture.
Their entitled thinking goes no further than "when you do this, I get money,
so you should/must do this".

If internet advertising is not sustainable in the face of ad blocking, then it
is not sustainable at all.

Incidentally, asking me to actively avoid sites who's ads I don't plan to view
is also absurd. The web simply does not, never has, and never could work that
way. Nobody can be expected to add that layer of deliberation to the act of
clicking on a link. By publishing an unsecured website, you are implicitly
authorizing anybody to link to it and to view it in any modified form.

------
metamemetics
Basically, targeted listings PROVIDES value to viewers. Look at Craigs List. A
site should have no problem hosting the ads on their own server and being
associated with its advertisers if they respect their readers and what they
see.

Content from 3rd party ad servers almost universally does not. They are
designed to be as attention-grabbing as possible, stealing the resource of
attention from your readers, and SHOULD be blocked.

My idea is a web app that big sites can drop on their servers where
advertisers are the users. Advertisers get dynamic quotes from the system
based on length coverage etc and demand by other advertisers during the same
time, and can upload their ads directly to the sites server. Each site hosts
the ads from THEIR web server in the same manner as they do their content
images (without javascript) so they should be unblockable.

Basically, it's about giving medium size sites an easy option as possible to
host ads directly from their own server. I have a few ideas for peer-to-peer
ad sharing between websites as well, if anyone wants to bounce ideas or write
some code, dhllndr at gmail, or aim: redfoxbeatbox

------
rythie
I'd use a list in Adblock that whitelisted sites that only ever showed adverts
that never moved, never poped up, never used flash, never showed me body parts
and never tried to sell me something that was obviously a scam.

Currently that list would effectively be empty I would expect, since the only
sites that qualify would have no ads currently

------
blahedo
Sounds like there's a market for modified ad blockers that download but don't
display the ad---anyone game to try?

~~~
ximeng
It doesn't really do much for the sites in the long term, as the advertisers
won't trust the analytics if these tools are regularly used or if they suspect
they might be.

I think AdBlock for Chrome does what you suggest and then blocks using CSS.

~~~
viraptor
Even if they stop trusting the stats, there's nothing they can do about it
really. There's no way to tell if I see something or not. I would be glad to
install such plugin... hopefully it will come to FF soon.

~~~
ximeng
They can pay for referrals (or purchases if they don't trust the referrals,
purchases are difficult to fake). People generally don't block paid Amazon
links, unless they feel they're being tricked into following them.

------
Create
Ghostery, NoScript, Adblock Plus, Better Privacy, CustomizeGoogle and ixquick.
\+ privoxy/GlimmerBlocker & <http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm>

Those who spy do not call it spying, it is those upon whom the spies spy who
rightly call it spying.

Spies call spying a slew of disarming terms: Forensics, investigation, probes,
intelligence, surveillance, _research, observation, analysis, data gathering,
data analysis, data mining, log filing_ , system testing, polling,
questioning, interrogation, looking into, checking, double-checking,
reviewing, verification, authentication, testing, evaluation, _protection of
the customer_ , the citizen, the nation, and more misleading terms being
invented and deployed all the time.

Apologists for spying have an ancient and wide range of justifications for the
practice and never admit it is not needed or wanted by the targets of spying.
Instead, spies have forever claimed their offense is on behalf of the
innocents who do not understand how dangerous the world is.

Now, like any other corporation, they have a product which they sell to a
market. The market is advertisers -- that is, other businesses. What keeps the
media functioning is not the audience. They make money from their advertisers.
And remember, we're talking about the elite media. So they're trying to sell a
good product, a product which raises advertising rates. And ask your friends
in the advertising industry. That means that they want to adjust their
audience to the more elite and affluent audience. That raises advertising
rates. So what you have is institutions, corporations, big corporations, that
are selling relatively privileged audiences to other businesses.

Well, what point of view would you expect to come out of this? I mean without
any further assumptions, what you'd predict is that what comes out is a
picture of the world, a perception of the world, that satisfies the needs and
the interests and the perceptions of the sellers, the buyers and the product.

------
petercooper
The alternative will be payola. Paid content. If advertising fails as a
revenue method, why not sell mentions in the actual content? Why not write
articles for pay? It'll happen. I bet it's already happening and in the best
cases we can't even suspect a thing..

------
hackoder
I guess a good compromise would be to not block the ads but hide them after
loading (I think thats how the AdBlock extension for chrome works)?

I agree that educating users is a good plan here. Users should have adblockers
active because ads sour our online experience and a large majority of sites
show ads that distract from the content (Not to mention that we have lots of
sites completely dedicated to spam). On the other hand, if a site has been
giving you great content for years, it makes sense to support them. But of
course, lots of big tech sites have sponsorship deals so its not like they're
posting great content out of their love for us...

------
cfpg
Even if the site isn't using a CPM model, getting paid by views, ad
impressions still count towards getting better ad deals. For example when
dealing with private ad-sales. some people also use ad impressions to count
pageviews, for example with Adsense, if you have 3 ad-units on one page, they
count as one pageview.

Although, having a huge technical audience who doesn't click any ads will
greatly decrease the CTR which will affect the eCPM the publisher is getting
paid.

------
adammichaelc
Because of this discussion I decided to unsubscribe (Google Chrome Adblocker
[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/search?itemlang=&q=...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/search?itemlang=&q=adblock))
from both EasyList and Chrome AdBlock custom filters and just custom-block ads
that are offensive.

------
thenduks
Their 'test' solution sounds like the way to go. If they figured out a decent
way to simply bust the whole page for the adblockers they should just go for
it.

If I went to a site and it was totally broken due to my blocking the ads I
would either a) whitelist it or b) stop going there. Sounds like exactly what
they're trying to get users to do.

------
teye
If you can detect ad blockers, why are you whining? Direct them to an
alternative flow/business model that works.

------
wedesoft
The music and movie industry are having a hard time, too! Soon it will be the
newspapers and book publishers. People realise that they don't need publishing
companies and soon people will realise that they don't need advertising. But I
think that people will always need musicians, actors, and writers.

------
ximeng
Compare relevant ads which get submitted to tech news site and discussed...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1171648>

------
m0nty
AdBlock+ white-listing: fine. Flashblock white-listing: no.
image.animation_mode: none.

Fixed.

(Edit: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11073> for the cookie-
haters among us.)

------
sdh
the people who block ads are never going to click on them anyway, so it's a
moot point. it isn't ad blocking that is devastating sites, it's ineffective
advertising.

------
MikeCapone
Amen. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

~~~
rimantas
Then I guess the number of ads you see on the way to have a lunch should pay
for your lunch, dinner and supper.

------
cmoscoso
any ad blocker for mobile safari?

------
TheAmazingIdiot
I block ads because I'm tethering an iPhone over my eee. My bandwidth cap is
5GB and Im not going to count my quota over ads that I will not click on.

Instead if I want to buy something, I will do a search on products that I want
to buy. Then, I will take recommendations.

~~~
AngryParsley
Do you disable adblock when you're not tethering? If AT&T had no bandwidth
cap, would you disable adblock?

I don't think bandwidth limitations are your true reason for blocking ads. Ads
are typically a tiny fraction of bandwidth usage. You would have to be very
close to your 5GB cap each month for blocking them to make a difference.

~~~
_delirium
From some spot-checking, ads are around 1/2 the bandwidth typically at major
websites, not "a tiny fraction". Flash ads are the main culprit, because a
single one can be pretty large, so the problem could be partly solved by just
blocking Flash ads instead of all ads.

~~~
AngryParsley
I guess I should have explained my point better. Things like streaming video
consume a lot more bandwidth than loading web pages. For example, watching
Hulu for an hour transfers 200MB if you're using the low-quality 480kbps
stream. Google News is about 500KB, so you'd have to load it every 9 seconds
for an hour to consume the same amount of bandwidth. A typical page load on
Ars Technica is around 100KB, so you'd have to rack up 2000 page views to
transfer 200MB.

------
TheSOB88
Sure, there are tons of annoying ads that get in your face and make you want
to commit suicide. But there's an easy solution: FlashBlock. Regular ads come
through, and ridiculous ads turn into a little box with an activate button.

------
dnsworks
Personally I use ad-blockers because flash is broken and inevitably will break
all modern-browsers at one point or another, especially newspaper sites that
seem to think there's no such thing as too much flash.

------
yanw
if only flash was bearable on linux or macs.

------
brandon272
It's amazing how upset people get over ads. I wonder how these same anti-ad
fanatics deal with other forms of advertising in their day to day life.

If I were Ars or any other site that relied on ad revenue, I probably wouldn't
remove any features, but I would put up an atrocious, gigantic, red, flashing
banner on the site that was only shown to Adblock users saying, "Please don't
use AdBlock! It's hurting us."

~~~
smackfu
Tivo thirty-second skip.

