
Don't Blame Your Community: Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites (2010) - dsr12
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100306/1649198451.shtml
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citricsquid
> If you're reading Techdirt, and the ads we serve are not good, you have
> every right to use an ad blocker. It's your browser, do whatever you want
> with it. I, personally, do not use an ad blocker because I don't find most
> ads annoying -- but if you do, more power to you. You're absolutely welcome
> here on Techdirt.

I know I'm in a minority so even posting this is absolutely pointless, but...
if I don't like the adverts that a website runs I do one of the following: pay
them to not have to view them (if they have a subscription option), don't
visit the website again or begrudgingly view them.

Yes it's "my browser" but it's also the websites content. If they didn't want
me to view adverts they wouldn't have adverts, so the assumption is the
adverts are there for me to view them. Either I view the adverts or I don't
visit the website. If techdirt doesn't mine me blocking adverts, great, but
why not make it a profile option? Sign up and get the option to disable
adverts!

Maybe I'm crazy, but I view access to websites, media and items (eg: biscuits)
the same. If I want access / ownership / consumption of something and the
owner wants me to pay $10, view an advert or give them my email address then I
do that or I don't get the content. Just like I would hope everyone thinks the
same of the content I'm involved in the production of (although I don't run
adverts on the websites that I own...)

As an aside I know of a website that has been around for a long time now that
is suffering because of sticking to their guns regarding advertising. They
don't want to sacrifice the "spirit" of the website so they're losing
advertising options fast (some of the content is _not_ advertiser friendly...)
and this is going to lead to them shutting down soon, which is a shame because
it's a website that matters a lot to me and has a significant userbase and is
a part of the internet history. Sometimes sticking to your guns to the death
isn't the best thing for your users...

~~~
islon
This is the internet not television. I'm not obliged to see their ads. Yes,
it's their content but my viewport. By the same argument I shouldn't be
allowed to surf the web using lynx (the console browser) because it doesn't
show pictures and many ads are pictures or flash. On my client I can change
the content all the way all want, if I don't want to see the word "fuck" I can
replace it for " _beep_ " with a greasemonkey script, if I don't want to see
ads I use an adblock. Internet is about freedom, television is about not-
filterable predefined content down your throat.

~~~
Goronmon
_This is the internet not television. I'm not obliged to see their ads._

I don't think anyone is really saying that. But I agree with criticsquid in
that if I think a site has content worth viewing, I want to do what I can to
support that site, whether it means subscriptions or viewing ads.

So I don't run an ad-blocker. If I run into a site with ads that annoy me, I
just don't visit that site. A site decides whether or not to run annoying ads,
even if they don't get to pick the ads specifically, so I show my frustration
by not giving such sites my traffic at all.

~~~
dubya
There are sites that I visit regularly and many more sites that I arrive at
only through search results. It's the second set of sites that keeps the
adblocker turned on.

There is an option in Adblocker Plus, I think, to allow non-annoying ads. If
it comes to the Safari version I will try it. OTOH, every time I open a new
tab, the Expose version of 12 most visited sites are retrieved with ads, so
maybe I'm contributing enough.

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gurkendoktor
As the author states in the last paragraph, this is exactly the same argument
as with piracy, but the OP is in a worse position to make it because the
author has to pay for traffic - unlike pirated music/ebooks/software, where
pirates generously share the bandwidth costs.

And the impression I get is the same as with piracy. A few % have no problem
because they are huge, have a devoted following, another income stream or
because they post link-bait without mercy. It's like the lottery winners
calling other people stupid for not winning. (Same reasoning in the software
world: Adobe still exists despite lots of people torrenting Photoshop, Apple
doesn't even bother to add copy protection to its OS, so then why are all the
little crybaby studios whining about piracy?! Similar examples exist for
games, music...)

The headline, as explained in the article, is also a tautology. Because if a
site goes bankrupt due to ad blocking, it is _the staff's fault_ , and
therefore the site did not go bankrupt due to ad blocking. Besides, it is
conveniently hard to prove for what reason a site went bankrupt - same story
as with pirated goods again.

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Karunamon
I use an adblocker because most sites I visit that serve ads do not personally
vet the ads that run (with the great exception I can recall being 4chan, of
all places!), they use an unfiltered third party network, which generally are
great vehicles for malware.

The few tenths of a penny my ad impression is worth does not offset the cost,
nor the risk, of your site infecting me with the rootkit of the day. Where do
I send the bill?

The second reason being the ads are generally scammy (One simple rule...),
distracting (moving things, sound, etc), irrelvant (I live at home by myself.
I am male. Why are you showing me women's fashion magazines and breast
enlargement ads?!), etc.

I've got no problem with text ads (ala Google) which eliminate most of these
concerns - heck, in Google's case, they're even usually relevant!

~~~
Goronmon
_I use an adblocker because most sites I visit that serve ads do not
personally vet the ads that run (with the great exception I can recall being
4chan, of all places!), they use an unfiltered third party network, which
generally are great vehicles for malware._

While sites might not be able to vet individual ads, they do get to choose
which advertisers to use and it's glaringly obvious which ones use the ads
people hate.

Why not just not visit sites that decide to use annoying ads?

~~~
Nursie
Because you've already caught the malware by the time you figure it out?

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graeme
There is a good article, linked within, about how as an entrepreneur, of
things go wrong, it's your fault.

I'd say that's valuable advice for humans, not just entrepreneurs.

This belief is useful not because it _true_ , but because acting as of it's
true offers you the best chance of changing what you can change.

[http://www.marksonland.com/2010/03/note_to_entrpreneurs_its_...](http://www.marksonland.com/2010/03/note_to_entrpreneurs_its_your_1.html)

~~~
stephengillie
One of my friends uses this philosophy in competitive gaming -- each point
lost, each teammate death, each tower destroyed is his fault -- to inspire him
to become better.

It's too easy to find scapegoats for our blame. I try to remember this when I
find myself sliding back into mediocrity.

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snowwrestler
A major failing of this article is that it presupposes that people actually
considered the quality of advertising in their decision to run ad blockers.

When running an ad blocker, most ads are blocked by default on every site.
Therefore the user never even has a chance to see if the ads are "good" or
not.

The question is, what happens if everyone starts using this software? Granted,
it's a very unlikely scenario since it takes effort to install and manage ad
blockers. But it's not hard to imagine that a relationship would exist between
marginal increases in ad blocker usage, and marginal decreases in ad revenue.

Most of the "good" examples in this article are not even ads, they are
sponsored content. It's roughly analogous to using product placements in TV
shows to replace revenue lost to ad skipping software in DVRs. But not many
websites are big enough (like TechDirt is) to command the special attention
from advertisers to create these "one off" deals.

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hayksaakian
The qq around ad blockers is the same as the qq around piracy. Bootleg vhs
tapes were available before streaming media, relatively easy to make, and
share. However the vast majority of people do not consume them to a damaging
extent. The same is true for ad blockers and content distribution now. Ad
blockers are a solution to a usability and business model problem. If you as a
producer of content find it to be a huge issue, then you have it in your power
to change it.

Only when its more convenient to do something the 'correct' way will it be
guaranteed to be the predominant way.

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TomMasz
I don't mind ads _when I want to buy a product or service and don't know where
to look_ , but otherwise they're just noise that generally slows page loading
or makes the readable content scroll up and down (I really hate those ads). I
use an ad blocker to make reading web content as easy as reading the newspaper
(where I can skip entire pages of ads).

If I like a web site, I'll pay for it. But I'm paying _because I like the
content_ , not to remove the ads. It's a thank you, not a ransom payment.

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kushti
"Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites" - another false-positive thought of
trendy venture-backed hipsters. Ok, speak your post-scarcity bla-bla-bla
further.

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leeoniya
i use ad blockers primarily so that third parties cannot track me across
different domains all over the internet and to increase page load times
dramatically.

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DanBC
I would love for a simple easy way to make micro-payments to the websites I
use regularly.

It'd be even better if that allowed me to turn off ads.

I'm gently concerned that would mean that site owners would allow obnoxious
ads in an attempt to drive people to paying, but I guess they realise that
people would ad-block or never visit again.

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debacle
I think it's likely that this is untrue. Slashdot and reddit are the two
examples that come to mind of a userbase who are likely to be filtering ads
and thus greatly reducing the revenue of their hosts.

~~~
gilrain
...you think it's untrue that ad-blocking does not kill sites, because two
sites likely to be ad-blocked more than the average are very, very successful?

~~~
mylittlepony
In this context successful should be synonym of profitable. Which, last time I
checked, reddit is not.

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commentzorro
This article is years old and no longer reflects current information.

~~~
mylittlepony
What do you mean?

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pretoriusB
> _"Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites"_

That's only because it's not really prevalent to the general masses. If it
was, e.g if browsers came with Ad Blocking pre-installed and enabled as a
default, thousands of news sites and blogs would suffer and crash.

~~~
mylittlepony
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4804474>

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rprasad
I use an adblocker at home but not at work. Honestly, for most of the sites I
visit, there isn't much of a difference (anymore). Websites have realized that
having fewer high-quality ads is better than having a massive number of crap
ads.

