

Is Ad Avoidance a Problem? - DanielBMarkham
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/10/is-ad-avoidance-a-problem.html

======
zimbatm
I use ad-block.

Ads are polluting my brain. I'm thinking of something while traveling on the
bus and suddenly I catch myself reading some silly slogan on a board. Now it's
stored somewhere and I might think about it later again. I never wanted to
read that thing and feel like it has been forced upon me. How many hours of
collective thinking power have been lost to ads processing ?

Ads publishers treat us like a free resources that they can tap into. They
hire psychologist and sociologists to know the best way to trigger emotional
responses into us. They track our every move on the Internet. TV shows are
especially created to dumb us down and make us more receptive to the ad-break.
And ads are so omnipresent that they are virtually unavoidable. I don't
remember the last time I got convinced to buy by an ad but it must work since
they keep doing it.

So yes, I don't feel bad and ad-block the hell of everything and wish I could
do it in the real life too.

EDIT: Actually my biggest grief is that the price of ads is not clearly
exposed. I need to know upfront how much of purchasing influence I'm expected
to spend on average otherwise how can I choose what is cheaper ?

~~~
bemmu
I am torn how I feel about ads.

It seems that they work for web and app publishers, because it's a way to
collect micropayments, while making people feel like they are not really
paying anything. Instead of asking someone to micropay you $0.001, you ask
them to waste brain cycles to tune out the ad + cause some increased chance
that they'll overpay for a brand name later. This might end up being more
expensive than the payment would have been.

I must admit I would behave the same way. If you gave me a way to pay $5 /
month that would be split among the sites I visit based on the pageviews I
generate, I probably would not do it. I wonder if there would a way for such a
system to be set up, so that it could offer something more than just
installing AdBlock would. I doubt it, but would be happy to be wrong.

It seems that ads are the only realistic way for this to work for publishers,
while adding an unfortunate mental tax for everyone not savvy enough to
install AdBlock. I hope one day we will come up with a solution.

------
dizzystar
I use ad-block, and this was only a recent development for me. At first, I
didn't really mind ads since I mostly ignored them. I'm pretty sure there is a
study somewhere about the long-term impact of web-based ads compared to
billboards and TV ads, and I'm pretty sure that study would say that the long-
term impact of web-ads would be much lower than TV ads, and basically
forgotten in 5 minutes, and if not so soon, probably vaporized within a week.

The problem became too much when advertisers and webmasters decided to use
other means to gain my attention. An ad in the corner of the page is no big
deal. When the page starts to look like a Nascar event with no meaningful
content, this is irritating. Since this apparently wasn't in-your-face enough,
they added in pop-ups, scrolling ads, and most confoundedly, ads that talked.
I listen to music when I am browsing, and I can't describe how disrespectful
this is to me. I sometimes browse with my computer muted, but some of these
ads have figured out how to turn my volume on! This is no longer an symbiotic
relationship between buyer and seller, but a one-sided fuck you. This is in
plain terms, abuse, and it is wrong and these assholes don't deserve a dime
from my clicks or my views.

But the problem gets worse because showing me ads is no longer good enough.
Now I have a few thousand companies tracking my every move. I dealt with slow-
loading sites via iframes and gigs of cookies on my computer. So now, I turn
on Disconnect or Ghostery.

I used to earn money from ad revenue on my sites, and I am going to put ads up
on my current sites. It would be foolish for me to depend solely on ad
revenue, and I certainly don't hold any ill-will toward people using ad-block,
so I would have to think of other ways to monetize my content. Book review?
Here's a link to Amazon with my affiliate code. It isn't as invasive and it
offers my users choice without invading their privacy, their ability to see my
content, and doesn't effect my site-speeds.

It is all a tough balance. Sure you want some analytics and you want some
revenue, but depending solely on invasive ads and trackers doesn't serve your
users. Once you lose sight of the users, you lose sight on usability, content
quality, and many other aspects. I want to create a great product first and a
revenue machine second.

~~~
GrinningFool
I am happy to look at ads - if they are maintained and a hosted on the site
serving them.

Far more than the intrusion into my awareness (and that's what I initially
started resenting) I resent the cross-site tracking that is implicit with any
hosted ad or third party ad provider.

If someone wants my attention, all they have to do is ask for it - themselves.
Because while I'm willing to pay for my consumption with my attention to what
is being sold, I am not willing to pay for it by sharing my browsing and
viewing habits with third parties.

------
tokenizer
Talk about moving the measurement to create concession. Ads are a problem.
Never have there been more advertisements. Not only do people have Billboards,
TV ads, Radio Ads, and Newspaper ads like we've had in the 20th century (all
of which are still pervasive and virtually unavoidable), But we're not talking
about a problem in avoiding all of the new types of advertising only really
initiated in this century.

Perhaps the problem isn't Ad Avoidance, but Ad Overload. People will either
find a means to limit their exposure, or the Ad industry will see
effectiveness drop to a level that isn't profitable to the cost.

I understand that jingles and subconscious inserting one liners are impossible
to ignore and extremely valuable, but I think the question rests on how many
of these virtually empty platitudes a human mind can carry.

~~~
tel
I've always found it interesting that prior to us paying for services with our
private data, we paid for it with our attention. All of these implicit value
transmissions are harmful to audiences, but the effects tend to be distant in
time or space.

~~~
tokenizer
> All of these implicit value transmissions are harmful to audiences, but the
> effects tend to be distant in time or space

Well I see harmful effects now. The word "consumers" for one. Children being
manipulated for profits. Over-sexualization. Creating the idea that things
will make you happy, and make this one of the most popular concepts in
society. Dividing people through the message of "Individuality", even though
that only really means buying things your neighbor wants.

> I've always found it interesting that prior to us paying for services with
> our private data, we paid for it with our attention.

And now we pay with both our private data, and our attention, as both are
extremely related when you want to either control, convince, or confuse
someone.

~~~
tel
I agree that they're visible—I spoke too soon. I mean more psychologically
that they have distance which means that we apply a lot of value discounting.
Even if I know that funding all the things I enjoy via advertisement will
eventually dehumanize me, I still get to enjoy them today.

Disincentivizing local consumer gain is, if I were to wage a wide bet,
something society will need to figure out. Our current values are clearly
aiming at it.

------
njharman
The concept that no ads leads to cultural wasteland is so ludicrously wrong it
makes me angry. First ads __are the wasteland __. Second advertising is
relatively new. Somehow culture was able to flourish without ads for thousands
of years.

------
kovalkos
What is the point of advertisement?

Capitalism is an interesting trick. It is an artificial game, which exploits
people's selfishness to benefit the world.

But selfishness doesn't usually work like that, so humans naturally try to
find loopholes which would make them rich.

Instead of spending money on improving their services & products, corporations
find it more profitable to spend _huge_ amounts of resources on patent
trolling, tax evasion and advertisement.

Sadly, ads will not go away any time soon, because they are much more
difficult to get rid of then other loopholes I mentioned above.

~~~
onedev
What if you've built an amazing, revolutionary product but no one knows about
it? You make it seem like the concept of advertising at it's core is
inherently bad; it isn't.

~~~
eevilspock
If it were truly amazing, people would hear about it. Journalists would write
about it, existing customers would tell all their friends, and you would
notice more and more people using it.

With advertising, a revolutionary new product from a creator without an
advertising budget can't compete with the established companies that have
hundreds of millions to spend and drown out awareness of others. Think about
political reality: It costs millions to hundreds of millions of advertising to
run for office. What kind of politicians does that give us? And what chance
does a fresh, clean and honest upstart have?

------
hackula1
I use adblock, but I try to disable it on sites that

A) have solid content that keeps me coming back.

B) Do not have ads that open new windows or popups when I do disable adblock.

I actually appreciate ads when they particularly useful and focused. 99% of
the time this happens when an ad network is not used and the ads are provided
by the content provider intentionally (jobs in my area on StackOverflow) or
banner ads on small blogs where the vendor has most likely personally
contacted the writer because the market is dead on. Ad networks have a close
to 0% success rate on showing me things I actually want, so I tend to disable
those unless I am just trying to support the content creator with a few cents
of impression money.

------
jrockway
Ad avoidance is as much of a problem as periodicals that won't rely on their
readers to make money. How come magazines are ad-sponsored but books aren't?
What's the difference?

(I was glad to hear the Times makes money off of subscribers. I never feel bad
about blocking ads, but I felt it was my civic duty after I started paying $13
a month or whatever it is to read it.)

------
caster_cp
And there's the Google stock (a company which, last time I checked, made most
part of its revenue through ads) sky rocketing to prove once and for all that
ads are a thing of the past...

I see this more as a crisis of the "old" media than a global ad avoidance
phenomenon. Brand avoidance, consumer activism and anti-advertisement
movements are real, but their size and impact on our culture (at least in
Brazil) is not that big for the time being.

------
mbesto
> _But the funny thing is that advertising spending is actually increasing,
> both in the United States and globally. Moreover, it has grown three years
> in a row, reaching more than half a trillion dollars in 2012. This is true
> even of live-television ads, which are the most intrusive and the easiest to
> avoid, yet are nonetheless growing at a healthy pace—by eight per cent last
> year in the United States._

For every $1 one company spends on advertising, another has to spend $2 to
steal your attention. Inevitably this means the industry will continue to grow
infinitely as companies continue to try to buy your attention. Look at PPC,
it's a perfect example of an openly efficient market to buy your attention.

My favorite quote that illustrates this is from Seth Godin:

 _Attention is a bit like real estate, in that they 're not making any more of
it. Unlike real estate, though, it keeps going up in value._

[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/07/paying-
atten...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/07/paying-attention-to-
the-attention-economy.html)

~~~
betterunix
"For every $1 one company spends on advertising, another has to spend $2 to
steal your attention. Inevitably this means the industry will continue to grow
infinitely as companies continue to try to buy your attention"

It sounds more like the industry will grow to the maximum that the economy can
sustain, and no further. It may appear to be unlimited _now_ but that probably
means that the economy can sustain far more advertising than we are seeing
today. Every time a new communications system is developed, the market will
shift -- and we have so many systems now that the market is just catching up
to all the ways we have to advertise.

I also suspect that there is another game occurring, which is the ads-versus-
ad-blockers game, and that will also reach some equilibrium. As advertising
becomes more aggressive, defenses against advertising will become stronger.

~~~
mbesto
> _It sounds more like the industry will grow to the maximum that the economy
> can sustain, and no further._

Fair point. I would argue that as long as (1) globalization exists (2) the
population increases, it can sustain growth. In other words as long as the
number of eyeballs increases so too will the people try to farm them up.

> _Every time a new communications system is developed, the market will shift
> -- and we have so many systems now that the market is just catching up to
> all the ways we have to advertise._

Regardless of communication medium, in theory it doesn't mean the market
spends any more or less on advertising. The goal is all the same, grab
attention and convert to buyer. So I'm not sure what you mean by "the market
will shift".

------
brownbat
If you read far enough, the article actually suggests ad avoidance isn't so
bad.

Another point to Bettridge:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

Also, I really liked the linked article on gaze aversion, which argues that
smartphones are a bigger threat than DVRs:
[http://adage.com/article/adagestat/smartphones-a-bigger-
dist...](http://adage.com/article/adagestat/smartphones-a-bigger-distraction-
dvrs/227725/)

Or on the internet, it's not really ad block, it's the fact that I can't
remember the last time I watched a show on one screen at home without easy
access to a second screen to flip through cat pictures or whatever during
(muted) commercials.

Guess I'm not the only one.

> Anyone who can reach the unreachable for even a moment has their hands on
> gold.

Is targeted door-to-door sales the next big thing?

------
jeena
Sometimes I wonder how the web looks like without a ad-blocker, for example if
there are ads on HN. But I never was brave enough to surf the web without one
after I got my first one back then.

------
pseudon
Underlying the issue of attention and ethics is the fact that most ads are not
benign static elements. They are accompanied by increasingly complex,
increasingly opaque, increasingly ubiquitous, and increasingly intrusive forms
of commercial (and therefore also government) surveillance.

~~~
quantumpotato_
Not to mention overt manipulation.

------
kbuck
I use an ad blocker. I used to use it without a filter list and would manually
block any ad I found intrusive (e.g. Flash ads, ads that pick words out of the
page content and highlight them, animated image ads), but then it simply
became too much work. The tipping point for switching to filter list was
spending two hours trying to figure out how to block YouTube video ads.

I want to support the sites I browse, but ad networks that host intrusive ads
give all ads a bad name. Even worse are the irresponsible ad networks that
allow advertisers to execute JavaScript, embed PDFs, embed Java applets, or
even embed an entire iframe with a URL of the advertiser's choosing.

------
greenyoda
" _Back in the twentieth century, people were roughly equal in their power to
avoid advertising. Only desert hermits and commune dwellers could truly live
ad-free._ "

In the 20th Century it was certainly possible to avoid ads on TV. You could
use the remote to mute them (or temporarily switch channels), leave the room
to do other stuff while they were on, or tape your TV shows on a VCR and fast-
forward over the ads.

Avoiding ads in print media was pretty easy too: just turn the page. Since
print ads don't flash or make noise, they can be ignored pretty easily.

~~~
PeterisP
Well, but they were roughly equal in their power to do so and in how much they
did it.

Currently, it's closer to "all-or-none" switch, where the majority see all
ads, while many see nearly no ads at all - and it's a quite different
situation.

------
blueblob
_The argument is pretty simple: if you destroy the advertising revenue that
content depends on, we’ll end up in a cultural wasteland, or, worse, a culture
plagued by advertising that masquerades as content._

Isn't this true for things that are already paid for anyways? The car from
Transformers seems to ring a bell.

The argument that advertising kills content doesn't really hold its salt for
me, if people are not willing to pay for content is it that great anyways? The
argument really only eliminates niche content.

~~~
nemothekid
Its not whether people are willing to pay for content, its can people really
afford premium content? Ad-less content isn't very attractive when you have
pay $99 per episode.

Essentially advertisers have been subsidizing content for years and the
question is can people really afford premium TV content and in what capacity?
I'm not sure what the exact numbers are but its something to consider when
thinking about the " if people are not willing to pay for content is it that
great anyways". People may like the content but might be priced out.

The next thing is consider is in the TV industry, you don't pay per content.
Consider the film industry which is relatively ad-less, but they make most of
their money from theaters. Imagine the backlash that would occur if comcast
said it would remove ads, but you had to pay $13 for each show you watched.

~~~
jeena
Excuse my ignorance but where do the advertisers get the money to pay for the
content? They get it from me if I buy their product. So instead giving my
money to the advertiser who then gives it to the artist, why wouldn't I just
give it to the artist myself (like with Netflix, etc.)?

I don't have the numbers but I am quite sure that movies at the theater
woudldn't be that much more expensive either. The advertisers don't invest
their own money, they invest the money they get from us the customers
obviously. And they only can invest as much as we buy, not more.

Wouldn't cutting out the middleman save some bugs too?

~~~
nemothekid
I'm just speculating here but I could think of some reasons why advertising is
a better revenue model than direct charging for a studio (also I think the
theater model doesn't depend on ads. For ads I mean tv/cable/ota).

1.) Better price discrimination. Instead of 3 people paying $5.99, I could
convince an advertiser to advertise 3 different products at different price
points. If the advertisements were 100% effective and I got a 10% commission,
it could result in one person buying a $500 Louis vuitton bag and another
buying a Macy's store brand bag at ($50). That gets me a revenue of $55
compared to $18 if I sold direct. (I know that TV ads don't actually work this
way, as you can't track whether a commercial led to a sale of a product)

2.) The advertiser may be willing to pay more for the ad spot than you are for
the content. Again speculating here, but if an advertiser is willing to pay
$20 per view and you will pay $10, then the studio is incentivised to go the
ad route. (I think this is most likely, as people were livid when Netflix had
to increase price of their streaming package meaning consumer could be more
price sensitive).

All in all, I have to believe that advertisers haven't been pissing their
money for decades, and that studios aren't so consumer hostile that they would
bend infinitely for advertisers. If the charge-the-consumer-directly model
actually worked I don't think studios would be so hostile to Netflix, and HBO
would likely offer a streaming package that didn't depend on the cable
package.

------
eevilspock
The author reflects how much we've all bought into the utter bullshit that
advertising makes things free. There is no free lunch, and there is no free
web. In truth ads actually make things much more expensive, as I'll explain
below. In addition most ads are fundamentally manipulative if not dishonest,
and thereby undermine democracy and rational free markets.

Advertising simply shifts the cost of the "fee lunch" to the price of the
advertised products. In other words we still end up paying. It may even shift
costs regressively, toward lower incomes and the less educated, in which case
the poor are subsidizing the better off.

BUT IT'S WORSE...

We end up paying a lot more than if we just paid for our content and services
straight up. Not only are you still paying for the costs of the "free
website", you are paying for all that advertising overhead, the costs of
advertising technology and infrastructure (huge, btw), the agency and creative
costs (Don Draper and company have to pay for the hookers and scotch somehow,
not to mention what’s-his-name who basically just lounges in his office
barefoot thinking Japanese), and big marketing departments that often
outnumber the people who actually write or make things.

You are also paying the opportunity cost of inferior product, because that’s
what happens when websites have to design to please advertisers over pleasing
us, the users. Dalton Caldwell makes this point comparing Sourceforge to
Github: [http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-
proposal](http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal).

Our identities and privacy are bought and sold to the highest bidders. So we
foot the bill for those bids AND we pay the cost of lost privacy. A double
whammy! It's personalization? Bullshit. Personalization means optimizing
something for me, not optimizing for the advertiser. Again, who's the real
customer?

IT GETS EVEN WORSE...

Think of the social costs of advertising. The web is infested with
misinformation and manipulation. Beside the lying ads themselves, relying on a
revenue stream entirely dependent on how many ads are seen severely affects
the moral choices of those who decide what gets produced and how its
presented. What are the costs of a misinformed and variously manipulated
citizenry, of distortions to the free-market?

Knowledge and discourse are the lifeblood of both democracy, free markets,
progress. The web, from the little scammy websites to the big brand ones that
so many blindly trust, has a huge influence on who we vote for, what we buy,
and most importantly, what we believe.

~~~
temuze
You are correct in saying there's no free lunch. However, I disagree with a
couple things.

1) We, as consumers, do not pay for the ad tech infrastructure - the
publishers do. Their purpose is to make the inventory more valuable and allow
publishers to get more money than they normally would. Better targeted ads
mean less ads.

2) The Dalton Caldwell argument doesn't hold up. Do television programs design
for advertisers? Yes, but they also need to design for consumers. A television
show that has commercials all the time will get less views and so will an ad
infested website with a terrible experience. That fear of alienation is why
Facebook isn't a giant display ad.

3) Websites aren't necessarily backed by the purchase of products through ads.
There are such things as "brand recognition" ads that do not rely on instant
action. After all, most television ads are not informomercials or "buy now"
ads. I think we'll see more brand recognition ads online in the next couple
years and online ads will become more mainstream. You'll see less scummy ads
as the internet continues to grow more influential and the social cost will
diminish.

~~~
eevilspock
1) Where do you think publisher's get the money to pay for the infrastructure?
Where do you think advertisers who pay publishers get that money?

2) Sure, they can't totally treat consumers as tools. But the product is
_less_ than what it would be if it were purely designed for users. Have you
heard the argument that advertisers are Google's true customers, that we are
the product? Google's once famous clean and neutral search results are now
cluttered and biased (see [1]). From a Wired article [2]: _" Lloyd made his
pitch, proposing a quantum version of Google’s search engine whereby users
could make queries and receive results without Google knowing which questions
were asked. The men were intrigued. But after conferring with their business
manager the next day, Brin and Page informed Lloyd that his scheme went
against their business plan. “They want to know everything about everybody who
uses their products and services,” he joked."_

3) See #1 above. Why do brands spend money on brand recognition, and where
does that money come from?

You say you agree that there is no free lunch but your disagreements
contradict that claim.

\---

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/10/new-banner-ads-
push-...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/10/new-banner-ads-push-actual-
google-results-to-bottom-12-of-the-screen/) [2]
[http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/computers-big-
data...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/computers-big-data/all/)

------
ddebernardy
TV ads are still a growing business according to TFA. Mm...

In other news, people still go to the bathroom, fetch a snack, walk their dog,
etc. during TV ads. And more recently, browse their tablet or smartphone.

Try this poll around you: You watch TV with:

[ ] No other screen on hand

[ ] One other screen (e.g. tablet, smartphone or laptop)

[ ] Two screens

[ ] Three or more screens

Then consider the price advertisers pay for "your attention" and have a good
laugh.

~~~
nemothekid
Its hard to laugh unless you know the financials. If advertisers are paying 10
million dollars for super bowl ads and getting a 15 million dollar return then
they are the ones laughing at your naivete.

~~~
ddebernardy
Or not... Assuming your figure is even remotely correct, it's a pittance --
especially considering the budget to make that ad. And a dozen years ago
they'd have gotten a lot more. Plus, it's not exactly easy to trace those $15M
now, is it? It's not as if they were placing a cookie or a but on those TV
viewers. They're spending it blindfolded.

Admittedly, there's more to ads than just selling. There's also a brand factor
and a "you made the right decision to already buy this" factor.

Still, ever noticed those ads at bus stops, next to which virtually every
bystander is busy using their smartphone? Methinks the returns in those, like
on TV, are getting lower by the day.

~~~
betterunix
"Still, ever noticed those ads at bus stops, next to which virtually every
bystander is busy using their smartphone? Methinks the returns in those, like
on TV, are getting lower by the day."

Maybe, but I think those ads tend towards the "effective if people see the
logo many times per day" sort of ads. You are likely to see the ad for a
moment before pulling out your phone, or while you exit the bus, etc. So maybe
a major fast food chain will put its logo there, just to remind you that they
exist and to increase the chance that you eat there for lunch.

------
RexRollman
I don't use an adblocker but I am real close to doing so. Why? Because of the
jerks who think it is okay to run a bunch of animated graphics, moving images,
or videos. I am also not happy about the pervasive tracking of users.

------
thearn4
Someone should make an app that aggregates a list of companies that pay for
advertisements which are especially disruptive or annoying, so I can be extra
sure that I'm not supporting their behavior.

~~~
judk
You could just surf the web and note the ones you see, but, oh.

------
j_baker
I think the problem is that some ads are so heavy-weight. I kind of wish there
were an ad-block tool that would only block ads that are too large (data-wise)
or that take too long to load.

~~~
mkenyon
There is. Adblock Plus allows plain and unobtrusive advertising out of the
box. For example, Reddit was recently whitelisted, which I'm sure helps their
bottom line.

[https://adblockplus.org/en/features#acceptable](https://adblockplus.org/en/features#acceptable)

------
consonants
I may just be paranoid, but I'm convinced that when wearable passive cameras
(glass) are culturally acceptable the first thing Google et al will be pushing
for is an option to "pop in", and analyze your environment.

Imagine you could see through the eyes of your customer interacting with your
brand or a competitor's. Imagine being able to see how your customers shop,
what they're eating today, and more importantly a view of their network from
their eyes.

It doesn't have to be that creepy, merely an agreement to let Google collect
information while you shop based on GPS data seems innocent enough.

Advertising will get more insidious, someone convince me I'm wrong please (I'm
being sincere, I don't want to hate technology).

