

How Much Would You Pay to Never See an Online Ad Again? - dsr12
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/how-much-would-you-pay-to-never-see-an-online-ad-again/265063/

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kaolinite
A few months ago I saw my mum browsing a website with a horrendous number of
adverts. I asked to borrow the computer for 30 seconds, installed AdBlock for
Chrome and refreshed the page. I handed it back triumphantly only to be told
that she couldn't see the difference and wasn't sure what I'd done. I suspect
this will be the response of most people - either you're technical enough to
install an adblocker or you don't really care.

~~~
gnosis
Let her use her browser with AdBlock installed for a few months, then remove
it. I'd bet she'd notice the return of all those ads.

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teeray
I would pay for something that I could load a budget onto to just pay everyone
for the ads they would have shown me so I can browse in peace. I like
supporting content creators directly, but I don't want to be hassled making
accounts and filling in my credit card info every time.

~~~
hornokplease
What you're describing sounds a little like Flattr[1] to me.

[1] <http://flattr.com/>

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kylec
Discussion from yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4767698>

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s_henry_paulson
Novel idea for something you would see on an infomercial or skymall, but no
tech savvy person would ever purchase one because

(1) Tech people already know how to block ads.

(2) The idea of having a random linux box on your network that has access to
all of your internet traffic, and can be compromised as well as a general
bottleneck isn't the most comfortable of thoughts.

~~~
anonymouz
add (3) Making exceptions or configuration changes for single sites will be
more effort than changing AdBlock settings for a given website directly in
your browser.

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gnosis
I already see virtually no ads. My setup is Firefox with AdBlock Plus,
NoScript, and RequestPolicy, proxied through privoxy.

There are really only two cases where I'd regularly see ads. One was Google
text ads. But now that I've quit using Google in favor of DuckDuckGo, I don't
see even those (DDG lets you turn ads off).

The other case is seeing some text ads through my email provider, which serves
them over SSL -- so they are not subject to being filtered out through
privoxy. This is a problem, and I've considered learning javascript just so
that I can feed decrypted SSL content through privoxy to filter out the few
remaining ads I get through SSL. But so far it's been such a minor problem
that I haven't bothered to do so.

~~~
eli
I'm pretty sure you are not the target audience for this product :) I would
guess it's mainly for iPad owners.

~~~
gte910h
Wow, I did not think of that, but may buy it because of this

~~~
J0415
Hint: jailbreak and install AdBlock on your iPad

~~~
gte910h
Sorry, I'm a developer. I don't jailbreak because I do not want to
accidentally get a different experience on the device than my customers do due
to jailbreak apps/the fact it's jailbroken at all.

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grecy
I would be interesting in never seeing another Ad again, in my entire life.

i.e. No ads on TV, no ads on the radio, no billboards, nothing in magazines or
newspapers. I think our world would be very different with no ads.

~~~
gnosis
If I had my way, all unsolicited advertising would be banned.

Advertising is an attempt to manipulate people in to buying crap they mostly
don't need. It uses either outright lies or lies by omission.

Worst of all, advertising is a corrupting influence on our political process,
since the news media constantly caters its content to please advertisers and
not to upset them with investigative stories in to the very corporations that
fund its broadcasts.

~~~
k2enemy
In net, I think I agree with you, but advertising can also serve an
informative role. There are times I've seen a well-targeted and unsolicited ad
for something I didn't know existed but solved a problem or want that I had.
Ads are also important for letting people know about prices, features, etc.
The importance of the informative role of advertising is probably decreasing
as the internet provides more and more product and price info, but I think it
is still there.

~~~
gnosis
Think of all the thousands if not millions of unsolicited ads you've seen in
your life. What percentage of those were for "something you didn't know
existed but solved a problem or want that you had"?

My guess would be less than 1%. Maybe even less than 0.1%.

Many ads don't even have anything to do with the product they're selling.
They're designed to get you to get you to associate a positive emotion with
the brand name, or be so surreal or catchy that they're memorable. Those ads
are worse than useless. They're both useless and manipulative.

------
sparkplug
Um, Adblock Plus is free and near perfect.

Am I missing something?

~~~
joeblau
Yeah, all of your mobile devices.

~~~
aw3c2
AdAway works like a charm on Android. it is open source and combines multiple
lists.

Opera Mobile allows you to use urlfilter.ini if you need more sophisticated
blocking on websites.

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jaequery
my mind already blocks out 90% of ads and selectively takes in 10% of useful
ads. i find it amusing people would go to such great lengths to achieve what
your mind can do already.

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anons2011
Not a penny. Adblock Plus (free!) as already mentioned.

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pippy
I tried to give the internet a go without ads after an upgrade. It wasn't that
bad, advertisers have improved.

Until I tried to watch a 10 second clip on youtube of Ace Ventura saying "yes
Satan?". After a 20 second ad for a car, music started playing from the side
ad. Clicking the mute button took me to their site. I closed it, refreshed the
video and after sitting through the same car video the same side ad started
playing.

So I installed adblock.

TV ads don't play same time when your show is on. You don't do the same on the
internet.

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brownbat
I haven't used an ad-blocker in a while (I block javascript and make plugins
click to play in Chrome for security, that coincidentally kills most of the
stuff).

The most ads I see are on video streaming services. But what's the state of
ad-blocking on Hulu? Doesn't Hulu detect if their ads aren't making it to your
machine, and halt playback? Has the device addressed this? (Have leading
adblockers?)

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swah
I would consider a Youtube subscription if it was 1-5 USD/mo. No idea how much
they make from me in ads.

~~~
nivla
If you use Youtube enough to be wanting to pay 1-5/month then they could make
more than that by displaying ads to you. Freemium+Ad models are sometimes more
profitable than subscription based models and in some cases you may find a mix
of both (eg: Hulu Plus).

~~~
olalonde
I strongly doubt that. In 2011, Youtube had a trillion views and revenues of
about 1 billion$. That's 0.001$/view. You'd have to watch 5000 videos/month to
be worth 5$.

~~~
nivla
Keep in mind [one page view != one ad view]. If you refresh the same video
more than once, it does not keep repeating the advert. There is also a limit
to the max number of adverts shown per session to a user. Moreover not all
videos have ads and not all ads are shown to all users. There is no point in
showing an ad for home-depot to your European demographic, likewise there is
no point in wasting ad bandwidth on a 150 view home-video.

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brianbreslin
I don't know anyone who would justify $120+ to get rid of ads. I don't think
people see them as THAT huge of an inconvenience.

~~~
gte910h
I personally block ads because I view them as effective. They're effective
enough to pay for decades of television, they probably work.

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rocky1138
$0, meaning I don't care that much about seeing ads. Plus I've got adblock and
disable flash until clicked.

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jaequery
i personally would find this more interesting if it let you curate your own
ads to the networked connected devices. this way, i can make money on behalf
of our offices. now wouldn't that be interesting, hmm.

~~~
eli
You mean like the hotels were doing?
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804608>

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pdubs
So...a firewall?

