

Why “just use Adblock” should never be a professional answer - codepo8-hn
http://christianheilmann.com/2014/02/02/why-just-use-adblock-should-never-be-a-professional-answer/

======
spindritf
There are so many problems with ads that I cannot in good conscience offer any
other advice than "block 'em all."

• Ad networks can be, and are, used as a malware distribution vector. No one
is vetting all the ads. Not the publishers, not the networks.

• They slow everything down. AdBlock and Ghostery make web browsing faster.
Not to mention waiting 30s to watch a youtube video, or worse yet to realize
that you didn't actually want to watch it.

• Ads are cognitive pollution. It's possible that mass marketing largely
doesn't work, but I'm wary of assuming that "ads don't work on me." What if
they do? As a matter of hygiene, it's better to avoid them. No, I don't avert
my eyes away from billboards (ironic next gen Google Glass application) but I
do skip TV commercials.

• Even if they don't work, they're at least distracting from stuff viewers
actually care about.

~~~
Killswitch
> They slow everything down. AdBlock and Ghostery make web browsing faster.
> Not to mention waiting 30s to watch a youtube video, or worse yet to realize
> that you didn't actually want to watch it.

Understandable, but um, if you didn't have those ads, you wouldn't have
YouTube. Oh pay for it? Who's gonna pay to watch stupid videos online? Nobody.

Ads are important. Without them, you'll be paying a membership fee to every
site you visit regularly.

~~~
weland
> Without them, you'll be paying a membership fee to every site you visit
> regularly.

I, for one, would be happy to. I'd honestly pay a monthly fee to watch
Youtube. I don't use it only for cat videos, I also use it to find new music
from artists I've never heard of, watch recordings of concerts I've been to
just to relive the moments and so on.

If Youtube would let me _pay_ to make those ads go away, I'd do so without
thinking twice. In the absence of the said option, though, yes, I block their
ads.

~~~
Killswitch
Judging by the huge bitchfest by users complaining because they have to pay $5
a month for Xbox Live Gold just to pay $9 a month to watch Netflix on it,
people won't want to pay for their internet connection, and membership fee to
the hundreds of sites on line.

Yeah the internet would be better, because nobody but the people who can
afford to pay for it would be on... You'd have to have a full time job just to
pay the fees to your handful of favorite sites you visit.

~~~
sentenza
You'd not be paying for every site you want to watch. Only those that are most
important to you. Also, not everybody using the site would be paying.

If content is supposed to be available to paying and non-paying users, then
maybe (in the case of youtube)the payout to content creators would be
determined by the upvotes of the paying customers only.

------
dserban
Oh, look, this again.

> "ads are what makes the current internet work."

No, they're not. The Internet was designed as a tool for enabling
communication, not money-making. Without ads, a lot of the blog spam that
exists today would go away and the Internet would be better off for it.

~~~
ankitoberoi
Yes and a lot of very talented people would not be able to focus on doing what
they currently do full time (and love to do) as they'll have to worry about
making money.

OR

As a content consumer, you'll have to pay for the content directly which is
currently available for free.

Yes, I know everyone hates ads and I'll probably get downvoted here too but -
You should punish publishers who serve malware, popups, JS & other bad stuff
BUT you don't punish ALL the publishers - many of them don't do that and are
just fine.

~~~
nitrogen
The web was great back when people wrote and published for the love. The web
would undoubtedly survive a transition back to such a state.

~~~
TillE
And that's when hosting was much more expensive.

Patreon is another good example of how to survive if there are a decent number
of people who genuinely like what you do. See Cara Ellison and Zoe Quinn, for
example. It won't make you rich, but that's very much the point.

------
BrainInAJar
Even if every ad was "well behaved" I'd still block each and every one of
them. The privacy implications of being constantly tracked in order to sell me
bullshit are too creepy.

Frankly, if your business depends on ads, you should think about a different
business model, because the NSA spying thing is partly your fault. There are
many things that I already pay for on the web, and many more that I would
happily pay for if they offered me an ad and tracking-free experience

~~~
graylights
I don't consider trackers "well behaved". My reasons for adblock: 1\.
Security. I don't mind static image ads because the security implications are
minor. But running third party code without accountability is scary. (1) 2\.
Performance. Loading images from a dozen different domains means many dns
resolutions. 3\. Privacy. This is just creepy, networks watching every page I
go to.

There is nothing in advertising that requires all of that. I'm perfectly fine
with static locally hosted ads. But the whole industry is based around
something else. I continue to use adblock plus despite their "Acceptable Ads"
program because I consider it reasonable in requirements.(2) I think there's a
lot more room for compromise in allowing ads but no extension makes it easy to
address my concerns.

Citations: 1\.
[https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN22569.html?impressions=true](https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN22569.html?impressions=true)
2\. [https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-
ads](https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads)

~~~
BrainInAJar
But ABP considers Google ads to be "acceptable". I do not. Google is one of
the creepiest companies on the internet to date, and I'd prefer to disappear
off their radar entirely

------
austenallred
So many comments on this thread parrot the notion that people will just pay
for the things that they love, but the math there rarely, if ever, ads up. The
fact of the matter is that outside a few exceptions advertising makes more
money than charging to use a product or relying on donations. And revenue is
necessary not only for servers, but for man hours and ability of the creators
to concentrate. No one can pretend that Google would make as much money
through any other means of monetization. And people don't often work for free.

There's also value in lowering the barriers to entry, and allowing all people
to use or access a program. Say, for example, Google cost $20/month. Would I
pay for it? Absolutely. But a lot of my friends wouldn't. My grandma would use
yahoo or bing instead. And some of the value that is gained in Google's
ubiquity (which is actually quite a lot) goes away. Google would make less
money. We might not have gmail, or google docs/drive. Or a self-driving car.
Or Google Fiber. Etc. etc. etc.

I'm reminded of the notion of App.net. Sometimes critical mass is inherently
valuable, if not part of the core functionality of the product. App.net was
originally a pay-to-use Twitter, that a lot of smart people started to use.
But it wasn't enough for me to ever find value in it. Twitter was better and
free. I'll let them throw ads at me every now and then - it's a great utility
and platform. There's no way I would consciously pay enough to use everything
that I use online.

It's also easy to say that "No one clicks on ads" or "I never click on ads."
Even "I'd be happy to pay for the sites I use." But not everyone using those
sites feels that way, so your price would likely be astronomical, or the site
would collapse under its own weight. A "pay to not see ads" model might work,
but a "pay to use the site" likely wouldn't.

One look at Revenue numbers of Facebook, Twitter, Google, or the recipes site
my little sister built (it makes her $150/day) says differently. I admittedly
click on ads at tims, especially retargeted ads. Even if you don't, someone
does. And they drive sales, otherwise people wouldn't use them.

So consider yourself opted out if you like, but don't pretend like they don't
make sense.

~~~
chaz
> It's also easy to say that "No one clicks on ads" or "I never click on ads."

I would add that the majority of ads in the world are brand advertising --
driving awareness and consideration and not targeting a direct response. If
you're planning to watch the Super Bowl today, the Olympics later today, or
just about any pro/college sport, it's been largely paid for by ads. Not to
mention just about any TV show, news program, newspaper, or magazine. No one
immediately runs out to Target when they see a detergent ad, but next time
they're in Target or shopping at Amazon (and after receiving many more
impressions), the familiarity grants it extra consideration.

Most people are familiar with keyword ads, but not as much with brand ads.
There's no need to click -- advertisers pay for impressions, and sites get
paid for impressions. A little less than half of Internet ads is from
brand/display advertising -- about $22bn in the US alone. But globally there
are hundreds of billions more from TV, radio, print, and outdoor that could
potentially shift online.

[http://www.itamarnovick.com/why-facebook-would-be-
worth-200b...](http://www.itamarnovick.com/why-facebook-would-be-
worth-200b-in-just-a-few-years/)

------
polemic
I don't agree with the conclusion that adblocking is leading to Upworthy style
pap articles... Those are engineered for a social media world, to cut through
short timelines and attention spans. The ad content is largely unchanged from
any other low quality media source. Just like all the low quality how-to pages
that were/are churned out to catch long-tail searches when _that_ was the
easier meat.

In a few years trends will change, habits will change, and a new paradigm will
emerge to attract eyeballs. But here's the thing: the content stratification
feared in this post has _long_ since happened. It's the reality of the web,
has been for some time, and it's certainly not killing anything that hasn't
had the bejeezes kicked out of it by other forces already.

~~~
ItendToDisagree
You make an interesting point about the evolution of advertising online... It
makes me think of the situation with the recording industry and record
sales/pirating.

It seems to me the advertisers are just 'screaming and yelling' that their old
business model isn't working anymore and trying as hard as they can not to
innovate or 'keep up with the times'.

------
dsr_
It is not my responsibility to save your business model.

It may well be that many sites will shut down without ads. That does not
obligate me to look at the ads; it only obligates me not to whine when a site
I liked shuts down from lack of ad revenue.

------
artificialidiot
This kind of butthurt posts pop up regularly since browser customisations
became popular. The main objection is almost always towards users' freedom of
choice of software to view web content. It is frightening them that some users
with technical ability and will share a solution with others who lack those,
often with no strings attached and free of charge, thus preventing people
whose livelihoods depend on advertisements to easily dictate how anyone must
consume their content. They want to limit my software choices. They want to
regulate existing software. They want to decide what I get to see on the
screen. Yet when they face resistance, they bring up bullshit arguments such
as their content is central to the existence of the internet against all the
evidence on the contrary all the while building their businesses on the
software built by people who have been succesfully upholding principles such
as freedom and decentralisation. No amount of sugar coating will make their
arguments pallatable for purveyors of software for freedom and choice thus
their feeble attemps will continue. Only way for them to win is to eliminate
general purpose computing which is already struggling to some degree in the
hands of our oh so totally not evil that icame darlings. If you have read this
far, there is a high chance you already know how to navigate marketing
bullshit and you don't need my advice anyway.

I will continue to block, and suggest anyone who listens the same, every shit
someone else want me to see or run against my wishes for the health of my
profession if for nothing else.

------
JamieLewis
Here is the thing, I don't mind ads - but I do mind pages loading 10+ files of
javascript when I am attempting to read an article.

I browse with noscript enabled, and for the most part the web is a much faster
and a much, much safer place
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Haum9UpIQzU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Haum9UpIQzU)).

I am still amazed when I try to read a simple blog article and am greeted with
a blank white page, it turns me right off the site and I go spend my time
elsewhere.

I will happily shell out money for content that I like.

------
btbuildem
Whatever buddy. Make something of value and people will pay you for it. Or
make useless amusements, and depend on ad revenue.

~~~
j2kun
There are ways to get the best of both worlds. XKCD is free and ad-free (and a
useless amusement, as are most things people want to pay money for).

~~~
greenyoda
xkcd had developed enough of a following that its author can make money by
selling xkcd-branded merchandise
([http://store.xkcd.com](http://store.xkcd.com)).

------
mwsherman
The insight here, which the writer doesn’t get to, is the incredible economic
inefficiency all of this implies.

Ineffective ads outnumber good ads by at least an order of magnitude,
conservatively. By good I mean “delivering economic value”, which might take
the form of clickthroughs or general brand awareness.

If we consider clicked ads, or those that eventually result in a purchase, to
be good ones, then the rest are a waste.

That waste should be understood as a degradation of the publisher’s product.
We go to great lengths to get the typography and design just so – and then
allow an economically worthless ad to degrade it.

The opportunity is to improve ads by an order of magnitude. This isn’t a
question of eking out slightly better targeting. It means not showing an ad at
all, most of the time.

Though the evidence to date is not in my favor, I have to believe that the
current state of web advertising is waiting for the bottom to fall out, like
print media in the last decade.

------
csmithuk
Can block, will block. I will advise people to block where possible as well.
Why?

The Internet experience is universally shit when there are adverts. The 2%
exception to the rule isn't a valid discussion point. Neither is the people
delivering content and surrounding it with shit.

My children battling through adverts galore and pushing apps on them using
dirty ad network tricks on their iPads is a fine example. Browsing on the
devices is fucking horrible to the point they only want to use a desktop with
an adblocker. Their school has adblockers. The local library has adblockers.
Everyone I know has adblockers.

The model is over. No turd polish or new strategy will help. Advertisers
ruined it.

I'd rather go back to gopher and dialups than saw a new paradigm appear.

------
hapless
The only ads that have ever been useful to me, even once, in my entire life,
were google search ads. Contextual ads presented to me when I am already
looking for something.

Coincidentally, in 2014, those are the only ads I don't block. I really cannot
imagine there is any advertisement I would ever value while reading about
something else.

------
mdisraeli
Irony - this developer, who seems to have a good understanding of ethics and
web best practices, on a post about advert blocking, has a link at the bottom
of their sidebar:

 _" Essay shark - paper writing service!"_

This is labelled in the source as an ad. Comparing DNS and IP records suggest
it is very unlikely they are related services. Chris also actively lists what
they work on,which does not include Essayshark.

Essayshark do, however, appear to have an affiliate scheme. This raises
interesting questions given the topic of the article.

~~~
codepo8-hn
This is one of the ads I have on my blog that came through an ad affiliate
program. So yes, I have ads on my blog, which is my right as a content
creator. You can, of course see this as a conspiracy or something evil. :)

~~~
mdisraeli
I don't view it as a conspiracy, only a very strange thing to observe, for a
number of reasons:

1\. The only thing which clearly marks this as an ad is the comment just above
it in the HTML. Which is strange for two reasons...

2\. The lack of nofollow strongly suggests this isn't just an affiliate link,
but a 'paid link exchange'. Of course, you could just be profiting from the
affiliation alone, but I'm sure you are aware as an experience web designer
that most search engines tend to frown on this sort of thing.

3\. By not clearly marking the element as an advert, you are effectively using
one of the same tactics that the "most aggressive and horrible ads" use. Yes,
plain text is small font is utter love, thank you for that, but given you've
just written a blog post about ad blockers, I'm guessing you must have also
carefully considered this

4\. You outright talk about "dark interaction patterns" \- not labelling
adverts clearly is one of them ;)

5\. A core theme in your post is "think about what appears on your page and
how it affects your design". I see no obvious topical connection, and if
anything, essay writing services exist for quite the opposite reason
typically.

Yes, I'm over-analysing this, and yes, I fully support your attempts to gain a
little more income. To be honest, the biggest issue I have is the nature of
the link - having many friends working in academia, and being white hat
typically myself, I have serious ethical issues with essay writing services,
and I do think the juxtaposition of that link with your article is rather
strange.

~~~
codepo8-hn
You are totally right, I have moved the blog from my old domain wait-
till-i.com to my name about a year ago and realised in November that all my
ads got killed that way (see how I game that system) :)

This was the first to come in, and I felt rather torn about it. It was needed
to get one in to get the affiliate program (which changed owners in between,
another thing that is kind of fishy) kickstarted again.

The good bit about these is that all they want is a link. No JS, no Flash,
nothing, which is why I considered them in the first place anyway.

Utterly fair points though, so here's a fat header above them and a nofollow
on the link.

~~~
mdisraeli
Your openness and taking of action are very much good things, thank you! :D

~~~
codepo8-hn
Frankly, I just messed this up as my job takes 120% of my time and I hardly
ever have a good connection to mess with the internals of the blog. I'd rather
write :)

~~~
mdisraeli
You and me both, you and me both....

------
randomflavor
So you adblockers who think the internet should go back to 1994, never use
Google? I think the article is spot on. Advertising does and has always
supported media distribution technologies since we had media distribution.
Today that technology is the web and mobile web, and it is a distributed
technology. Either micropaymetns with a bitcoin like tech will be embedded in
the browser for you to be ad free, or view ads will be a future choice.
Dodging the means people use to generate revenue - is just naive.

~~~
fotbr
With the way Google has been acting over the last, oh, 5 years or so? Yeah, I
try to avoid google for the most part.

I'm firmly in the camp of "You (the server) provide the content. I (my
computer) decide which pieces of that content to display. You get no say in
what my computer does or does not do." So yes, I block ads. I block
javascript. I block flash. I override your CSS. I pick and choose which
elements to display. I'm perfectly fine with doing without your content if you
make it too inconvenient, because 99% of the time, I don't really need that
content anyway, and the other 1%, well, the same content can be found
elsewhere.

The the thing that younger people do not understand: I've lived in a pre-
internet, pre-cellphone, and for the most part, a pre-personal-computer,
world. I know what it's like. I know it's not the end of the world to go back
to that. As a result, there's a lot of stuff I'm not willing to put up with.

~~~
cico71
This. Anyway, we are not the target of these messages to legitimize the status
quo of the ads business (or, even worse, that want to expand the influence on
regulatory matters). We are too old, well past the point where ads may have
had a significant impact on our choices, and where media could change
radically our point of view. In other words, we are irrelevant to them and we
can continue happily blocking everything, but younger people needs to be
brainwashed to keep the current model and to mold the internet into its final
form.

------
cordite
I admit that I've had useful ads related to databases and hosting. But most of
the time, the ads have been too obscene.

I almost feel like puking when I use a public computer. Google has made it
better with textual ads, but they still serve those flash ones the literally
flash and try to entice the same kinds of things mobile games often cater to.

There's also the past where the computers that had kids that would click on
these ads would end up infested. Overall, the web ad industry has made some
really dumb mistakes in the past.

------
zebra
Ad networks - if you have shown a heavy flash banner 10 times in a row and I
haven't click on it, please get the hint and stop pushing it, I won't click it
on the 11th time. Today I'm talking about a blue banner with a developer with
his saliva dripping on his desk.

------
chacham15
Honestly, Adblock is the world we live in. You can cry and complain that
people shouldnt use it, but the fact of the matter is that we will. Unless you
plan on somehow forcing this technology out of existence, the solution isnt to
not use adblock. The solution is to come up with a better way. If I knew what
that way was, I'd be a multi-millionaire at least, but I dont. My main point
is that crying or complaining about it isnt going to solve the problem.

------
musicalentropy
Is there seriously a business right here which works thanks to ads ? I mean,
do you really know people clicking on these ads ? For me, everything here is
just working because people want to pay you so you put ads on your website...
But this money, at the end, does not come from money generated from ads, but
from... business angels and VCs money !

------
scottydelta
well Ads are what keeping the internet alive in a very generic sense. The free
services we enjoy like google, youtube, twitter, online new sites, are free
because of the ads. Blocking them all is like discouraging people to actually
produce good content, for eg youtube video creators get a share of money
earned by youtube through ads on the video's page, what do you think happens
when you watch the video by blocking all the ads? It doesnt affect youtube
that much but it makes alot of difference for the creator.

------
pbreit
Outside of a handful of HN curmudgeons, I don't see it too much.

------
af3
don't just use Adblock... use Adblock Edge ;)

