

Adblocking is Missing the Point - alanthonyc
http://www.inforift.com/adblocking-is-missing-the-point

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noelchurchill
People who use ad blockers are people who likely wouldn't respond to the ads
anyway so the advertiser isn't missing anything.

The problem is Ars is charging advertisers on a CPM basis so the more ad
impressions the more Ars gets paid. They could just raise the CPM they charge
to account for the lower impressions. Hopefully advertisers would understand
the impressions are of more value because some of the low value visitors
already "opted out" by using ad blockers.

Or they can charge on a cost per click basis.

~~~
wanderr
It's unlikely Ars has any direct control over their CPM; its likely determined
by an algorithm that already takes CTR into account. It would be interesting
to see the internal Ars numbers to see what happened to theid revenue after ad
blocking people turned off adblock; theoretically their CTR should have gone
down significantly, lowering their CPM. The question is, assuming that's what
happened, did the excess impressions make up for the lower CPM?

------
spot
the author thinks he is immune to ads because he doesn't click. so... why all
those ads before the internet?

~~~
alanthonyc
Immunity implies disease. As long as we are talking about advertising in those
terms, then something is wrong.

Once we get a way to connect businesses to the consumers who truly need their
product or service, then we have something to work with.

And by the way: the advent of the internet was/is a pretty huge deal. Things
before and things after are necessarily very different.

~~~
apu
_Things before and things after are necessarily very different._

I would say that "things before and things after are not necessarily the
same."

------
johnl
My use of ad blocking came about the same time viruses came to a head and I
decided to shut them all down to solve the problem. Maybe what's needed is a
more intelligent ad-blocker that can discriminate against the more intruding
ads and leave the "see and click" ads alone..

------
arantius
Single anonymous blogger claims that advertising is fundamentally broken, and,
thus, that all the parties collectively investing billions of dollars into it
each year are fools, who do no ROI calculations on their dollars spent.

Yeah right.

~~~
alanthonyc
By your logic, spam is also working fine because the people who invest money
into it are getting the ROI they desire.

Anyway, I'm hardly a "single" voice on the topic:

[http://www.drawar.com/articles/dont-let-ads-kill-your-
site/6...](http://www.drawar.com/articles/dont-let-ads-kill-your-site/61/)

And here's a non-anonymous blogger who is/has spoken on the same topic at
SXSW. I didn't make it there, but I'm looking forward to a synopsis or a
video.

 _"Online Advertising: Losing the Race to the Bottom"_

<http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/617>

"How individuals and groups can maintain some shred of dignity and support
themselves by creating ad and sponsorship programs that _benefit and respect
publishers, readers and advertisers._ Presented by John Gruber of Daring
Fireball and Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners and The Deck Network."

(emphasis mine)

