There is no way I’m going to buy anything from an online ad, so what’s the point of forcing me to look at them in order to read a page?
Ad clicks generate revenue for the site host is the only reason I can think of.
Yes, that’s it in a nutshell. Advertisers don’t care about you as an individual - they care about getting a certain number clicks across a certain number of views. It doesn’t matter that SCAdian is never going to buy anything from an online ad, it only matters that SCAdian is part of a population of users, some of whom will click on ads and buy products.
Same as spam really. We wouldn’t have spam if everybody were smart enough to not click on it, buy from it, etc.
We also wouldn’t have online ads if everybody were smart enough to not click on it, buy from it, etc.
Unfortunately your fellow humans, in bulk, aren’t that smart.
We also wouldn’t have free content on the internet, so it’s a good thing on balance.
They just need one chump out of 1,000 to buy something
But it’s not free. You’re paying mightily for it both in dollars and in being spied upon.
All the revenue e.g. Google gets every year doesn’t come out of thin air. It comes out of what you pay for the goods & services you buy.
I for one have no problem with paying for content. However I refuse to pay for content and still be served ads.
Instead of each of us making micropayments for page views, we’ve hired click brokers, spammers, and various legit advertising companies to make those payments on our behalf. After marking them up many, many times over.
Advertiser-supported anything is a pox upon commerce and a plague upon society. But it’s subtle enough that the vast majority of America falls for it.
Simple answer it takes a lot of time and money to start a web site, and a continual amount of time and money to keep the content fresh. Either you pay for the site or the site serves ads. Most web site operators can’t afford to run a site with no compensation.
I don’t charge anyone to use my website, nor do I have any ads. There’s plenty of free content out there, it’s just not at the likes of BuzzFeed, CNN, or Forbes.
The OP’s question is valid, and it’s not simply “hurr durr ads bad.” More and more websites actually block you from viewing them if they detect that you’re running an adblocker. Some just guilt you a bit, but you can still proceed, while the more mainstream news sites flat out refuse to show you the content, even though it’s already loaded in the background. So they’re not really saving themselves bandwidth/resources, yet they’re insisting someone allow ads even though they’re not marketable. Impressions/views are nearly worthless these days (about $0.03 each at best). So simply seeing the ad doesn’t get them anything, only clicks, and people who use adblockers aren’t clickers.
I forgot who on this site said it but it was brilliant. With all of the malware out there he compared websites telling you to not use an adblocker to a prostitute telling you to not use a condom.
Indeed, installing adblockers on our company computers eliminated nearly all malware infections. And it’s not as if people were surfing for porn during their lunch break. They were being infected by hijacked adservers pushing malicious ads out to completely innocuous everyday websites who were none the wiser. Ads being a significant vector for malware is rarely brought up when discussing monetization and other factors, but it should be.
(hit enter too soon)
It’s kinda a chicken-and-egg problem. Publishers wish there was a non-ad-driven way to monetize content too, but unless you’re as big as the NYT or Netflix, it’s difficult to convince users to pay for your stuff vs some generic malinformation blog that just repackages your expensive investigative journalism and resells it with a misleading, clickbaity headline. The internet’s freedom is also its downfall.
Google even tried a micropayments model, but it never took off: Google Contributor - Wikipedia
These days it seems like it’s either ads or, for the very lucky, direct-to-viewer Patreon subscriptions.
But since Apple and Google are now the primary gatekeepers to the American Internet, each taking a 30%+ cut, other publishers are scrambling for relevance. More and more get bought by media megaconglomerates every day, where efficiencies of scale and wire services can get reused from local paper to local station, all to sell you worthless sensationalist drivel, while the true indies have to host bake sales for your $5/mo. It’s not a good outlook for independent publishing.
That’s somebody’s time making content, so unless you can figure out a better way to reimburse them, ads it is and ads it will be. Just be grateful that there’s enough other users out there still willing to click on ads that a simple adblock will let you still view the content. For now.
PS for news sites, Bypass Paywalls works much better than Adblock.