No, not by definition. If there is a product I would like to buy, letting me know that that product exists is not inherently manipulative or deceptive. I don’t mind if Valve tells me that Fallout 4 is coming out because even if they are only doing it because they want my money, they will get my money by selling me a product that I want.
Not that that excuses all of the bullshit that unscrupulous online advertisers get up to these days. In-line JPGs and 2-4 frame GIFs are fine, but it is the advertisers who made going adblock-free an intolerable experience by adding scripts, audio, video and malware instead of being happy with a simple banner at the top of the page.
And it’s not just ads. I block scripts at the Huffington Post not because they show stuff I don’t want to see, but because at least one of their scripts is a bloated piece of crap that doesn’t load properly, so I prevent it loading at all.
I use an ad blocker. All the time. The few times I’ve read SD on a computer without ad block I’m stunned at the crappy ads on here.
I also have a “brain ad blocker”. I have taught myself somehow so I literally don’t see ads on pages that have ads as part of the page content (fixed ads? What would you call it?) and I don’t see the “fluff” on the sides - links to other articles, etc. The only way I can describe it is that it is like Niven’s hyperdrive blindspot. There’s nothing there.
Unfortunately, I still see TV ads. They’re everywhere!
So by your logic, if I
[ul]
[li]Fast forward through commercials on a show on my DVR[/li][li]Change stations on the radio during the commercial block[/li][li]Toss the coupons from the newspaper without looking at them[/li][li]Don’t read the last 20 pages of Popular Mechanics magazine[/li][/ul]I’m literally stealing content from the publishers?
I started using adblock because of autoplaying videos, which seriously can die in a thousand fires. I even have my google chrome at home blocking any video until I say it’s OK to play. I hate going to CNN and being FORCED to watch their stupid video because everyone is too fucking stupid to read the article.
I also watch Netflix and watch absolutely nothing on network TV. I don’t even watch the news. I totally don’t get, at all, in this day and age, why people still put up with ads. I just won’t do it. I only watch ad-laden TV when I am forced to.
If you want me to pay for your show and stuff then I am willing to. You just need to come up with a new model. I won’t put up with your ads just because you can’t think of anything more creative.
Yeah, but even NPR can air “underwriting” that alerts you to the existence of a product. It doesn’t become an “advertisement” that is illegal for non-profits to run until you add superlatives, bandwagon appeals, calls to action, among other things. That is my personal definition of advertising, one that makes a distinction between informative and manipulative campaigns.
I have no problem with something like “Bob’s Shoes. 123 Main Street. We sell shoes, sandals and boots for men, women, and children. Since 1983. www.bobsshoes.com”. That’s just “information”. But “Come on DOWN!!! to Bob’s SHOES!!! The best darn shoe store in the country! Fellas, ladies love shoes, so save your marriage by buying two pairs of pumps for the price of one!! For a limited time. Only at BOB’S!!!” is manipulation at best, and fraudulent deceit at worst.
Yes, plain old information is fine, even if it’s about a commercial product. I’m pro capitalism, so it isn’t the fact that someone is trying to sell me something that pisses me off. It’s the systematic psychological manipulation of entire populations that we’ve somehow become used to and found acceptable that I want to eliminate. I am also a supporter of free speech, so I wouldn’t want anti-advertising laws to be introduced, but I do think there should be more options for people who want to avoid advertising entirely. I’ve become pretty good at it. I still watch broadcast news in the morning, and Hulu Plus shows me occasional ads (that I mute), but overall I’m happy with the extreme lack of advertising I’ve fostered in my life compared to when I was a child. All I ask is for the trend to continue, and for the continued right of ad-haters like me to block them wherever possible.
I ad block and block all of the social media and analytics crap (via Ghostery), but have the occasional site or service white-listed.
Aside from the safety issue of ads, I just plain out don’t care if a product exists or not unless I’ve already identified a want or need in my life, and that’s usually introduced by something I’m struggling with or when I run into a friend with a cool, new thing. Ads are entirely meaningless to me because I’m am literally not interested in something unless I’ve made up my mind to it myself. Probably my only weakness in this regard is tech and cooking magazines, where maybe “Wired” could have been paid to write about 3D printers or camera drones by a company (no, I don’t own either, but I admit I did some research into owning both of these).
Am I yet another in the chorus of hipster douches who say advertising has no effect on them, but is wrong? Yeah, likely I’m wrong, but I’m not exposed to much direct advertising anyway, with ad blockers, and no live TV, and not able to read Chinese billboards. I would have to really, really challenge myself to find something that direct advertising has persuaded me to buy or even think of.
I’ve tried them but always ended up uninstalling them due to them making my computer run glacially slow. Admittedly, this may be due to my computer being extremely old now. I’ll try them again once I get a new computer.
If I am literally stealing when shall I expect the police to come and arrest me for this thievery?
I don’t care. I will block any ad in any way possible for every reason given as well as because they annoy me. The sites that require ad viewing are LITERALLY stealing from me.
I have no problem with advertising in principle and practice, as long as it doesn’t obscure what I’m trying to do. As said obscuring began to increase to ridiculous levels, I decided to use an ad-blocker. I have occasionally tried turning it off, usually on specific sites I want to support, but the ads are still obnoxious and interfere with my attempts to read the damn site, so fuck 'em.
The contract I have with my ISP includes a cap on the amount of data I can send/receive per month. I haven’t authorized any advertisers to use any of that data so with their parasitic relationship with content providers, they are literally stealing from me.
I’ll chalk that up as a zero sum equation. I won’t prosecute them if they don’t prosecute me.
PSXer is joking. He even tried to make it obvious by saying “it’s okay to steal from big organizations.”
And, yes, I adblock. Partly for protection, and partly because I discovered that, once I turned them off, I was happier. I didn’t focus on the things I didn’t have.
I don’t buy the “information” logic now. The only time I need information is when I’m getting ready to buy something, and I can use the Internet like anyone else. What I want is a system where I can choose to go look at the things the software thinks I might be interested in.
You know, how YouTube and Netflix “advertise” their videos.
Other. I like ads (they support content): I just don’t want malware, moving ads, or overly clickbaity scam-ads.
Ad block plus with the allow non-intrusive ad option, using with the Malware Domain list. Not the Easy List. Flash block set to on. Ghostery tracker take care of the rest: I think I’ve checked about 4 boxes out of thousands. Getting rid of Taboolla and Doubleclick gets rid of a lot of the miscellaneous stuff.
I used to be like this. I wasn’t comfortable with the concept of cutting off site owner’s sources of revenue, but neither did I like my browsing experience being plagued with intrusive, media rich ads. I used to have a policy of only blocking the worst ads and providers, but over time that ended up being most of them, and I’d end up playing whack-a-mole every session trying to kill the latest round of annoying ads.
I also realised that even with the ads I could see, I hadn’t clicked on an ad in literally years, so nobody was actually missing out by me using adblock anyway. So now I just block them all.
Something I have noticed from my time trying to run an ad-supported website, though: this situation is at least partially our fault as users.
When I first created my site, I tried to make the best experience I could. Small, unobtrusive text ads in the sidebar and the bottom of the page, that sort of thing. Almost nobody ever clicked on them. So I got a little more adventurous by allowing graphical (and then flash) ads, putting them in more prominent positions and making them bigger. Result? About ten times the click through rate from when I’d just started out with the text ads. You can’t blame advertisers and site owners from using the methods that bring in the most money, and it’s a simple fact that users just don’t take any notice of the adverts that they claim to like the most.
In the end, though, the advertising model fell down completely - for my site, anyway, and this is an overall trend. People have developed ‘ad blindness’ and average click through rates have dropped significantly over the last few years. I ended up dropping adverts altogether and sought out a different method of revenue generation.
That was a compelling argument before the rise of ad networks which involve both tracking users across the web to serve “relevant” ad content and a totally lax curation or editorial policy for accepting ads so that any sleaze merchant who wants to push an unethical product or drop a hidden tracker of their own into an ad can do so.
Internet ads are poison, and that’s not a new phenomenon. Everyone who has a website that they actually pay to run knows that now. There is no longer any way for a cognizant adult to lend benefit of the doubt to ad networks for responsible behavior or to shrug about the potential for harm to visitors’ computers, the invasion of their privacy, or the unethical content of some of the ads themselves and the websites they link to.
Hopefully the rise of Patreon and cash.me will be the decline of ads on personal and hobbyist sites, at least.
I don’t play whack-a-mole anymore. I have reached an equilibrium. I admit I’m surprised on how few ads I see: I would like to see more.
As I see it, I’m helping the ad model evolve. You don’t click on newspaper or billboard ads either: they still register though. Also, if they want me to click on an ad, they should probably put some latency in their presentation. Sometimes I click to the next page and go back to the previous page only to find that the ad has disappeared.
It appears that advertisers are too obsessed with clicks. The ad market might try friendlier ads at higher volume.
Here’s a simple blog - Calculated Risk. http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/ Visit it without an ad blocker and there are all manner of irritating and moving ads from iShares: why do they want to piss me off? That’s a link I might actually click occasionally. With the ad blocker, I get 2 stock images that look a little (not too much) clickbaity. They allegedly link to nerdwallet and next advisor.
Nerdwallet displays sponsored ad copy disguised as a consumer review. The website is more polished than their stock photo ad. As for Next Advisor: [INDENT] NextAdvisor.com is a consumer information site that offers free, independent reviews and ratings of online services. We receive advertising revenue from most but not all of the companies whose products and services we review. For credit cards, we review cards from all of the top 10 US issuers by purchase volume (according to Issue 1035 of The Nilson Report, Feb 2014) excluding issuers that require additional accounts to be a cardholder and private label issuers. We may also review cards from other issuers in select cases. We do not review all products in a given category. We are independently owned and operated and all opinions expressed on this site are our own.
[/INDENT] I know how to get decent reviews. You go to Consumer Reports, bankrate.com or depositaccounts.com.
The real kick though is that there’s a vast amount of white space alongside the blog. You could advertise movies or bottled water there. Isn’t bandwidth cheap and browser caches widely available?
Anyway, one dirty secret is that scammers pay the most for ads. I’m talking about those who get your credit card for exchange of one weird trick, then enroll you in a $7.95 per month subscription service whose terms are buried in the fine print and whose name on the bill is opaque. I understand that advertisers seem to think that only morons see their ads anyway: anybody else uses a fully equipped ad blocker. It’s a vicious circle.