There was an ATMB thread a few days ago about other people having similar problems.
The problem of ads is going to come to head sooner rather than later. The recent spate of serious malware in ads, and the generally more intrusive nature of adverts is making an ad-blocker less of a luxury or a statement of principle, and more and more a simple necessity. It is going to get worse before it gets better, and the manner in which it gets better is not clear.
Ad-Block Pro claim they are trying to make the internet better by actually allowing some advertisers that meet their standards for reasonable advertising to be white listed. That these advertisers also pay for this does rather diminish the purity of the approach, but it is indicative.
The big problem is that the eco-system is such that nobody who has advertising on their site controls it. For the most part Google are the Godzilla of the game, and the deal is simply that they give you some money, and they run the ads. It isn’t good, but there it is. It is almost certain that a site like SDMB will never have the size of readership to be able to fund any other sort of ad model. The idea that the Chicago Reader could afford go out and sell ads on the site themselves is hopeless. So we are left with the need for a new model that rewards good behaviour and pushes out the bad actors. Whilst everyone is comfortable making money off the current model, this isn’t going to happen. The chicken and egg is that if Google has a better idea about who you are (demographic, income, interests) they will serve you more targeted ads, and implicitly (supposedly) less annoying and intrusive ones. Many of us run no-script and Ghostery partly to prevent such knowledge being harvested. As well as, again, it becoming more a matter of necessity if you want to avoid unpleasant surprises.
No doubt, if a significant number of people did use ad-blockers things would change. Not necessarily for the better. For the SDMB paying the money is basically the right answer. In general, it isn’t the answer, and I don’t think anyone really understands what the right answer is.
Color me naive’ (and I read your explanation), but my bolded part above strikes me as utterly bizarre. What’s so hard about advertising links to other related sites-say, Bad Astronomy, Cosmoquest, XKCD, HowStuffWorks, ScientificAmerican. They could also put in an Amazon link (& to other online retailers like ThinkGeek) like some other sites do and reap a percentage of the sales (and the demographic here I know uses Amazon all the time-I know I do).
Now, someone can indeed chime in and tell me that the above is impossible, it doesn’t work like that, etc. etc. All I can say in reply is that we live in BizarroWorld.
The above is not only not impossible, but part of Internet business.
The sites you mention are “related” to the interests of how many members?
Does Chicago Reader have the analytics internal to their own system to negotiate financially with sites (your list) which–by some miracle of SD general demographics or humdrum-with-the-right-technology-micro-demographics–are interested in establishing a mutually beneficial business relationship?
It’s not BizarroWorld any more than most everything you enjoy on radio, television, or print. Poor Cecil would go hungry and you and I would have no ATMB on which to thrash this out without it.
In other words (?): Yay ads!
ETA: I’m in the website business.
ETA2: I suggest a new statement in mod responses in threads like this: “If you don’t like our ads that means you want Cecil to starve.”
Then sit back and wait.
I’m not in the website business, but if I’m understanding your objection correctly (and I’m not sure that I am), what you’re missing is that running targeted ads like you suggest would require making individual advertising deals with a whole bunch of individual advertaisers, which would be a lot more time-consuming (and expensive, because you’d have to pay somebody to do it) than just accepting a check from a single company who arranges for all the ads.
Can I do that with a Visa debit card, without using PayPal? When I go through the steps, using PayPal is the only option showing.
Click through to the PalPal page, and then up toward the top should be a link that is something like, “Change payment method.” Click that, you enter your debit card number, and you’re done.
You may have some intermediate steps if you aren’t a PayPal member, but this isn’t rocket surgery.
Trying to guilt people is shitty, and one of the few reasons I will put you on my list of sites I will never unblock. Even if you’re kidding, it puts a bad taste in my mouth. The way you get me to give you money (and viewing ads is giving you money) is to make content I want to support, not trying to guilt trip me into supporting you. If are in dire straits, set up a place where we can donate. Don’t use it to hawk your wares. It’s dishonest.
Furthermore, I have yet to be on a website that got shut down due to lack of ad revenue. Any site I’ve used regularly is still around, except one that got shut down for reasons completely unrelated to ads–it foolishly never even ran them. The thing is, what you need to stay up and running scales with your users. In theory, you should need the same amount of ads no matter what level you are on–you’ll just get paid less for them. In practice, I know this isn’t the case, but people still manage to keep the lights on.
And the stuff about removing ads entirely had nothing at all to do with what he asked, anyways. He just asked why the SD or its parent company couldn’t negotiate for first party ads instead of getting increasingly skeevy third-party providers. Heck, Viglink is still used here, despite actually modifying posts by changing links. And now we have popunders by another name.
It’s kinda like those threads where people say universal health care is impossible. We can see other countries that do it. And we can see other sites that pull it off without this stuff. So that’s what we want them to do. Yeah, first party ads take work, but this place apparently has an Advertising department. It runs a newspaper, which do first party ads all the time. And this site has tons of analytics and data. So it could be done.
But but but…we’re stealing BigT!!! And that’s bad! 
Perhaps I’m just monumentally wealthy or something but the idea of spending the amount of time here that I - and many others posting in this thread *not that I’m thinking of anyone in particular *- spend, while being so tightassed that I would rather come up with various pissweak justifications for not paying than shell out $15 whole dollars just boggles my mind.
Perhaps I’m just a stubborn asshole but everytime a paying member (not that I’m thinking of anyone in particular) makes a shitty comment about guest accounts it makes me kind of happy that I’m just a member of the common unwashed.
I should say that I understand that to some people the subscription is a stretch and I don’t aim my remarks at them. But some of the people concerned have mentioned what they do for a living…
I also think that not paying and not complaining about ads seems a decent option.
Some people think, “Pay up or we’ll bombard you with dodgy ads!” is a shitty business model." Crazy, isn’t it?
Yeah how shitty. Do you know what’s even more shitty? Those businesses that won’t let you have what you want at all unless you pay. I went to buy a Coke the other day and this wanker behind the counter wouldn’t give it to me till I paid. Blackmailing asshole. “Fuck your shitty business model” I said righteously and walked out.
That analogy would only work if paying them had a significant risk of resulting in you being poisoned. So long as websites show so little concern about passing along malware - and none at all for paying for the damage such malware does - they are in no position to claim any moral high ground about payment.
As for me? Firefox with NoScript and Adblock Plus means no ads at all. It’s interesting to note that NoScript is blocking no less than 8 advertising/tracking websites on this page.
An ideal business model for websites does not exist:
1/ We like our websites, oh yes we do, let’s look at our postcounts, people
2/ There’s no really easy way to pay for the cost of running a website other than hoping to sell merchandise, hoping people will pay a sub or hoping you can sell ads
3/ People probably won’t buy enough merch to run your website
4/ People expect to get stuff on the internet for nothing and won’t pay subs
5/ Ensuring only good safe ads would require having a person (or several) vetting ads - and for a small website that doesn’t even produce enough ad revenue to support proper technical maintenance, there’s no way that’s not going to see you come out behind
6/ Existing 3rd party ad systems are shitty and might transmit virii and that pisses people off
7/ More and more people use adblockers just so pages load faster etc, so ad revenue is uncertain and getting more so.
There is no good model. There are only compromises. The owners of this website give you a couple options, one of which is (for anyone earning even a low wage) incredibly cheap on a per hour/per year basis, and the other of which is annoying but free. Unless you are genuinely skint then as far as I’m concerned if you spend any significant time here the choices are: take your pick of pay or advertising, leave, or stop whining.
By the way my analogy works perfectly because if you pay here you have no risk of being poisoned.
What might work as an analogy is this: the guy behind the counter says, “Well, you can pay $2 for that Coke, but I like to offer a cheap option, so if you like you can have a coke free from that crate over there but they are passed their used by date, so if they taste bad or something, well…”
Pay your $2 or kwitcha bitchin’.
If they hand out poison they are in no position to pretend any sort of moral superiority.
Trying to guilt people into paying for something that is free is just plain emotional blackmail. And mental abuse in my book.