It is true that advertising can affect you even if you think it doesn’t, which is an important thing to keep in mind.
Although most of the ads I see on the internet are so cryptic I can’t imagine what effect they could possibly have on my shopping habits.
The ones I tend to see if I disable adblock are more along the lines of “Ten crazy health tricks to make doctors hate you!” more than messages to buy Pepsi or whatever.
As for Blip, I don’t know. I don’t have any particular moral objection to shaming people to make them donate to you, although that’s probably a fringe view.
Whatever works. I personally won’t use their website if I can avoid it because it doesn’t work as well as Youtube.
Also, I’m under the impression that generally websites get paid per click, not for each person who sees the ad, so given that I never, ever, click ads on websites, using adblock doesn’t make any difference.
Do you really get a lot of 3-5 minute un-skippable ads on Youtube? I’ve been watching a lot of Youtube shows recently (since I have a job with overnight shifts with a lot of downtime). And there are 15 second ads that force you to watch the entire thing, and there are longer ads (1-5 minutes long). But I don’t remember ever seeing a long ad that didn’t let you press a “skip ad” button after the first 5 seconds of the ad. If it makes a difference, I’m usually viewing these videos on my iphone and ipad (using Safari).
My vague understanding from various articles I’ve read is that most online ad revenue these days comes from impressions/views, not from clicks. So I don’t feel upset about being “forced” to watch the first five seconds of a skippable video ad. And for the most part, the blogs and websites I read don’t have hugely annoying/obtrusive ads when I view them on my tablet without ad-block software.
For the poll, I answered “other”. I don’t get very bothered by seeing ads when browsing using my phone or tablet, but I do use ad-block on my laptop (with some websites on the whitelist). I don’t think using ad-block is immoral and I understand why people do it, but I can also see why some people think ad-block is problematic for the current model of how a large part of the internet currently works. I can appreciate the argument that there are content providers that I would like to support so they can grow and produce more content I enjoy (mostly Youtube channels and blogs), and that these content providers get most/all of their revenue from ad views. So at least currently, if I want to support them then blocking their ads would be counter-productive.
What alternative sources of revenue would they have if everyone used ad-block? I’m not sure. Not everyone can make money by selling merchandise, and if all of these sites were behind pay-walls then I never would have discovered most of them. They could offer “free previews” and then have a pay for subscription model, but I think that under this model then it would be more difficult for smaller content providers to get started and grow to be big enough to get enough subscribers to be sustainable. Personally, I don’t like the idea of paying for monthly/annual subscriptions for websites, but maybe this will be more common in the future. There is one website I visit often (Ravelry- a website for knitters), and I’ve put them on my ad-blocker whitelist, as they do have ads but they none of them are loud or visually annoying, and I’m not sure where they get the ads from, but they’re all selected to be companies that would be of interest to the site’s users.
Well said. I do that too, and enjoy the fact that I’m not watching ads. I also channel flip whenever an ad break starts so I don’t have to watch ads. I also record a lot of shows so I can fast forward through the ads.
I don’t have my own computer on the internet, but if I did, I’d use every available means to block ads.
Anyway, I don’t even notice ads on web pages having been able to train myself to not look at them.
I just want to point out - the internet and the world wide web existed long before the advent of bouncy, shrieky, ads. If all browsers came with adblock preinstalled, the www would still be here and it would work just fine.
It’s true that if all ads were blocked, websites would find some other model to use. They would probably use a paywall, making you pay $10 a month for their content. Would the people here who use adblock prefer that?
The argument that it’s alright to use adblock because websites will find another model is faulty, though. You are still reneging on the exchange that has allowed for the content you are consuming. You are taking something for nothing.
Are you kidding? I use Youtube fairly often, and I’ve never been forced to watch an ad more than 30 seconds or so. Even having to watch a 15 second one is rare; they usually let you skip after five seconds. I have a feeling you’ve been exaggerating the instrusiveness of ads and the threat of malware from ads.
That argument would only be true if all the websites on the internet were created to be commercial enterprises. That wasn’t true when the web began and it’s still not remotely true today.
People post things on the internet for two reasons: 1) because they want the publicity and exposure or 2) because they feel like it. Some of those people - especially in category 1 - are hoping to make a profit from it but not everybody. Not by a long shot.
Content authors make their work publicly available because they know they’d never get much traffic if they stuck it behind a paywall. There’s just too much competition, too many people doing it for love, to attract an audience if their stuff is locked away. Content creators put their stuff on the internet because they want our attention.
That’s the bargain. Not “I will post my precious content online and if you glance at it you have to pay me for it.” The bargain is “I will post my precious content online and you will give me your precious attention for five minutes.”
Well, I was born in 1994, so I can’t honestly remember what the state of internet advertising was back in '96 or whether The Onion had ads back then. Nevertheless, I can tell that they now rely on it heavily to continue producing the high quality content they do.
I agree that many people put their creative works on the internet for reasons other than profit, but most websites I enjoy do have a clear profit motive. The content people create just to share are useful and all, but when the majority of my browsing is done on websites like Gmail, Something Awful, Youtube, etc., which all make money at least partly through ads. I suppose their business models will have to evolve if ad blocking becomes more common, but I don’t know what they will do.
Also, another major point is that what replaces ads in the future as a major source of revenue for websites might be even worse than ads themselves. We already see that certain companies use user data as a major way to make money. Perhaps that will be the way of the future.
I don’t really see what TV has to do with it. As far as I know, there’s no way for advertisers to track who watches their ads on TV or not, so the television station is not affected by you walking out of the room.
On the other hand, the money internet sites make from ads is clearly and directly affected by adblock since they are paid by impressions or clicks.
One of the reasons I’m passionate about this is because I’m a journalist. I post articles to the internet, and it’s not because I want publicity or because I feel like it (although I do enjoy some of the work). It’s because it’s my job; it’s what I have to do to support myself.
We don’t produce articles because we want people’s attention, per se, but because the content we produce is in demand. We make money through ads, newspaper subscriptions and a paywall (some articles are behind it, others aren’t).
You seem to envision an internet that functions based on the volunteerism of content-producers. That seems to me like a ridiculous fantasy and I think it shows a serious lack of acquaintance with human nature. If you want quality content, you simply have to make some sort of sacrifice. It seems to me like looking at a few ads is a relatively small sacrifice to make, and we should be glad that the system works decently well.
