For what it’s worth, I tried having a Very Serious Conversation around adblocking technologies with some of the advertising folks at a newspaper I used to work at - and their view was “We don’t know how to use it (ie, how to install AdBlock or UBlock Origin), therefore none of our readers do either, so we can continue to make our ads annoying and intrusive and high five ourselves for being trendy and innovative”. And then wondered why readership figures and advertising revenue was in freefall. :smack:
No-one really has a massive problem with static ads like in a newspaper or a magazine - it’s the fact internet ads are all-singing, all-dancing, all annoying potential security issues that’s the problem.
If a website said “We swear our ads are hosted by us and they’re static jpeg images; we don’t track you and we’re not up to anything suss but we would like to pay our bills and eat something that wasn’t two minute noodles for lunch” then I think more people - including me - would be happy to whitelist the sites.
That’s actually not true. You’re much more likely to get infected from online shopping, blog, and moderately sized special interest sites (religion, guns, cats, whatever). Porn sites are so big and have such a bad reputation that they can’t afford to allow malware through. These other sites which are too small to have someone on staff watching them full time but which are large enough to have good traffic and ads are more risky.
How are they going to make a profit, if you leave, taking your “I’m going to block your every attempt to make a profit” technology with you?
That said, I use adblocker half-heartedly. If someone shows me a warning, I’ll turn it off. With one exception: I love the game KenKen and play a round or two of it most days. Their website won’t allow the game to load with adblocker turned on; but once I turn it off, it serves me several DOZEN ads, so many that it slows the (timed) game to a crawl and makes it unplayable. So I turn adblocker off just until the game (and usually a half-dozen ads) load, then turn it back on.
A month ago, this site had the same problem and took a lot of (much appreciated) work by the mods to identify the source. So, is the SDMB a pirate site, streaming source or (as many have suspected) porn?
When they are printing their “high quality journalism” on my paper, I get to decide what bullshit scribbles, if any, go in the margins. And lies and manipulative psyops designed to part me from my money are right out, not to mention virtual dancing strippers and animated growing boners. They can draw those offensive and user-hostile scribbles elsewhere.
It’s like people forgot that my computer is my property. I decide what goes on it. This isn’t like you printed a pamphlet and I can take it or leave it. You’re attempting to place your content on my machine. I am 100% in charge of what gets put there. Don’t like it? Go back to printing on dead trees which you personally own and stay off the internet.
FYI, while they seem to block users of AdBlock+, I use uBlock Origin and have no problem gaining access on the rare occasion Forbes has something I want to read.
There are two advertising statistics which websites get revenue for (or I should say, at least two, these are the ones I know about).
Number of people to whom they have served/shown the ad. If the website had only one ad, and if no-one had ad blockers, this would be every visitor to the website. If some visitors (like you) have an ad blocker, then this number is every visitor minus those visitors with an ad blocker. You can perhaps see why they would want the largest number possible to get served their ads (to get more revenue), which translates to the fewest possible with an ad blocker.
Click-throughs, i.e. occasions when someone clicks on an ad for any reason. Assuming your will is strong, this would not be affected by whether or not you have an ad blocker, so to that extent you are correct. However, this is not the only way websites make money.
I understand-You want to peruse the largest newsstand in the world for free without viewing the adverts that pay for that privilege. Now, all those websites you want to view for free cost money to operate, which they can get from either subscription(oops-not free), contributions(oops-not free, either), or adverts(annoying, but free).
TANSTAAFL, dude.
I haven’t noticed this from Business Insider but Forbes has been doing it for probably a year now, at least. I’ve realized that not reading Forbes’ glorified blog postings hasn’t left any holes in my life so I guess we get along without one another just fine.
Sites I use enough to warrant it, I tend to subscribe to (which blocks their ads) unless some other circumstances are there. Sites I use casually, I can just skip if they’re trying to keep me out. Very little on the internet that all that unique and, right now, I can’t think of a single topic that I was supposed to read about on Forbes but couldn’t so I guess I didn’t miss it much.
When the lunch is poisoned it’s not much of a temptation.
Simply put, the advertisements are obnoxious enough and dangerous enough that they make any site where I can’t block those advertisements have negative value; I just won’t go there. Nothing they can supply is worth the aggravation and the danger to my computer. It’s like trying to tempt someone with their favorite food after you’ve just dribbled poison and raw sewage all over it; it doesn’t matter how good the food was, now it’s ruined.
Fair enough, and no harm there! It’s the anger at those sites that I don’t get. They’re trying to make money; you’re choosing not to participate in that; that’s how the game is played.
Getting angry because they’re trying to make money, you’re trying to circumvent their means of making money, and they’re preventing you from circumventing their means of making money strikes me as weird.