Comments on: Ad Blocking: A Market or a Moral Issue?

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:57:39 +0000

I use an ad blocker and have been for years now. It is not a moral issue at all. It is just the end of a battle that has been raging on since the intenet was born. And the user finally won. Instead you should be asking yourself: WHY do people have the NEED to use ad blockers?
The internet brought this on itself; countless popups we had to endure, the viruses and all sorts of spyware, all the banners and ads slowing down the browsing to a crawl, the useless forms and registrations, all the spam for giving our emails… if this was done in moderation, it never would have come to this. But everyone was so money hungry and ready to torture the user to death, just to make a buck… and finally the user fought back. So now, when the spammers finally realized there is nothing they can do anymore, we call it a moral issue? Please…
I understand there are people who used banners and ads politely, but most abused them to extremes, and are now getting what they deserved.

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By: Hoqenishy

Hoqenishy — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:32:11 +0000

Ken: WRONG! If someone foolishly decides to block the Firefox agent, a one-minute tweak can get around your ‘blocking mechanism’. If you try to DIV wrap your ads and utilize Javascript, that’s easily stopped by NoScript. The only other solution I’ve seen was to use CSS, and even then that was circumvent-able.

Bottom line – don’t kick against a brick wall. Those determined to block ads (such as myself) will do it, and will figure out a way around your anti-blocking mechanisms in a fraction of the time it took for you to implement them. Instead of wasting time trying to fight the ABP crowd, find a new and unobtrusive way to monetize your site, such as self-hosted text ads. Yes, it will require more work, but the good news is that the market will dissolve most of the absolute crap found online and leave only the useful content.

By: James D Kirk

James D Kirk — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 04:30:10 +0000

There are many, many ways to monetize ones venture online. Inline ads on websites are only one choice a website owner has in order to try and financially support themselves. All one has to do is look at the phenomenon of businesses like SiteSell.com and all they promote for literally thousands and thousands of site owners to support themselves. In fact, anyone who owns a Site Build It! account knows the mantra of CTPM (Content>>Traffic>>Pre-sell>>Monetize) and that what is most stressed is NOT putting advertisements on your site until you have the traffic (generated by quality content). (The rest of my post on this topic if you are interested!)

By: Wladimir Palant

Wladimir Palant — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 22:48:04 +0000

A moral problem? Definitely not. The basic assumption behind ads is that they will only be interesting to few, that’s why they are so many. Then what’s the point if people who are not interested in ads are forced to view them?

But the main issue is that ads manage to annoy people who don’t really want to block the ads – and in my experience there are many more of those. Blinking and making sounds brings you more clicks (at least in the short term). So we certainly have an economical problem here – alienating your customers seems to be the best business strategy at the moment. This is something Adblock Plus could change, by forcing advertisers to look for better strategies before they lose all the good will most people still show towards them.

I really don’t think Adblock Plus will destroy the Internet – neither did popup blockers. They only changed the way advertising works on the Internet, for the better. Forgive the shameless plug but I discussed some economical aspects of this question here: http://adblockplus.org/blog/ads-dont-generate-money

By: Ellie

Ellie — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 14:13:54 +0000

I don’t really pay attention to ads – the ad blindness I have is strong, too. Anything blinking or moving just doesn’t even register with my brain.

By: Skellie

Skellie — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 13:48:01 +0000

The truth is that only a small percentage of the web community are ever going to have the technical know-how to block ads. We’re not even yet at a point where Firefox threatens the dominance of internet explorer yet.

Pop-up blockers are in mainstream usage but I don’t think advertisers have a right to use pop-ups anyway.

Ultimately you can no more stop people blocking ads than you can stop them fast-forwarding or channel surfing through TV commercials. I think it’s the right of the user to block ads if they have the will to do so. If someone’s annoyed enough by advertising to block it then they’re not going to be clicking ads anyway.

By: Eric S. Mueller

Eric S. Mueller — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 13:23:11 +0000

As much as possible, I only block the truly annoying flash ads or ads from servers that are known for tracking. I have no problem with Google’s “Don’t be evil” approach, and I have found their ads to be very helpful to me on occasion. I like the ad supported business model as long as we’re not talking about the annoying, seizure-inducing “punch the monkey and win $20″ flashing banner ads.