Why People Block Ads, and What It Means for Marketers and Advertisers
research.hubspot.com
research.hubspot.com
http://i.imgur.com/4hjX71d.png
What a succinct way to demonstrate why people use Ad/Script Blockers.
HubSpot is geared towards marketers, so I can understand why they push the limits in terms of seeing what they can get away with. But, when you run a content site and you want to send anonymous users Desktop Notifications, you have to ask yourself: "is this really a sustainable way to use desktop notifications, or am I just ruining it for everyone?"
The "fake notification" at the bottom too... How is that any better than those banner ads that pretend to be OS dialog boxes?
FWIW I didn't see the popup. I use both uBlock Origin and NoScript and there is no way in hell I will ever turn them off.
Why would I agree to that?
Edit: This was a genuine question and I don't understand the down votes :|
Online ads are not uniquely malicious, although they are more pervasive (even reading a magazine, the page I am actively reading will not have an ad in between paragraphs, though the next page might). I do think modern marketing firms (and often therefore web) have developed more effective -- and therefore bad -- techniques to have the effect they are paid for.
PS. I upvoted you because I don't think it was a bad question. If I had to guess, it may be misconstrued as a [bad] rhetorical question arguing that "you already have to put up with X, so it's pointless/inconsistent/illogical to reduce your exposure to X".
It would look like empty track with the sound of cars going by.
...yet.
If you're not into that, give some funding to a startup which is working to make micropayments on websites viable to remove ad-enabled content.
If you're not into funding something like that, try creating your own company or means to do that or joining a company which is working to advance ad-free viewing.
Now, if you're not into that, then stop visiting any site which has ads on it.
Lastly, if you're not into that, then suck it up and just view the ads which enable revenue for these sites to run.
2) I find that ad supported content tends to be not worth paying for. I do pay for subscriptions to magazines and sites that are worthwhile (a paywall is a very good indicator that you're not wasting your time).
What's your take on this thought experiment:
Imagine a giant barrel of apples on the side of the road with a coffee can next to it. There's a sign that says "Take an Apple, Leave a Penny"
Now imagine you don't carry pennies for moral and/or pragmatic reasons. They're too heavy, or you don't want to support Big Copper, whatever. But you want an apple.
Do you take one?
Let's do a realistic thought experiment that's actually fair:
Imagine you have a movie that you love. It's showing tonight on an over-the-air channel that inserts ads throughout it. You decide to record the show and watch it later.
Do you skip the ads?
This is why I said a "giant barrel", because serving web pages does have marginal cost to the server owner, and from there you could imagine a situation where your page view does diminish the number of page views left for "paying" customers.
I might fast-forward through the ads, but I wouldn't feel good about it or try to defend it philosophically.
If a website put up an "ad-wall" (click to view!), I would not try to bypass it. Instead, they want the experience to be friction-less, subtle, (or, alternatively, overwhelming and surprising) so I don't quite notice the ad is there, or can't click away fast enough to avoid being influenced by it.
That is malicious by any reasonable definition. They are trying to impose something on me without making it explicit. Shielding myself from such a thing is ethical. With your pennies and apples example, they are not imposing anything on me, they're not performing a bait and switch. We can both engage within the rules established on the sign.
In this ecosystem, ads are parasites. If there is a workable method to filter out the parasites while leaving the rest of a site intact, one should use it.
Though I would like to see a search engine that only returns sites without ads. I suspect the results would be better.
You shouldn't be "forced" to see ads. Quality content can exist with and without ads. But, ads are the price to pay to visit one of these sites with ads. My suggestion was leading towards that if you don't like a site with ads, then don't visit it. As opposed to using an ad blocker as a filtering method.
With respect to "the web existed long before ads" - Water has also existed before water companies. If you don't like to pay them, you can't just hook in directly to their water lines and syphon it off to yourself and bypass payments. You could however go out and get your own. Just like you could create your own news stories, online games, sites etc without ads.
Your search engine idea is a novel one, and it'd be neat to see that exist.
I can appreciate the idea that creating an economy makes for sustainability. But I just don't see the merit with regards to web ads. The most noble ad-driven business model is news media, which is already rife with paid placement (and other propaganda) despite the ads - the motivation to profit from both sides is too great. And the most prevalent ad-driven business model is to aggregate creations from users who are not paid. If we were talking about what's right, then such sites should not even exist - they should be users' individual federated websites or even a better non-centralized protocol. But amorally, those sites create needless centralization points in order to profit off being gatekeepers. So users should feel no compunction about also doing self-interested things, like running ad blockers and other privacy extensions.
This is something the online ad industry has never understood.
Print ads were embedded in an experience that users considered valuable.
Online ads don't even try to offer value. They just want your clicks.
Because they're so rarely associated with the content around them, they're more like idiots screaming in your ear than interesting people you might want to have a conversation with.
So of course people try to filter them out. Why should this surprise anyone?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Un...
Surely advertisers don't need surveys to point this out to them. And if this is common knowledge then why is nobody doing anything about it?
Why are ads still slowing down loading the actual content or taking over control of the web page? How hard is it to get this right?
You can argue the ethics of this all day with me but in the end I just don't care. I'm paying for the data pipeline, I'm paying for and maintaining the device that can be infected, and your business model isn't my problem. If you want me to look at ads, make it happen in such a way where it doesn't degrade the rest of the experience. Several websites have done it just fine.
Very well said.
"The effect ad blockers have had on publishers has been tremendous, with advertising organizations estimating that by 2020, $35 billion dollars per year will be lost as a result of blocked ads"
I prefer to consider the amazing things that will be done in 2020 instead of pissing away $35 billion on nothing.
For every site that has an ad-blocker, there's usually another one with comparable content that doesn't.
Did you mean "ad-blocker-blocker", or maybe "ad-blocker-blocker-blocker-blocker" ?
I also think the ads the survive are going to be product placement (for brand awareness) that will be ads intermingled with the content, whether it is a billboard being photoshopped into a music video or all the characters in the content using microsoft products, but basically blended into the story. And the other ads will switch to pay per action (CPA) rather than simply clicking.
Could be totally wrong too, we could just end up in click-counter-click hell but I just can't see that as sustainable.
With ads so cheap, there is no way to distinguish between legit companies and scams/crappy products. With TV ads on popular programs, I know the company at least is good enough to afford the ad.
"Wealthy" or "big" neither equals nor implies "good". The only thing that's certain is that when you buy an advertised product, you're paying a premium to fund their marketing.
> 1. Ads are annoying and intrusive (64%) 2. Ads are disruptive (54%) 3. Ads create security concerns (39%) 4. Ads affect load time and bandwidth usage (36%)
What a lazy conclusion. Can't take this article seriously.