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Comment by dzonga | Hacker News Reader

there's this false notion that users hate ads. that's why they use ad-blockers. people hate intrusive ads. I do. I don't like auto-playing video. dynamically loaded ads. don't like ads that track me. brand ads i.e banner ads, that're just a simple picture are acceptable to me - like the ones we used to have in paper newspapers. creatives worked on those. now it's just random shit.

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I hate ads. I don't care how visible or not they are. Ads are emotional manipulation designed to get us to open our wallets to spend on things we wouldn't otherwise buy. I refuse to subject myself to that when there is an alternative.

I fully admit that my opinion is not the only one. I'm sure there are some people whose attitude matches the one you describe. But my guess is that sentiment toward ads is declining. At the very least, publications are deciding that they can make more money off subscriptions than ads. Not sure if the revenue for ads is declining, or what.

Another data point here, I'm a user who utterly hate ads.

Ads is just another word for manipulation. I see ads as an amalgam of screaming signaling noise that feed our primitive brains with ideas that are not ours.

I don't care if it's a huge, medium, small, unobtrusive. I simply can't stand ads at all.

All this disgust is on ads on a very basic level, imagine what I think about target ads/tracking.

edit. spelling.

My dislike of ads is directly correlated to how visible they are in a linear fashion. The only ads that I find to be unobtrusive are invisible (i.e. non-existent).

I am a user and I also hate ads. It is not a false notion.

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