I'm willing to unblock ads for a site if all the following are true:
* I like the site.
* The ads are static images or text.
* The ads are hosted locally.
* The ads are not malicious.
If any of the above is not true, the blocking stays.
* I like the site.
* The ads are static images or text.
* The ads are hosted locally.
* The ads are not malicious.
If any of the above is not true, the blocking stays.
With newspapers and magazines, picking up a copy and estimating the distribution of the paper via a 3rd party (such as Nielsen) answers all these questions.
I'd like to hear about a solution that addresses that. It seems fundamentally incompatible with the conditions of "hosted locally" and "static images or text" (which means you can't run JS to verify whether the ad was actually displayed).
The problem with this approach is that it's a "he said, she said" situation where both parties can claim that the other is producing fraudulent numbers. It can only be resolved with litigation, which is not what anyone wants when all they wanted to do is get some sales numbers up.
Also, if you're familiar with the state of advertising fraud, faking conversions with botnets and residential proxies are an absolutely real thing.
It's not about what "ought" or any sort of morality, more of a factual statement of how the world works.
I have very few truly "favorite sites". Most of them are completely disposable. Eg, I don't see myself ever paying for a website that provides song lyrics -- it's a fully optional service, and entirely fungible.
I think it's possible a limited return to an "old internet" model to some extent, where some random person might just posts lyrics of their favorite band just because they like it.
For the very few actual favorites, probably.
> Would that be a win in your book? Always honestly intrigued by such world views.
Extremely so. First, no ads. Second, a site that must please its users or go bankrupt. That's a win/win in my book.
Such a change likely comes along with improvements in the site's quality. Eg, paid Youtube competitors don't want to feed me hogwash all day in hopes I watch more ads. Bandwidth is expensive, they're not getting any more money from me, and there are no ads to pay for increased consumption. So their priority becomes a smaller amount of high quality content.
In practice it seems be go subscription, and then make things that used to be free to everyone require not just the basic subscription but a premium one.
There aren't a lot such sites, though.
I am glad the ad model is dying. What a waste of resources that was!