1) free websites and web services need revenue and as long as the ads are tasteful, I don't mind them
2) I actually want websites to annoy me with lots of stupid ads, as I want to stop using such websites, because I want to reward publishers that don't do that
Ad blockers are trying to fix a symptom of the disease and in doing so they only help spreading and growing that disease.
This is the problem: the ads stopped being tasteful. Remember pop-ups? Remember how, when browsers started having pop-up blockers as a default, the response by the advertising industry was to try to circumvent the blockers, resulting in even more annoying ads? Remember how ad companies did not get the message when people stopped accepting their cookies, and now use dozens of techniques to track people? Remember how they said they thought Do Not Track meant "track but do not show targeted ads?"
Unfortunately, the annoying, intrusive, privacy-invading advertising is not limited to a handful of sites. It is all over the place. That's why ad blocking is important and necessary: we users should not have to suffer because of the advertising industry's greed.
I don't do this because ads annoy me (of course they do, but for the above reasons, it feels wrong). I do this because a few years ago, certain less technical members of my family received a nasty bit of malware/rootkit combo delivered -- as best I could discern -- via a song lyric look up site. Another laptop picked up malware around the same time, though its source was more difficult to discern. In addition, about this same time, Microsoft and Google's ad networks were found to have some Flash ads that were malicious.
After spending a few hours reloading laptops (with the offending individual being my first experiment with Ubuntu on a non-technical user's PC), I got fed up and installed a proxy.
My computers all have local firewalls and anti-virus, but I'm sure nobody's surprised that they were still infected.
I wonder, is the state of these ad networks improved at all? Are there advertisement blocking tools that just target ads that have the greatest probability of being exploits (flash, java, smaller ad networks)?
And I had fun from time to time connecting via SSH and making a song or two play when I knew she had to be cheered up. She thought that was a little creepy, but hey.
OTOH, I also feel tremendous sympathy towards websites trying to survive on ad revenue. I'm actually the type of person who still buys music to support artists.
I don't know what the solution is. We are forced to choose between being watched as we browse the web, staying completely offline, or blocking ads but not supporting the websites we visit.
In principle I like the concept of paying a fixed amount per unit time and splitting that across the sites I care about. In practice I don't see any obvious privacy-respecting way to do that.
But I don't think most folks think this way, so practically speaking I don't see micropayments ever working. Would love to be proven wrong.
Is it really that hard to let me pay a monthly fee to turn ads off?
Google is serving the vast majority of ads online and they already have the infrastructure in place to channel part of that fee to the content creators including knowing whom I visit and when.
I'd trust very few web sites to stay ad-free if they switched to a pay model. The money is just too good for them.
Users get a good adblocker that they don't have to feel bad about using, and site owners get to sustain the revenue they would've lost.
Maybe it could provide more benefits than just ad blocking? Perhaps it would just be a "premium membership to the internet". Site owners can take even more revenue if they implement even more features. More web app options, custom styling options, social badges, etc. The more a user pays a month, the more features he gets all over the internet.
Or eliminate it. He provided a small comment afterwards, and the replies to that comment are good. Not what I'd call noise.
Your comment and my response however...
It's invasive, and quite frankly, it's disturbing and creepy that the same advertisements follow me regardless of website. I feel like the guy in Pachebel's Rant, finding Canon in D across modern music, except what I'm finding is invasive Google ads, and I find them on most websites...
So no, I actively refuse the narrow demographic Google placed me into, and chases me around the internet with.
1) You save battery life
2) You save data
3) Pages load quicker
And you lose no content in the process. So why wouldn't you? If you're using a fast machine hooked up to fibre broadband, perhaps it's a different matter, but as a mobile user it's a no brainer. And that isn't even mentioning the content of ads or privacy concerns...
If you think ads are necessary for the health of the internet, then they need to be presented a way that doesn't actively harm the experience of using the internet.
I envision an "ad network" appearing eventually that doesn't display any ads, just distributes revenues from an aggregate subscription. Then sites can still be supported by spontaneous visitors and users can control their exposure to advertisements online.
I don't want advertising in my face, full stop.
As I said in reply to another of your comments, I've been working on the technology to make it possible to do this reliably for some time now. It's harder than it looks.
What were the others?
It's a good idea on paper, but actually making the market-building side work is really hard.
I've been focused on the technology side because hey, that's how I'm wired. Essentially, you can't rely on standard web bugs or javascript approaches; they're much too easy to subvert.
In my honours dissertation I identified 9 distinct attacks on the "naive" protocol and developed countermeasures for each. But that design is fatally flawed too. I have another design which ... well, watch this space: http://robojar.com/
eg.
if ( auth.is_subscriber )
puts advertisement_block
endIf someone could attach electrodes on your cranium and "reprogram" it so that it would permanently increase your propensity to buy product X by 10% in exchange for viewing an article on a website would you do it? Would you justify doing it by statements like "free websites and web services need revenue and I don't really mind the electrodes"?
If websites have a problem with this they can just respond 402 to all my requests and I won't cry to anyone.
Some advertisers are just honest people trying to make money and I hope word-of-mouth will cover those. But for the rest of it, let's just say my life is much better without TV, radio, or magazines.
- Adblock - DoNotTrackMe - Disconnect
in addition to
- Quick Javascript Switcher (if I really get pissed)
They are like antibiotics creating stronger bacteria?
Now some of my daily news sources will become pretty unbearable ... but I guess I better look out for other websites that don't need to put up full site flash wrap-banners.
I would not mind a solution that provides trusted ads. A system by which I can inspect what the site is trying to feed me and whitelist what I am willing to deal with.
In that regard, it's very easy to detect if someone is using AdBlock or not.
The usual approach I've seen sites take is they have some sort of "Please disable your ad-blocker" image that they load everywhere ads go, and then just overlay the ad image on top of that one when it loads.
In fact, several websites show you a warning message, or refuse to load, if you're running an adblocker.
2. Even if they did this would be very unreasonable, either you view adverts and the publisher gets paid or you don't view adverts and the publisher doesn't get paid. If you're triggering the pay-out criteria without actually doing whatever is required (view, click, interact) it's just moving the financial hit to the advertiser, which is still unreasonable.