Enabling click-to-play for Flash eliminates - in my experience - more than 99% of the truly obnoxious ads. For example, I literally can't think of a time that I've come across an ad that auto-plays audio when I've had click-to-play enabled. I'm sure it's happened in my web browsing history, but I can't recall a time.

I can't help but feel that if people truly believed it when they said, "I'm okay with seeing ads - just not the obnoxious ones," then they would enable click-to-play rather than installing an ad blocker.

As it stands, though, the most-upvoted arguments in favor of wholesale ad blocking are - and will forever be - presented as the trump cards: "Think of the children," and "I'm totally fine with ads - but the bad actors ruined it for me!"

Ad blocking isn't piracy - I want to make it very clear that I believe that. That said, I find the arguments in favor of ad blocking to often be similar in flavor to the arguments in favor of piracy: "I'd pay for content, if only they'd charge a reasonable amount for it." Since "reasonable" is subjective, there's no response that can be made.

(There are other arguments in favor of ad blocking, such as the aforementioned Zappos Boots Creepiness.)