Why Do You Block Ads?

flyingember asks: "With ad blocking becoming ever more popular among users, why do you block ads? And with what? Do you view internet ads as different from say, TV ads? What about in a magazine? Do you not buy a magazine because it has too many? I'm specifically talking about the ads in a webpage, but even popup blockers can cause problems with me using a site."

My reasons

[powerpuffgirls (758362)]

1. Most ads are taking too long to download. Even if I have broadband, I would rather use it on somewhere useful.

2. Most ads are too big and intrusive.

3. Most ads are irrelevant.

See the trend? That explains why Googld Ads is so successful.

Re:My reasons

[bilbravo (763359)]

I agree. Also, it's not the ads on sites that just sit there. It's the ones that take over, either by growing to the size of the web page and getting in your way (while you are clicking a link, etc), or have loud music... like a TV commercial. If it's just there, it can flash, dance, whatever--as long as it doesn't get in my way or scare the piss out of me when I'm not expecting to hear voices from my computer at 3am.

Re:My reasons

[pjkeyzer (645364)]

The flashing ones are the worst, in my opinion. I hate having a big blinking red thing at the top of the page that says "you're a winner, click here to claim your prize" (or whatever it says, i've blocked them long ago). I use a hosts file to block ads, but I would not block Google ads because they are relevant, and are occasionally useful. Google ads stay out of the way, and I only notice them if I try.

Pete

Re:My reasons

[Chrispy1000000 the 2 (624021)]

The ones that I like the least are the ones that tend to lag on loading, , not allowing the rest of the page to be displayed, even if they are not a integral part of the page structure.

Re:My reasons

[coaxial (28297)]

The flashing ones aren't the worse. The new floating ads that fly around over the main page and force you to click on them to make them go away are the worst. I hate those things. I can't wait until gecko and khtml come up with a new ad blocking scripts.

Re:My reasons

[FxChiP (687923)]

4. Many ads are made in Macromedia Flash nowadays, which is a bitch to render on old computers.

5. Many ads are scripted to invade your privacy without a thank-you note.

6. Most ads are just plain annoying.

Re:My reasons

[AchilleTalon (540925)]

7. Some ads are masking text from the site you are browsing with sliding panels which don't slide back properly and keep parts of the text you want to read masked. I suppose they are made to work with IE.

I often e-mailed site owners/maintainers about this problem and was never successful to have them resolved it.

Re:My reasons

[B747SP (179471)]

I often e-mailed site owners/maintainers about this problem and was never successful to have them resolved it.

This is a little bit off-topic, but relevant insofar as getting site owners to change broken content is concerned.

A little while ago, my Mum was having trouble convincing one of our older family members to eat properly. I had recently stumbled across a new type of food in the supermarket that my cats really enjoyed, and so I thought that the old cat might enjoy it too...

So in the course of an email exchange with Mum (I'm Australian, that's how we spell 'Mom'), I figured I'd send her a link to the specific type of cat food I was suggesting...

Well, I couldn't. As it turned out, the company had a web site that was all Macromedia Flash and bells and whistles and glory, and the only way I could point my Mum at the particular product I was talking about would be to say "go to this site, now click on the 'bleh' link followed by the 'foo' link, then scroll down to 'bar'...."... Or I could just not reccomend the product.

As it happened, that was the week I was lecturing my Bachelor of Business students on making sure that money you invest in IT actually benefits the business, don't let the IT department run away with cool toys that don't deliver value to customers, etc, etc (I'm a geek, but somehow I've managed to convince someone to let me lecture business students!!!) and I so I got a bee in my bonnet about it and I emailed the cat food company...

Basically I said look, your web design company sold you on flash because it is pretty and bling bling and looks lovely, but here's a concrete example of how going with flash made your web site sufficiently unuseable that it cost you a sale. I couldn't effectively reccomend your product to my quasi-computer-literate Mum 'cos she would have issues navigating the web site, and I couldn't send her a direct link.

Lo and behold, a month later, the cat food company [dine.com.au] had a new web site, all standard html with proper workable links that change in the address bar as you work through the site, and now I can send a link to my Mum (and I have).

What's more, the web site loads faster as well!!!

.

.

.

.

(As an interesting aside, slashdot seems to have recently updated it's code. I had to turn off all of my adblocking stuff to make the posting page appear as anything but a black background - it's been like that for about a month now (Firefox, The Proxomitron))

Send them a bill

[ChaosMt (84630)]

If you were american, you'd send a bill to accounts payable for consulting hours.

Re:My reasons

[StevenMaurer (115071)]

8. Many kinds of (flash) ads surprise you with sound. This can be highly annoying for casual browsing at work (or home when the family is asleep).

9. Some ads surprise you with things that - depending on your work environment - might be considered Not Safe For Work. Surprisingly, this usually isn't porn sites (which I don't surf anyway), but things like risque cartoons and Sports Illustrated body painting.

10. Because I can. Seriously - if there was a way to delete all ads from TV, wouldn't most people do it?

This isn't to say that advertising isn't effective with me. I often turn on ads for specialty sites that I'm using to research what sort of product to purchase. Quite frankly, this is the most effective time to reach me anyway, since I've usually made up my mind that I need something and am making decisions about it.

Re:My reasons

[Gojira Shipi-Taro (465802)]

(in the following post, "you" and "your" refers to the advertisers, not the parent post)

If it's animated, I block it.

If it plays sound, I block the shit out of it. (I might be at work. Jeapordize my job by playing a noisy ad at a site that I actually need to go to for work purposes, and I might retaliate beyond blocking your ad) If it tries to install spyware or worse on my system, I'll definitely retaliate.

If it makes any use of Macromedia technology, particularly Shoskeles, I'll not only block it, I'll shitlist your company, and neither I nor the corporation I work for will ever pay you a fucking cent again.

If it's nice, static, and pertains to what I'm looking for at the moment, I might actually click on it. If I do, count yourself lucky. You're not entitled to my attention. Consider this like print media. You're paying for page space, and if that page space gets you business, yay for you. If it doesn't... your only recourse is to get over it and find a new page space to advertise in.

Re:My reasons

[MikeFM (12491)]

As both a developer that uses ads on many of his websites and a user that blocks ads I guess I feel both sides of the issue.

I didn't use ads for years because I felt they were to intrusive. Why did I decide to start using them? Mainly because ad blocking software was finally easily enough available and easy enough to use that I felt that being intrusive and adding download time didn't matter as much because users have the power to turn the ads off. Sometimes I even offer a button on my sites that will disbale ads for the user. The secondary reason is because users have told me time and again that they'd rather see ads than be charged a fee (even less than a dollar). Often I offer both as options. Paying members don't see ads and get more features but the basics are paid for by ads. For a long time I ran my websites completely from donations but in recent years (since about the time of the 911 attack) users have stopped donating. I've not been able to pinpoint the why but it seemed a very strong trend despite my sites continuing to grow. Loss of donations has forced me to use ads and charge for membership as loath as I am to use those methods. Oddly enough I've also noticed the more useful a website the less the ads get clicked. This seems a bad trend to me as it encourages websites of crap instead of making good information easily available. Two of my websites.. one gets about 500 unique visitors a day and contains solid Linux information.. the other gets about 100 visitors a day and is down right now and contains nothing but a notice that it'll be back up after I finish recoding it. The first site usually gets no clicks while the later gets about five per day. The same trend seems to hold among my other sites. Sort of encourages the building of dead-end or confussing websites.

I've tried a couple different ad programs. So far I like Yahoo's better than Google's because it doesn't load quite as slow and the ads pay better per click. On the other hand Yahoo does a poor job of rotating ads but I suspect this is due to their beta status.

Given that I make a living from ads why do I block them? Because they are freaking annoying. I don't read junk mail, spam email, watch tv, or read magazines that insert ads throughout the content. For myself I'd rather make donations to websites I like than pay for memberships or see ads. I'd be more willing to do memberships if they didn't overprice them. Usually I charge about $5/mo for my sites which is pretty reasonable. A site that charges more than that or that makes signing up painful I just won't use. Ads I'd use more if they weren't so often annoying to look at and inserted in inappropiate spots in the content. My perfered type of ad to see is a small paid sponsorship (~80x30 pixels) at the bottom of the menu or page. If I see such an ad I'll more often click on it especially if it looks well made (flashy but tasteful) and related to the site content.

Re:My reasons

[jim_v2000 (818799)]

I think you forget that Ads are paying for the content of whatever page you are reading...including this one.

Simpler reason: The overcame my inertia.

[SmallFurryCreature (593017)]

Like most people I am basically a lazy fat slob. Something may irretate me BUT in order for me to do something about it it must reach a certain level.

This is apparently a very complex social issue as very few people seem to regonize that this treshhold exists. Certainly not those in power, it explains why our "leaders" are so often confused when we suddenly rebel against something we have quitely accepted before.

It happens in all sorts of places in our society, from important to trivial, the resistance against immigrants (muslims mostly) that "suddenly" came to a rise in europe. Has politicians totally baffled. The young male "suddenly" no longer watching tv (and more important tv commercials) has tv bosses claiming the world is coming to an end.

What has simply happened that a constant level of annoyance has grown to the point where people are no longer just content to let it lie.

When that "okay" radio starts cranking out ad-blocks of more then 5 minutes it perhaps becomes rewarding enough to simply switch the radio off and take the effort to bring in your own music. When that tv program you sorta watch is interrupted beyond the point where you can actually remember what you where watching then perhaps you don't switch back (is there any human out there who can watch a full dutch tv ad-block?). Perhaps you don't switch the tv on at all when all you ever watch are half of a tv-show.

So I block ads EVERYWHERE because they have grown to irritating. They reached my treshhold where I go from simply being irritated to taking action.

And just as the current backlash against muslims in europe went from tolerance to hatred in a flash I am now very extreme in my ad blocking. ALL image ads are blocked and screw even those sides where I can fully understand they need ad income to survive.

My current solution is getting a bit old but for now the ads that do slip through are not yet irritating enough to make me spend an hour or two finding a better solution and implementing it. When it does my browser will once again be totally ad free and many a free site will loose yet another tiny slice of income.

Then again who cares about sites like those game sites with bloody redirects to full page ads? Or slashdot with it showing a linux user MS ads? Geez talk about adding insult to injury.

Will I ever go back to unblocking ads? Perhaps. Someday I will buy a new computer and install a clean version of my OS on it and then I will probably be to lazy to install an ad blocker immidiatly (then again the blocker is part of squid so this is only when I replace my "server") and if I find that the ads then are not irritating enough I may not bother.

Lets face it, that is not very likely eh?

The response by marketing to the increasing resistance against ads is to make the ads bigger and more intrusive.

Re:My reasons

[Stripe7 (571267)]

I started blocking ads when I started up the task manager one day to discover that 90%+ of my cpu was being taken up by firefox which was sitting in the background while I was working on some other stuff. Turned out to be all those flash ads. Started zapping ads since then. Nowdays if an ad catches my attention it gets zapped and the originating website of the ad get blocked permanently.

Re:My reasons

[sqlrob (173498)]

Yes. I previously left them unblocked, since they were at least somewhat relevant, and unobtrusive, especially compared to others.

Then I started seeing "Free iPod", "Free XBox360" (Huh? It's not out), "Free PS3", "Download Episode III here" ads. If you can't be bothered to have a human at least run a quick check on whether or not it's a fraud, I can't be bothered to even consider your ads.

Re:My reasons

[mpn14tech (716482)]

Also just as annoying or amusing is when I do searches and get google ads to find bessel functions on ebay, quarks at pricegrabber or other irrelevant nonsense.

Re:My reasons

[StikyPad (445176)]

Some people will laugh with you, but the rest of us are laughing at you while we get bargain prices on quarks and bessel functions.

Re:My reasons

[Rob_Warwick (789939)]

Once eBay's ads told me that they had all the Evil Monkeys I'd need.

Now I shop at eBay.

Re:My reasons

[leshert (40509)]

If a magazine costs 20 bucks a month, why should they have to use ads?

Because it may cost 50 bucks a month to get it to you.

For most magazines and newspapers, ads are a much bigger source of revenue than subscriptions fees.

Re:My reasons

[StikyPad (445176)]

...or cover some part of the house while you're painting :) Try that with Flash ads.

Actually, the Flash ads worked fine, but removing the paint from my laptop afterwards was a bitch.

Re:My reasons

[number11 (129686)]

" Do you not buy a magazine because it has too many?"

There are magazines I do not buy because of the ads. I do find ads somewhat more tolerable in mags because: they don't move or flash or try to play music; I can flip pages faster than I can load new screens; I can riffle and jump in on page 30 without having to plow through the intervening ads; the load time for an ad is almost always exactly the same.. significantly less than a second); and, the visual page of a mag (and even more so a newspaper) is large enough (and the layout is usually consistent enough) so that it's easy for the eye to avoid the ads.

TV, being linear, forces the ads to the exclusion of anything else, which is annoying in a different way. At least they're not in your field of vision while the stuff you want to watch is happening. And because they monopolize the TV, they serve as timeouts, time to go grab a beer, run to the bathroom, yell at the cat. I watch very little TV (at home, probably not more than a couple of hours in the last year).

Re:Google Ads

[AuMatar (183847)]

I block google ads. They're less annoying, but thats like saying someone who punches you in the face is less of an asshole than someone who kicks you in the nuts.

Ehh

[andreyw (798182)]

Eyesore. Waste of screen real estate. Invasion of privacy.

Re:Ehh

[skyshock21 (764958)]

Exactly. I can change the channel on TV when ads come on. I can flip the page in a magazine. But with many websites, they wrap the fucking text around an ad that will give you epilepsy if you look at it.

Plus, I block ads because it's my perogative to control the content that I wish displayed on my PC.

Invasion of privacy issue

[jd (1658)]

This is often not an obvious one, but it's probably the biggest difference between web adverts and, say, magazine ads. Magazine ads can't identify you when you go to the page they are on. The very act of downloading the image of the advert, however, will log your IP address, the page you came from, the web browser you are using, possibly the Operating system you are using, and maybe even the language setting you have the web browser on.

That's a hell of a lot of marketing information that is being trawled for, without permission from anyone.

Those who view HTML-based e-mail have similar problems - any spam you open with a blank, embedded image link (provided you view images) will result in the spammer instantly obtaining vast amounts of data about you.

To me, that is simply NOT acceptable. If you think that Big Brother is bad (and not just the show), then Big Ad Exec is far, far worse.

Besides which, I was born in the UK, grew up on advert-free television, and resent the hell out of having 20-30 minutes of adverts for every hour timeslot on American TV. If I wanted to watch promotional material, with clips of TV show included, I'd go to one of the home shopping channels, thank you very much. I do not choose to go to the lairs of thieves and I never invited those lairs to come to me.

As you might have gathered, I don't watch much TV in America.

UI

[nothings (597917)]

I block ads so that when I right click on the page to pick "back" from the context menu I don't accidentally click on an ad and get "open link in new window" or some other random crap in the top of my context menu with no "back" at all.

Oh, and maybe to speed up page loading.

And to stick it to the man.

And to save electrons.

annoying animations

[danpritts (54685)]

static ads don't bother me so much, but blinking, flashing, moving junk drives me nuts.

Flashblock for firefox solves 95% of this problem nicely.

Re:annoying animations

[roach2002 (77772)]

Setting, in about:config, image.animation_mode to "once" will finish off the rest!

Hope this helps

Because I can!

[Anonymous Coward]

If I could block ads in magazines, or stop them on TV I would.

because they are annoying

[Raleel (30913)]

flash, popup, anything to catch my attention, and I'll for sure try and block you, because I'm not an impulse shopper. I plan my purchases.

I hate how some companies feel that making sure you have 10 windows open on your desktop isa good way to do business. Get in the way of what I'm doing on the web, and I'll certainly have a negative image of your company.

Re:because they are annoying

[Jim Starx (752545)]

I never agreed to any social contract. Just because a company wants to throw advertising in my face does not mean that I'm obligated to let them.

56k

[PhireN (916388)]

I Block ads because they take too long to load on my 56k modem.

Mostly for sport

[rebug (520669)]

Whenever I run into an ad online, I'm compelled to view the source, close down my browser session, and tweak my userContent.css/hostperm.1 to block it.

I don't recall having this aversion to advertising before popups got huge, so I think the advertisers just pushed me enough that I said "you know what? fuck you guys, I'm not going to see a single damn one of your bullshit ads."

Magazine Ad Overload

[RaguMS (149511)]

Recently in Barnes & Noble, I remarked to my friends, "I won't buy magazines because they're all full of ads. Why can't they make a magazine with no ads?", to which one friend responded, "What you want is a book."

if not ads, who should pay for content?

[UnderAttack (311872)]

So who should pay for content if ads shouldn't? Would you "subscribe" to a website?

Re:if not ads, who should pay for content?

[JanneM (7445)]

So who should pay for content if ads shouldn't? Would you "subscribe" to a website?

Mostly no. Because most media is not good enough to be worth paying for. And yes, if that means it will not get created at all, then so be it. Nobody has a right to make a living creating content. If you can't make it compelling enough for your audience to pay for it (whether eyeball time, clicks or cash) then you should "realign" your business.

There is plenty of content of all kinds out there created as a labour of love, as a loss leader for other stuff or that manages to draw in enough bucks through ads or sponsorship.

I used to like reading the NYTimes colmunists. They are not always (or ever frequently) right; some columnists are probably a danger to my blodd pressure. But they are always very well written, and at least nominally thought through. Now they've disappeared behing a pay wall. Do I pay? Nope. There's punditry of similar quality to have by the ton out there. I see no reason to pay a substantial sum to read those particular good writers when I could spend all my waking hours reading other writers just as good already.

Something like Salon I could imagine paying for if the quality was more even. As it is, their "watch an ad" is nonintrusive enough (you see the ad before reading the content, not during) and reasonable enough that I do so instead.

Pointless and useless

[OzJimbob (129746)]

I block ads on the internet because they are usually completely useless to me. When I watch TV at least, the ads are for things I might buy at the grocery store, or they advertise a sale on at a local furniture store, or they advertise a car I might one day consider buying.

The vast majority of ads on the internet are either completely disinteresting to me - trying to sell me a server appliance, or telephone deals in another country. Or they are advertising online casinos that I would never visit. Or they are scams - you know, the "Your computer is not OPTIMIZED click HERE" crap. If interet advertising was actually relevant to my every day needs, and didn't all come across as a cheap scam, then I might be more tolerant.

In fact, I am. I'm quite happy to view the Google ad-words ads, because they have, sometimes, shown me something I might be interested in.

Anyone remember Computer Shopper?

[Asprin (545477)]

Back in the early '90s, we used to buy Computer Shopper magazine *specifically* *because* of the ads. That thing was at least 2 inches thick; not like today's version.

why do...

[UnanimousCoward (9841)]

...dogs lick their balls?

My health.

[The Ancients (626689)]

I'd rather not find out I suffer from epilepsy due to a simple bout of web surfing.

That would just be plain unfair.

The POed Factor

[MBCook (132727)]

I don't ad-block on the 'net (I use Safari and I don't know of an equivalent to Firefox's ad-block extension). But I do have a TiVo and I skip commercials.

So why? There are many reasons. Lets start with the net. While they take time to download and eat up CPU cycles (I've always wondered how much battery life Flash ads eat up when surfing the 'net on battery), there is a bigger reason.

What do ads look like on the 'net these days. Are they simple? Are they like google ads or the banner ads of yesterday? No, I see 3 things. I see large moving objects covered with names of states trying to sell me mortgages (peacocks, palm trees, all sorts of crud). I see 20 smiley faces dancing and bouncing like all those stupid pages people put up when animated GIFs first appeared. Last thing? Shoo the _____ to win a _____. DO IT NOW. NOW NOW NOW. TRY IT. WIN A ______. CLICK HERE.

Yeah, THOSE make me want to try/buy. Some companies ads are fine (the MS ads here on Slashdot are fine with me). But because people don't click them (see reasons above), they have decided to make things worse. Now they open BIG WINDOWS when you mouse over (or just enter a page). They bounce things around your browser window. They play sounds and songs and other crud. I keep my computer muted all the time (unless I'm listening to music) for precisely this reason. I got tired of surfing and randomly having some loud car-screech-peel-out or stupid music.

TV? I watch more ads than ever. Instead of being annoyed by most (BUY THIS CAR NOW AT JOE BOB FORD), I can skip all that. But when fast-forwarding if I see something that catches my eye I'll stop and watch it out of curiosity. No longer are am I just "watching" the ads (in the sense I'm in the room and theoretically watching TV), now I actually WATCH them. I don't tend to miss any commercials that I wish I'd seen (haven't heard about any good ones recently I didn't already know about). Interesting ads work, but it is only because of my TiVo I even bother.

As for radio, things have gotten worse also. That is one of the reasons (there are MANY others) that I've moved to listening to NPR so much (and my iPod even more).

My biggest complaint with mass media has to be how smutty it is. It used to be you could watch TV or listen to the radio. Now if I watch TV I get to see "male enhancement" ads, some of the most appalling and horrifying ads I've seen in my life (Tag body spray, Axe shower gel, some gum brand, and some others). Radio is the same. Everything I watch/listen to wants to sell me male enhancement drugs, recreational sex drugs (Viagra et al), some scan diet pill (that is probably causing millions of people kidney disease), 12 year olds dressed like hookers ('cause it's COOL), etc.

There are some fun commercials, and I've watched 'em. I enjoyed the iPod commercials, the Old Navy swing commercials from years ago, HP's recent printer campaign with the photos, and many others. The Toyota Prius commercial (from the Super Bowl) and many others have been great. But to watch those I get assaulted by tons of stuff that annoys me (car ads), sickens me (male enhancement), or just makes me want to cry that something like that would be broadcast (Tag body spray, Axe shower gel, etc).

But the biggest problem, the BIGGEST problem is seeing the same commercial 3 times per show. For every show. On every network. Non-stop play. Same thing over and Over and OVER and OVER.

I've heard rumblings of going back to "Kraft Foods presents: Medium on CBS". That's fine with me. I can't WAIT. It has GOT to be better than what we have now. And for those of you saying "Just give up on TV and watch the shows when they come out on DVD", I'm VERY close to that. VERY close.

Whether you agree with my stance on certain commercials being vulgar/etc; you have to admit... commercials seem to be trying to get louder and more annoying (like car dealership commercials are the best thing out there or something).

Because it's my money

[Jekler (626699)]

I pay for bandwidth therefore I should be able to choose what uses the bandwidth I pay for. The model of ad delivery on the internet is different than a magazine. Before you buy the magazine you can, theoretically, determine how much space is taken up by advertisements and decide if it's a fair trade for your money. With internet ads, you pay first, and you find out how much bandwidth is taken up by an ad after you get it.

Time is limited, advertising isn't a fair trade for my time. I lose minutes of my life, what do I get out of it?

I use the adblock extension for Firefox. Before that, I used Ad-Shield for Internet Explorer.

I block and avoid as much as possible

[vorpal^ (114901)]

I would like to use Opera, as it seems to run faster than Firefox on OS X, but given that it doesn't offer something like adblock, as far as I'm concerned, the web is unusable with it. I'm a very easily distracted and hyperstimulated person (I suspect that I'm a high functioning person with Asperger's syndrome), and the nature of ads these days is so obnoxious (shaking banner ads, bright and flashing colours that can have no purpose other than to induce epileptic seizures) that unless I block these graphics, I feel physically sick after several hours of using the web and cannot focus on the content of the page I'm trying to read. Because of this, I've blocked all the ads I've come across, and for months now that I have adblock configured to my liking, I've seldom seen a single one.

I feel similarly about movies and television. The ads on both of these mediums are designed to grab attention and maintain it, but I find them too intensive; the constant movement, colour, etc. makes me dizzy and anxious to the point that I feel extremely unpleasant and need to retreat to my home to relax. I now download ad-free content using Bittorrent and watch all my TV shows sans ads and my movies in the comfort of my own home, free of charge. Is this stealing? Absolutely, but given the psychologically manipulative tactics used in advertising these days, I don't particularly care. I'm fully aware that two wrongs don't make a right, but I feel no inclination to behave with the slightest bit of decency towards industries that treat me in such a vile manner.

(On the other hand, I fully do support companies that I feel treat me well. I happily pay for their products. I go see my favourite musicians in concert and buy their albums and make a point of saving money beforehand so that I can buy their albums and merchandise there to show my appreciation for them.)

The whole point of advertising these days is to be as intrusive as possible. For example, in Toronto right now, a movie theatre along one of our major highways, the QEW, wants to erect a huge LCD screen to present highway drivers with movie previews. The problem is that their proposed screen surpasses the size limitations set by the city. They're fighting to change the bylaws. Opponents are claiming that the ad will distract drivers and increase the probability of accidents, while the movie company is stating that there is no evidence of such a thing. The sad thing is that the city is even considering it, from my understanding. The entire purpose of the screen, it seems to me, is to distract drivers as the screen is not visible to anyone other than people in cars on this highway, so I can't even fathom how the theatre's claim has any merit whatsoever. It boggles my mind.

I mean, we're constantly being bombarded by advertising. Now when I go to the gas station, I have LCD screens ON THE GAS MACHINES blaring loud advertisements in my face. Similarly for the subway stations, which have essentially become painted with ads for TV shows. The hubcaps of taxis are now advertisements for TV stations. It's rare that I have a day where I don't end up using a urinal that forces ads into my face. Often, these ads are so wasteful from a resource perspective that I can't wrap my mind around it; for example, we have a TV show up here in Canada called Canada's Worst Driver. One of their advertising mechanisms is for a tow-truck to pull around a severely decimated car with a huge advertisement for the show printed on the side of the car. This is permissible in an era where gas prices are soaring and smog is becoming a huge problem in Toronto?

How can I possibly show even the slightest hint of respect for an industry that gladly stomps on my toes at every possible opportunity it gets? As far as I'm concerned, there is no lifeform worth less on the face of this planet than those in advertising, who bring almost nothing beneficial or worthy to the table of humanity, only forcing more mental pollution upon us. I once met someone with whom I was quite compatible, but upon hearing that this person was in college studying marketing, I sent them packing as I could never date someone with those ambitions, regardless of how amazingly we got along.

I don't.

[NanoGator (522640)]

I don't block ads. I block annoyances, such as popups. I don't mind the ads. I certainly prefer them to having to pay subscription fees. Then again, ads these days are far less annoying than they were 3 or 4 years ago. Heck, I even find the occasional thinkgeek ad interesting. I don't think advertising is automatically evil. I can understand being against the annoyance, but I've seen so many extreme views here that are really quite obnoxious. "Even though these ads are what is keeping this site I enjoy so much alive, I'm blocking them because of the principal of it." Yeah, right. If you were really operating on principals, you'd pay the fair price for viewing the site. Sadly, this sort of attitude doesn't earn as much karma around here.

For those of you that think all ads are evil, I have some random bits of info for you to read:

- I have my dream job right now because of a community site supported by ads. It is a massive site that is expensive to run simply because of the sheer number of users. I know others that can tell a similar story.

- Slashdot, an ad driven site, has provided me and LOTS of others many many hours of entertainment. (admittedly, it's the extreme twerps that provide the most entertainment for me.)

- Serenity, the movie trailer that lots of Slashdots tripped overthemselves to get, is an ad intended to get you to spend $8+ at the local theater.

- Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, Star Trek, Babylon 5, and even Futurama were made for the expressed purpose of tricking you into watching commercials.

- Any time you get excited by the latest processor or the newest video card or even the whoop-de-shit gaming system coming out, you're hearing about it because of advertising. Despite popular belief, there's really not that much difference between news and advertising.

Anyway, I'm done ranting. Moving on to a more constructive topic: I think advertising services are missing a critical component here. Opera had it right for a while. Way back in version 5, they actually used a .gif based ad instead of Google's text based ads. They had comics rotating through the ads. I found myself glancing up there regularly so I could catch the latest comic. I miss that. In that sense, it was more like TV. The ads became tolerable because I was being rewarded with content. Fair enough. I think some would-be cartoonists could make an interesting living, there. I think this is the right idea. Unfortunately, most sites try to play it as though the content they're providing is enough. Pity, really. Tripping over ads is not the way to keep your userbase. That's what drives people to block the ads. I can certainly understand that. Heck, even TV isn't immune to this. Lost is very hard to watch without a PVR. Tone it down, dudes.

I don't block ads

[esconsult1 (203878)]

Seriously.

My eyes gravitate towards whatever article/information I'm reading and completely ignores the peripheral ads. Once in a while, I see something that I like, and if I do, I click on it.

Many slashdotters think its really kewl to block ads, but ads pay for the sites you are viewing, ads pay for slashdot (not nearly enough of us subscribe to keep this site running).

On the other hand, we do have the right to block ads, its our computer and bandwidth. But if enough of us do, then most of the sites we know and love will cease to operate. As someone working in the ad-serving and tracking industry, ad blockers (not popup blockers -- popups are evil) are beginning to show up as a serious chunk in the stats. Advertisers and their agencies are now up in arms. Not being able to tell the ROI of an ad, means agencies can't tell if its worth showing or now.

By us not clicking on the crappy flash ads -- that sends a message. Blocking it does not.

Should be a poll--as if /. could do a useful one

[shanen (462549)]

Anyway, I haven't read all of the posts (though I spent more time on "insightful" and only saw more evidence of poorly considered moderation), but I didn't see this position expressed, and certainly not clearly, so...

Actually, I don't actively block the less intrusive ads, but as the advertising techniques used become more aggressive and privacy intrusive, I do respond with increasing vigor. Of course the worst bastards are the jackasses that are trying to infest my computer with browser hijackers and various other forms of spyware, but they are only extremists on the same scale. Therefore I say the fundamental problem is the "free lunch" mentality created by "free" radio broadcasts. Radio broadcasts were not really free, but by having the advertisers sponsor them, the radio stations were able to build a profitable business model. However, the chickens always come home to roost, and the result of this kind of "free" was ultimately very bad, especially as applied to television, and now as it is invading the commercial Internet.

The interests of the advertisers are NOT the same as the interests of the public. The advertisers do not want people to be well educated and well informed, because in that terrible case (from their perspective) the best product value (in each product category) would be known, and that product would capture the bulk of the sales. Except for the sellers of the best product, the companies who are paying for the advertising want people to be as easily manipulated as possible, so that they can twist as many of them as possible into buying not-so-valuable products. Actually, from the perspective of the "purest" advertisers, selling nothing at the highest price possible is the ultimate goal.

In conclusion, take a close look at Dubya to see what they can sell. Your children and grandchildren (and more) will be paying for that "sale" for a long time.

Re:Computer Shopper

[shawb (16347)]

If you think that's bad, you should try a fashion magazine sometime. My roomate brought one home once, so I decided to count the pages of ads. Of the first 100 pages, 93 were ads. 4 of the other pages were reviews of insanely expensive products, all glowing. The other two pages? Table of contents. Price? nine bucks. It was there that I realized how horribly idiotic fashionistas are.

Re:Computer Shopper

[Reziac (43301)]

This isn't much different from most mainstream magazines. Look at a Good Housekeeping or Women's Day or even TVGuide, and often as not the ads outnumber the content.

[picks random edition of eWeek off the stack of unread IT rags] Even in this relatively content-heavy magazine, 26 of 58 pages are ads.

Occasionally, ads are a magazine's primary desirable content, such as ComputerUser -- *most* of why I have a subscription is because I need to see local vendors' component prices. I've even been known to complain when there aren't enough ads. :)

Almost all dog and horse magazines are essentially ad venues, with only token content. BUT -- there again, the main reason people buy these mags is to see ads relevant to their breed(s) of interest.

Here's the Big Point: when the ads are relevant to the audience's needs and interests, then ads are desirable -- and may even be regarded AS the "main content".

But on the web, we're typically bombarded with ads we did not choose to see, that are of no interest to us, that waste our time and bandwidth, and that *interfere* with viewing the "main content".

Small wonder that just about everyone who groks ad blocking proceeds to do so.

Re:Computer Shopper

[Lemmy Caution (8378)]

You may not understand fashionistas, but they aren't simply idiotic. They are simply playing an entirely different game than you are - one that has its own rewards and advantages.