Why Do You Block Ads? 1470
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 (Score:5, Informative)
2. Most ads are too big and intrusive.
3. Most ads are irrelevant.
See the trend? That explains why Googld Ads is so successful.
Ehh (Score:5, Informative)
Sound (Score:3, Informative)
56k (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My reasons (Score:2, Informative)
Here you go (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Magazine Ad Overload (Score:4, Informative)
Why Do You Block Ads? (Score:3, Informative)
Because I find them irritating.
> And with what?
Privoxy.
> Do you view internet ads as different from say, TV ads?
Don't watch TV.
> What about in a magazine? Do you not buy a magazine because it has
> too many?
Yes (but I very rarely buy magazines anyway).
You can stop them on TV... (Score:3, Informative)
I haven't seen an ad in many months. TV has improved out of sight for me.
Re:My reasons (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Magazine Ad Overload (Score:3, Informative)
Surf through enough old paperbacks with copyright dates from the 1940s-1970s in a used bookstore, and you'll probably find some ads. Especially in book-club printings and other editions that were sold at a discount. I'm not sure exactly when this practice died out, or why, but it has definitely been done.
JunkBuster / Privoxy (Score:3, Informative)
-molo
Re:My reasons (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Wrong country, that's why (Score:3, Informative)
2) Most ads are large, very colourful and very distracting.
3) It's so easy to block them. Right-click the offending image, choose Adblock, shorten the url and stick a * on the end for a wildcard match.
4) My first broadband account had a 500mb month cap and 15c/meg over that. If I did a lot of web browsing I could literally end up paying to view ads.
5) When I'm in the market for a big-ticket item I read reviews and compare prices and features. No amount of advertising will influence my decision to purchase. If a manufacturer wants to influence me they need to make a product so good that it's a no-brainer. E.g. the Subaru WRX.
6) I usually buy small ticket items on impulse. I'm there in the shop, it's staring at me, I buy it. Online ads for small ticket items are pointless. (Freight + waiting time)
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
www.pimpmysafari.com (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My reasons (Score:3, Informative)
Most magazines and newspapers could be given away for free, but they charge a nominal fee to create a percieved value. It is strange, but that free paper is for some reason less desirable then the one that costs 50 cents. If it is free, then the opinions and articles inside must be of a lower intellectual value.
But, on the other hand, if papers and magazines charged their real cost + profit without ads, then no one would buy because the price would be too high.
Re:annoying animations (Score:5, Informative)
Hope this helps
Re:I don't block ads (Score:3, Informative)
Slashdot, as well as every website I can think of that employs ad-based content could certainly find ways to cover costs and generate revenue without relying on ad-based income. LiveJournal, for instance, offers enough value-added content to subscribers that thousands and thousands of users happily pay; never has LiveJournal had to rely on ads. This is a business model which more online companies should seek to emulate.
Re:I block and avoid as much as possible (Score:3, Informative)
Dallas airport (Score:1, Informative)
Re:My reasons (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My reasons (Score:3, Informative)
Offensive Search Results
We're disturbed about these results
as well. Please read our note here.
www.google.com/explanation
Blocking ads (Score:1, Informative)
Not true. (Score:3, Informative)
However, if you Google for "JewS", there is no message, and there is indeed an eBay offering.
Re:My reasons (Score:3, Informative)
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but Consumer Reports is one giant paid ad. They consistantly rate Bose speakers as top quality audiophile products for Christ sakes.
Re:Invasion of privacy issue (Score:2, Informative)
The worse thing is that those 'images' are in fact just asp or php scripts (with binary output of a 1x1 transparent gif) that can be used for sending all sorts of information. 'http://spam.com/white.gif?id=34512' can give them as much information as replying to the spam.
That's why you shouldn't load external images from e-mails you don't trust.
Re:I think the better question is.. (Score:2, Informative)
Using adblock and a hosts file requires practically no effort at all. There's even a filterset.g updater extension now, so all I have to do is check every once in a while for updates to the hosts file and right-click + "adblock image" on anything that filterset.g doesn't get.
For that minimal investment of effort, I get improved page load times on my 28.8k connection and I no longer have to put up with the all-singing, all-dancing ads. It's well worth it.
Re:My reasons (Score:4, Informative)
[snip]...A positive example of such an attitude was realised in the advertising campaign [for Pollena 2000] of 1990-1996 in the strategic use of quotations from a very famous canon trilogy by the nineteenth-century writer Henryk Sienkiewicz. [...] The high level of satisfaction was gained by virtue of reference to the common archive of quotations. The linguistic pun and the historical scenery imitating the novel's reality took the audience by storm. It was a great commercial success which some agencies tried to repeat[snip]
This makes it sound like the ad worked and the crafty Poles got the reference.
Re:My reasons (Score:2, Informative)
Re:My reasons (Score:3, Informative)
For a color magazine, the production costs are huge, even in large volumes. The subscription cost simply "qualifies" the reader. This is why magazine subscriptions are priced like airline seats: two subscribers who bought on the same day from a bingo card (one that fell out of the magazine) may get very different rates. The subscriber who pays more is deemed "more serious" about the subject, simply because they're more willing to shell out $$ for information on the subject. If the mag can prove to subscribers that they hit enough of those readers, then they can justify ads for more expensive products, and/or drive up the ad rates accordingly.
The old Cobb Group publications of the 80's and early 90's (I was the Editor-in-Chief of some of the developer pubs) were all subscription driven, and people were massively annoyed that they only got 16 pages of content for $49/year. They were insistent that we didn't need to use ads, and could somehow bulk mail glossy, 75-page mags with no ads, and not charge $400/year. Even for 16-page 2-color publications, it typically cost $2 to get a copy in a subscriber's hand, and that's not counting marketing and overhead costs.
As for my reasons for blocking ads, it's primarily because of a complete lack of relevance. On the other hand, I recognize that I tend to keep the publications from knowing too much about me, which no doubt affects their potential ability to present relevant ads to me.
Tim
Magazines without ads (Score:3, Informative)
ad blocking via hosts file (Score:1, Informative)
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 media.fastclick.net
127.0.0.1 cdn1.tribalfusion.com
127.0.0.1 cdn5.tribalfusion.com
127.0.0.1 itxt.vibrantmedia.com
127.0.0.1 geek.salary.com
127.0.0.1 spe.atdmt.com
127.0.0.1 a.tribalfusion.com
127.0.0.1 images.webattack.com
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 altfarm.mediaplex.com
127.0.0.1 a.as-us.falkag.net
127.0.0.1 adlog.com.com
127.0.0.1 www.layermedia.com
127.0.0.1 global.msads.net
127.0.0.1 ca.rd.yahoo.com
127.0.0.1 us.a1.yimg.com
127.0.0.1 us.i1.yimg.com
127.0.0.1 assets.bravenet.com
127.0.0.1 www.bravenetmedianetwork.com
127.0.0.1 accipiter.speedera.net
127.0.0.1 banner.oddcast.com
127.0.0.1 view.atdmt.com
127.0.0.1 content.yieldmanager.com
127.0.0.1 ipods.freepay.com
127.0.0.1 ad.yieldmanager.com
127.0.0.1 adsfac.net
127.0.0.1 cdn.mediaplex.com
127.0.0.1 img-cdn.mediaplex.com
127.0.0.1 adfarm.mediaplex.com
127.0.0.1 links.industrybrains.com
127.0.0.1 a248.e.akamai.net
127.0.0.1 network.realmedia.com
127.0.0.1 nx-adv.bookclubservices.ca
127.0.0.1 www.burstnet.com
127.0.0.1 servedby.advertising.com
127.0.0.1 realbannerads.com
127.0.0.1 srs.targetpoint.com
More infomation on this system will be available on my site sometime in the future
I will also release a beta version of a hosts file based ad blocking system
http://s010600609736b3d7.cg.shawcable.net/tech [shawcable.net]
Re:Vote with your wallet (Score:3, Informative)
FYI - There IS a fuel efficiency requirement for hybrid vehicles in California carpool lanes. As a result, only the Honda Civic Hybrid, the Honda Insight Hybrid, and the Toyota Prius Hybrid are actually eligible, and on top of that, there's only a limited number of permits available, so even some eligible vehicle owners will be left out.
Here's the California DMV's chart on eligible vehicles (hybrid, electric and CNG): http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/carpool/carpool.htm [ca.gov]