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."

To protect privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

I block ads to protect my privacy. Why is it that advertisers always feel the need to use cookies? Because they want to track me from site-to-site. That offends me. Thus I refuse to cooperate with them. If they would just respect my privacy, I would have no problem with them.

UI

[nothings]

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.

Re:My reasons

[bilbravo]

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.

annoying animations

[danpritts]

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.

Because I can!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

because they are annoying

[Raleel]

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:My reasons

[FxChiP]

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.

Because I can

[dnixon112]

With a DVR you can skip TV ads, and I do. With pop-up blockers and user stylesheets you can remove internet ads. Gets quite a bit harder to get rid of magazine ads, but maybe that's why I hardly buy magazines anymore. I'd rather pay a small fee for quality content if ads were not generating enough revenue.

Magazines

[superpulpsicle]

If I bought a magazine and all the articles were blocked by Ads, I'd be pretty pissed.

And if I had to pay extra $$$ to read the same magazine with the articles unblocked, I'd be even more pissed.

if not ads, who should pay for content?

[UnderAttack]

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

Re:My reasons

[pcmanjon]

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

Magazines shouldn't have any. If a magazine costs 20 bucks a month, why should they have to use ads?

I think the better question is..

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not?

Hrmm

[oman_]

These sound like the kind of questions an advertiser would ask in order to make more effective (intrusive) ads.

Anyone remember Computer Shopper?

[Asprin]

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.

Re:My reasons

[sqlrob]

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

what goes up, must....

[efuseekay]

Ads are also the money maker that gives Google the capital so they can bring you more Cool Stuff(tm).

Why Should I See Ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do advertisers feel the need to advertise everywhere? Why do they need to advertise on the radio, on TV, on the side of the road, on cars on the road, on buildings, on people, on everything I read, in movie theatres (of all places, in a show you've paid to see), on personally owned copies of movies, in the sky, on the ground, and basically everywhere else they can think of? How is ignoring advertising any different than ignoring any other minor omnipresent annoyance?

Specifically, in the online world we have to fetch the advertisements to see them, which means it may cost us money or time to do so. There's no preexisting environment in which the ads reside, they are just hyperlinks from information we actually want to see. Selectively following hyperlinks based on semantic choices was the original purpose for the WWW, at least. Blocking ads is a fundamental expression of that semantic choice about what information we want.

Google adwords are an example of the unfortunate trend of integrating advertisements into everything in an almost undetectable and invisible way. So far, Google has not done this, but separates the ads from search results, but it would be easy to carefully integrate them as other search engines have done. It would make them even more money, so it will be difficult to explain their No Evil approach to shareholders. Hopefully they keep enough of the company in good hands.

Re:Magazine Ad Overload

[RaguMS]

I have this horrible, sinking feeling that one day they're going to start putting advertisements in books.

I have this sinking feeling that it's already happened - you and I just haven't seen them yet.

Re:My reasons

[leshert]

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

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

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

[JanneM]

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.

The POed Factor

[MBCook]

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).

Ads?

[mswope]

- All ads. period.

If I want something, I know how to look for it. If I can't find it, oh well...

If someone has to *tell me* that I need something, do I really need it?

mas

Re:Ehh

[andreyw]

Also with magazines I do not have a choice - can't remove them, plus at least they don't obscure content as some of the more-annoying popus do.

Re:I block them on TV too...

[gnarlin]

I have only one thing to say to you. Bittorrent!
Oh, and Ni!

Re:because they are annoying

[Jim Starx]

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.

Invasion of privacy issue

[jd]

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.

Re:My reasons

[AuMatar]

Then fucking charge more. I'll pay for content, but I will *not* pay for ads. It would at least be understandable if it was free and had ads, but I will not accept both. And its very unlikely I'll read you even for free if you have ads, I'd rather pay for something where the author isn't going to try and annoy the hell out of me.

Because it's my money

[Jekler]

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.

Re:The POed Factor

[RLiegh]

Whether you agree with my stance on certain commercials being vulgar/etc; you have to admit...

I grew up during the free-wheeling 70's, and I pride myself on being less prudish and repressed than pretty much anyone I (currently) know. However, that said, I always wince whenever I'm eating dinner and a masingil ad comes on, or seeing an commercial for herpes while I'm watching a movie, and yeah I get offended over the Viagra ads too (mostly because of the shyster factor).

This is all during the late afternoon, early evening; it's not a matter of being purient; it's a matter of being gross. I don't want to hear about herpes, diarrhea, yeast infections or impotence while I'm trying to relax.

It's just fucking gross.

I block and avoid as much as possible

[vorpal22]

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.

Re:My reasons

[jim_v2000]

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

I don't.

[NanoGator]

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.

Re:My reasons

[pjkeyzer]

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:Here in MN it's possible to block ads in yards.

[LocalH]

It's illegal to post a non real estate, political or garage sale sign in your own front yard.

And you think that's a good thing in a supposedly free country? I should have the right to put whatever I want in my yard as long as it doesn't violate "community standards" for obscenity.

I block ads because I can

[Anonymous Coward]

I block ads because I can block them (why would I want to see them?), obviously I can't do anything about ads in paper magazines.

Re:You can stop them on TV...

[cbreaker]

Not HDTV. Sure, if you have an OTA HDTV card you could do it, but for cable TV unfortunately most cable companies are stopping this quite effectively by encrypting most (or some key) digital channels requiring the use of their boxes. It wouldn't be the end of the world, but there's just about zero capture boards available to record over DVI or Component. (Some exist, but are extremely expensive (15K+) and for professional AV shops.)

DRM is killing home-brew video, and it's pushing Linux to the side when it comes to A/V applications.

My Wife...

[russh347]

my mother, and my kids will click on the ads. Then I have to spend time cleaning up the mess.

Ads in magazines aren't active, they don't make a mess in your living room just because you read them. If web ads didn't leave a bunch of pop-ups and malware, I probably wouldn't bother.

I hate playing whack-a-mole.

Re:My reasons

[AchilleTalon]

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.

text/html

[morcego]

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

HTML-based e-mails are the main reason I use a CLI (text-ui) e-mail reader. More exactly, Mutt. HTML messages get rendered using a CLI web browsers (w3m). I would love to be able to use Thunderbird. It is really neat, has some nice features, and is easy to use. But (mostly) because of the HTML based e-mails, I simply can't.

So, I end up having to use a plendora of different programs (fetchmail + procmail + mutt + w3m + spamassassin + exim) to be able to read e-mail.

I have considered simply filtering all html based e-mails directly on my mail server, but since I receive a lot of business related e-mails from people who simply think that adding their company logo on the body of the message is something important, I can't do that.

I really miss the time when I could simply sit in front of my AIX workstation and use elm to read my 20ish daily e-mails.

Re:My reasons

[number11]

" 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:My reasons

[Spy der Mann]

You can always tear up the magazine ads and use them to power up your boiler, or cover some part of the house while you're painting :)
Try that with Flash ads.

Yeah...

[Auraiken]

That's exactly what scissors were made for... :)

Re:I block and avoid as much as possible

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that I'm a high functioning person with Asperger's syndrome

Self-diagnosis is a more serious condition than any condition itself. If you truly believe this to be the case then see a doctor. Assuming you are when you are not will not enable you to resolve anything; not seeking a professional's assistance when you are will not resolve anything.

Your belief is a few steps away from hypochondria, and the self-involved nature of many slashdotters (and Asperger patients) leaves them more vulnerable to such things.

Seriously, if your friend had a rootkit installed they would come to you; if you had a malaise you would see a doctor.

Re:Computer Shopper

[Anonymous Coward]

And in Maxim and similar magazines, the ads have just as many half-naked women as the main content, so it's all good.

Re:My reasons

[Chrispy1000000 the 2]

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:Pointless and useless

[Nqdiddles]

Not to mention the fact that if it's an actual product they're offering it's usually in another country, irrelevant and the wrong voltage for me.
Or illegal to ship internationally.
Relevance really is the key, and I WILL click on static text ads that have some relevance to what I'm looking at.

Re:My reasons

[StevenMaurer]

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.

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

[shanen]

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.

The point of ads is to make you unhappy

[anomalousman]

I block ads whenever it's easy. I use my PVR, Firefox's Adblock, and a "No Advertising Material Please" sticker.

Internet ads are exactly like TV ads, except they cost me money to download. I don't like magazines where the ads are so prevalent, they genuinely get in the way of finding content. Content. Haha.

The REAL question is: why do you watch ads? Why do you download them? It's not like you need to be aware of ads these days to know what to buy when you want to buy something. When I want to buy something I look on the internet retail and review sites just like everybody else. Until that point, the only point of ads is to make me unhappy. Ever seen an ad whose message was "everything is great, you can be content and change nothing?" The answer is no. The point of an advert is to make you dissatisfied with soemthing in your life so that you take some action (each advertiser has a preferred action) to fix it.

These people are professionals, too. There is a serious amount of science put into figuring out ways to make people unhappy. I don't feel like subjecting myself to that needlessly, even though I am a happy little consumer.

Re:My reasons

[papukanghi]

Google Ads are an eye sore. Its the most ugly thing to ever hit the web. They dont put any ads on their website but put those ugly text adv's on almost all of the websites in the world.

whats so cool about it? how is it cool? it's not cool. it's google. The fact remains, there's something attractive about anything google does ... in time, it'll lose the charm and something new will come to replace it. Google has that *thing* ... like coke and pepsi because google has managed to retain that 'underdog' feel.

I have never seen anthing intresting in their *contextual* ads.

Vonage Ads...

[TouchOfRed]

These things piss me off to no end. First of all they are everywhere, and secondly, they are annoying as hell, as they look fucking stupid. They look like some grade 10 student went trigger happy with the liquify function in photoshop, and to top it all off, have a tacky orange background that doesnt blend or fit into any websites i visit. Their service sucking is a tottally different story in itself....Firefox+adblock are lifesavers, reminds me of browsin g back in 1997.

Re:My reasons

[Technician]

6. Most ads are just plain annoying.


Especialy those that glue themselves right over the text you are trying to read. I have yet to buy a magazine where an ad was pasted over the article and took 10 seconds to peel up to read the text underneath.

I started blocking pop-ups when X10 made themselves a pain in the butt. I removed macromedia when Yahoo loaded up in interstitials that covered the content. From there I was on a roll and obtained hosts files. It started when ads got big time IN YOUR FACE

Re:My reasons

[coaxial]

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.

Because I'm not that sort of consumer

[sremick]

I block ads because advertising doesn't fit the sort of consumer I am. While I understand the desire for companies to advertise (and the desire for sites to provide free content in return for advertising), that only works for consumers who are sensitive to advertising. I am not like that, however. I am a different sort of consumer. I am the knowledge-empowered, researching sort of consumer. Not only will advertising not get you any points with me, but will probably work against you.

When I'm online reading stuff on a web page, I'm not in a frame of mind to be advertised to. I'm working on something else, thank you very much. Interrupt me and it's not much different than a salesman calling me while I'm trying to eat dinner or enjoy a good book. If I'm ready to purchase something, I will then do research and find reviews sites, discussion forums, and other such stuff. I could care less what the manufacturer says about its own products. Half of it tends to be lies anyway. So advertising gets a company absolutely nowhere with me. If you have a product worth buying, it's going to have to stand on its own due to its merits, and not because you spent $X million advertising it. Some of my best products I've ever purchased are well-known only to enthusiasts in the field, and usually never advertise. Because they don't need to.

Not every consumer is like me. So granted there is a market for advertising. I am not that market, however. So why should I waste my screen real-estate and bandwidth for material which will never obtain its desired purpose with me?

I use AdBlock with Firefox and block EVERYTHING with a ruthless passion.

However I don't deny the success of advertising and I do use it a tiny bit myself. Other consumers are passive and depend on advertising to proactively notify them about products, vs themselves doing the work.

Why I block them...

[omglol]

Because they are products of evil and greedy corporations. Fuck the system!

Re:I don't.

[mdielmann]

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

Well I tricked them! I bought the Futurama DVDs - now I can skip all the ads. They're not even interleaved in the episodes.

I wish...

[Anonymous Coward]

That the epileptics out there would sue the people who put up the flashing ads.

Not only are they *painful* to look at, especially when they never stop flashing, but it occurs to me that they might well trigger epileptic seizures in some. Hell, an old episode of pokemon managed to do that in many children in Japan, and all video game makers put warnings about epilepsy in their instruction manuals (usually in the first page or two--read it sometime), so why not hold them at fault?

It's not like they can't make non blinking ads.

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

[thevoice99]

You're paying $50 for the right and ability to access content. People who make the content don't get any part of that $50. One way or another content is going to get paid for whether it be through ads or subscriptions. If I were to say build a machine that blocks all the commercials from being shown on TV. How can I expect my favorite show to be able to hire actors, a crew, etc. to continue filming if they get no money at all? This is not to say I like ads but if you go to a website and like their content either turn off your ad blocker or send them some money otherwise you arn't doing them a favor by visiting.

Re:My reasons

[Total_Wimp]

...or have loud music...

Nothing is more annoying than looking for some important (or trivial) piece of info at work and all of a sudden everyone hears music/sound effects/an announcer coming from your cube. I've actually taken to surfing with the sound off to avoid this. I shouldn't have to.

Anyone who puts automatic sound on their web site should be slapped around with rotting chicken legs and left in a kennel naked overnight. I don't even care if it wasn't an ad. Trust me, that MIDI you love actually sucks way more than you think it does. Honest. If you think I'll love it so much then furgodsake at least gimme a button to click on first. I beg of you.

TW

I block ads because they waste my time and money

[Grail]

I'm Australian.

That means two things when it comes to ads: first, I pay to view them. Second, I usually can't buy the product being advertised anyway (or certainly wouldn't want to buy it and pay the cost of shipping).

Internet access in Australia is usually charged in terms of per-megabyte, or with a fixed quota (after which your speed is restricted to fast modem instead of broadband). Some sites I've been to serve me a 3k HTML page, a 1k CSS file, and a 10k Flash animation. By blocking those ads, I've effectively increased by ability to use the World Wide Web by a factor of 4 (I can load the whole page four times faster, and I can view four times as many pages in total).

More often than not, the spam ads are for offers which are only of use to people in the USA (eg: mobile phone, home shopping, cable TV subscription, magazine subscription, yadda yadda). Other times they're for a product which I'd save $10 on the price, but pay an extra $30 for shipping. Target audience folks, it's a key word in marketing. I am not your target audience, you can tell that from the ".au" on the end of the domain name of the IP address I'm connecting to you from.

I also find it really distracting when I'm reading an article on a famous Geek website (article might be abou the Microsoft anti-trust case, or Microsoft's latest buying out of some foreign government), and an ad for something like Visual Studio comes along. Get with the program - I don't even use an Intel box!

Perhaps if advertisers would acknowledge the basic facts available to them, I'd stop being so upset about advertising. Here are the basic facts: I'm in Australia, and I use Mac OS X. Don't advertise Windows-Only software to me, don't advertise export-restricted products to me, don't advertise services to me unless they're available for use in Australia.

Re:My reasons

[harlows_monkeys]

Ads are ads, targetted or not

Isn't that kind of an irrational attitude?

Unless you have so much money that you have no interest in getting a bargain on your purchases, or have such complete knowledge of all fields in which you purchase that you are aware of the prices from all suppliers of your goods, why would you want to get rid of all ads, rather than just the ones that are intrusive or off target?

Where do I start?

[oneandoneis2]

why do you block ads?

Well:

• Most ads are for US products, and I'm in England.
• Most ads, popups in particular but plenty others too, are incredibly annoying. Advertisers seem to have lost their minds when it comes to the Internet - they throw good sense out of the window and aim for the most obtrusive, annoying adverts they can think of. Flashing colours, animation, NOISE, or just obscuring the parts of the page I actually want to look at. Less annoying ads, such as Google's, I don't block - I even click on google ads occasionally, because they have a high chance of being something I'm actually interested in.
• Every website I regularly use that offers the option, I'm a paying subscriber of - such as slashdot - or a supporter of indirectly - such as Dilbert.com, which I Adblock with a clear conscience since I own every Dilbert comic strip ever published in a book.
• I don't buy ANYTHING on the strength of an advert. Advertisers lie. Before I cough up cash, I look for feedback from consumers.
• Many years ago, before Adblocker appeared on the scene, I made a resolution never to click on any advert that used annoying tactics like pretending to be a system message, flashing colors, whatever. So if I'm not going to click on it, why waste my and the advertisers bandwidth looking at it?
• Slashdot often links to sites that have posted sensational lies in order to get lots of people visiting their page & giving them a boost in advertising. Blocking the ads on their site means sites I specifically DON'T support don't get money from peddling their tripe.

And with what?

Firefox's adblocker, the AdBlock extension, and a list of the worst advertising offenders in a "block stuff from these" file.

Do you view internet ads as different from say, TV ads?

• Yes: I hardly ever watch TV, and when I do, I almost entirely watch the BBC - which has no ads.
• More to the point, TV ads don't use up my paid-for bandwidth, and are kept rigidly separate from the programmes: You don't get banner ads plastered across the top of the screen in climactic moments of the TV show, but you frequently encounter them on web pages.
• Lastly, TV ads aren't specifically created to be annoying and hard to get rid of. They're generally quite entertaining. Many TV ads have made me laugh, for example. No internet advert ever has.

What about in a magazine? Do you not buy a magazine because it has too many?

Don't buy magazines very often. . . But when I do, I'm happy for them to have ads. They don't have "peel off this ad to view the actual content" ads stuck all over the pages, or ads with flashing lights or so-called humerous noises. They have well-designed, undemanding ads that are relevant to the rest of the content.

It all really boils down to: Most internet ads seem to have been designed for no other purpose than wasting my time and pissing me off. So I block those ads. If that makes life hard for a website I use, then they should either: Offer a "pay for ad-free pages" like Slashdot does; or find advertisers who aren't determined to push ads that will alienate the very users the site depends upon.

Re:My reasons

[masklinn]

They don't move, they don't blink, they don't annoy, they don't take half my fucking screen estate, and you can skin them to at least fit the color scheme of your website.

Re:My reasons

[jrumney]

I stopped buying Wired when the ad content overtook the article content in volume. That and the articles' target audience seemed to change from technical to dotCom business folk.

Re:My reasons

[TheRaven64]

The worst ones are those that use Flash, and eat 100% of my CPU to do something that is more or less the equivalent of an animated GIF. When you are mobile, it's a real pain to suddenly hit one of these and watch your battery life plummet. For this reason I disabled Flash.

Slashdot take note: I am happy to put up with banner ads if they don't consume too many resources, but I simply will not see anything that uses Flash. Perhaps you should make it a condition of advertising on your site - you and El Reg are the only sites I've noticed missing out from this policy.

Re:My reasons

[nahdude812]

This is largely it for me. Several of my favorite sites have ad services that may take 15-20 seconds to load an ad, and because they are simply <script src="http://someadnetwork.com"> they halt the rest of the page from loading or displaying while the ad loads. Because often I'm using such sites as reference sites, and I might click around 6-8 times to get to the information I'm really looking for, even 10 seconds waiting per page per ad adds up real quickly. That's a surefire way to get in my adblock. The other thing that gets on my adblock is ads which interfere with my information consumption in other ways, such as being excessively annoying, having sound, or appearing over content.

Honestly I'm more liberal about what ads I'll view and pay attention to on web pages than I am on TV. I skip almost all TV ads immediately (pvr), and very rarely watch live TV simply because of how annoying advertising is.

I don't buy magazines that are advertising heavy. Why do people spend so much money on those magazines such as GQ which are 75% ads? I prefer small publications which are capable of subsisting on their subscriptions alone, or few relevant ads. I subscribe to several of these, and actually find their content to be more interesting than main stream publications.

Wherre I set on Google Text Ads and ads in general

[Mr Z]

Oh, they aren't pretty compared to, say, a flower in a vase. But, bless their little hearts, they just sit there. They don't blink. They don't flash. They don't scroll by the top of the screen. They don't periodically hop in front of the content I'm trying to read. They don't even cycle through a handful of images, updating every couple seconds. They just sit there and get noticed when I feel like noticing them.

And that, my friends, is beautiful.

I've actually clicked on some Google Ads purposefully. But I generally won't click on a banner except by accident. Sites that affront me visually like the Vegas Strip are less likely to get a return visit from me.

You see, I don't watch TV regularly. I haven't for a decade or so. Now, when I go to restaurants, when there's a TV on somewhere, my eyes will drift to it: "Moving picture box funny! ::blankfaced drool::" It could be golf of all things. My ability to filter out noisy moving sh*t has gone away. So, if I end up at a website with even just a couple animated ads around the edges, I have a supremely hard time reading the article of interest before I've nuked all the ads. That includes that scrolling headline marquee so many news sites seem to love. (I love the Nuke Anything extension to Firefox.)

So maybe it's just super common among the handful of us that don't numb ourselves on the boob tube every night that really get annoyed by ads. Dunno.

I do know I usually don't bother with the newspaper or most magazines (and get annoyed playing "find the article" in the latter when I do), and I still don't turn on TV. (Who wants to see the same feminine hygene product commercial 3 times in a single commercial break? You do? Ok, I prescribe watching TBS and UPN for the rest of your days.) What magazines I do subscribe to (Mother Jones [motherjones.com] and Pontiac Enthusiast [pontiacenthusiast.com]) have low ad content of high relevance. They get my renewals year upon year. (Heck, I would've never learned of ZZPerformance [zzperformance.com] if it weren't for a tasteful ad in Pontiac Enthusiast, and they've gotten a few thousand $$ from me over the years.)

Ditto with websites. I return to the ones that don't assault me like a gaggle of epileptic clowns, and make my visit worth my while. Google text ads are a tool to enable that, and that my friends is beautiful.

--Joe

Re:My reasons

[bellers]

You charge $5 a month for membership to your site? I think thats way above my pain threshold. Your site costs exactly 20% of my total monthly internet bill. Do you think your site is worth 20% of the entire internet?

I don't. Hell, I squick in pain every year when I give Salon.com $20, and thats only a buck and change every month. At $60, they could go screw. There's no website in the world I'd pay $60 for.

Re:My reasons

[JerkBoB]

Bravo, sir!

It's a rare /. comment that gets me to belly-laugh. My hat's off to you.

Re:My reasons

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

Ad-free magazines simply do not exist anymore. There aren't any. Not one single one. Prove me wrong.

Consumer Reports Magazine???

Re:Because I can.

[jasen666]

That's the cost of serving content on the internet. Unless your site is a pay site, and says so, you cannot expect to make money off of random visitors. You put up a site knowing that hosting, bandwidth, and content are going to cost a certain amount, and I think any website based on a business model of getting paid simply by ad views was made to fail. This is not radio, TV, or print. Your consumers aren't obligated (or rather forced) to view/listen to your paid ads. I can't skip an ad on radio. But I sure would if I could. Same with TV. I hate commercials. I would live in my own little ad-free world if it were possible.
Since I can skip ads on websites, I do. I don't care whether they're annoying or not, obtrusive or not, or even relevant to the page. I don't want to see them. If I want to buy a product, I'll go look for that product. If you want to make money from me to help pay for your website, sell something I might want. Make the site subscription based... if the content is good enough I'd pay. But understand that the old days of getting paid by mandatory ad viewing are over.
You can't make the internet in the image of TV, it's not the same and never will be.

Re:My reasons

[Johnny5000]

So maybe that answers your question "Why do people spend money on magazines that contain ads?" Because they all do. Ad-free magazines simply do not exist anymore. There aren't any. Not one single one. Prove me wrong.

Adbusters?

PARENT IS ALL YOU NEED

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

To whatever marketing consultant posed this question - the parent gets it in a nutshell one you need to read. I block flashing/moving ads. I block large ads. I don't go quite so far as to block ads that don't fit the colour scheme, but I just might start.

For ad designers - many ads only make it to the viewer's brain after 20 or 30 page hits. I was on /. for a year before I decided to check out one of those thinkgeek ads (and glad I finally did). If you get blocked, you won't have that chance, even if you get them to look over at "that damned flashy thing" the first time it loads. It's just another annoying ad of many. On sites like this especially - where viewers are coming day after day, month after month - you will want to design many different ads promoting different aspects of your business/product. Only after a proper gestation period will the viewers begin to consider the product.

For site owners - don't alienate customers with your ads. It doesn't even need to be said that the flying-across-the-screen-close- now-or-I-block-the-article ads are a disservice to your customers. I (and others here) have stopped going to entire websites specifically because of their ads that are designed to get around the blocker-of-the-day. Ad-blockers aren't the root of the problem - the sheer disrespect for the page viewers is.

Another quick note for advertisers - I *always* de-animate my gifs, so make sure all your info is on the first frame. Even better, don't animate - you risk blockage.

Re:because they are annoying

[Buran]

Maybe. However, that doesn't create an obligation for anyone to do what the network wants. I should also point out that a lot of the backlash they're seeing right now is due to their increasingly annoying people with the ads. I recently watched a movie at my parents' house (they don't have a TiVo; I do) and it was teeth-grindingly annoying because the ad breaks were not only frequent, but very long. This behavior is new (I used to watch TV live all the time and it wasn't anywhere near this bad) and it has pushed more and more people over the edge to the point where they use DVRs or other methods of skipping the ads or at least fast-forwarding through them, like using VCRs or BitTorrent files.

It is rather laughable to me that they complain about people skipping the advertisements -- that came about in large part because the advertisements have gotten more and more insufferable and the actual content shorter and shorter. Instead of doing the right thing and actually fixing the problems (less of it, make it more interesting; I'll watch a good ad but those are too rare these days), they just pile on more crap and then go whining when people protest.

Right now they have little sympathy from the public. They have the power to fix this by catering to what the public wants (less intrusiveness and better content and more content), and they don't. I'm not obligated to help them out any so long as they aren't helping me out any.

They violated their end of the bargain by making people feel that it's no longer worth it. People now have the power to fight back instead of passively taking it, and I'm not going to start passively taking it just because an exec doesn't like it. Big Media is too used to force-feeding us what they think we want the way we think we want it.

Times have changed. The power is ours now.

Re:My reasons

[accelleron]

He was being sarcastic or hypocritical.

In today's world, it's impossible to avoid buying advertised products. The important thing is to know how to look past the hype and decide which products/offers have value, and which do not. Sometimes, advertisements help us do that (i.e. find a product we needed but otherwise would not have found, or inform us about the best available deal.) The reaction some people have displayed (I will not buy it because advertisement sucks) is the polar opposite to the "buy it because I saw an ad for something and now I feel I really need it" reaction, and is equally stupid. Advertisements are not completely worthless, and although I'd rather see them take up a much lesser part of our everyday lives, I'm not ready to turn amish and live on a farm without electricity to avoid them.

Re:Someone else should pay for my free.

[bbc]

"Oh lovely. The same argument people use to justify pirating content makes an appearance. "I would have never bought it, but I will download it to use". The web version "I would have never bought anything, but I will download the content to use"."

Oh lovely. Now you're comparing people who do not wish to see ads with criminals.

BTW, only the middlemen--you know, the real profiteers--are cynical enough to call creative works "content".

"the rest of us [...] put you on our hate list."

Oh lovely. The same list the terrorists use.