I'm one of the few then. I feel so special! (To be fair, I have to click to start Flash, because I haven't updated it and Firefox says it has security holes, which helps a lot.)
Well, it seems that vendors have decided web advertising is not valuable even among user demographics that don't block ads. AdBlock may not be making all that much difference if the basic problem is that people ignore ads even when they see them.
That said, there must still be some value in brand recognition. I guess it's just not as much value as vendors had previously ascribed to these ads.
I think the reach is well beyond tech now. People have figured out they can watch youtube without ads by installing adblock. For me that was a huge incentive and it effectively have made my online experience better.
For those that claim this is stealing, that would imply that there was an explicit price with click to purchase button to view the webpage. There is no entitlement to the website operator, any ad click or donation is completely up to the discretion of the visitor. To claim people are stealing by using adblock is arrogance.
> People have figured out they can watch youtube without ads by installing adblock
I've seen AdBlock Plus fail on YouTube in a particularly annoying way--the ads that consist of a long video (often 2 minutes or more) with a "you can skip this ad in 5 seconds" overlay that counts down and turns into a skip button are shown--but with that overlay and skip button removed!
I recently installed AdBlock (at home) and AdBlock Plus (at work), and I'm not really impressed. At most sites, ads did not bother me. I installed these because of one particular site that was getting too obnoxious. That was gocomics.com. They started running frequent ads that expand on the left side of the page, which would often push the end of the comic I was reading off the right side of the page.
I'd much prefer if I could have these off for most sites, and only block ads on specific sites that I find overly aggressive. They support this, but there doesn't seem to be a good interface to manage it, and it looks like it would get impractical to deal with a lot of sites that way.
On your commute, you're passing a McDonald's store every day. You know it's there, but you never buy food there for whatever reason. Are you stealing?
I'd rather pay the site directly if they'd stop displaying ads.
Several companies experiment with those kinds of revenue stream: OkCupid shows you this [1] banner encouraging you to pay 5$ if you're using an ad blocker.
Reddit has the "gilding" concept. While I don't know if that pays out at the end of the day, I'd rather pay the site directly than having them to rely on distracting and sometimes malicious ads which load 3 embedded flash player objects and destroy the site's performance.
By relying on ads, sites naturally introduced a terrible usability. Notice how many times you encounter a complete page reload where a simple AJAX call would have done the job better? That's because you sell a certain number of page impressions to advertisers, and the sooner they're used up, the sooner you get paid. The complete system is a mess.
> On your commute, you're passing a McDonald's store every day. You know it's there, but you never buy food there for whatever reason. Are you stealing?
That analogy doesn't work very well in this context. A more realistic example would if they were giving away cookies in exchange of you getting inside and see their advertising and one friends of yours gets inside and take several cookies so you and your other friends don't have see the ads.
It wouldn't be stealing because the cookies are "free" but still you might feel like taking advantage.
I am agree with you and I would rather pay for the site but many people won't and that's exactly why several content providing are having troubles with ad-blockers.
If you want a physical cookie analogy, its more like going to a real estate open house knowing you have no interest whatsoever in buying that house, yet still eating a free cookie. You walk in, the house reeks of cat pee, no Fing way, but those are tasty looking cookies...
I wouldn't break into your house and steal your cookies, but if you put up signs all over advertising your open house with free cookies, if you twist my arm enough I'll cave in and show up and eat a cookie. Just don't be annoyed at me when I don't buy the house. Practically no one purchases, anyway.
> Just don't be annoyed at me when I don't buy the house. Practically no one purchases, anyway.
Exactly my point... just are just taking advantage of the "free content". And everybody go for the cookies. Then they will be stop offering cookies (even though there were really good cookies)
I've never purchased through an online ad, I don't have any disposable income. If you don't want me to visit your site then you're welcome to paywall it - but I'm saving resources by blocking ad loading. If you put content on a website then you put it there free, that's the ethos of the web, I do it too - you're welcome to put up adverts of course but there's no contract between us that necessitates my consumption of those ads.
If you want to block those using adblockers then it's possible, any indication that those with adblockers are unwelcome will certainly be respected by me; I'll just find another source, maybe Google's cache. Oh, you don't want Google to cache your site, well you know what to do, it's easy to prevent.
Personally I started with adblockers when ads went dynamic, motion distracts my eye too much and means I can't read the content. In-your-face-ads make me determined not to buy from those companies - most of which don't sell in my country anyway, it seems.
If Adblocking is stealing then so is shutting your eyes during ads at a cinema, or going to the toilet in a broadcast-TV advert break, or looking at an amusing billboard without checking who the advertising company is, ....
Not even close to it. You could say the opposite, in that some of these more obtrusive ads are stealing from the business they are supposed to be advertising with. Many times a small banner ad can inline flash objects, all kinds of mess to take over real-estate on a site, and the owner may not even know it. Then, an ad collects usage data on you, and sells it, without your consent, or worse?
And you say people with ad blockers have no integrity?
Content producers whose stream of income comes from ads.
I don't use an ad blocker. It's a form of piracy like torrents are. Getting content without paying. I'm also a content producer and i know it really hurts the already weak sustainability of content websites.
