Should you block ads online?
Over the weekend, technology news and analysis site Ars Technica posted an impassioned plea for its readers not to use ad blockers. Software tools that block advertisements on websites are common these days. You can download them as extensions for many web browsers, or as freeware. Using them stops your browser from displaying the advertising banners and other commercials, such as Google Ads, that you often find on websites. Advocates say that it makes the experience of reading a website more streamlined. Opponents, such as Ars Technica, say that it makes it harder to bring readers the content that they love.
"Did you know that blocking ads truly hurts the websites you visit?" said Ars Technica writer Ken Fisher. "Imagine running a restaurant where 40% of the people who came and ate didn't pay. In a way, that's what ad blocking is doing to us."
Whether or not you click on an ad is irrelevant, Fisher says. The simple fact that you see the advertisement when you look at the content on a site is enough to satisfy the advertiser in many cases. Known as cost-per-impression, this advertising model is common online. It differs from a cost-per-click model, where sites hosting online advertisements are only paid when you click on the advertising link.
Ars Technica tried an experiment last week, where it made its content disappear for visitors who were using a popular ad blocking tool. Technically, it turns out that it is possible to do this. However, socially, the website found that many of its visitors were not blocking online commercials out of malice.
Of course, there are more intrusive models than simply running an advertising banner across the top of the screen. Some websites make you look at an advertisement when you hit the site, forcing you to wait, or to click on a link manually to get past the ad. Others throw up animated advertisements while you are reading the text (which irritates me beyond belief, personally).
There is one other issue to consider when thinking about online advertisements. It is useful to think of the advertising banner that you see in many websites as a kind of window into advertising land, rather than a piece of content that the website is responsible for. Many websites grant advertising companies access to their websites through this window, meaning that the advertising syndicates can serve up whatever advertising content they want.
Online criminals have devised ways to inject malicious content via these advertising services, that can infect users' computers without the hosting website being responsible for the advertising content at all. In some cases, this has resulted in visitors' computers being infected by the advertising content on a website. Recently, the New York Times was duped into running an advertisement that used malicious code to throw up a browser window selling fake antivirus software.
As someone that makes his living writing for websites, I want them to be commercially viable. I don't write for free. Geektown and the other websites that I write for how to make their money from somewhere. Making people pay for content via subscription would drastically reduce the reader base, and I like the idea of being able to get content online for free, in exchange for looking at an advertisement.
As readers, how do you want to keep sites viable? Are you willing to look at advertisements? Would you rather pay for content, and how much would this restrict what you see online?
Danny Bradbury, MSN Tech & Gadgets
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Comments
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Posted by: Tucker C. Fudpucker | Mar 10, 2010 9:08:19 AM
It blocks content that we love? What planet are you from?
If we loved the constant pop ups and interruptions, we wouldn't block it.
And while we're at it we also block flash.
I try to read news items and the constant flashing of garbage ads
is very very annoying.
STOP THE NONSENSE!!!!!!!
Posted by: Tucker C. Fudpucker | Mar 10, 2010 9:17:36 AM
Pay for content?
I already pay nearly $50.00 per month for internet service.
If you want payment, take it up with the ISP's
You money grubbers have turned the internet into something it was never meant to be.
Ads are everywhere, flashing billboards on roadsides and city streets, on buses/streetcars/subway cars and tunnel walls, the risers of staircases, TV and radio where I am a captive audience. At least print ads in newspapers and magazines can be skipped over. Enough is enough. I have advertisement overload.
If ads get worse on the internet I will cancel my ISP subscription and not use internet services any longer.
Posted by: Sam Sarca | Mar 10, 2010 10:40:51 PM
Instead of ads, why not let advertisers purchase immersion into content? As example for blogs: "Congress' new plan shines bright like G.E.'s compact fluorescent bulbs, which may lead them to a budget surplus greater than all the money in Ceaser's Palace."
Posted by: Tazz Daman | Mar 13, 2010 5:23:04 PM
Cry me a river dude.
you think i like ads yopur wrong.enough is enough already.all that crap fopr what?
you want to make money fine but dont you dare tell me i need to cliock on them.
if you cant have a way to keep hackers sending malicious contant to bad.
fix your problems then i might look at those ads till then go to hell.
my privacy is more important then your ads.
Posted by: Danny Bradbury | Mar 14, 2010 4:30:16 AM
Sam - interesting idea, thanks for the thoughtful input. I worry about the idea of advertiser placement, though - it could dilute the content, and make readers trust sites even less. At least with an advertising banner, a reader knows where the sponsored content lies.
Posted by: Ivan lazaruk | Mar 16, 2010 12:10:19 PM
True
Posted by: BlinkyBDone | May 19, 2011 2:46:35 PM
I can handle suttle advertising on the pages. I even sometimes pause to read it. However, this flashing advertisement concept that is appearing is not only annoying - it's unacceptabl and intolerable. I refuse to visit any page that this occurs on. So you see - this form of advertising is a waste of corportate sponsership money and will never hit this target. GET RID OF IT... MAKE IT STOP...