Adblock, and others like it will ruin the internet for all.

This is the place to discuss issues with the acceptable ads list like a website no longer complying with the criteria.
ydoc16

Re: Adblock, and others like it will ruin the internet for all.

Post by ydoc16 »

lol, reading this forum thread has been quite a silly experience.

First of all let me say clearly that I hate advertising and everything it stands for. It's one of the reasons I love Netflix so much and have not watched cable in years.

Firstly, advertising is as others have said cost raising. You think that paying to browse the web would be bad? what you don't realize is that if there were no advertising the majority of the items you buy would be much cheaper. All of those costs are passed onto you the consumer for every ad they pay for. Take away advertising and you would save probably the identical amount of money you would lose in a pay to browse the web scenario.

Secondly, subscription based services with no advertising are wonderful, unlike things like cable TV where you pay for access to 100 channels and all you really wanted for 5 of them, you actually get what you want with subscription based services. The internet is no different then cable you pay for access to this wide expansive service to which you only use a small fraction of. Just like cable you pay for a service and have to watch ads for that same service. Subscription bases services are the exact opposite you pay for what you want its cheaper then the whole package and you don't have to watch ads at all. The bonus to this is you know that money you are spending is going to the company that you want it to go to. When you subscribe for cable tv you give money to the cable company not the channels you love to watch. And watching the channel you love only contributes in a Minor way to its success. Then look at the opposite side of the coin, lets say you really love to watch scifi channel so you pay a small subscription fee and watch it on the internet instead say .99 cents a month. All that money from all the subscriptions goes to the scifi channel and what provides a quality product for you flourishes. So lets look at Scifi channels revenue for 2009, scifi makes .21 per month, per subscriber there's 96 million subscribers 247 mil in cash from subscribers. Ad revenue is estimated at 250 mil for that same year.

Now lets look at the other side of the coin, A scifi channel with no ads and a subscription cost of .99 cents. Per year they could make 1.140 trillon dollars Assuming that there subscriber numbers stayed the same. Which to be honest if there were no commercials it would probably go up not down.

Thirdly, Pointless advertising Things that everyone needs that never needs to be advertised. Like toilet paper, soap, water... This are things that will always be purchased with or without advertising. If the companies stopped advertising they wouldn't go out of business quite the opposite would happen there products would be cheaper and people would buy more of them.

Fourth, The websites that depend on ad revenue should die honestly. this means that they have no meaningful way of generating there own income. This includes A website people don't want to see fail(donations) A website that serves a purpose that people enjoy(subscriptions) Or one that serves the purpose of its owner or business(owner/business payed for)

Fifth, Ad revenue profit. It is safe to say that ad revenue is never steady for any given website or time period. But it is safe to say that a website can be self sufficient off of ad Revenue as long as that self same revenue is not being used as income. Or in simpler terms Many Quote UnQuote webmasters are using there ad based websites simply to make money to pay there bills. Well whats wrong with that you say shouldn't the webmaster get paid for his hard work and with ads you don't even have to foot the bill!. Poppycock when you get money from those ads it's because someone clicked on them and maybe even purchased the swill you advertising. If the webmaster hand picked his ad's so that they were 100% verifiable products worth advertising it might be ok. But the majority of internet advertising falls into the category of malvertising, baiting, and internet gambling. The truth being as a webmaster who sprays ad's all over his site to let some people browse for free your also screwing over a percentage of your fan-base through ads that trick them out of there money.

sixth, Free to play game models with subscription options. Briefly taking a look at games like World of tanks which is a free to own and play game that makes money off of people who support the game. If Wot's were completely free it would shutdown in no time you might thing. But the truth is that it is completely free. They offer options for working adults who also want to play to be able to speed there journey for cash instead of hours of hard work. The model works and surprisingly well, people who love and enjoy the game support it by paying for those enhancements. The people who either A can't afford it or B don't want to pay are supported by the ones who do. The ones who pay get the added bonus of more and more users to play with.

While this model applies to a game and not the internet, I have seen similar models for websites such as crunchyroll. They allow some of there content to be viewed freely with ad's and subscribers get it all without ads.

Where does this fit into the argument this thread employs? Simple you own a website with ads plastered all over it but there is no option for a consumer to pay a little money and view the site without them. So what does the consumer do who has no interest in your ads but can't view your website without them? They either don't visit your website, they try to navigate around the popups and mouse overs, or get ad blocker.




TLDR: There are better ways to do things then advertising, and subscription based service are nothing to be afraid of. The old days of ad funded entertainment is going the way of the dinosaur. If your website depends on it you business model is outdated and needs to get with the times.
Super cow

Re: Adblock, and others like it will ruin the internet for all.

Post by Super cow »

Your arguments may seem sound to you but they lack a major understanding of how advertising works to begin with, so all your empirical thought construction is biased as a result.

I have nothing against advertising if it stays discreet enough, and American standards in that area are definitely NOT discreet. My beef is tracking, and that's why I'm blocking all ads altogether, discreet or not.

That said, I wouldn't want my way to become predominant, because advertising *is* necessary in many cases, and in a couple cases it would arguably cease to be necessary only if it was forbidden by law. (which would be unreasonable)
Thirdly, Pointless advertising Things that everyone needs that never needs to be advertised. Like toilet paper, soap, water... This are things that will always be purchased with or without advertising. If the companies stopped advertising they wouldn't go out of business quite the opposite would happen there products would be cheaper and people would buy more of them.
This is such a case. Such items currently need advertising because when your competitors pay tons for ads and you do nothing, and the market is saturated like it is for such products, then you just run out of business. It's the same principle as the competition for access to Sun light in a forest.

Back to replying to your other points:
1/ Sure enough, advertising costs is money that counts in a budget. However it can be calculated and actually end up being a monetary GAIN for the consumers, because what the company pays for advertising can be translated into how much money it gets back. When the balance is positive (and really, that's the whole point of advertising), the company has extra cash. One of the things you can do with extra cash is lower your prices.

2/ Your whole point assumes that the user base will be identical or even bigger if all advertising ceases. Decades of evidence have proven otherwise though. Without advertising, user base depletes simply because so much less people get to know your product. If you start a business you will have huge problems getting discovered. If the market is saturated your competitors who do advertise will suffocate you. There are only a handful of cases where you can go by without advertising, and those cases don't last forever.

3/ See quote at the top of the post

4/
The websites that depend on ad revenue should die honestly. this means that they have no meaningful way of generating there own income.
Oh man that is so ignorant and dangerous. If you had any power to act on your "should die" statement, you would be such a nuisance. There are oh so many things that can't directly generate income yet are so precious to society as a whole, or even just to single individuals. I'm sure you can think of good stuff yourself. You don't want to kill these things.

5/ It's true that aggressive advertising is a real pain in the ass. American standards are horrible, there is way too much shit in your face disfiguring the landscape and the web. In the physical world this shit should be regulated by law and if it is already, it should be made stricter (however now that companies rely on this level of advertising, changing regulation can create harmful chaos. But if it's done progressively and thought out carefully as any law should be, I'm all for it). In the digital space there probably should be no such laws because applying laws require control over the web, which is something way way WAY worse than excessive advertising, especially when you have adblockers.

Anyway, there's still room for webmasters to place their ads with taste and decency. But it is true that being more aggressive brings more money in the short term, and many web markets ARE saturated. Most businesses don't want to rely on advertising to cover their costs, because that's a sign of fragility, so they struggle to find other business models. They ideally just want to use advertising to grow or fuel their userbase faster than they lose consumers.

Finally malware and dubious ads are errors made by ad networks rather than webmasters, but you can indeed tell the "worth" of a webmaster by the general kind of ads that his site allows. Basically if he's too aggressive, he is worth less. However he has his own problems to solve that the jungle market kindly brought to him. Only a minority is cynically milking the cow until it dies.

6/ Free to play is an interesting and rising business model, but it can be abused way more seriously than just regular web ads. When the free to play model is abused you are not playing games anymore, you are using a product entirely designed around the concept of cynically milking the cow till it speaks its last moo. Dungeon Keeper mobile sounds like a good example of cow molesting.
But there are many good free to play games so let's not make me say what I didn't, I'm totally against the trend that shits on that business model as a whole and all games based on it.
RNA

Re: Adblock, and others like it will ruin the internet for all.

Post by RNA »

Why not have two levels of Ad block? One that blocks ALL ads for people that just don't care for any, and one for intrusive ads which blocks ads that play sounds, play over videos on youtube, or otherwise force you to look at them. This would allow little sidebar/footer/header ads on websites to appear and fund a site without being a bother to the average user...

There is a site I like which uses ad revenue that I'd like to help by viewing some of them... But they also have 21 freaking ads on every page!!! They blare sound and play right in my face over everything else, too. I'd really love if I could block THAT without blocking the little footer/header ads n' such. You know?

Heh, just imagine if those loud obnoxious ads started toning it down because they don't want to get blocked by the filter.
Super Cow

Re: Adblock, and others like it will ruin the internet for all.

Post by Super Cow »

Adblock Plus already has a system like this, it's a special filter that allows acceptable ads but they have to be listed in there. I think it's even enabled by default :)

Maybe you can contact the site you want to help and propose them to submit their non intrusive ads to ABP team ?
Otherwise you can create rules yourself that will allow good ads but not bad ones. Perhaps you'll find help on this forum, though make sure you read my first link and check that the ads you want whitelisted fit the requirements :)
Pats
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Jul 12, 2014 11:09 pm

Re: Adblock, and others like it will ruin the internet for all.

Post by Pats »

Adblock et all will not ruin the internet for all - what a stupid thing to say. Some websites rely on ads to bring in revenue and that's fine as along as the ads are static and not popping up randomly. Accessing a site that has ads jumping out at you no matter what you do to click them away, is like going into a shop and having staff in your face the moment you step through the door until the moment you manage to escape. Do I go to a cafe and order a coffee only to have staff surround me with buy this, buy that and stuff that's got nothing to do with just getting a coffee? Not likely. How about this: the internet is meant for all to access sure, including those who don't want ads that are intrusive, nothing whatever to do with site accessed and trick you into clicking them away only to have multiple sites opening from that one click. Adblock is a saviour as far as I am concerned and I support such apps and the genius' who have worked out how to help all who use the internet. Thank you Adblock.
Albina24
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Jul 24, 2014 1:44 pm

Re: Adblock, and others like it will ruin the internet for all.

Post by Albina24 »

Dear friends! If you are using Adblock Plus software to block online advertisements, please take 2 min to answer this questionnaire! It will help me a lot with my dissertation! All your replies are anonymous. Thank you very much for your help!

Please follow the link
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1C5ZsuP ... =send_form
Preflex

Re: Adblock, and others like it will ruin the internet for all.

Post by Preflex »

Jax2 wrote:As for whitelists, why should webmasters have to ask ANYONE whether or not they can display advertisements on their website?
You don't have to ask. You can put whatever you want on your website. Adblock+ is not stopping you. However, you are not allowed to control the behavior of my web browser.

My web browser is my user agent. That means it serves the user, not webmasters. I am the owner, administrator, and sole user of this machine.

I ask my browser to get http://www.YourAdSlatheredSite.com/index.html . It happily does this, because it's my user agent, and I told it to do that.

Index.html asks my browser, "Hey, go download all this other stuff: http://ads.doublelick.net/bunch&of&trac ... tPills.png http://someotherad.com/ad.png , etc." My browser refuses, because it's my user agent, not yours. I didn't tell it to download those resources. My browser renders what I want to see, not what you want to show me.

It's YOUR website. However, it's MY computer, MY browser, and MY display. I pay to power all this stuff and to be connected to the internet. MY user agent doesn't have to do what YOU say.

The fundamental issue isn't advertising. It's not money either (if it were about money, i'd just ask you to cut me in on the revenue, and then you can shovel all the ads you want at me). it's control. Who gets to control my computer? You or me?

Do you do everything you're told to do by strangers on the internet? Of course not. Why should my browser behave any differently?
Censorship.
No, it's not. My user agent is simply ignoring your request that it make additional requests, at my request, based upon recommendations that I requested it to fetch from easylist.adblockplus.org .

If you're standing at the bus stop, screaming orders at people, and I ignore your orders, that's not censorship. It's also not censorship if I wear earplugs to keep from having to listen to you. It's still not censorship if I hand out earplugs to other people at the bus stop so that they don't have to listen to you either. If I were to forcibly insert them into the ears of all visitors to the bus stop, that would be censorship. Adblockplus is just handing out earplugs. You can take 'em if you want 'em.

Adblock+ doesn't block ads, users do. Adblock+ users block ads because it is not in their interests to download them. They are annoying, wasteful, and dangerous. If Adblock+ and all its clones vanished tomorrow, I would just edit /etc/hosts to get a similar effect.
Ad blocker forever.

Re: Adblock, and others like it will ruin the internet for all.

Post by Ad blocker forever. »

Im an ad block user, i just wouldnt surf the internet without ad blocking, you webmasters, publishers can cry all day, if i want to block advertising ill block it and there is nothing anyone can do about it. The internet is infested with Ads and now internet users have the means to block them and thats fantastic, want revenue get a real job instead of infesting web pages with something people hate. I personally do hope you are forced to shut down, good riddance i will never fall for your sob stories, never care about your website or where it ends up. Another thing, internet users will not pay for content, if 1000 websites close down 1000 more are created so quit the crying because it doesnt dissuade anyone its a very poor argument and excuse

if there are Ads on websites, i will always block them, i never want to see advertising when im online i have no interest in it so Deal with it :)
Welcome to the Ad free internet

Re: Adblock, and others like it will ruin the internet for all.

Post by Welcome to the Ad free internet »

Ad blocking is growing by the millions, estimates are by 2017 95 percent of internet users will be using some type of ad blocking technology, i'm 1 of them.
Internet users can not only block advertising but can block and remove all content from a website with a few mouse clicks and replace that content with personal photos, text or what ever else they like " Remove it Permanently" and "Yet another remove it Permanently" fine examples. Add to that, many other browser add ons, means the internet belongs to the user not website publishers and not advertisers.
Times are changing and yeah websites are going to go out of business and that's the way it ought to be, no one is going to lose sleep over that fact.
Imagine the mess

Re: Adblock, and others like it will ruin the internet for all.

Post by Imagine the mess »

Imagine the internet with out ad blockers, every webpage would be circus of flash playing pop up trash and malware infesting everything you do, using up you're bandwidth, Advertising ruins the internet, The only thing keeping the internet clean and free from garbage and making surfing enjoyable are Ad blockers.
same old excuses

Re: Adblock, and others like it will ruin the internet for all.

Post by same old excuses »

Its the same old excuse from publishers etc, Ad block ruins my website, i can't make revenue , ill have to close down or charge a subscription, boo hoo.
Any site who charges $ for content will sink faster than the titanic. There are millions of free websites who manage with ad blocking and don't complain about it and will continue supplying content for free, the others don't matter and aren't worth your time.
The bottom Line

Re: Adblock, and others like it will ruin the internet for all.

Post by The bottom Line »

Website publishers Still Blame Users for Poor Business Model, Advertising.
Currently 63% of users block adverting and that number grows everyday.
AdLover the Scumbag Parasite

Re: Adblock, and others like it will ruin the internet for all.

Post by AdLover the Scumbag Parasite »

Actually, ads are ruining the Internet for all - hence the existence of Adblockers and similar countermeasures.

Now please lock this thread, as well as being a bunch of lies it's insulting to people's intelligence.
TheNamed

Re: Adblock, and others like it will ruin the internet for all.

Post by TheNamed »

Worlds smallest violin... Bet you tried to blow up RadioShack when VCRs came out and people were fast-forwarding your precious commercials. The vast majority of users don't use ad blockers and the small percentage who do are not going to kill the internet. Hating on us because insanely highly-paid developers make a couple less bucks is only displaying your greed. Don't be the Lars Ulrich of the internet. If you want your sites not to be blocked, just stick to the Acceptable Ads guidelines and get on the whitelist because apparently AdBlock Plus has no problem whoring themselves out these days.
shaniquah booyah

Re: Adblock, and others like it will ruin the internet for all.

Post by shaniquah booyah »

I personally have no problems with advertising. The reason why I use adblock is because I will go to a website and it has more ads than content and it will actually freeze my browser and I have to shut it down and turn on the adblock- then their are video ads on a website that is so loud it's distracting and then the least favorite is popups and pop-unders.
Normally Google ads are not a issue neither is Amazon ads, I find value in both, especially if I am looking to make a purchase... The others are just a huge issue and some carry really harmful elements for your pc o.O

I am a webmaster so I know the cost of managing, advertising and hosting... That is not even including hiring someone to work on code. None of this is FREE, it's free for the user, but it is not free for me. How should webmasters pay for it ? :lol:

Well I decided to not work on it and let them all go offline years ago.

Now I have decided to start creating again, but I would probably have to block out users who block ads. I know my websites are not filled with ads, but to have one ad on a page and have that even looked at as evil vs the person who wants his or her enjoyment free is pathetic.. to ask the owner to pay for a user to create a free account and ramble free on a website where we have to pay for the servers....

why should we pay for them ?
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