Why “just use Adblock” should never be a professional answer

There are so many problems with ads that I cannot in good conscience offer any other advice than "block 'em all."

• Ad networks can be, and are, used as a malware distribution vector. No one is vetting all the ads. Not the publishers, not the networks.

• They slow everything down. AdBlock and Ghostery make web browsing faster. Not to mention waiting 30s to watch a youtube video, or worse yet to realize that you didn't actually want to watch it.

• Ads are cognitive pollution. It's possible that mass marketing largely doesn't work, but I'm wary of assuming that "ads don't work on me." What if they do? As a matter of hygiene, it's better to avoid them. No, I don't avert my eyes away from billboards (ironic next gen Google Glass application) but I do skip TV commercials.

• Even if they don't work, they're at least distracting from stuff viewers actually care about.

Oh, look, this again.

> "ads are what makes the current internet work."

No, they're not. The Internet was designed as a tool for enabling communication, not money-making. Without ads, a lot of the blog spam that exists today would go away and the Internet would be better off for it.

Even if every ad was "well behaved" I'd still block each and every one of them. The privacy implications of being constantly tracked in order to sell me bullshit are too creepy.

Frankly, if your business depends on ads, you should think about a different business model, because the NSA spying thing is partly your fault. There are many things that I already pay for on the web, and many more that I would happily pay for if they offered me an ad and tracking-free experience

So many comments on this thread parrot the notion that people will just pay for the things that they love, but the math there rarely, if ever, ads up. The fact of the matter is that outside a few exceptions advertising makes more money than charging to use a product or relying on donations. And revenue is necessary not only for servers, but for man hours and ability of the creators to concentrate. No one can pretend that Google would make as much money through any other means of monetization. And people don't often work for free.

There's also value in lowering the barriers to entry, and allowing all people to use or access a program. Say, for example, Google cost $20/month. Would I pay for it? Absolutely. But a lot of my friends wouldn't. My grandma would use yahoo or bing instead. And some of the value that is gained in Google's ubiquity (which is actually quite a lot) goes away. Google would make less money. We might not have gmail, or google docs/drive. Or a self-driving car. Or Google Fiber. Etc. etc. etc.

I'm reminded of the notion of App.net. Sometimes critical mass is inherently valuable, if not part of the core functionality of the product. App.net was originally a pay-to-use Twitter, that a lot of smart people started to use. But it wasn't enough for me to ever find value in it. Twitter was better and free. I'll let them throw ads at me every now and then - it's a great utility and platform. There's no way I would consciously pay enough to use everything that I use online.

It's also easy to say that "No one clicks on ads" or "I never click on ads." Even "I'd be happy to pay for the sites I use." But not everyone using those sites feels that way, so your price would likely be astronomical, or the site would collapse under its own weight. A "pay to not see ads" model might work, but a "pay to use the site" likely wouldn't.

One look at Revenue numbers of Facebook, Twitter, Google, or the recipes site my little sister built (it makes her $150/day) says differently. I admittedly click on ads at tims, especially retargeted ads. Even if you don't, someone does. And they drive sales, otherwise people wouldn't use them.

So consider yourself opted out if you like, but don't pretend like they don't make sense.

I don't agree with the conclusion that adblocking is leading to Upworthy style pap articles... Those are engineered for a social media world, to cut through short timelines and attention spans. The ad content is largely unchanged from any other low quality media source. Just like all the low quality how-to pages that were/are churned out to catch long-tail searches when that was the easier meat.

In a few years trends will change, habits will change, and a new paradigm will emerge to attract eyeballs. But here's the thing: the content stratification feared in this post has long since happened. It's the reality of the web, has been for some time, and it's certainly not killing anything that hasn't had the bejeezes kicked out of it by other forces already.

It is not my responsibility to save your business model.

It may well be that many sites will shut down without ads. That does not obligate me to look at the ads; it only obligates me not to whine when a site I liked shuts down from lack of ad revenue.

This kind of butthurt posts pop up regularly since browser customisations became popular. The main objection is almost always towards users' freedom of choice of software to view web content. It is frightening them that some users with technical ability and will share a solution with others who lack those, often with no strings attached and free of charge, thus preventing people whose livelihoods depend on advertisements to easily dictate how anyone must consume their content. They want to limit my software choices. They want to regulate existing software. They want to decide what I get to see on the screen. Yet when they face resistance, they bring up bullshit arguments such as their content is central to the existence of the internet against all the evidence on the contrary all the while building their businesses on the software built by people who have been succesfully upholding principles such as freedom and decentralisation. No amount of sugar coating will make their arguments pallatable for purveyors of software for freedom and choice thus their feeble attemps will continue. Only way for them to win is to eliminate general purpose computing which is already struggling to some degree in the hands of our oh so totally not evil that icame darlings. If you have read this far, there is a high chance you already know how to navigate marketing bullshit and you don't need my advice anyway.

I will continue to block, and suggest anyone who listens the same, every shit someone else want me to see or run against my wishes for the health of my profession if for nothing else.

Here is the thing, I don't mind ads - but I do mind pages loading 10+ files of javascript when I am attempting to read an article.

I browse with noscript enabled, and for the most part the web is a much faster and a much, much safer place (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Haum9UpIQzU).

I am still amazed when I try to read a simple blog article and am greeted with a blank white page, it turns me right off the site and I go spend my time elsewhere.

I will happily shell out money for content that I like.

Whatever buddy. Make something of value and people will pay you for it. Or make useless amusements, and depend on ad revenue.

The insight here, which the writer doesn’t get to, is the incredible economic inefficiency all of this implies.

Ineffective ads outnumber good ads by at least an order of magnitude, conservatively. By good I mean “delivering economic value”, which might take the form of clickthroughs or general brand awareness.

If we consider clicked ads, or those that eventually result in a purchase, to be good ones, then the rest are a waste.

That waste should be understood as a degradation of the publisher’s product. We go to great lengths to get the typography and design just so – and then allow an economically worthless ad to degrade it.

The opportunity is to improve ads by an order of magnitude. This isn’t a question of eking out slightly better targeting. It means not showing an ad at all, most of the time.

Though the evidence to date is not in my favor, I have to believe that the current state of web advertising is waiting for the bottom to fall out, like print media in the last decade.

Can block, will block. I will advise people to block where possible as well. Why?

The Internet experience is universally shit when there are adverts. The 2% exception to the rule isn't a valid discussion point. Neither is the people delivering content and surrounding it with shit.

My children battling through adverts galore and pushing apps on them using dirty ad network tricks on their iPads is a fine example. Browsing on the devices is fucking horrible to the point they only want to use a desktop with an adblocker. Their school has adblockers. The local library has adblockers. Everyone I know has adblockers.

The model is over. No turd polish or new strategy will help. Advertisers ruined it.

I'd rather go back to gopher and dialups than saw a new paradigm appear.

The only ads that have ever been useful to me, even once, in my entire life, were google search ads. Contextual ads presented to me when I am already looking for something.

Coincidentally, in 2014, those are the only ads I don't block. I really cannot imagine there is any advertisement I would ever value while reading about something else.

Irony - this developer, who seems to have a good understanding of ethics and web best practices, on a post about advert blocking, has a link at the bottom of their sidebar:

"Essay shark - paper writing service!"

This is labelled in the source as an ad. Comparing DNS and IP records suggest it is very unlikely they are related services. Chris also actively lists what they work on,which does not include Essayshark.

Essayshark do, however, appear to have an affiliate scheme. This raises interesting questions given the topic of the article.

So you adblockers who think the internet should go back to 1994, never use Google? I think the article is spot on. Advertising does and has always supported media distribution technologies since we had media distribution. Today that technology is the web and mobile web, and it is a distributed technology. Either micropaymetns with a bitcoin like tech will be embedded in the browser for you to be ad free, or view ads will be a future choice. Dodging the means people use to generate revenue - is just naive.

I admit that I've had useful ads related to databases and hosting. But most of the time, the ads have been too obscene.

I almost feel like puking when I use a public computer. Google has made it better with textual ads, but they still serve those flash ones the literally flash and try to entice the same kinds of things mobile games often cater to.

There's also the past where the computers that had kids that would click on these ads would end up infested. Overall, the web ad industry has made some really dumb mistakes in the past.

Ad networks - if you have shown a heavy flash banner 10 times in a row and I haven't click on it, please get the hint and stop pushing it, I won't click it on the 11th time. Today I'm talking about a blue banner with a developer with his saliva dripping on his desk.

Honestly, Adblock is the world we live in. You can cry and complain that people shouldnt use it, but the fact of the matter is that we will. Unless you plan on somehow forcing this technology out of existence, the solution isnt to not use adblock. The solution is to come up with a better way. If I knew what that way was, I'd be a multi-millionaire at least, but I dont. My main point is that crying or complaining about it isnt going to solve the problem.

Is there seriously a business right here which works thanks to ads ? I mean, do you really know people clicking on these ads ? For me, everything here is just working because people want to pay you so you put ads on your website... But this money, at the end, does not come from money generated from ads, but from... business angels and VCs money !

well Ads are what keeping the internet alive in a very generic sense. The free services we enjoy like google, youtube, twitter, online new sites, are free because of the ads. Blocking them all is like discouraging people to actually produce good content, for eg youtube video creators get a share of money earned by youtube through ads on the video's page, what do you think happens when you watch the video by blocking all the ads? It doesnt affect youtube that much but it makes alot of difference for the creator.

Outside of a handful of HN curmudgeons, I don't see it too much.

don't just use Adblock... use Adblock Edge ;)