[mc32]

I think they symptomatic of an immature system. That's to say one which isn't well regulated.

They are the result of site owners trying to make their sites sustaining or profitable and we have some trying very annoying ways of monetizing, and on the other hand we have users wanting free access to everything.

The result is site operators getting more desperate using more invasive techniques driving more users to use ad blockers and siding by default with people who want everything free.

In the end, the piper needs to get paid. Will micropayments be the answer or will only businesses for whom the www is essentially branding and marketing survive? I don't know. Certainly hope it's not public radio donation style funding.

That said, paid content masquerading as journalism is the worst.

[jeffmould]

I couldn't agree more. Major media outlets are more and more using invasive ads that completely detract from the user experience in general. I can't count the number of times I have quickly closed a tab because a video ad started autoplaying, or the times when I am a 1/3 of the way into an article and suddenly the javascript loads and the page drops down or an interstatial popups up.

It's a catch-22. Media outlets see they can make money off ads so they use more invasive techniques, viewers leave the site because of these techniques causing a drop in revenue, the media outlet steps it up a notch to more profitable, more invasive ads because of lost viewers from the first round of ads.

[jordanpg]

I like your use of the word "immature". I'd mention another sense of that word, a more literal sense.

The web is new and ads have been humanity's first attempt at extracting revenue from the miracle of the web.

The web of 5, 10 years from now might be unrecognizable in various ways, by current measures.

I see no reason to think that the same might not be true about internet revenue. In another comment, I said that ads were the worst of what capitalism has to offer. If that's true, and adblocker use grows without bound, a new economic equilibrium will be reached somehow. Someone will think of something -- or else the web as we know it will become dramatically different, for better or for worse.

That is the best of what capitalism has to offer: confidence that a large enough market will adapt to anything.

[puissance]

If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold. --http://www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven-discontent#325604...