[adamt]

I agree completely and like you for a long time I didn't use ad-blockers on morale grounds.

Personally I don't get overly excited about the tracking/re-targeting, but what did bother me was how ridiculously intrusive the ads on some sites that totally destroyed my user experience, wasted my batteries and cellular data and at times prevented me from (on mobile) from getting to the content I actually wanted.

With mobile it was also the stupid number of accidental clicks when scrolling, or pop ups with really small 'x' to close that and a non-zoomable viewport.

Wasting my time (and somebody else's money) on ads I never wanted to click does't seem like a good or sustainable economic value add.

Sometimes ads can be useful. On Google search sometimes the people who will pay for ads are sometimes a better signal than those that SEO their way to the top. Similarly I have discovered things of interest in Facebook & Twitter ads where they were relevant to me.

It does seem that online advertising is in need of a bit of a 'reboot'.

[thirdsun]

Same here - I'm not that concerned about targeted ads, but if it means significant consequences for my bandwidth, security, performance or simply being able to use the site as intended, well, then I don't seem to have a realistic choice.

That said, I think there's room for an adblocker that focuses on ads that are too intrusive and whitelists decent, static ads automatically. Currently I do that manually on a per site basis.

[freehunter]

Adblock Plus does that. Ad networks can in some fashion request their ads be unblocked, and ABP does some sort of review (I'm not sure how it all works, I don't use it).

[thirdsun]

I'm not sure, but isn't that review process basically a transaction of money? As in buying your way out of being blocked? That's probably the last thing I'd want.

[freehunter]

Fair enough. I know I had heard something about them unblocking "non-intrusive ads" but didn't really pay attention to the details.

[fucking_tragedy]

Ad networks pay ABP to be whitelisted. That is their review process.

[Karunamon]

In fairness, they don't just whitelist any old ad, there's ostensibly a review and guidelines that must be followed, but at the end of the day, it's still a colossal conflict of interest.

[tomp]

> On Google search sometimes the people who will pay for ads are sometimes a better signal than those that SEO their way to the top.

Are they?

If you have 2 products that sell for X, one company spends Y on ads and X - Y on product, the other spends X on product. It would seem that the second one should be SEOd (by good reviews and recommendations) to the top, and that would be the more important signal.

[TeMPOraL]

For me an ad is a signal I don't want that product. Most of the time ads in search results are suboptimal compared to organic results anyway.

[maaku]

Too simplistic a model.