[krapp]

It's not the public's concern to promote alternative revenue models on behalf of businesses in return for blocking their ads - it's those business' concern to convince people to pay for their content.

They have every right to try to make money on the web, but they're trying to do so on a platform which was designed to be stateless, and which gives users arbitrary power to filter or block content and alter responses. The only reason ads on the web worked at all was that browser technology and ad blockers hadn't yet matured, and people weren't aware that blocking ads was possible. Businesses thought the web would behave like old media, only cheaper, but that's not really the nature of it.

[grzm]

> "It's not the public's concern to promote alternative revenue models on behalf of businesses in return for blocking their ads - it's those business' concern to convince people to peay for their content."

I completely agree. What I'm was pushing back at is the blanket "ad revenue model is bad and ruining the net" espoused by my parent, as opposed to the more nuanced view presented by the article and their parent. And this is an arms race: the only reason adblocking works now is that it's relatively easy to recognize what payloads are ads and which are content. Once it's more feasible for sites to load ads "natively" mixed with their own content, that will become more widespread and harder to block.

It is the public's/individual's concern to support businesses that are providing a service they provide balanced with them doing so in a way that they agree with, and also to recognize where they're receiving value whether or not they're paying for it. If people aren't willing to support subscriptions or other revenue models, they're going to get ads or nothing, either because the content is going to be paywalled or the content providers are going to be out of business. There are those that complain about paywalls, and others that complain about ads.

[krapp]

>I completely agree. What I'm was pushing back at is the blanket "ad revenue model is bad and ruining the net" espoused by my parent, as opposed to the more nuanced view presented by the article and their parent.

They're not entirely wrong, though. The ad revenue model is infeasible in my opinion first because the web doesn't provide a stable platform for it (can't guarantee viewership, can't reliably track engagement) and second because businesses approached the web unwilling or unable to apply any ethical standards to their advertising (as exist in other media) to the point that their ads are now often indistinguishable from malware.

Ad blocking on the web is really not much different than DVRs, or turning the radio volume down during ads, or any number of other ways users can avoid advertising by old media which don't directly affect revenue. But those media determine the value of advertising based on extrapolation by survey, using companies like Arbitron and Nielsen, so people tuning away don't actually matter. AFAIK, on the web, every impression matters and margins are razor thin, so the old media model breaks down when people choose to block ads, as they do in droves.

>Once it's more feasible for sites to load ads "natively" mixed with their own content, that will become more widespread and harder to block.

I think I've started to see this on Youtube. As a response to their widespread demonetization policies, content creators are starting to do more stand-up ads directly in their video, like the early days of television when they would sometimes just turn the camera around and talk about the sponsors for a few minutes. Oddly, I find that less annoying than commercial-style ads. It's often less intrusive, and can even be entertaining. As long as there's no deception involved, then I don't think it's a problem.

But most of the web isn't video, so I think paywalls or some kind of subscription service will probably work, although I suspect a lot of sites dying for lack of revenue is going to be inevitable. Of course, companies could always just see the web as one more media format and not put all of their eggs in that particular basket.