[danbruc]

Of course, they will not get paid for me visiting the website if I block the ads, but that was not my point. People have already bought stuff and with that paid for the ad budget. And that money will be spent somewhere. Maybe someone else will see the ad that I blocked, someone who would otherwise not have seen it because the ad budget would have been exhausted. Or maybe the prices for ads go up because there are less impressions to sell. Only if companies would lower their ad budgets in response to ad blocking would there be less money to distribute. If that would be the case, then my argument would fail.

[shortformblog]

Your point is illogical. It’s like you’ve invented a theory as to how companies advertise that has zero tethering to reality.

It’s especially stupid because it doesn’t include publishers in the equation at all. It’s just you looping over yourself attempting to validate your choice for running an ad blocker.

Admit you’re doing it because you want to callously screw over publishers. You certainly haven’t put their thoughts into consideration here.

To be clear: Run an ad blocker if you want, but stop acting as if you bought those ads. The chicken dinner I ate the other night has no say how I live my life after our transaction has ended.

[danbruc]

If I buy an iPhone, does some fraction of the price contribute to Apple's ad budget? If so, where does that money end up? What would change if I did not block Apple ads?

[shortformblog]

It’s up to them how they spend their money, not you. You can complain if they somehow damaged your product, they got your money unfairly, or were somehow doing something bad with your data, but at some point it is their money to spend how they see fit. They earned it, and they might spend it on advertising.

If I buy stuff at a grocery store, I can’t get a random bagger fired just because I feel like it. At some point the transaction ends and they ultimately continue to operate with or without your input.

[danbruc]

I am neither complaining nor trying them what to do with their money, that looks like a complete deflection to me.

If I am buying Apple products, am I contributing to their ad budget? If so, where does that money end up? Is it likely that some of it will end up as ad revenue on some website? What difference does it make whether or not I block ads? Or the other way around, if I am visiting websites and look at Apple ads but do not buy Apple products, am I contributing to the ad revenue of the websites?

[shortformblog]

Maybe in the cosmic sense you are, in that they have a giant pile of money, and you contributed a few pennies to it, but this is not how accounting works. Your transaction and their ad budget are separate things.

Also, advertising does other things than tell you to buy something, and it doesn’t always take the form of banner ads. Apple, for example, does a ton of brand awareness advertising. Affiliate marketing often targets direct transactions. Maybe your goal is to simply start a relationship that might someday lead to a really big purchase.

Often, in the era of SaaS, people advertise to existing customers. Apple does this—they have a TV service and a music service and a cloud service.

There are plenty of reasons for them to advertise after you bought the original product.

But your original point was that customers bought the ads. Maybe they didn’t! Maybe they were given funding by a VC firm and the company decided it wanted to build an audience. Maybe they want to advocate for a political issue.

I think the biggest problem with your argument is that it has tunnel vision and sees advertising as this one dimensional thing, when in reality it takes many forms. Plenty of those forms are bad, but it is not as simple as “I bought a product, now I never want to see an Apple ad ever again.” Many businesses (Amazon, eBay) make most of their money off of customers they’ve already advertised to that they advertise to again and again.

[danbruc]

Well, I don't give a shit about the advertising goals of Apple or anyone else, that is why I block ads. And that is also completely irrelevant, the question was whether I am screwing over websites when I am using an ad blocker. I argue not, because as a consumer I still contribute to the ad budgets that become the ad revenue of the websites. What I am not doing when I block ads is influencing how the money gets distributed among all the websites, I can live with that. And if the money is not consumer money, so what? What do I have to do with companies distributing VC money among websites?