[sgoranson]

On a related topic: what do people think about ad blocking technology from an ethical viewpoint?

For me, I think I use the same screwy morality that I use when I'm downloading music...I don't mind stealing from wildly successful artists/businesses, but I'll gladly pay full price for a CD or click on an ad for someone who's just trying to pay the bills.

[maweaver]

I don't block ads because I like sites being free, and I want to do my small part to help keep them that way (and to encourage others to put out free content). So I guess you could call it ethics, but it's the self-serving sort.

[anigbrowl]

I don't do it, as I occasionally find ads relevant and useful - maybe once a month at most. On the other hand, I avoid sites where there are lots of intrusive ads. The harder it is for me to read the content I came to read, the less likely I am to return. In fact, I wish I had a bookmarklet to produce a form message saying 'the ads on your page at [URL] are so obnoxious that I have auto-blocked myself from your site for a month in protest.'

Most advertising people I have met seem rather dense to me...although I suppose it can be argued that there are more poorly-educated, undiscriminating people out there who are drawn to eye-candy and so forth. Sure, repetition works, you need to create X impressions before people remember your brand. I get that. But overdoing it will cause them to remember your brand in a negative or (worse) unserious way.

[lucumo]

You should write that bookmarklet. As a site owner, I can tell you I'd probably ignore it if it's only one person, but if several people are complaining, I'd look into it and discuss the problem with one or a few of them. And I would be grateful for the feedback.

Constructive feedback is always good. "Your ad in location XY is loading very slowly." "The ad for product Z is misbehaving and causing a redirect/hang/whatever." As long as it isn't annoying comments like "I don't like ads, you should remove them" or "It moves. Can't you just use ads that I don't notice?" Those are pointless, because they hinge on the concept that ads are fine as long as nobody sees them, which goes against the whole point of ads.

[benmathes]

If all you're doing is clicking, the reality is that you aren't helping the site with that ad. The "quality" of the ad clicks is also measured (e.g. percentage of people who clicked on the ad that also purchased something).

Click on things you are legitimately interested in.

[DarkShikari]

On a related topic: what do people think about ad blocking technology from an ethical viewpoint?

I don't think I've clicked an ad since I was first introduced to the internet at around age ~5 (maybe with a few exceptions for accidental misclicks), and I don't intend to click on one in the future either. As a result, I am saving them bandwidth by blocking their ads.

Activating an ad-blocking device is equivalent to stating "I do not intend to click on your ads," and as a result it cannot possibly be losing the advertiser money.

(If the site charges per impression instead of per click, that's another thing, but those are rare these days.)

[lucumo]

Cost-per-impression isn't that rare. We have a nice deal that does just that. In fact that whole network does only cost-per-impression.

But even for cost-per-click views matter. If you have more views, you can get into better programs.

But most of all, you deprive the site and the advertiser of the opportunity to make money of off you. If you don't click a specific advertisement: fine. Then it's the publisher's job or the advertiser's job to find ads that do get them value out of your visit. If you "opt-out" of ads, they don't have that opportunity and you've become worthless to them. A freeloader with no potential of ever being worth something. The site would be better of by blocking you...

[warp]

Do you have any stats on that?

I never click on ads, but I know impressions do work on me, lodging brand names into my head and all that.

It seems a bit odd to me if advertisers suddenly start ignoring the value of impressions.

[doesnt_like_ads]

(unfortunately had to make a new account to say this)

I block ads for two main reasons:

Annoying Advertising

Very few of these "rich advertising media" campaigns are any good. The few that are good are overshadowed by the really crappy ones with flashy imagery and music and generally breaking your web browsing flow by overlaying junk across your page. What makes it worse is that the people that commission these things think that this stuff is great and nobody in their "bubble" thinks different. The worst ones in my opinion are those keywords which you accidently hovered over and your browser locked up for 2 seconds.

Crap performance

Ad networks are an utter joke in terms of performance. As they said at velocity conference a few years ago "If you work for an ad network, shame on you." Ad networks don't do simple things like putting scripts on a CDN, not using gzip, still using document.write, not optimizing javascript/images - basically the whole Yslow rulebook.

Privoxy block data

26880 out of 283845 requests have been blocked, which equals a block rate of 9.47%.

(Interestingly enough it never gets much higher than 10%)

A lot of the time each advert takes 1second+ to load. I'm not sure right now about the uptime on this PC but assuming each ad takes 1 second to load each ad that's been blocked that's 7.5 hours of time waiting for ads to load.

[req2]

If the site charges per ad served and you never click, you merely shift the 'ethical burden' of 'stealing from the website' to '"stealing" from the guy who paid for ads'.

[wooby]

I feel the same way. Why not just save everyone some hassle, admit to ourselves we never click on ads, and employ an extension or userscript.

[aw3c2]

If the ads are presented in a nice way (no animated flash popups with sound (or any subset)), are for something good and not delivered through a data-mining ad network, I don't mind. Those will often get through my ad blocking filters all by themselves.

[Semiapies]

Ads keep the sites I'm looking at funded and available. However, obnoxious ads (flashing, disgusting, NSFW, etc.) are rude, and I will filter them.

[TallGuyShort]

But the ads only pay if people click on them. I don't click on ads, EVER. I never have, and have never even been close to. Some people do click them, obviously. Since I'm not clicking them, anyway - me using an ad blocker only saves the advertiser bandwidth money.

[eli]

Lots of ads are per-impression not per-click. Really that's the only sensible way to do a brand-building campaign.

Anyway, I have no problem clicking ads if they're relevant and for something I really want to learn more about. It's just that they rarely are.

[zargon]

I have only clicked an ad once in my life. I was searching Amazon but couldn't find anything suitable. Then I noticed they were showing me an ad from a 3rd-party site for exactly what I was looking for. I clicked it, and bought the product. So at this rate, ads help me out about once every 15 years.

[Semiapies]

You're not the internet. If nobody clicked on those ads, they certainly wouldn't exist.

[TallGuyShort]

I explicitly said "there are people that click on those ads". Those people don't have Ad Blockers. I don't click on those ads, so I have an Ad Blocker. All I was saying was that it doesn't present an ethical problem.

[lucumo]

> I don't click on those ads, so I have an Ad Blocker.

It's probably the other way around: You have an Ad Blocker, so you don't click on ads.

[callahad]

I don't block ads. I just don't patronize sites with intrusive advertising.

[lallysingh]

I block flash ads on my solaris box -- the z ordering is all screwed up with flash, and it gets in the way of content. Also, it makes firefox (by its own fault or by the plugin) crash, often.

On other machines, only those ads with movement get blocked. Look, if you can't get a message that's interesting in text while I'm already reading, then you don't have a product I'd want to buy.

[barrkel]

I've never seen an ad and felt better afterwords.

Ever.

To the extent that I'm freeloading by continuing to patronize sites after blocking ads, I justify by directing other people to those sites when I see interesting content.

[zackham]

Happy users tend to share links with friends, and depending on the site, contribute content. If keeping a user happy means a decline in impressions and a bump in click-though rate, so be it.

[abefortas]

I don't think I have any ethical responsibility to help make sites I go to profitable. I also don't like looking at ads.

In the case of Gmail, Google can easily absorb the cost of my not seeing ads. If they don't want to do that, they shouldn't provide free webmail.