[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.