Rise of Ad Blocking Is the Ad Industry's Fault, Says Outgoing FTC Commissioner

Rise of Ad Blocking Is the Ad Industry's Fault, Says Outgoing FTC Commissioner
motherboard.vice.com

What gives them the right to track? Besides of imposing banners to my face?

They got what was coming to them. I am glad that the EFF is giving us tools to fight back.

Consider donating to them!

However, last week I finally reversed my decision and started using ad blockers. Why? Frankly, many sites are just greedy. Banners were ugly enough (and I tolerated them) but many sites these days show ads that cover the content, and going as far as to hide the [x] button for a few seconds. And, I am not even talking about privacy and security issues.

Businesses have to come up with better monetization strategies. Shoving ads on my face and making me accidentally click them is a net loss for everyone.

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'.

The thing is, I don't mind ads. The problem is that the people providing content should own and manage what ads they show me. This idea of allocating page space and then bidding it off? It only leads to click fraud, malware, and all sorts of other problems. Instead, write things I find useful, then provide me links -- text links -- to ways I might continue my investigation.

Ads are fine when they help people. When we start focusing on the money instead of the experience, however, it all goes to crap. I don't think ads are something you can outsource if you want to be a quality content provider. They're just as important as any other content on the page.

By the way, this also means that mostly-plain-text pages could work fine for both creators and consumers in the vast majority of cases.