Why “just use Adblock” should never be a professional answer

The problem with modern day ad blockers is it is just an all out block every ad. Now if they were blacklist by default instead of whitelist, it'd be better. Nobody ever changes the default settings, so people who serve non-intrusive ads don't ever get a chance to display their ads.

So many comments on this thread parrot the notion that people will just pay for the things that they love, but the math there rarely, if ever, ads up. The fact of the matter is that outside a few exceptions advertising makes more money than charging to use a product or relying on donations. And revenue is necessary not only for servers, but for man hours and ability of the creators to concentrate. No one can pretend that Google would make as much money through any other means of monetization. And people don't often work for free.

There's also value in lowering the barriers to entry, and allowing all people to use or access a program. Say, for example, Google cost $20/month. Would I pay for it? Absolutely. But a lot of my friends wouldn't. My grandma would use yahoo or bing instead. And some of the value that is gained in Google's ubiquity (which is actually quite a lot) goes away. Google would make less money. We might not have gmail, or google docs/drive. Or a self-driving car. Or Google Fiber. Etc. etc. etc.

I'm reminded of the notion of App.net. Sometimes critical mass is inherently valuable, if not part of the core functionality of the product. App.net was originally a pay-to-use Twitter, that a lot of smart people started to use. But it wasn't enough for me to ever find value in it. Twitter was better and free. I'll let them throw ads at me every now and then - it's a great utility and platform. There's no way I would consciously pay enough to use everything that I use online.

It's also easy to say that "No one clicks on ads" or "I never click on ads." Even "I'd be happy to pay for the sites I use." But not everyone using those sites feels that way, so your price would likely be astronomical, or the site would collapse under its own weight. A "pay to not see ads" model might work, but a "pay to use the site" likely wouldn't.

One look at Revenue numbers of Facebook, Twitter, Google, or the recipes site my little sister built (it makes her $150/day) says differently. I admittedly click on ads at tims, especially retargeted ads. Even if you don't, someone does. And they drive sales, otherwise people wouldn't use them.

So consider yourself opted out if you like, but don't pretend like they don't make sense.

The insight here, which the writer doesn’t get to, is the incredible economic inefficiency all of this implies.

Ineffective ads outnumber good ads by at least an order of magnitude, conservatively. By good I mean “delivering economic value”, which might take the form of clickthroughs or general brand awareness.

If we consider clicked ads, or those that eventually result in a purchase, to be good ones, then the rest are a waste.

That waste should be understood as a degradation of the publisher’s product. We go to great lengths to get the typography and design just so – and then allow an economically worthless ad to degrade it.

The opportunity is to improve ads by an order of magnitude. This isn’t a question of eking out slightly better targeting. It means not showing an ad at all, most of the time.

Though the evidence to date is not in my favor, I have to believe that the current state of web advertising is waiting for the bottom to fall out, like print media in the last decade.

I don't consider trackers "well behaved". My reasons for adblock: 1. Security. I don't mind static image ads because the security implications are minor. But running third party code without accountability is scary. (1) 2. Performance. Loading images from a dozen different domains means many dns resolutions. 3. Privacy. This is just creepy, networks watching every page I go to.

There is nothing in advertising that requires all of that. I'm perfectly fine with static locally hosted ads. But the whole industry is based around something else. I continue to use adblock plus despite their "Acceptable Ads" program because I consider it reasonable in requirements.(2) I think there's a lot more room for compromise in allowing ads but no extension makes it easy to address my concerns.

Citations: 1. https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN22569.html?impressions=true 2. https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads

> Without them, you'll be paying a membership fee to every site you visit regularly.

I, for one, would be happy to. I'd honestly pay a monthly fee to watch Youtube. I don't use it only for cat videos, I also use it to find new music from artists I've never heard of, watch recordings of concerts I've been to just to relive the moments and so on.

If Youtube would let me pay to make those ads go away, I'd do so without thinking twice. In the absence of the said option, though, yes, I block their ads.