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

christianheilmann.com

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

#51

Post by e12e »

Killswitch wrote: post #21
spindritf wrote: post #14

There are so many problems with ads that I cannot in good conscience offer any other advice than "block 'em all." • Ad networks can be, and are, used as a malware distribution vector. No one is vetting all the ads. Not the publishers, not the networks. • They slow everything down. AdBlock and Ghostery make web browsing faster. Not to mention waiting 30s to watch a youtube video, or worse yet to realize that you didn'…

> They slow everything down. AdBlock and Ghostery make web browsing faster. Not to mention waiting 30s to watch a youtube video, or worse yet to realize that you didn't actually want to watch it. Understandable, but um, if you didn't have those ads, you wouldn't have YouTube. Oh pay for it? Who's gonna pay to watch stupid videos online? Nobody. Ads are important. Without them, you'll be paying a membership fee to eve…

If we go by some guesstimates and youtube's numbers[1], if youtube were to target 6 billion in gross revenue (slightly up from 2013 gross ad revenue) each of it's one billion monthly unique visitors would have to pay 50 cents a month for youtube access. That's not accounting for the simplification of the hosting platform sans ads (but that might even out, or be eclipsed by taking payment).

So, if 1 in 100 signed up for 5 USD/month access, youtube would still make more (gross) than on ads. 1 in 100 might of course be a far too optimistic conversion rate.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/12/googles-y...

http://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html

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

#52

Post by sentenza »

austenallred wrote: post #24

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…

There will always be places online for people that do not like to pay. The question is, for how long will those places remain good places?

I don't use ADN either, but AFAIK it is used by a rather active "in crowd" here in Germany that is very happy about the paywall barrier of entry, since it keeps out all the spammers and most of the junk.

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

#53

Post by greenyoda »

Killswitch wrote: post #48
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true, sites did just fine before the advent of ads, and were actually useful. Some kinds of advertising online aren't even obnoxious, and that's fine too. For the obnoxious stuff? We can mostly do without. If we drive them to bankruptcy even faster with adblocking, all the better! ;-)

Have you ever wondered what YouTube's bill is monthly just to give you that content for free? I come from a group of people who run some of the biggest video based sites online, yes people want to watch these stupid videos for free, hundreds of thousands of daily visitors... One guy I know pays $1500/mo just to give stupid 30 second clips to his visitors with nothing but a few ads on the site to support it. No ads? S…

If all the cat videos were to disappear tomorrow, I suspect that most of the 7 billion inhabitants of this planet would somehow manage to fill the gaping voids in their lives with other stupid things.

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

#54

Post by sentenza »

e12e wrote: post #51
Killswitch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They slow everything down. AdBlock and Ghostery make web browsing faster. Not to mention waiting 30s to watch a youtube video, or worse yet to realize that you didn't actually want to watch it. Understandable, but um, if you didn't have those ads, you wouldn't have YouTube. Oh pay for it? Who's gonna pay to watch stupid videos online? Nobody. Ads are important. Without them, you'll be paying a membership fee to eve…

If we go by some guesstimates and youtube's numbers[1], if youtube were to target 6 billion in gross revenue (slightly up from 2013 gross ad revenue) each of it's one billion monthly unique visitors would have to pay 50 cents a month for youtube access. That's not accounting for the simplification of the hosting platform sans ads (but that might even out, or be eclipsed by taking payment). So, if 1 in 100 signed up f…

Maybe they should also make micro-donations to the authors of videos possible?

They'd get a cut of the payment as profit and it would also "incentivize the content creators" (I feel dirty now.).

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

#55

Post by greenyoda »

nitrogen wrote: post #12
ankitoberoi wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and a lot of very talented people would not be able to focus on doing what they currently do full time (and love to do) as they'll have to worry about making money. OR As a content consumer, you'll have to pay for the content directly which is currently available for free. Yes, I know everyone hates ads and I'll probably get downvoted here too but - You should punish publishers who serve malware, popups, JS & oth…

The web was great back when people wrote and published for the love. The web would undoubtedly survive a transition back to such a state.

Also, people whose writing is good enough have the opportunity to leverage their web audiences into purchasers of paid books. For example, Joel Spolsky (joelonsoftware.com) and Michael Lopp (randsinrepose.com) have published books based on their web postings. If you have content that is consistently interesting, people might actually pay to read it. And Spolsky's unpaid writing on the web also paid off through increasing awareness of his various business ventures. Ads aren't the only way to get a return on your writing investment.

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

#56

Post by greenyoda »

j2kun wrote: post #13
btbuildem wrote: post #8

Whatever buddy. Make something of value and people will pay you for it. Or make useless amusements, and depend on ad revenue.

There are ways to get the best of both worlds. XKCD is free and ad-free (and a useless amusement, as are most things people want to pay money for).

xkcd had developed enough of a following that its author can make money by selling xkcd-branded merchandise (http://store.xkcd.com).

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

#57

Post by chacham15 »

Honestly, Adblock is the world we live in. You can cry and complain that people shouldnt use it, but the fact of the matter is that we will. Unless you plan on somehow forcing this technology out of existence, the solution isnt to not use adblock. The solution is to come up with a better way. If I knew what that way was, I'd be a multi-millionaire at least, but I dont. My main point is that crying or complaining about it isnt going to solve the problem.

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

#58

Post by deletes »

ItendToDisagree wrote: post #25
Killswitch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They slow everything down. AdBlock and Ghostery make web browsing faster. Not to mention waiting 30s to watch a youtube video, or worse yet to realize that you didn't actually want to watch it. Understandable, but um, if you didn't have those ads, you wouldn't have YouTube. Oh pay for it? Who's gonna pay to watch stupid videos online? Nobody. Ads are important. Without them, you'll be paying a membership fee to eve…

Youtube ads have gotten more and more obnoxious and intrusive as time has gone on. I remember even before adblock was a thing using Youtube and not having to wait 30+ seconds to decide if I want to watch the video or not. This is not necessarily a reason to block all ads. But if they would make the ads less obnoxious I'd be much more likely to not worry about blocking them.

I haven't seen a youtube ad in years. And I only use Noscript which is partially disabled on youtube, because you need scripts for flash. So I should see ads.

If you could link me a video with an ad it would be awesome, I want to determine the cause.

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

#59

Post by codepo8-hn »

mdisraeli wrote: post #18

Irony - this developer, who seems to have a good understanding of ethics and web best practices, on a post about advert blocking, has a link at the bottom of their sidebar: "Essay shark - paper writing service!" This is labelled in the source as an ad. Comparing DNS and IP records suggest it is very unlikely they are related services. Chris also actively lists what they work on,which does not include Essayshark. Essa…

This is one of the ads I have on my blog that came through an ad affiliate program. So yes, I have ads on my blog, which is my right as a content creator. You can, of course see this as a conspiracy or something evil. :)

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

#60

Post by cico71 »

fotbr wrote: post #40
randomflavor wrote: post #7

So you adblockers who think the internet should go back to 1994, never use Google? I think the article is spot on. Advertising does and has always supported media distribution technologies since we had media distribution. Today that technology is the web and mobile web, and it is a distributed technology. Either micropaymetns with a bitcoin like tech will be embedded in the browser for you to be ad free, or view ads…

With the way Google has been acting over the last, oh, 5 years or so? Yeah, I try to avoid google for the most part. I'm firmly in the camp of "You (the server) provide the content. I (my computer) decide which pieces of that content to display. You get no say in what my computer does or does not do." So yes, I block ads. I block javascript. I block flash. I override your CSS. I pick and choose which elements to disp…

This. Anyway, we are not the target of these messages to legitimize the status quo of the ads business (or, even worse, that want to expand the influence on regulatory matters). We are too old, well past the point where ads may have had a significant impact on our choices, and where media could change radically our point of view. In other words, we are irrelevant to them and we can continue happily blocking everything, but younger people needs to be brainwashed to keep the current model and to mold the internet into its final form.
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