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Exactly someone who understands how advertising online actually works.

People do not disagree because they don't understand how it works. Indeed, the opposite is true, you are more likely to be okay with online advertising only if you do not know how it works.

Put simply: I know that ads work by tracking and trying to identify me and relevant demographic information to better target the ads, that is exactly why I hate them.

The only ad service I don't block is Project Wonderful because they actually get this (their ads are targeted by site and simple geolocation, not by user).

So use a better ad company. Project Wonderful lets you moderate ads if you choose, or whitelist by advertiser, or just allow a free-for-all. And they don't allow arbitrary scripting, so no XSS or browser attacks.

It is possible, though IIRC it requires JavaScript trickery. My ad provider, Project Wonderful, does it on their home page with the following script:

var isFF = (navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Firefox") > -1) ? true : false;
var hasABP = false;
function detect_abp() {
    if(isFF) {
        if(Components.interfaces.nsIAdblockPlus != undefined) hasABP = true;
        else {
            var AbpImage = document.createElement("IMG");
            var AbpIframe = document.createElement("IFRAME");
            AbpIframe.id = 'abpiframedetector';
            AbpIframe.src = '/adimages/';
            AbpIframe.style.display = 'block';
            AbpImage.id = 'abpimgdetector';
            AbpImage.src = '/adimages/textlink-ads.jpg';
            AbpImage.style.width = AbpIframe.style.width = '1px';
            AbpImage.style.height = AbpIframe.style.height = '1px';
            AbpImage.style.border = AbpIframe.style.border = '0px';
            AbpImage.style.top = AbpIframe.style.top = '-1000px';
            AbpImage.style.left = AbpIframe.style.left = '-1000px';
            document.body.appendChild(AbpImage);
            document.body.appendChild(AbpIframe);

            setTimeout(set_abp_status, 100);
        }
    }
}
function set_abp_status() {
    if(document.getElementById('abpimgdetector').style.display == 'none') hasABP = true;
    else if(document.getElementById('abpiframedetector').clientHeight == 0) hasABP = true;
    if (hasABP)
    {
        document.getElementById('adblock_message').innerHTML = "write some stuff here";
    }
}

There's an iframe with that ID on the page that gets zapped by ABP. I don't feel right using that script, though.

The biggest ads I have are 50Kb, and the same ones are displayed on all sites (so the banner doesn't have to be re-downloaded; my HTTP headers are configured to expire the cache only once per day). They don't even attempt to download on mobile browsers to avoid hitting those users with bandwidth charges.

I've experimented with text ads, but they simply don't pay as well (they're CPM ads--while I mentioned CPM above, I should have pointed out that my ads through Project Wonderful are cost-per-day ads; the only problem is that my CPM rates are much lower because of adblock).

I hate ads as much as the next guy, I really do. But I go the extra mile to make my ads not suck.

If you want realtime 24/7 adds you can buy REAL billboard advertising for less then $3000 a month.

http://www.gaebler.com/Billboard-Advertising-Costs.htm

Not 1.3million needed to just brake even.

You can buy 24/7 Advertising on MAJOR web comics which have 2-3 times as many readers as CoH does for less then $1000 a month.

http://www.projectwonderful.com/advertisehere.php?id=8073&type=1

Show me some evidence that COH could make millions a month off of advertisers. Give me some hard data showing what Adertisers ACTUALLY PAY that supports your view.

Likewise NC soft making a bad decision on a nebulous and new area of business as program updates is far different then advertising which has been taught and studied for hundreads of years. Advertisers can figure out Cost per viewer and the affectiveness of their ads well enough to relize that $1.3 million dollars can't be justified for the same 60,000 viewers.

But by all means cry DOOM and PARANOIA everytime something changes in your world. I guess if you expect the worst you will never be disapointed.

Random

How do you build an advertising economy when the number can't be trusted?

One organization attempting to answer this question is the advertising service Project Wonderful. In their model, you buy slots of time when your ad will be displayed on a given site via a continuous, rolling auction. Traffic, cost per click, cost per impression - all those traditional metrics are pretty much removed from the equation. The value of an hours-worth of impressions on a given site is decided dynamically and re-evaluated continuously by the folks buying the ads.

Whether it'll be truly successful or not, who knows. Their mechanism does seem to address some of the significant failings of the traditional online advertising model though.

Project Wonderful - they have image-based advertising and are currently all over the comic book and game websites. The revenue passed through them is really unbelievable and they are working on a bidding model - you bid on when you want your ad to appear and you manage your ads yourself. So if, say a new blog post is released, you want your ad up then; you bid it up, but only for that time period. You don't pay for any advertising time that you are not displayed. It seems to be an extremely "fair" model.

Wikipedia should institute Project Wonderful ads. They're unlike "traditional" banner ads in sort of the same way Wikipedia is unlike traditional encyclopedias; potential advertisers bid on advertising spots until they reach an equilibrium point. Advertisers pay per day rather than the gameable per-click, and a significant portion of the money actually goes to the advertisee.