DoubleClick Warns Against Ad-Blocking Browsers

An anonymous reader writes "The end of free Internet content will come when Web browsers start blocking online advertisements by default, a DoubleClick executive has warned. Bennie Smith, the online advertising network's privacy chief, said the popularity of tools like Adblock -- an extension to the Mozilla Firefox browser -- which makes blocking online ads simple was tied to 'a negative vibe against advertising in general'."

Comments

adblock

[BerneAI]

oh you mean the annoying flashing scrolling bandwidth sucking slow loading ads. gee i'm shocked

Re: NOT ALL ADS

[hytmal]

I use Firefox with AdBlock, and I've got to say that I only block ads that I think are obtrusive and annoying. I don't think anyone is losing any business from those "IF THIS BANNER IS FLASHING, YOU'VE WON!" things that just give me a headache. If you don't want us to block your dumb ads, DON'T make them annoying and distracting, make them catch the eye without being obnoxious.

Boo Hoo DoubleClick

[Roland of Gilead]

Yesterday on /. I read that "the end of paid content on the web is nigh", today I read "the end of free Internet content is nigh".
So which is it? ;?

Oh 'ya, DoubleClick can kiss my posterior oriface you greedy [insert curse words here], keep your spyware crap to yourself.

Meh...

What annoys me

[merc]

Is the notion that somehow I'm morally obligated to watch commercials or view the blinking, shouting, flashing, annoying pop-up tripe that the purveyors of net-crap spew. It's almost as if the marketing forces are trying to brainwash us into thinking we are somehow indebted to them.

I could care about the next guy; I know two things about my own personal net surfing habits that are absolute: I 'll always block this crap for as long as there are tools to do so and secondly I'll never lose a second of sleep over doing so.

More things change, the more they stay the same

[brontus3927]

Doubleclick is complaining that Adblock will "ruin" the internet by making advertising unprofitable for web page creators. People on both sides of the argument cite TiVo's and some newer VCR's 30 second skip feature. But even that isn't the beginning of work done to make ads less obtrusive. Magnavox has a feature called SmartSound. This tech has been in their TV's over a decade. What it does is normalize audio levels, because cable networks tend increase the volume for commecials to make them more noticable. Now most good TV's have a similar feature. And the cable companies noticed. I have a cheap TV that doesn't have this feature, and I rarely get loud commecials anymore.

I see the same as the future of the internet. People will block the annoying, intrusive, and CPU-sucking ads, and advertisers will notice this and eventually stop making such ads. To any advertisers out there, here's a hint, I block out of hand anything that moves, whether it blinks, is animated, or floats on the screen, including the floating toolbars at the top of the screen. I block intellitxt. I block huge ads stuck in the middle of content (think just about every news website, and slashdot). I do not block static ads at the top or bottom of the screen or ads in a side bar that doesn't interfere with reading the content.