Why Do You Block Ads?

flyingember asks: "With ad blocking becoming ever more popular among users, why do you block ads? And with what? Do you view internet ads as different from say, TV ads? What about in a magazine? Do you not buy a magazine because it has too many? I'm specifically talking about the ads in a webpage, but even popup blockers can cause problems with me using a site."

Comments

Mostly for sport

[rebug]

Whenever I run into an ad online, I'm compelled to view the source, close down my browser session, and tweak my userContent.css/hostperm.1 to block it.

I don't recall having this aversion to advertising before popups got huge, so I think the advertisers just pushed me enough that I said "you know what? fuck you guys, I'm not going to see a single damn one of your bullshit ads."

Re:My reasons

[David P]

Anyone else here blocked Google's ads as well? It's just one more block of irrelevant content that my eye has to scan over to get to the stuff I wanted.

Annoyance factor

[SpookyFish]

Personally, I don't block them until they a) blink b) slow down the page.

Animated crap and poorly designed pages that make the ad-links (ohh, and that damned javascript highlight words BS) get insta-adblock.

Sure, that policy has led to my adblock filter catching damn near all graphical ads -- that ain't my fault.

I still see Google's.

Computer Shopper

[Vrallis]

Back when I was first getting into computers, I always used to buy the Computer Shopper magazine. It was huge (250-350) pages, but only about half of it was ads. The rest of it consisted of, mostly, hardware and software reviews. It was also fairly cheap at the time, at around $2.50 an issue.

Then it went to $2.95 an issue and consisted of 2/3 ads.

Then it went to $3.98 an issue and consisted of 3/4 ads, but dropped down to only about 200 pages.

At that point I never bought another copy.

(Yes, the numbers aren't exact, but it makes my point.)

Right now, I only block popups, though I'm considering blocking far more. I used to block all of doubleclick's stuff, but they aren't as common as they once were.

Re:Computer Shopper

[shawb]

If you think that's bad, you should try a fashion magazine sometime. My roomate brought one home once, so I decided to count the pages of ads. Of the first 100 pages, 93 were ads. 4 of the other pages were reviews of insanely expensive products, all glowing. The other two pages? Table of contents. Price? nine bucks. It was there that I realized how horribly idiotic fashionistas are.

Re:Computer Shopper

[Octorian]

Yeah, but back in the day many of us bought Computer Shopper *for* the ads. Prior to the popularization of Internet shopping, the only way to find out about good-price vendors from which to get all our computer hardware was through those ads. (unless, of course, you live in California where all those vendors were physically located, which I obviously didn't)

Re:Computer Shopper

[Reziac]

This isn't much different from most mainstream magazines. Look at a Good Housekeeping or Women's Day or even TVGuide, and often as not the ads outnumber the content.

[picks random edition of eWeek off the stack of unread IT rags] Even in this relatively content-heavy magazine, 26 of 58 pages are ads.

Occasionally, ads are a magazine's primary desirable content, such as ComputerUser -- *most* of why I have a subscription is because I need to see local vendors' component prices. I've even been known to complain when there aren't enough ads. :)

Almost all dog and horse magazines are essentially ad venues, with only token content. BUT -- there again, the main reason people buy these mags is to see ads relevant to their breed(s) of interest.

Here's the Big Point: when the ads are relevant to the audience's needs and interests, then ads are desirable -- and may even be regarded AS the "main content".

But on the web, we're typically bombarded with ads we did not choose to see, that are of no interest to us, that waste our time and bandwidth, and that *interfere* with viewing the "main content".

Small wonder that just about everyone who groks ad blocking proceeds to do so.

Re:Computer Shopper

[bleckywelcky]

Have you ever leafed through Rolling Stone? I signed up for a free subscription online just for the hell of it. When it arrived in the mail I opened it up and start leafing through. The first couple pages were ads, kept leafing. More ads, kepts leafing. More ads. After about 15 pages I started leafing backwards because I thought I had missed the table of contents. Nope, kept leafing forwards. Finally arrived at the table of contents at like page 20. At that point I thought to myself "wow, I'm glad I don't pay for this crap" and chucked the magazine.

Re:Computer Shopper

[babbage]

As happens surprisngly often, Douglas Adams had an essay that commented on this very topic. I'll quote a relevant section:

But what about the magazine publisher? What does she have to sell? What's she going to do now that she doesn't have stacks of glossy paper that people are going to want to hand over wads of greenies to acquire? Well, it all depends on what sort of business you think she's in. Lots of people are not in the business you think they're in. Xerox, for instance, is in the business of selling toner cartridges. All that mucking about they do developing high-tech copying and printing machines is just creating a commodity market in toner cartridges, which is where their profit lies. Television companies are not in the business of delivering television programs to their audience, they're in the business of delivering audiences to their advertisers. (This is why the BBC has such a schizophrenic time - it's actually in a different business from all its competitors). And magazines are very similar: each actual sale across the newsagent's counter is partly an attempt to defray the ludicrous cost of manufacturing the damn thing but is also, more significantly, a very solid datum point. The full data set represents the size of the audience the publisher can deliver to its advertisers.

Now I regard magazine advertising as a big problem. I really hate it. It overwhelms the copy text, which is usually reduced to a dull, grey little stream trickling its way through enormous glaring billboard-like pages all of which are clamoring to draw your attention to stuff you don't want; and the first thing you have to do when you buy a new magazine is shake it over a bin in order to shed all the coupons, sachets, packets, CDs and free labrador puppies which make them as fat an unwieldy as a grandmother's scrapbook. And then, when you are interested in buying something, you can't find any information about it because it was in last month's issue which you've now thrown away. I bought a new camera last month, and bought loads of camera magazines just to find ads and reviews for the models I was interested in. So I resent about 99% of the advertising I see, but occasionally I want it enough to actually buy the stuff. There's a major mismatch - something is ripe to fall out of the model.

If you browse around an online magazine (HotWired, for instance, springs unbidden to mind) you will find a few discreet little sponsor icons here and there which you choose to click on. You only get to see the proper ad if you're actually interested in it, and that ad will then lead you directly towards solid, helpful information about the product. It is of course much more valuable for advertisers to reach one interested potential customer than it is to irritate the hell out of ninety-nine others. Furthermore, the advertiser gets astonishingly precise feedback. They will know exactly how many people have chosen to look at their ad and for how long, with the result that an unwelcome ad for something no one's interested in will quickly wither away, whereas one which catches people's attention will thrive. The advertisers pay the magazine for the opportunity to put links to their ads on popular pages of the magazine and - well, you see the way it works. It is, I am told by people with seriously raised eyebrows, astonishingly effective. The thing which drops out of the problem is the notion that advertising need be irritating and intrusive.

He was being a bit optimistic, perhaps, but he's basically summarized the way things stand, or that they seem to be heading. And this was first printed in the original UK issue of Wired magazine, so that was what, a decade ago? The whole essay, What have we got to lose?, is fascinating stuff. Go read it if you haven't come across it before -- you'll be glad you did.

Do you not buy a magazine because it has too many?

[RLiegh]

Why actually; I don't buy magazines; for pretty much that reason. In 1994 I realised that most magazines on the shelf have very little substance to their articles, are 2/3rds filled with ads and cost (at the time) $3.50 to $5 each. Not to mention the fact that the usual story layouts around that point became really bad (this got worse a few years later when they started making ads which blended in with the story to deliberately cause confusion).

I don't mind some advertising, but the amount and intrusiveness of modern advertising is obnoxious enough that I do avoid buying magazines and I have had to take the time to figure out adblock and flashblock.

Why I Block

[NETHED]

If it slows my browser down. I hate ads that double my browser memory footprint. There are many doubleclick ads that do this.

If it is intrusive. I cannot stand within text ads. Never EVER put an ad in the middle of a paragraph. EVER. If you do, I won't look at it, and I'll block it if I can. So does my mother, the demographic the ad is targeted for. Any ad that takes over (pop-over).

All other ads, I respect. The advertisers must make money, and I do click on ads I find interesting. I feel it is important to support those who support things I like.

Pointless and useless

[OzJimbob]

I block ads on the internet because they are usually completely useless to me. When I watch TV at least, the ads are for things I might buy at the grocery store, or they advertise a sale on at a local furniture store, or they advertise a car I might one day consider buying.

The vast majority of ads on the internet are either completely disinteresting to me - trying to sell me a server appliance, or telephone deals in another country. Or they are advertising online casinos that I would never visit. Or they are scams - you know, the "Your computer is not OPTIMIZED click HERE" crap. If interet advertising was actually relevant to my every day needs, and didn't all come across as a cheap scam, then I might be more tolerant.

In fact, I am. I'm quite happy to view the Google ad-words ads, because they have, sometimes, shown me something I might be interested in.

Adblock with Filterset.G

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much I use Adblock with the most up-to-date definition from pierceive.com.

What ads do I see? None, or very close to it.

What legitimate content gets blocked? None, or very close to it.

Why? Having IFRAMEs dissapear makes the page shorter. Less to download. Less crap in my way. And nothing is safe either (including Google textads). If I don't like something the definition does, I just change it.

Re:Magazine Ad Overload

[FxChiP]

I have this horrible, sinking feeling that one day they're going to start putting advertisements in books.

If not the printed books we have now, then possibly the eBooks of the future.

Re:annoying animations

[jacen_sunstrider]

I despise the blinking, flashing moving junk ads which make noises, because I can spend entire minutes looking for whatever program is making the dodododo! noise that I know shouldn't be coming from my speakers.

I block pop-ups (somewhat), but nothing else

[ThatAdamGuy]

On the other hand, if a site has a lot of obnoxious shoot-the-monkey type ads or audio ads, I'll likely never return to it.

Additionally, I am very happy to pay a couple of bucks a month to sites like Salon.com (http://www.salon.com/ to have a streamlined and ad-free experience (in the case of Salon, I also want to support strong independent journalism).

I'll tell you what worries me, though: people (or, worse yet, applications by default) blocking text ads. IMHO that's pretty self-defeating long-term; if text ads cease to be significantly more effective than graphical and/or annoying pop-up ads, then companies will either revert back to more flashy ads (yuck!) or they'll start putting content behind subscription walls (bad for searching, bad for wallets), or -- worse yet -- may just decide to stop sharing or creating content at all.

Re:Firefox + Adblock + Adblock Filterset.G Updater

[Dr. Spork]

If you have Adblock + Adblock Filterset.G Updater, Flashblock is redundant. Filterset.G really gets Adblock to kill all the flash you don't want to see and leave the stuff that's worthwhile, all without requiring any input from you. It makes the internet 99.44% less annoying.

Multiple reasons w/explantions

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Ads are too big to download even on broadband; how do you think dial-up users feel downloading a 500k flash file or what ever?

2) Ads typically are poorly placed. It will takes away from the content your reading. Do you go to a site to see ads or to view something else. Its mostly likely that you are their for something else. A non-obtrusive ad servers its purpose better than one that is obnoxios. Its like a car sales man from the 60's doing their hard sell tatics. Guess what; these are the 2000s(?); the hard sell attituded has died off in most other business, except the web.

3) The ads do not reflect the reason you came to a site. Yes, I am reading an article about Sun servers but for somereason I get an ad about this x10 camera. How about being relevent and target the market for that page. Perhaps something like a Sun ad or an HP-UX ad? Noooo, that would make sense...

Does anyone realize why Googles ads are sucessful? They target a market. Search by mini-itx and you get ads about people selling mini-itx. Guess what? I am going to click on those ads!!! They are not flashing/blinking; they are not obnoxious and they are freakin relevant. Gee.... I think that this could be a pattern for sucess.

Hard sales with irrelevant subjects are a disaster; no matter on how hard you try to sell your product, its not going to work. The reset of the sales people or at least the good ones do the consultative selling approache.

Final note; because this is /. ; what post would not be complete without a car reference:
Ever go to a car dealer and have them try to sell you a suit case or a dust buster? I think not; web advertisers have to get a clue. This also goes along with popups. Doing something creative to bypass the ad blocking software/popup blocker is not going to get you a sale; it will get you negative feeling about the product and the company selling the product (to most users) and perhaps at one point some people will realize that its also the marketing company; this applies to Joe Sixpack user.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Magazine Ad Overload

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Although, and I'll burn Karma to say this, my parents bought me a Cooks Illustrated subscription for my birthday last year at my request. I only ever recieved one issue. I wrote them to complain and never got a response. So anyone thinking "that's a good idea" I tell you now that it probably isn't.

Just my experience, but I do voice my opinion when a company disappoints me.

Different than TV/magazines

[richardtallent]

I skip television advertising (using my HDTV card and my two ReplayTVs) because it's loud, annoying, and completely irrelevant to my current purchasing needs.

Case in point: I am currently looking into getting a Vespa. My car was crushed in Hurricane Rita, and I have a 5-block commute that's just long enough in the hot Texas sun to eliminate human-powered locomotion. I've never seen a Vespa commercial. But if I watch the commercials tonight on television, I have no chance of hearing of it or of alternative bike brands. Instead, I will be inundated with 15 minutes of advertising for big Texas trucks, Viagra, diapers, feminine hygeine products, and television shows I don't watch. Give me 3 minutes per hour of targeted, privacy-protected advertising and I'll be all ears. Give it to me on BitTorrent in HD and I'll even pinky-swear that I won't skip the ads or take my copyright-infringing potty break.

On the web, I do not block Google-like advertising, or even graphic banner ads. I block Flash because of their secret non-cookie-cookies and other abuses. Magazine advertising does not magically follow you from one page to the next, making noises and throwing itself on top of the article print. It does not force me to fill out a form with my personal information before I can turn the page, and it does not send messages back to the mothership. If it did any of these things, I would forego buying magazines (or, alternatively, switch away from whatever brand of brownies might have accompanied the experience).

I am not opposed to advertising. Well-done, it answers a consumer need. Even poorly-done, it is a necessary evil until open-source, distributed P2P applications can take over many services (search, publishing, hosting, communication, etc.) that are currently centralized out of technological necessity and commercialized out of market necessity. Once a year, I even put my ReplayTV in the undocumented "Superbowl mode" so I can watch all of the burping frogs and sock puppets without the pesky football getting in the way of my party.

But advertising is not about eyeballs: it is about gaining the *respect* of the consumer, not simply their *attention*. Respect my privacy, respect my space, respect my computer, respect my bandwidth, and I might give you the Internet equivalent of an elevator pitch. Fail on these counts, and it doesn't matter whether I find a way to block you or not, I won't be purchasing your dancing monkeys or secret cameras or casino games.

Burned long ago, never to trust again

[Sax Maniac]

I've been using Privoxy since it was Junkbuster, and old habits die hard. Why did I start?

It all started with animation. There is nothing worse than trying read some articles with dayglo green-on-pink spinning, flashing, !CLICK HERE! on top. I can't... think... with that there! Junkbuster fixed that.

Then there was cookie management. I only log into a handful of sites, why does every single one need cookies to the end of time? JB again to the rescue: it could convert cookies into session-only cookies, and leave the ones I need alone.

Then came the spam. Back then I was using Netscape 4, and it would dutifully load remote images off the web, with no way to stop it. Privoxy helped there by letting me blackmail IPs. Not great, but better than nothing.

Since it's a proxy, all this worked for the times I was also forced to use IE, which I tried to resist as long as possible. Since neither Netscape or IE had any of these features, it was a great add-on.

As everyone around here has said over and over, text ads don't bug me. I could go militant anti-ad and start filtering text ads with Privoxy, but I don't. Google got it right. God bless 'em.

These days, things have changed for the better. Mail clients can disable remote image loading, and actually prefer text over the HTML bullshit. Browsers have per-site cookie management and allow you to accept session cookies silently. Firefox has ad-block.

"Maybe ads aren't so bad anymore", I think, "maybe advertisers have learned their lesson, and I should stop blocking". Then I use my parents' computer without adblock on a Christmas break. The ads now are movies, overlay the entire screen, with swooshing rock soundtracks. Result: adblock not only stays on, but gets installed on permanently on their computer too. And anyone else's I work on.

At home, I picked up a ReplayTV 5040 (the geek PVR) -- two babies made following "24" impossible, and I was tired of swapping tapes. I dumped the stupid VCR the day we got it. Automatically skipping ads was just a pleasant bonus, and saves lots of time.

I don't block ads

[esconsult1]

Seriously.

My eyes gravitate towards whatever article/information I'm reading and completely ignores the peripheral ads. Once in a while, I see something that I like, and if I do, I click on it.

Many slashdotters think its really kewl to block ads, but ads pay for the sites you are viewing, ads pay for slashdot (not nearly enough of us subscribe to keep this site running).

On the other hand, we do have the right to block ads, its our computer and bandwidth. But if enough of us do, then most of the sites we know and love will cease to operate. As someone working in the ad-serving and tracking industry, ad blockers (not popup blockers -- popups are evil) are beginning to show up as a serious chunk in the stats. Advertisers and their agencies are now up in arms. Not being able to tell the ROI of an ad, means agencies can't tell if its worth showing or now.

By us not clicking on the crappy flash ads -- that sends a message. Blocking it does not.

Re:My reasons

[billcopc]

Unless you work as a media monkey in any branch of entertainment industry, I don't see why you need sound at work. If you "need" it to play music while you work, tough luck! On my PC, sound comes from a very limited number of tasks: Winamp/WMP/VLC, games, and whatever musical tools I abuse. I don't want the OS dingy-dong-beeps scaring the bejeezus out of me at 4 a.m., and I don't want these annoying web pages blarting out noise unless I specifically want to hear it.

My solution is simple: I use both the onboard sound AND a PCI card. The music/games are manually instructed to use the better card, everything else goes to the onboard. If I don't want to hear garbage, I just mute the onboard. Easy!

Still, I wish there were a global "mute" for browser-based stuff. Just a little clicky button on the toolbar, that tells embedded MIDI and Flash to shut the hell up.

Simpler reason: The overcame my inertia.

[SmallFurryCreature]

Like most people I am basically a lazy fat slob. Something may irretate me BUT in order for me to do something about it it must reach a certain level.

This is apparently a very complex social issue as very few people seem to regonize that this treshhold exists. Certainly not those in power, it explains why our "leaders" are so often confused when we suddenly rebel against something we have quitely accepted before.

It happens in all sorts of places in our society, from important to trivial, the resistance against immigrants (muslims mostly) that "suddenly" came to a rise in europe. Has politicians totally baffled. The young male "suddenly" no longer watching tv (and more important tv commercials) has tv bosses claiming the world is coming to an end.

What has simply happened that a constant level of annoyance has grown to the point where people are no longer just content to let it lie.

When that "okay" radio starts cranking out ad-blocks of more then 5 minutes it perhaps becomes rewarding enough to simply switch the radio off and take the effort to bring in your own music. When that tv program you sorta watch is interrupted beyond the point where you can actually remember what you where watching then perhaps you don't switch back (is there any human out there who can watch a full dutch tv ad-block?). Perhaps you don't switch the tv on at all when all you ever watch are half of a tv-show.

So I block ads EVERYWHERE because they have grown to irritating. They reached my treshhold where I go from simply being irritated to taking action.

And just as the current backlash against muslims in europe went from tolerance to hatred in a flash I am now very extreme in my ad blocking. ALL image ads are blocked and screw even those sides where I can fully understand they need ad income to survive.

My current solution is getting a bit old but for now the ads that do slip through are not yet irritating enough to make me spend an hour or two finding a better solution and implementing it. When it does my browser will once again be totally ad free and many a free site will loose yet another tiny slice of income.

Then again who cares about sites like those game sites with bloody redirects to full page ads? Or slashdot with it showing a linux user MS ads? Geez talk about adding insult to injury.

Will I ever go back to unblocking ads? Perhaps. Someday I will buy a new computer and install a clean version of my OS on it and then I will probably be to lazy to install an ad blocker immidiatly (then again the blocker is part of squid so this is only when I replace my "server") and if I find that the ads then are not irritating enough I may not bother.

Lets face it, that is not very likely eh?

The response by marketing to the increasing resistance against ads is to make the ads bigger and more intrusive.

Re:My reasons

[locnar42]

My work just bought me a new computer. While spec'ing the new system with my boss, I mentioned that I didn't need speakers. He got them anyway because we frequently have webinars that we need to watch. I'd have just used headphones, but it does show at least one valid use of sound at work.

Re:My reasons

[B747SP]

I often e-mailed site owners/maintainers about this problem and was never successful to have them resolved it.

This is a little bit off-topic, but relevant insofar as getting site owners to change broken content is concerned.

A little while ago, my Mum was having trouble convincing one of our older family members to eat properly. I had recently stumbled across a new type of food in the supermarket that my cats really enjoyed, and so I thought that the old cat might enjoy it too...

So in the course of an email exchange with Mum (I'm Australian, that's how we spell 'Mom'), I figured I'd send her a link to the specific type of cat food I was suggesting...

Well, I couldn't. As it turned out, the company had a web site that was all Macromedia Flash and bells and whistles and glory, and the only way I could point my Mum at the particular product I was talking about would be to say "go to this site, now click on the 'bleh' link followed by the 'foo' link, then scroll down to 'bar'...."... Or I could just not reccomend the product.

As it happened, that was the week I was lecturing my Bachelor of Business students on making sure that money you invest in IT actually benefits the business, don't let the IT department run away with cool toys that don't deliver value to customers, etc, etc (I'm a geek, but somehow I've managed to convince someone to let me lecture business students!!!) and I so I got a bee in my bonnet about it and I emailed the cat food company...

Basically I said look, your web design company sold you on flash because it is pretty and bling bling and looks lovely, but here's a concrete example of how going with flash made your web site sufficiently unuseable that it cost you a sale. I couldn't effectively reccomend your product to my quasi-computer-literate Mum 'cos she would have issues navigating the web site, and I couldn't send her a direct link.

Lo and behold, a month later, the cat food company had a new web site, all standard html with proper workable links that change in the address bar as you work through the site, and now I can send a link to my Mum (and I have).

What's more, the web site loads faster as well!!!

.

.

.

.

(As an interesting aside, slashdot seems to have recently updated it's code. I had to turn off all of my adblocking stuff to make the posting page appear as anything but a black background - it's been like that for about a month now (Firefox, The Proxomitron))

Re:My reasons

[E8086]

4. Many ads are made in Macromedia Flash nowadays, which is a bitch to render on old computers.

The ones that seem to have memory leaks are a pain on computers of any age. Now why is firefox using 80MB+ of ram? That's right, it's those damn flash ads. I use firefox with flashblock and set to block popups because I don't like having any more windows open and some used to open in another window, the other window you were working on something in. Flash ads get boring after a couple loops.

Re:because they are annoying

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but the theory is that the stronger a person's reaction to an ad whether positive or negative the more likely that person is to remember that company when they want to buy something. The idea is that unless you have an exceptional memory (few people do) or keep a written/computerized list (a good idea) you won't remember won't remember whether your reaction was negative or positive and you will be more likely to buy the product because you remember the fact you had that reaction, not the reaction itself.

Re:I don't.

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

"- Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, Star Trek, Babylon 5, and even Futurama were made for the expressed purpose of tricking you into watching commercials."

Err... no, they weren't.

Sure, the television executives put them *on the air* to trick people into watching commercials, but behind the shows themselves were people who actually cared about creating quality entertainment. To equate all television to the level of "just there to sell you stuff" is to cheapen the artistic vision of people like Gene Rodenberry, J. Michael Strascynski, and Joss Whedon to the level of the garbage sitcoms and reality shows that litter the rest of the television airwaves. And, unless you're going to say that an episode of B5 or Farscape is no better than an episode of... er... whatever crappy reality shows are on the major networks right now (I haven't even owned a TV in almost two years), then your argument is highly subjective at best.

Re:if not ads, who should pay for content?

[BigBuckHunter]

But I already "pay" for the internet. Comcast gets about $50 a month. I also Pay for my Cable TV.
 
BBH

Re:My reasons

[Stripe7]

I started blocking ads when I started up the task manager one day to discover that 90%+ of my cpu was being taken up by firefox which was sitting in the background while I was working on some other stuff. Turned out to be all those flash ads. Started zapping ads since then. Nowdays if an ad catches my attention it gets zapped and the originating website of the ad get blocked permanently.

I dislike all advertising and solicitations

[kalislashdot]

On my computers I block ads with a hosts file. I use http://www.everythingisnt.com/hosts.html/ and update it every few months.

I block ads for 3 reasons
1. I dislike clutter and junk. I visit a webpage for the content. Not the crap floating around trying to sell me something.
2. Spyware relief. This was a bigger issue when I was using IE, but I noticed all my spyware was coming from these banner ads. They either tried to install some ActiveX or exploited some hole to install it without asking. for example on my Father's compter. Every month he would have 30 new spyware apps installed. Once I install this hosts file, I see one or none installed.
3. I rarly is never buy anything because of an ad. If I want something I will go out and get it. I guess ads are only good for one thing... telling me of something that I never new existed. That might be fine for some closed off old grandma but I am pretty much in the know.

I also dislike Spam for obvious reasons, but hate junk mail and phone calls. I either throw junk mail on the floor in the post office or save it and return it in the pre paid envelopes. Since the post office got paid to give me the junk I figure they can pay someone to throw it in the trash. On TV I have TiVo so I can skip threw the commercials in a few seconds. No TiVo in the bedroom and we scream becasue our eyes bleed from the crappy commercials. I also do not answer my door. Anyone who knows me knows to call first. Evry time I opened the door when it was not expected it was someone selling or pushing something. They get the door slammed in their face.

Idiots block ads.

[iSearch]

/. is ad supported, yahoo is ad supported, google is ad supported. it's simple game theory. what's best for you is to block the ads because it makes your experience more pleasurable, but what is best for the overall internet is for ads to be profitable so that producers of content and services can subsidize their content. You have a right to privacy, a right to freedom of speech, a right to practice the religion of your choice. You DO NOT have a *right* to good search results, free software, free music etc..etc... because SOMEBODY is paying for it, and if you're not willing to be a good community member by watching ads then visit only paid content sites. Grrrrr.

Re:My reasons

[kubevubin]

Those are the very ads that I dislike so much. Honestly, any person who creates an ad that resembles a Windows dialog box or offers false promises of free gifts/prizes should be staked to a fence and set aflame. Stupid bastards, taking advantage of peoples' gullibility.
And anyone who makes one of those Flash ads that pops up overtop the Web page that a site visitor is viewing deserve the same. The Internet is becoming nothing more than a wasteland where parasites and advertisers (essentially the same, depending on how you look at it) lie in wait for the next sucker.

Re:Invasion of privacy issue

[scotty]

Worse. They don't just log your IP address, your referrer info, your user agent and the colour of underwear you are wearing today, they also send back cookies so that they can identify it is you again, when your browser opens up another of their ads.

They can keep track of all the pages (with their ads on) you have been and all different ads you have seen and clicked on, and deduce your personality, your habbits, your interests and the kinds of niches you are into.

That's called invasion of privacy.

So I usually surf in w3m.

Re:My reasons

[zCyl]

I pretty much do just that. I have a Mythtv box, and usually I watch any programs it has recorded when I have the time. And when I do, I skip ads. Even when I watch "live" tv, I usually watch it at 90% rate, so that I'm able to skip at least part of the commercial break.

Not to add a "me too", but a MythTV install really does change the value of TV. If you don't have it, you don't know what you're missing. Get a cheap $50 TV card, setup MythTV, and have it record everything you would even consider watching throughout the week. Then instead of wasting time watching whatever crap happens to be on at that hour, you always have TV shows around that you would want to watch, which you can pause whenever you want. Typical storage is around 1.3 gigs per hour, which is cheaper than videotape, and much less clumsy.

This also means you can take advantage of reruns of an entire series. Often a series is rerun in order during the daytime, but unless you're unemployed and watch TV all day, you don't have time to watch them all in order. With DVR, you can record them and watch them in order, and follow along with the arching plots.

Auto-skip of commercials is just a bonus.

Re:My reasons

[azav]

Truth in Advertizing?

These "You're a Winner" pieces of crap suck ass because 1) they are lying to you and 2) they are served up by companies who obviously aren't paying lots of attention to their ethics and often show up on webites I would like to trust; too bad their ads are lying to me.

Lying to a potential customer to try and make 2 cents is remarkable insulting to the reader.

I simply want YOUR marketing mesage OUT of my face.

Re:My reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

10. Because I can. Seriously - if there was a way to delete all ads from TV, wouldn't most people do it? I must point out an exception in radio. There is Classic Rock station here in San Antonio that has a commercials format that I have not found anywhere else I've been. They have only one announcer boldly but calmly read commercials over the air. No screaming car salesmen with explosion and echo soundeffects. No goofy voices, nor mutilation of top songs into ads. (hey, not to different than Google ads, perhaps) I'm content sitting through these commercials and actually find myself paying attention to the ads. I often wonder what advertising would be if the medium (paper, radio, tv) were more discriminate of what style commercials they published.

Re:My reasons

[mallie_mcg]

I don't mind advertising in the general case, but there are some forms that I cannot stand.

1) Flashing: if an Ad flashes or wibbles or wobbles it distracts my eye from being able to read the text on the page, which defeats the purpose of the page and the advertising - I find these ones actually painful and headache inducing.

2) Garish Colours: If an Ad is overly bright relative to the surrounding text/sytle (ie: pages with white text, black background) it can make it overly hard to focus on the text.

3) Sound: There is absolutly no reason that an Ad should have or play sound. Hell there is no reason for an Ad to be flash - often times the volume is set too loud and it affects my usage of the computer.

4) Pop-ups: Its my browser, my PC dont run around making windows on it!

5) Spyware/Deceptive ads: I block advertising that is deliberatly misleading because that content should not be advertisable - the advertisers who allow people to peddle their scumware via that method should be shot along with their clients.

I specifically allow google and other text based ads, as they are usually more relevant and seem to fit in with the flow of a well designed site better. They get read more than the other crap. I'm sure most of the clicking of the flashing, wobbling ads is out of people trying to get them to sit still or shut the hell up.

M

Re:My reasons

[KiloByte]

Don't forget that you're not the target audience. Ads are aimed at idiots, not you.

When communism collapsed in Poland and we got our first ads, washing powder named "Pollena 2000" was marketed using a reference to one of Polish best known book. The TV ad they used is still quoted as the best Polish ad ever -- and yet, it caused a decline in sales. Why? The bulk of the audience is nearly mindless, they don't read any books and even if they happen to remember something they were forced to read in school, it brings traumatic memories.

No ads here

[Dissectional]

I block all ads online as I cannot stand web advertising. I'm perhaps overly picky as I recall an Internet that had no intrusive ads back in the day. The hijacking of the Internet by ambitious advertisers really irks me.<p>

I also no longer buy magazines due to the advertising:actual content ratio being all screwed up.<p>

I also no longer listen to the radio because of excess advertising (and the proliferation of entertainment marketed as 'music' though thats another discussion entirely)<p>

But hey, thats just me. I'm aware of the alledged justification for advertising and all that jazz. I'm just being honest with myself when I say outright that advertising pisses me off no end, irrespective of medium.

Re:Here in MN it's possible to block ads in yards.

[maxwell demon]

It's illegal to post a non real estate, political or garage sale sign in your own front yard.

And you think that's a good thing in a supposedly free country? I should have the right to put whatever I want in my yard as long as it doesn't violate "community standards" for obscenity.

Well, it should be easy to circumvent:
Say you want to put up a sign "Get Firefox!", then instead make a sign which says:

[small]I demand my political right to put up a sign saying[/small]
[big]Get Firefox![/big]
[small]in my own front yard![/small]

This is clearly a political sign, and therefore shouldn't be a problem. :-)

Re:I wish...

[Ithika]

They make me feel ill. I've long since had the sense to block them on any computer I have regular access to.

Brilliant!

[The-Bus]

I've long advised clients, friends, family members, and anyone I can meet to never ever ever use Flash on their site UNLESS you need it for some very specific use (interactive game, media player) and then it should still be an option.

Recently I did some research and I found that about 20-30% of people don't have Flash installed. Further, as you've pointed out, over 50% of people cannot use Flash correctly to navigate a page. This means if you're a company, roughly two-thirds of your audience are not seeing your content. That makes no business sense whatsoever.

If Flash sites weren't (usually) garishly designed, searchable, easy to print, and had text that you could select and copy, then maybe I wouldn't be so against it.

Many reasons

[EWIPlayer]

• I am but a poor and humble programmer. I don't have billions of dollars with which to combat the billions of dollars that are spent learning how to manipulate me. Blocking ads whenever I can is the most powerful thing I can do.
• Ads take up my bandwidth and my browser real-estate.
• Some of them are just plain offensive.
• Some of them don't lay out properly in Firefox, thus ruining the experience of visiting the particular web site.

I don't view them to be any different from TV, billboard, magazing, newspaper, or any other ads.

I don't buy any magazines other than the C/C++ User's Journal, and even that is starting to suck. All of your "popular" magazines are so crammed full of ads, it's just disgusting. One magazine my wife brought home was geared so heavily towards advertising that they put the Table of Contents on several pages, and the first one didn't start until page 20! You had to flip through all the ads to get to the Table of Contents, and then flip through more to continue reading it... and without the Table of Contents, trying to find what you were looking for was impossible given the number of pages that were just plain ads to begin with!

I watch my TV shows by downloading them off the net, commercial free.

I block all Web Ads.

I download music and movies instead of buying them (although more and more movies are simply advertisements with a bit of story around them), mainly because it's the laziest civil disobedience I can muster. Why is it illegal to download music and movies but it is perfectly legal to stage a systematic, heavily researched, concentrated attack on my brain, manipulating me, making me stupider and poorer with no way to get around it? I would have to stop watching TV, Movies, reading papers, opening my eyes while walking along the street, listening to the radio, talking to friends or anyone else that speaks english, etc... you can't get away from it. How on earth is that legal?

The above post appears to be a simple rant. And that's what it is.

Re:My reasons

[TheRaven64]

I'm using a 1.5GHz PowerBook, OS X 10.4.2, with the Flash plugin that comes with Safari. A few of the Flash ads on Slashdot have a habit of making my CPU usage jump to 100% - CPU speed doesn't matter if someone codes a busy loop. Nice does nothing - if there is nothing else using my CPU, then Flash gets all of it. This takes my CPU from power saving idle mode to full speed, power-hungry mode, and can take a good 30 minutes of the battery life if I don't kill flash.

Re:My reasons - We pay for data downloaded in UK

[Anonymous Coward]

Moving to ADSL in the UK we now pay per gigabyte downloaded. My usage is quite small, and I think a lot of that is down to Adblock!

It was the ads that move over the text of the page just long enough after it having loaded for you to be reading it that cause me to install adblock. Now I've started blocking ads, I find it just makes the web a much nicer place.

The counter example - Google's ads are actually often useful and I quite frequently follow them as well as the search results. We're decorating at the moment, so companies offering the bits we need are just what we're after.

Because I can

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I can, that's why.

It's my computer, I pay (when at home) for the connection, and when I want to buy something, I'll go looking for it.

Before you ask, I don't have cable TV, don't watch broadcast TV (except for Yu-Gi-Oh with my son, and then I turn the sound off on ads), load DVDs with the monitor off and don't turn it on until past the advertising the effing film industry tries to force down my throat, and when I listen to commercial radio, it's generally to symphonies or operas where there's long stretches of music and little advertising.

Junk mail gets either returned to sender or thrown directly into the recycling bins unread, I make use of both federal (because the fines are bigger) and state (because they pay me a bounty) do-not-call lists, and don't wear clothing with manufacturer's brands on them (except for my windbreaker with the 6-color apple with the dent in it).

Yes.

[ildon]

With ad blocking becoming ever more popular among users, why do you block ads?

I block ads because they are intrusive and interfere with my ability to read or enjoy websites.

And with what?

Firefox's popup blocker, and the almighty hosts file.

Do you view internet ads as different from say, TV ads?

I skip those, too, when I can, on things I have recorded on DVR. I used to see them as opportunities to use the restroom or grab a snack, but now I have a pause button. Often pausing to use the restroom or grab a drink enables me to skip some ads in the future. My time is controlled by me, and not by the television. This is a Good Thing.

What about in a magazine? Do you not buy a magazine because it has too many?

Yes. In fact, I've stopped reading magazines for the most part. 90% of the information they contain can be obtained through websites a month before that. And for the 10% that's "exclusive", it becomes accessible before the page even hits the stands, usually. If not almost immediately after.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a dead medium. I do read the newspaper occasionally.

Animated Ads

[skubeedooo]

Because it takes forever to scroll scroll when there is stuff going on on the side.

I don't know whether it's the fault of nvidia, xorg, linux, fedora (e.g. it's fine on windows), gecko or firefox, but I do know that it is very annoying and is the only reason I went to the trouble of installing an adblocking extension.

Easy

[mkswap-notwar]

This is an easy one. They're annoying. They're large, or blinking, or scrolling, etc. They take my eye away from the content of the page, which is what I'm really interested in. Some take up so much real estate on the page, it's funny to see the page without ads. Some pages look so bare with ads blocked, with only a paragraph or two with the actual content of the page.

It's essentially that same reason why I mute TV commercials, or switch to another channel when ads come on for 4 minutes or so.

Blocking Ads

[Davidge]

flyingember asks: "With ad blocking becoming ever more popular among users, why do you block ads?

I block ads mainly because I don't want to see them, and I can. If I'm viewing a webpage for some specific information, I'm not visiting that webpage in order to view ads, esp. flashing, moving, annoying ads (eg punch the monkey and similar).

And with what?

I use Ad-Zap with Squid. i.e. I have an internal squid proxy on my home network and it uses the ad-zap plugin to remove any ads I don't want to see. Having said that, I allow Google-Ads, as they're just text and don't get in the way of what I'm reading, and are reasonably targetted to the content.

Do you view internet ads as different from say, TV ads?

Not really. I don't watch TV (partly because of the ads and partly because it's full of crap and the bits that aren't are on at ridiculous hours of the night)

What about in a magazine?

Same again, magazine ads are just the same, annoying and unwanted (but at least they don't move).

Do you not buy a magazine because it has too many?

Spot on, haven't bought an industry magazine in years.

I'm specifically talking about the ads in a webpage, but even popup blockers can cause problems with me using a site."

How so ? how does an ad-blocker/pop-up blocker hinder your ability to read a page ?

Re:My reasons

[Jim Hall]

4) Pop-ups: Its my browser, my PC dont run around making windows on it!

Normally, I'm not a grammar nazi. But I had to call you on this one, since I had to go over it a few times before I realized you meant:

4) Pop-ups: It's my browser, my PC; don't run around making windows on it!

Re:My reasons

[(startx)]

This is the very reason I finally broke down and loaded adblock in my Mozilla based broswers, and PithHelmet in Safari. I was trying to load /. one morning and the entire page render was being held up by the ad server being used that day. I could tell from sniffing traffic with ethereal that the HTML and CSS were all downloaded fine, but it just wouldn't render without that damn add.

All internet advertisers lost another pair eyes that day because one bad egg wouldn't let me view my /. .

I block ads because...

[Evro]

I block all Flash ads via Firefox's Flashblock plugin, which only plays flash animations you click on, because Flash ads are extremely annoying, going so far as to include annoying video and sound, or dumb interactive 'games' in the ads.

I block anything from doubleclick.net because of their history of violating the privacy of internet users and trying to tie anonymous web usage back to actual human beings.

I also block a lot of stuff just because I can as a way to assert my right to view and not view whatever I want on my computer. The media companies would have you believe that you must view ads to view their content. The Internet is the first medium in which the ads a user sees can actually be recorded, and frankly advertisers aren't liking what they're finding, which is that most people just don't pay attention to most ads unless they're extremely targeted. Fortunately new technologies are making it easier to generate really targeted ads without violating anyone's privacy.

I also block many ads because they're simply ugly.

Re:My reasons

[psyon1]

I noticed that problem with my a few of my pages as ad networks became bogged down. I found it better to put an IFRAME in place that loads another page with the ad. Most ad networks allow it, and it lets the page load up while the ad is delayed.

Re:My reasons

[Taevin]

I completely agree. Most of the time, I don't even look at the top part of the page because that's where the massive banner ads usually are. Especially so on those poorly designed sites; you know, the ones with large fonts and conflicting colors and sloppily laid out frames. Ads have cause me to become biased against sites created by people that are not trained well enough to create a clean looking website. Sometimes I just assume that poor looking sites like that are devoid of any useful information and filled with ads so I close that tab immediately. It can also be frustrating when a site then puts introductory information like the name or description of the site in the top area of the page (as it's natural to do), because I almost instantly scroll down when a page first loads to avoid the visual raping by a flashing banner.

An Ask Slashdot I would like to see is: Why do you (or anyone you know) put ads on your page? I mean unless you have massive traffic like sites like Slashdot have, are you actually making any money on them? For most people, the best they are probably going to do is cover their hosting costs. But really, web hosting is not that expensive. I'm not so self important to think that my personal webpage or an informational page that I put up is so valuable to people that they should accept being visually raped upon entering it. Am I the only one?

Re:My reasons

[ShieldW0lf]

1) Don't watch TV because of ads
2) Get my seat at the theater then go out for a smoke till a few minutes into the movie to avoid ads
3) Block internet ads
4) Crack the DVDs I rent and copy the vobs as the popcorn is popping so I don't have to watch the ads
5) Changed corner stores because the nearest one has an LCD screen at the checkout streaming ads
6) Never buy anything I've seen advertised as a matter of policy because I saw it advertised
7) Never buy my kid anything she's seen on TV because she saw it there
8) Don't listen to the radio

I do all this because I find mass advertising offensive. Makes me angry as hell. I honestly believe it makes you stupid. Since I stopped permitting them to brainwash me regularly, what little tolerance I had for it has disappeared and I honestly don't understand how people I go to visit can put up with watching TV or using IE.

Mass media advertising ought to be illegal as far as I'm concerned.

You misunderstand tolerance of acceptance.

[SmallFurryCreature]

Or perhaps what you describe has no word. Tolerance has a certain amount of "putting up with something", a very definete note of you not liking something but for now accepting it.

I think the huge amount of immigrants were tolerated like that. Sure some of the so called intellectuals just LOVED it all. Although I am one of those cynical people who happens to note that none of these so called intellectuals happen to live in immigrant neighbourhoods. Or even travel there.

Same as with ads, only a tiny percentage of people enjoy ads. For most of us, certainly myself they were never more then a necesarry evil, something to be tolerated because there really wasn't an alternative.

Just as there was no way to vote against immigrants before Pim Fortuyn arrived there was no way to not watch commercials before the arrival of tv torrents. Or indeed before the internet gave an alternative way to vegetate in front of a glowtube.

I think in both cases the irritation was tolerated until a certain treshhold was reached. Then when that was broken it just all burst out.

As to you calling Pim Fortuyn a right wing extremist. Most right wing extremist are well known for their hatred of Jews, Homosexuals and Women rights. Pim does certainly not qualify for hating any of them. Muslims do. The new extreme right does not wear jack boots, they were head scarfs. Only a true racist would claim that only white people can be racist.

The only reason I linked the two was because I think both are clear examples of people mistakingly believing people liked them and suddenly hated them. I think these kind of things fester for a long time until they suddenly erupt and then all the powers that be stand around scratching their heads and wondering what caused it. 10-30yrs of not regonizing enough is enough.

Re:My reasons

[ShieldW0lf]

I would prefer to do without. And where necessary, I do. And I'm raising a kid that will do the same.

So, in a word, yes.

Re:My reasons

[nahdude812]

No offense, but you didn't ask me for large publications, you asked me for any publications, and I listed several I myself subscribe to. You asserted that no such publications existed, and per your request, I (and several others) proved you wrong. FWIW, I'd considered several kid magazines (Zoo Magazine, Ranger Rick, Hilights), but decided not to include these since I think kid magazines should be excluded from consideration of "publications without advertising."

Your points about Consumer Reports objectivity are well received; they would almost certainly lose subscribers if any ads showed up at all.

National Geographic is a fantastic example, though, of how unnecessary advertising is in subscription magazines. This is not a small publication either in distribution, or in the length of the publication itself (it needs to be bound, not simply stapled). The articles in this magazine certainly cost tremendously more to research and produce than the articles in GQ, Cosmo, or Reader's Digest, yet they manage to do it without advertising.

It seems obvious to me that the other mags are purely focused on profit, and not with producing a good periodical. Therefore even a periodical which I found useful that was heavily advertising based, I'd avoid unless it was *necessary* for me to perform some function. Currently no ad-heavy periodicals meet that criteria, so I subscribe to none.

Re:My reasons

[SlartibartfastJunior]

I'm a librarian, and a good deal of what I do is help first-time internet users figure out the net, set up email, etc.

I HATE those "you won an Xbox!" ads because people invariably CLICK on them, expecting something, and I have to explain how they didn't really win anything. EVERY TIME. Then they come up to me complaining the Internet broke and they didn't get their Xbox. *sigh*

bill hicks

[jbridge21]

"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers, Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself. Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke... there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a friend - I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags! "Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags!
Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!
"Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a fucking web! "Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market - look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar..." How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don't you?"

Re:Vote with your wallet

[lowrydr310]

I don't like air pollution, or government-sponsored terrorism, so I bought a Toyota Prius.

Your Prius still pollutes and still requires gasoline, though it's considerably better than most cars out there.

California's new law allowing Hybrid cars to drive in carpool lanes is not very good. Honda makes a hybrid Accord that pollutes more and gets worse fuel economy than several non-hybrid cars. GM is about to release a hybrid pickup truck that only gets 10% better fuel economy than a standard truck - 10% of 15MPG is only 1.5MPG more (partly because the hybrid setup is primarily designed to provide 120V AC power outlets throughout the truck for contractors). Imagine that owners of these hybrids get rewarded in CA by being allowed to drive in the carpool lane!

Re:PARENT IS ALL YOU NEED

[Anonymous Coward]

I would add to this, sites that *require* javascript to 'close' the pop-up ad that is covering the information. There is one site I visit, where I end up viewing the page source to get the information I need as I refuse to enable javascript, just to clear their ads. If there was another site with that information, I would refuse to visit that site at all, as Java/Javascript shouldn't be required to read a page. The exception to that is if I am purchasing something, I'll enable javascript for that specific instance, and disable it afterwords.

They are easy to block

[danila]

Why do I block online ads? Because I can.

Advertising is evil. It is an attempt to manipulate me so that some corporation can profit while making stuff that noone needs. I turn TV sound off every time there is a commercial break (I don't watch TV myself, but I am sometimes present in a room when others do), I don't listen to radio ads. I throw away any paper spam, filter my e-mail and block online ad. As soon as I can use my augmented reality display to block real life ads, I will.

I once saw a reference to an old study that found that about 30% Americans would be willing to accept a lower standard of living as a price for eliminating all advertising. I am not surprised.