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

[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

[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.

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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.

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

[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

[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.

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: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

[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.

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?"