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

My reasons

[powerpuffgirls]

1. Most ads are taking too long to download. Even if I have broadband, I would rather use it on somewhere useful.

2. Most ads are too big and intrusive.

3. Most ads are irrelevant.

See the trend? That explains why Googld Ads is so successful.

Re:My reasons

[bilbravo]

I agree. Also, it's not the ads on sites that just sit there. It's the ones that take over, either by growing to the size of the web page and getting in your way (while you are clicking a link, etc), or have loud music... like a TV commercial. If it's just there, it can flash, dance, whatever--as long as it doesn't get in my way or scare the piss out of me when I'm not expecting to hear voices from my computer at 3am.

Re:My reasons

[FxChiP]

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

5. Many ads are scripted to invade your privacy without a thank-you note.

6. Most ads are just plain annoying.

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.

Re:My reasons

[Pizpump]

Screw Google's Adsense also. Ads are ads, targetted or not. Personally, I add any ad server's address I come across to my local "hosts" file (Windows XP). Since my machine believes that address is local, I get no ad.

Re:My reasons

[pcmanjon]

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

Magazines shouldn't have any. If a magazine costs 20 bucks a month, why should they have to use ads?

Re:My reasons

[sqlrob]

Yes. I previously left them unblocked, since they were at least somewhat relevant, and unobtrusive, especially compared to others.

Then I started seeing "Free iPod", "Free XBox360" (Huh? It's not out), "Free PS3", "Download Episode III here" ads. If you can't be bothered to have a human at least run a quick check on whether or not it's a fraud, I can't be bothered to even consider your ads.

Re:My reasons

[leshert]

If a magazine costs 20 bucks a month, why should they have to use ads?

Because it may cost 50 bucks a month to get it to you.

For most magazines and newspapers, ads are a much bigger source of revenue than subscriptions fees.

Re:My reasons

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

(in the following post, "you" and "your" refers to the advertisers, not the parent post)

If it's animated, I block it.

If it plays sound, I block the shit out of it. (I might be at work. Jeapordize my job by playing a noisy ad at a site that I actually need to go to for work purposes, and I might retaliate beyond blocking your ad) If it tries to install spyware or worse on my system, I'll definitely retaliate.

If it makes any use of Macromedia technology, particularly Shoskeles, I'll not only block it, I'll shitlist your company, and neither I nor the corporation I work for will ever pay you a fucking cent again.

If it's nice, static, and pertains to what I'm looking for at the moment, I might actually click on it. If I do, count yourself lucky. You're not entitled to my attention. Consider this like print media. You're paying for page space, and if that page space gets you business, yay for you. If it doesn't... your only recourse is to get over it and find a new page space to advertise in.

Re:My reasons

[jZnat]

Which is also why it's not uncommon to be able to get a free magazine subscription. As far as I remember, publishers get their money in proportion to how many subscriptions they sell, so the more the better, even if they have to give away many of those subscriptions for free in order to attract new subscribers.

Re:My reasons

[AuMatar]

Then fucking charge more. I'll pay for content, but I will *not* pay for ads. It would at least be understandable if it was free and had ads, but I will not accept both. And its very unlikely I'll read you even for free if you have ads, I'd rather pay for something where the author isn't going to try and annoy the hell out of me.

Re:My reasons

[MikeFM]

As both a developer that uses ads on many of his websites and a user that blocks ads I guess I feel both sides of the issue.

I didn't use ads for years because I felt they were to intrusive. Why did I decide to start using them? Mainly because ad blocking software was finally easily enough available and easy enough to use that I felt that being intrusive and adding download time didn't matter as much because users have the power to turn the ads off. Sometimes I even offer a button on my sites that will disbale ads for the user. The secondary reason is because users have told me time and again that they'd rather see ads than be charged a fee (even less than a dollar). Often I offer both as options. Paying members don't see ads and get more features but the basics are paid for by ads. For a long time I ran my websites completely from donations but in recent years (since about the time of the 911 attack) users have stopped donating. I've not been able to pinpoint the why but it seemed a very strong trend despite my sites continuing to grow. Loss of donations has forced me to use ads and charge for membership as loath as I am to use those methods. Oddly enough I've also noticed the more useful a website the less the ads get clicked. This seems a bad trend to me as it encourages websites of crap instead of making good information easily available. Two of my websites.. one gets about 500 unique visitors a day and contains solid Linux information.. the other gets about 100 visitors a day and is down right now and contains nothing but a notice that it'll be back up after I finish recoding it. The first site usually gets no clicks while the later gets about five per day. The same trend seems to hold among my other sites. Sort of encourages the building of dead-end or confussing websites.

I've tried a couple different ad programs. So far I like Yahoo's better than Google's because it doesn't load quite as slow and the ads pay better per click. On the other hand Yahoo does a poor job of rotating ads but I suspect this is due to their beta status.

Given that I make a living from ads why do I block them? Because they are freaking annoying. I don't read junk mail, spam email, watch tv, or read magazines that insert ads throughout the content. For myself I'd rather make donations to websites I like than pay for memberships or see ads. I'd be more willing to do memberships if they didn't overprice them. Usually I charge about $5/mo for my sites which is pretty reasonable. A site that charges more than that or that makes signing up painful I just won't use. Ads I'd use more if they weren't so often annoying to look at and inserted in inappropiate spots in the content. My perfered type of ad to see is a small paid sponsorship (~80x30 pixels) at the bottom of the menu or page. If I see such an ad I'll more often click on it especially if it looks well made (flashy but tasteful) and related to the site content.

Re:My reasons

[JesusCigarettes]

7. Profit?

Re:My reasons

[jim_v2000]

I think you forget that Ads are paying for the content of whatever page you are reading...including this one.

Re:My reasons

[pjkeyzer]

The flashing ones are the worst, in my opinion. I hate having a big blinking red thing at the top of the page that says "you're a winner, click here to claim your prize" (or whatever it says, i've blocked them long ago). I use a hosts file to block ads, but I would not block Google ads because they are relevant, and are occasionally useful. Google ads stay out of the way, and I only notice them if I try.

Pete

Re:My reasons

[KylePflug]

Adblock is a much more effective means to the same end.

Re:My reasons

[NeuroKoan]

Very true.

Most magazines and newspapers could be given away for free, but they charge a nominal fee to create a percieved value. It is strange, but that free paper is for some reason less desirable then the one that costs 50 cents. If it is free, then the opinions and articles inside must be of a lower intellectual value.

But, on the other hand, if papers and magazines charged their real cost + profit without ads, then no one would buy because the price would be too high.

Re:My reasons

[AchilleTalon]

7. Some ads are masking text from the site you are browsing with sliding panels which don't slide back properly and keep parts of the text you want to read masked. I suppose they are made to work with IE.

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

Re:My reasons

[number11]

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

There are magazines I do not buy because of the ads. I do find ads somewhat more tolerable in mags because: they don't move or flash or try to play music; I can flip pages faster than I can load new screens; I can riffle and jump in on page 30 without having to plow through the intervening ads; the load time for an ad is almost always exactly the same.. significantly less than a second); and, the visual page of a mag (and even more so a newspaper) is large enough (and the layout is usually consistent enough) so that it's easy for the eye to avoid the ads.

TV, being linear, forces the ads to the exclusion of anything else, which is annoying in a different way. At least they're not in your field of vision while the stuff you want to watch is happening. And because they monopolize the TV, they serve as timeouts, time to go grab a beer, run to the bathroom, yell at the cat. I watch very little TV (at home, probably not more than a couple of hours in the last year).

Re:My reasons

[Spy der Mann]

You can always tear up the magazine ads and use them to power up your boiler, or cover some part of the house while you're painting :)
Try that with Flash ads.

Re:My reasons

[mpn14tech]

Also just as annoying or amusing is when I do searches and get google ads to find bessel functions on ebay, quarks at pricegrabber or other irrelevant nonsense.

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:My reasons

[Chrispy1000000 the 2]

The ones that I like the least are the ones that tend to lag on loading, , not allowing the rest of the page to be displayed, even if they are not a integral part of the page structure.

Re:My reasons

[freaktheclown]

Jews
Looking for Jews?
Find exactly what you want today
www.eBay.com

Re:My reasons

[StevenMaurer]

8. Many kinds of (flash) ads surprise you with sound. This can be highly annoying for casual browsing at work (or home when the family is asleep).

9. Some ads surprise you with things that - depending on your work environment - might be considered Not Safe For Work. Surprisingly, this usually isn't porn sites (which I don't surf anyway), but things like risque cartoons and Sports Illustrated body painting.

10. Because I can. Seriously - if there was a way to delete all ads from TV, wouldn't most people do it?

This isn't to say that advertising isn't effective with me. I often turn on ads for specialty sites that I'm using to research what sort of product to purchase. Quite frankly, this is the most effective time to reach me anyway, since I've usually made up my mind that I need something and am making decisions about it.

Re: My Reasons

[lordofthechia]

But if you don't look at the ads it's like you're stealing the internet!

Re:My reasons

[negative3]

http://www.pierceive.com/ has a damn good filterset for Firefox adblock. I've hardly had a problem using it, and it is much easier to grab the new one than constantly adding sites to your own list (especially when you're too lazy to export it to another pc).

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

[StikyPad]

Some people will laugh with you, but the rest of us are laughing at you while we get bargain prices on quarks and bessel functions.

Re:My reasons

[StikyPad]

...or cover some part of the house while you're painting :) Try that with Flash ads.

Actually, the Flash ads worked fine, but removing the paint from my laptop afterwards was a bitch.

Re:My reasons

[Technician]

6. Most ads are just plain annoying.


Especialy those that glue themselves right over the text you are trying to read. I have yet to buy a magazine where an ad was pasted over the article and took 10 seconds to peel up to read the text underneath.

I started blocking pop-ups when X10 made themselves a pain in the butt. I removed macromedia when Yahoo loaded up in interstitials that covered the content. From there I was on a roll and obtained hosts files. It started when ads got big time IN YOUR FACE

Re:My reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

google ads are not that bad as the ones that say "YOU HAVE SPYWARE DOWNLOAD THIS!!!"
or "YOU ARE A WINNER CLICK HERE AND SUBMIT YOU EMAIL ADDRESS"

there normaly plain text and have something to do with the website your viewing.

what i hate the most is adverts that claim they scanned your computer/registery and found spyware. when your not even using windows.

Re:My reasons

[X0563511]

There was a new "advertisement" on top of that one right there:

Offensive Search Results
We're disturbed about these results
as well. Please read our note here.
www.google.com/explanation

Re:My reasons

[aichpvee]

The ones I hate the most are the ones not caught by my current privoxy setup. Though the ones you mention are a close second.

Re:My reasons

[Rob_Warwick]

Once eBay's ads told me that they had all the Evil Monkeys I'd need.

Now I shop at eBay.

Re:My reasons

[coaxial]

The flashing ones aren't the worse. The new floating ads that fly around over the main page and force you to click on them to make them go away are the worst. I hate those things. I can't wait until gecko and khtml come up with a new ad blocking scripts.

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

[Total_Wimp]

...or have loud music...

Nothing is more annoying than looking for some important (or trivial) piece of info at work and all of a sudden everyone hears music/sound effects/an announcer coming from your cube. I've actually taken to surfing with the sound off to avoid this. I shouldn't have to.

Anyone who puts automatic sound on their web site should be slapped around with rotting chicken legs and left in a kennel naked overnight. I don't even care if it wasn't an ad. Trust me, that MIDI you love actually sucks way more than you think it does. Honest. If you think I'll love it so much then furgodsake at least gimme a button to click on first. I beg of you.

TW

Re:My reasons

[rcbarnes]

I propose the following punishment for all internet advertisers who use invasive ads:

1) Strip advertiser naked.
2) Nail his (odds are he's male) penis to a tree.
3) Hand him a butter knife.
4) Set the tree on fire.

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

[Proc6]

Hear, hear. Incidentally, that's (one reason) why I DO subscribe to Consumer Reports. No paid ads. Period.

I hate to be the one to break this to you, but Consumer Reports is one giant paid ad. They consistantly rate Bose speakers as top quality audiophile products for Christ sakes.

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

[dr_d_19]

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..

Typical geeks. Your mum has to eat cat food, and your concern is the HTML vs Flash conflict.

Re:My reasons

[Fred_A]

What's the matter with you, what do you have against trees ?

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

[harlows_monkeys]

Ads are ads, targetted or not

Isn't that kind of an irrational attitude?

Unless you have so much money that you have no interest in getting a bargain on your purchases, or have such complete knowledge of all fields in which you purchase that you are aware of the prices from all suppliers of your goods, why would you want to get rid of all ads, rather than just the ones that are intrusive or off target?

Re:My reasons

[hedge_death_shootout]

Hey - interesting story. I tried to find out about it and found this, which seems to confirm the existence of the ad, but contradict you on its successfulness:

[snip]...A positive example of such an attitude was realised in the advertising campaign [for Pollena 2000] of 1990-1996 in the strategic use of quotations from a very famous canon trilogy by the nineteenth-century writer Henryk Sienkiewicz. [...] The high level of satisfaction was gained by virtue of reference to the common archive of quotations. The linguistic pun and the historical scenery imitating the novel's reality took the audience by storm. It was a great commercial success which some agencies tried to repeat[snip]

This makes it sound like the ad worked and the crafty Poles got the reference.

Re:My reasons

[masklinn]

They don't move, they don't blink, they don't annoy, they don't take half my fucking screen estate, and you can skin them to at least fit the color scheme of your website.

Re:My reasons

[jrumney]

I stopped buying Wired when the ad content overtook the article content in volume. That and the articles' target audience seemed to change from technical to dotCom business folk.

Re:My reasons

[permaculture]

Yes. Once I was researching studies on second hand tobacco smoke.

Ebay offered me 'great bargains on 2nd hand tobacco.'

Uh huh?

Re:My reasons

[muzzmac]

15 Naked advertisers. You?

Re:My reasons

[Petersson]

10. Because I can. Seriously - if there was a way to delete all ads from TV, wouldn't most people do it?

Remove all ads from TV and couch potatoe generation will suffer from bladder rupture. Sure someone will sue you for that...

Re:My reasons

[TheRaven64]

The worst ones are those that use Flash, and eat 100% of my CPU to do something that is more or less the equivalent of an animated GIF. When you are mobile, it's a real pain to suddenly hit one of these and watch your battery life plummet. For this reason I disabled Flash.

Slashdot take note: I am happy to put up with banner ads if they don't consume too many resources, but I simply will not see anything that uses Flash. Perhaps you should make it a condition of advertising on your site - you and El Reg are the only sites I've noticed missing out from this policy.

Re:My reasons

[nahdude812]

This is largely it for me. Several of my favorite sites have ad services that may take 15-20 seconds to load an ad, and because they are simply they halt the rest of the page from loading or displaying while the ad loads. Because often I'm using such sites as reference sites, and I might click around 6-8 times to get to the information I'm really looking for, even 10 seconds waiting per page per ad adds up real quickly. That's a surefire way to get in my adblock. The other thing that gets on my adblock is ads which interfere with my information consumption in other ways, such as being excessively annoying, having sound, or appearing over content.

Honestly I'm more liberal about what ads I'll view and pay attention to on web pages than I am on TV. I skip almost all TV ads immediately (pvr), and very rarely watch live TV simply because of how annoying advertising is.

I don't buy magazines that are advertising heavy. Why do people spend so much money on those magazines such as GQ which are 75% ads? I prefer small publications which are capable of subsisting on their subscriptions alone, or few relevant ads. I subscribe to several of these, and actually find their content to be more interesting than main stream publications.

Re:My reasons

[ArsenneLupin]

Yea but you go in trying to buy just 1 quark but they allways sell you 2...

Actually 3.

If you find a package that has just two quarks, one of them is certainly an antiquark, so you better bring that back for a refund!

Re:My reasons

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Ebay also claims to have all the Plutonium you need..

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

[HaydnH]

Slashdot take note: I am happy to put up with banner ads if they don't consume too many resources, but I simply will not see anything that uses Flash. Perhaps you should make it a condition of advertising on your site - you and El Reg are the only sites I've noticed missing out from this policy.

There are ads on /.??

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 /. .

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

[bellers]

You charge $5 a month for membership to your site? I think thats way above my pain threshold. Your site costs exactly 20% of my total monthly internet bill. Do you think your site is worth 20% of the entire internet?

I don't. Hell, I squick in pain every year when I give Salon.com $20, and thats only a buck and change every month. At $60, they could go screw. There's no website in the world I'd pay $60 for.

Re:My reasons

[JerkBoB]

Bravo, sir!

It's a rare /. comment that gets me to belly-laugh. My hat's off to you.

Re:My reasons

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

Ad-free magazines simply do not exist anymore. There aren't any. Not one single one. Prove me wrong.

Consumer Reports Magazine???

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

[Johnny5000]

So maybe that answers your question "Why do people spend money on magazines that contain ads?" Because they all do. Ad-free magazines simply do not exist anymore. There aren't any. Not one single one. Prove me wrong.

Adbusters?

Re:My reasons

[Bam359]

How about National Geographic?

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.

Re:My reasons

[Phisbut]

There really should be a plugin that lets you limit the amount of CPU usage that a plugin can use.

But if that plugin would require quite a bit of CPU usage to prevent the other plugins from eating up your CPU, we'd be pretty fucked now, wouldn't we?

Re:My reasons

[TimTheFoolMan]

What most people don't realize is that their subscription does not pay for the magazine. The ads do.

For a color magazine, the production costs are huge, even in large volumes. The subscription cost simply "qualifies" the reader. This is why magazine subscriptions are priced like airline seats: two subscribers who bought on the same day from a bingo card (one that fell out of the magazine) may get very different rates. The subscriber who pays more is deemed "more serious" about the subject, simply because they're more willing to shell out $$ for information on the subject. If the mag can prove to subscribers that they hit enough of those readers, then they can justify ads for more expensive products, and/or drive up the ad rates accordingly.

The old Cobb Group publications of the 80's and early 90's (I was the Editor-in-Chief of some of the developer pubs) were all subscription driven, and people were massively annoyed that they only got 16 pages of content for $49/year. They were insistent that we didn't need to use ads, and could somehow bulk mail glossy, 75-page mags with no ads, and not charge $400/year. Even for 16-page 2-color publications, it typically cost $2 to get a copy in a subscriber's hand, and that's not counting marketing and overhead costs.

As for my reasons for blocking ads, it's primarily because of a complete lack of relevance. On the other hand, I recognize that I tend to keep the publications from knowing too much about me, which no doubt affects their potential ability to present relevant ads to me.

Tim

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*

Re:My reasons

[accelleron]

He was being sarcastic or hypocritical.

In today's world, it's impossible to avoid buying advertised products. The important thing is to know how to look past the hype and decide which products/offers have value, and which do not. Sometimes, advertisements help us do that (i.e. find a product we needed but otherwise would not have found, or inform us about the best available deal.) The reaction some people have displayed (I will not buy it because advertisement sucks) is the polar opposite to the "buy it because I saw an ad for something and now I feel I really need it" reaction, and is equally stupid. Advertisements are not completely worthless, and although I'd rather see them take up a much lesser part of our everyday lives, I'm not ready to turn amish and live on a farm without electricity to avoid them.

Ehh

[andreyw]

Eyesore. Waste of screen real estate. Invasion of privacy.

Re:Ehh

[andreyw]

Also with magazines I do not have a choice - can't remove them, plus at least they don't obscure content as some of the more-annoying popus do.

To protect privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

I block ads to protect my privacy. Why is it that advertisers always feel the need to use cookies? Because they want to track me from site-to-site. That offends me. Thus I refuse to cooperate with them. If they would just respect my privacy, I would have no problem with them.

UI

[nothings]

I block ads so that when I right click on the page to pick "back" from the context menu I don't accidentally click on an ad and get "open link in new window" or some other random crap in the top of my context menu with no "back" at all.

Oh, and maybe to speed up page loading.

And to stick it to the man.

And to save electrons.

annoying animations

[danpritts]

static ads don't bother me so much, but blinking, flashing, moving junk drives me nuts.

Flashblock for firefox solves 95% of this problem nicely.

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.

Re:annoying animations

[roach2002]

Setting, in about:config, image.animation_mode to "once" will finish off the rest!

Hope this helps

Because I can!

[Anonymous Coward]

If I could block ads in magazines, or stop them on TV I would.

because they are annoying

[Raleel]

flash, popup, anything to catch my attention, and I'll for sure try and block you, because I'm not an impulse shopper. I plan my purchases.

I hate how some companies feel that making sure you have 10 windows open on your desktop isa good way to do business. Get in the way of what I'm doing on the web, and I'll certainly have a negative image of your company.

Re:because they are annoying

[Jim Starx]

I never agreed to any social contract. Just because a company wants to throw advertising in my face does not mean that I'm obligated to let them.

Re:because they are annoying

[Buran]

Maybe. However, that doesn't create an obligation for anyone to do what the network wants. I should also point out that a lot of the backlash they're seeing right now is due to their increasingly annoying people with the ads. I recently watched a movie at my parents' house (they don't have a TiVo; I do) and it was teeth-grindingly annoying because the ad breaks were not only frequent, but very long. This behavior is new (I used to watch TV live all the time and it wasn't anywhere near this bad) and it has pushed more and more people over the edge to the point where they use DVRs or other methods of skipping the ads or at least fast-forwarding through them, like using VCRs or BitTorrent files.

It is rather laughable to me that they complain about people skipping the advertisements -- that came about in large part because the advertisements have gotten more and more insufferable and the actual content shorter and shorter. Instead of doing the right thing and actually fixing the problems (less of it, make it more interesting; I'll watch a good ad but those are too rare these days), they just pile on more crap and then go whining when people protest.

Right now they have little sympathy from the public. They have the power to fix this by catering to what the public wants (less intrusiveness and better content and more content), and they don't. I'm not obligated to help them out any so long as they aren't helping me out any.

They violated their end of the bargain by making people feel that it's no longer worth it. People now have the power to fight back instead of passively taking it, and I'm not going to start passively taking it just because an exec doesn't like it. Big Media is too used to force-feeding us what they think we want the way we think we want it.

Times have changed. The power is ours now.

Sound

[EvanED]

FlashBlock with Firefox. I didn't used to block anything but popups, but when they started to use sound in ds, I was fed up.

Because I can

[dnixon112]

With a DVR you can skip TV ads, and I do. With pop-up blockers and user stylesheets you can remove internet ads. Gets quite a bit harder to get rid of magazine ads, but maybe that's why I hardly buy magazines anymore. I'd rather pay a small fee for quality content if ads were not generating enough revenue.

56k

[PhireN]

I Block ads because they take too long to load on my 56k modem.

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."

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

[Lemmy Caution]

You may not understand fashionistas, but they aren't simply idiotic. They are simply playing an entirely different game than you are - one that has its own rewards and advantages.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

And in Maxim and similar magazines, the ads have just as many half-naked women as the main content, so it's all good.

Re:Computer Shopper

[luna69]

Cultural relativism! Woohoo!

People engaged in insipid, useless, self-referential activities are not just 'playing a different game'. They're playing a dumb game, demonstrably.

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.

Magazines

[superpulpsicle]

If I bought a magazine and all the articles were blocked by Ads, I'd be pretty pissed.

And if I had to pay extra $$$ to read the same magazine with the articles unblocked, I'd be even more pissed.

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.

Magazine Ad Overload

[RaguMS]

Recently in Barnes & Noble, I remarked to my friends, "I won't buy magazines because they're all full of ads. Why can't they make a magazine with no ads?", to which one friend responded, "What you want is a book."

Re:Magazine Ad Overload

[mph]

Or, maybe you want a magazine with no ads. Like Consumer Reports or Cook's Illustrated, both of which sell for a reasonable price.

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:Magazine Ad Overload

[RaguMS]

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

I have this sinking feeling that it's already happened - you and I just haven't seen them yet.

Re:Magazine Ad Overload

[John Miles]

I have this sinking feeling that it's already happened - you and I just haven't seen them yet.

Surf through enough old paperbacks with copyright dates from the 1940s-1970s in a used bookstore, and you'll probably find some ads. Especially in book-club printings and other editions that were sold at a discount. I'm not sure exactly when this practice died out, or why, but it has definitely been done.

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.

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.

if not ads, who should pay for content?

[UnderAttack]

So who should pay for content if ads shouldn't? Would you "subscribe" to a website?

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

[JanneM]

So who should pay for content if ads shouldn't? Would you "subscribe" to a website?

Mostly no. Because most media is not good enough to be worth paying for. And yes, if that means it will not get created at all, then so be it. Nobody has a right to make a living creating content. If you can't make it compelling enough for your audience to pay for it (whether eyeball time, clicks or cash) then you should "realign" your business.

There is plenty of content of all kinds out there created as a labour of love, as a loss leader for other stuff or that manages to draw in enough bucks through ads or sponsorship.

I used to like reading the NYTimes colmunists. They are not always (or ever frequently) right; some columnists are probably a danger to my blodd pressure. But they are always very well written, and at least nominally thought through. Now they've disappeared behing a pay wall. Do I pay? Nope. There's punditry of similar quality to have by the ton out there. I see no reason to pay a substantial sum to read those particular good writers when I could spend all my waking hours reading other writers just as good already.

Something like Salon I could imagine paying for if the quality was more even. As it is, their "watch an ad" is nonintrusive enough (you see the ad before reading the content, not during) and reasonable enough that I do so instead.

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:if not ads, who should pay for content?

[thevoice99]

You're paying $50 for the right and ability to access content. People who make the content don't get any part of that $50. One way or another content is going to get paid for whether it be through ads or subscriptions. If I were to say build a machine that blocks all the commercials from being shown on TV. How can I expect my favorite show to be able to hire actors, a crew, etc. to continue filming if they get no money at all? This is not to say I like ads but if you go to a website and like their content either turn off your ad blocker or send them some money otherwise you arn't doing them a favor by visiting.

I think the better question is..

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not?

Re:I think the better question is..

[Ugly American]

Because blocking ads takes effort.

Using adblock and a hosts file requires practically no effort at all. There's even a filterset.g updater extension now, so all I have to do is check every once in a while for updates to the hosts file and right-click + "adblock image" on anything that filterset.g doesn't get.

For that minimal investment of effort, I get improved page load times on my 28.8k connection and I no longer have to put up with the all-singing, all-dancing ads. It's well worth it.

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.

Re:Pointless and useless

[Nqdiddles]

Not to mention the fact that if it's an actual product they're offering it's usually in another country, irrelevant and the wrong voltage for me.
Or illegal to ship internationally.
Relevance really is the key, and I WILL click on static text ads that have some relevance to what I'm looking at.

Hrmm

[oman_]

These sound like the kind of questions an advertiser would ask in order to make more effective (intrusive) ads.

Anyone remember Computer Shopper?

[Asprin]

Back in the early '90s, we used to buy Computer Shopper magazine *specifically* *because* of the ads. That thing was at least 2 inches thick; not like today's version.

Ads don't target me, so why waste my time

[geoskd]

Most ads on TV, web pages, bullboards and anywhere else they put them just annoy me. If I am looking for a product of some kind, I look online, and do research on whats available. That is why I block ads in pop up windows, and immediately close all windows which do make it through. That is why I don't watch live TV anymore, but TIVO everything and watch it later. I appreciate that those same ads subsidize much of my entertainment experience (oh but wait, I *pay* for Cable TV access, and I *pay* for Network access, and I *pay* for music, and I *pay* for movies). Maybe the prices are less than what I would pay otherwise, but I am certain that many of the products I purchase would be cheaper if the manufacturers didn't waste so much money advertising to a market full of people like me. I am just surprised that they havn't figured out the hint by now.

-=geoskd

www.geoskd.com

why do...

[UnanimousCoward]

...dogs lick their balls?

Re:why do...

[Barnoid]

...dogs lick their balls?

because they can.

and don't tell me you have never tried... ;-)

My health.

[The Ancients]

I'd rather not find out I suffer from epilepsy due to a simple bout of web surfing.

That would just be plain unfair.

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.

Here you go

[Kris_J]

why do you block ads?

They're visually annoying and distracting. They're a waste of bandwidth. Sometimes they're even noisy.

And with what?

A .hosts file, Firefox's built-in popup blocker, Adblock for Firefox, Flashblocker for Firefox and Proxomitron with the JD5000 ruleset.

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

Nope. If I'm unfortunate enough to be watching a program live, I mute the ads. If I'm watching it later, I fast-forward.

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

Yes. There are magazines I stopped buying because they became all ads and no content. The only magazine I currently subscribe to has no ads.

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

If my ad-blocker causes problems with a site I decide if it's worth turning it off. If not, I move on and typically never come back to that site.

Out of place and annoying

[Swimmin' Pants]

I typically only block ads if they cause problems with a page's layout. Many of the webcomics I read will have it set up so that the ads fit in nicely (and sometimes are even relevant to my interests!), but with a lot of sites, they'll have ads in the middle of the screen or will actually be causing me problems with reading the page due to layout issues.

Also: Sound in internet ads is completely unforgivable, due to the fact that I'm listening to music quite often while browsing webpages.

As for television ads, I find that most of them are completely abnoxious, and getting my DVR made television viewing far, far more enjoyable an experience.

what goes up, must....

[efuseekay]

Ads are also the money maker that gives Google the capital so they can bring you more Cool Stuff(tm).

Why Do You Block Ads?

[John Hasler]

> why do you block ads?

Because I find them irritating.

> And with what?

Privoxy.

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

Don't watch TV.

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

Yes (but I very rarely buy magazines anyway).

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.

You can stop them on TV...

[spagetti_code]

using MythTV. Strips them out automatically. Sadly misses the odd one, but I have 'skip30' and 'back5' buttons on my remote to solve that - 7 or 8 quick clicks past the ads, then back to the start of the prog.

I haven't seen an ad in many months. TV has improved out of sight for me.

Re:You can stop them on TV...

[cbreaker]

Not HDTV. Sure, if you have an OTA HDTV card you could do it, but for cable TV unfortunately most cable companies are stopping this quite effectively by encrypting most (or some key) digital channels requiring the use of their boxes. It wouldn't be the end of the world, but there's just about zero capture boards available to record over DVI or Component. (Some exist, but are extremely expensive (15K+) and for professional AV shops.)

DRM is killing home-brew video, and it's pushing Linux to the side when it comes to A/V applications.

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.

The POed Factor

[MBCook]

I don't ad-block on the 'net (I use Safari and I don't know of an equivalent to Firefox's ad-block extension). But I do have a TiVo and I skip commercials.

So why? There are many reasons. Lets start with the net. While they take time to download and eat up CPU cycles (I've always wondered how much battery life Flash ads eat up when surfing the 'net on battery), there is a bigger reason.

What do ads look like on the 'net these days. Are they simple? Are they like google ads or the banner ads of yesterday? No, I see 3 things. I see large moving objects covered with names of states trying to sell me mortgages (peacocks, palm trees, all sorts of crud). I see 20 smiley faces dancing and bouncing like all those stupid pages people put up when animated GIFs first appeared. Last thing? Shoo the _____ to win a _____. DO IT NOW. NOW NOW NOW. TRY IT. WIN A ______. CLICK HERE.

Yeah, THOSE make me want to try/buy. Some companies ads are fine (the MS ads here on Slashdot are fine with me). But because people don't click them (see reasons above), they have decided to make things worse. Now they open BIG WINDOWS when you mouse over (or just enter a page). They bounce things around your browser window. They play sounds and songs and other crud. I keep my computer muted all the time (unless I'm listening to music) for precisely this reason. I got tired of surfing and randomly having some loud car-screech-peel-out or stupid music.

TV? I watch more ads than ever. Instead of being annoyed by most (BUY THIS CAR NOW AT JOE BOB FORD), I can skip all that. But when fast-forwarding if I see something that catches my eye I'll stop and watch it out of curiosity. No longer are am I just "watching" the ads (in the sense I'm in the room and theoretically watching TV), now I actually WATCH them. I don't tend to miss any commercials that I wish I'd seen (haven't heard about any good ones recently I didn't already know about). Interesting ads work, but it is only because of my TiVo I even bother.

As for radio, things have gotten worse also. That is one of the reasons (there are MANY others) that I've moved to listening to NPR so much (and my iPod even more).

My biggest complaint with mass media has to be how smutty it is. It used to be you could watch TV or listen to the radio. Now if I watch TV I get to see "male enhancement" ads, some of the most appalling and horrifying ads I've seen in my life (Tag body spray, Axe shower gel, some gum brand, and some others). Radio is the same. Everything I watch/listen to wants to sell me male enhancement drugs, recreational sex drugs (Viagra et al), some scan diet pill (that is probably causing millions of people kidney disease), 12 year olds dressed like hookers ('cause it's COOL), etc.

There are some fun commercials, and I've watched 'em. I enjoyed the iPod commercials, the Old Navy swing commercials from years ago, HP's recent printer campaign with the photos, and many others. The Toyota Prius commercial (from the Super Bowl) and many others have been great. But to watch those I get assaulted by tons of stuff that annoys me (car ads), sickens me (male enhancement), or just makes me want to cry that something like that would be broadcast (Tag body spray, Axe shower gel, etc).

But the biggest problem, the BIGGEST problem is seeing the same commercial 3 times per show. For every show. On every network. Non-stop play. Same thing over and Over and OVER and OVER.

I've heard rumblings of going back to "Kraft Foods presents: Medium on CBS". That's fine with me. I can't WAIT. It has GOT to be better than what we have now. And for those of you saying "Just give up on TV and watch the shows when they come out on DVD", I'm VERY close to that. VERY close.

Whether you agree with my stance on certain commercials being vulgar/etc; you have to admit... commercials seem to be trying to get louder and more annoying (like car dealership commercials are the best thing out there or something).

Re:The POed Factor

[RLiegh]

Whether you agree with my stance on certain commercials being vulgar/etc; you have to admit...

I grew up during the free-wheeling 70's, and I pride myself on being less prudish and repressed than pretty much anyone I (currently) know. However, that said, I always wince whenever I'm eating dinner and a masingil ad comes on, or seeing an commercial for herpes while I'm watching a movie, and yeah I get offended over the Viagra ads too (mostly because of the shyster factor).

This is all during the late afternoon, early evening; it's not a matter of being purient; it's a matter of being gross. I don't want to hear about herpes, diarrhea, yeast infections or impotence while I'm trying to relax.

It's just fucking gross.

Ads?

[mswope]

- All ads. period.

If I want something, I know how to look for it. If I can't find it, oh well...

If someone has to *tell me* that I need something, do I really need it?

mas

Paging Dr. Freud

[Anonymous Coward]

Dr. Freud to the front desk please...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I block them on TV too...

[gnarlin]

I have only one thing to say to you. Bittorrent!
Oh, and Ni!

JunkBuster / Privoxy

[molo]

I block ads with JunkBuster, but plan on moving to Privoxy soon. JunkBuster is showing its age (only support HTTP 1.0, etc.). I find adverts distracting and a waste of bandwidth. I've also started downloading TV shows that interest me so that I can watch them without the ads. Cuts down on viewing time by 20% or more.. and the quality is better than over-the-air analog.

-molo

Invasion of privacy issue

[jd]

This is often not an obvious one, but it's probably the biggest difference between web adverts and, say, magazine ads. Magazine ads can't identify you when you go to the page they are on. The very act of downloading the image of the advert, however, will log your IP address, the page you came from, the web browser you are using, possibly the Operating system you are using, and maybe even the language setting you have the web browser on.

That's a hell of a lot of marketing information that is being trawled for, without permission from anyone.

Those who view HTML-based e-mail have similar problems - any spam you open with a blank, embedded image link (provided you view images) will result in the spammer instantly obtaining vast amounts of data about you.

To me, that is simply NOT acceptable. If you think that Big Brother is bad (and not just the show), then Big Ad Exec is far, far worse.

Besides which, I was born in the UK, grew up on advert-free television, and resent the hell out of having 20-30 minutes of adverts for every hour timeslot on American TV. If I wanted to watch promotional material, with clips of TV show included, I'd go to one of the home shopping channels, thank you very much. I do not choose to go to the lairs of thieves and I never invited those lairs to come to me.

As you might have gathered, I don't watch much TV in America.

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:Invasion of privacy issue

[MonoSynth]

Those who view HTML-based e-mail have similar problems - any spam you open with a blank, embedded image link (provided you view images) will result in the spammer instantly obtaining vast amounts of data about you.

The worse thing is that those 'images' are in fact just asp or php scripts (with binary output of a 1x1 transparent gif) that can be used for sending all sorts of information. 'http://spam.com/white.gif?id=34512' can give them as much information as replying to the spam.

That's why you shouldn't load external images from e-mails you don't trust.

Re:Invasion of privacy issue

[aug24]

There is one reason, and one reason only to watch ordinary TV in America.

You and your flatmate take turns flipping channels. First one to hit a car ad makes the coffee. You never wait more than 90 secs.

Justin.
(With thanks to Mark Williment)

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.

Re:Google Ads

[AuMatar]

I block google ads. They're less annoying, but thats like saying someone who punches you in the face is less of an asshole than someone who kicks you in the nuts.

Because it's my money

[Jekler]

I pay for bandwidth therefore I should be able to choose what uses the bandwidth I pay for. The model of ad delivery on the internet is different than a magazine. Before you buy the magazine you can, theoretically, determine how much space is taken up by advertisements and decide if it's a fair trade for your money. With internet ads, you pay first, and you find out how much bandwidth is taken up by an ad after you get it.

Time is limited, advertising isn't a fair trade for my time. I lose minutes of my life, what do I get out of it?

I use the adblock extension for Firefox. Before that, I used Ad-Shield for Internet Explorer.

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 block and avoid as much as possible

[vorpal22]

I would like to use Opera, as it seems to run faster than Firefox on OS X, but given that it doesn't offer something like adblock, as far as I'm concerned, the web is unusable with it. I'm a very easily distracted and hyperstimulated person (I suspect that I'm a high functioning person with Asperger's syndrome), and the nature of ads these days is so obnoxious (shaking banner ads, bright and flashing colours that can have no purpose other than to induce epileptic seizures) that unless I block these graphics, I feel physically sick after several hours of using the web and cannot focus on the content of the page I'm trying to read. Because of this, I've blocked all the ads I've come across, and for months now that I have adblock configured to my liking, I've seldom seen a single one.

I feel similarly about movies and television. The ads on both of these mediums are designed to grab attention and maintain it, but I find them too intensive; the constant movement, colour, etc. makes me dizzy and anxious to the point that I feel extremely unpleasant and need to retreat to my home to relax. I now download ad-free content using Bittorrent and watch all my TV shows sans ads and my movies in the comfort of my own home, free of charge. Is this stealing? Absolutely, but given the psychologically manipulative tactics used in advertising these days, I don't particularly care. I'm fully aware that two wrongs don't make a right, but I feel no inclination to behave with the slightest bit of decency towards industries that treat me in such a vile manner.

(On the other hand, I fully do support companies that I feel treat me well. I happily pay for their products. I go see my favourite musicians in concert and buy their albums and make a point of saving money beforehand so that I can buy their albums and merchandise there to show my appreciation for them.)

The whole point of advertising these days is to be as intrusive as possible. For example, in Toronto right now, a movie theatre along one of our major highways, the QEW, wants to erect a huge LCD screen to present highway drivers with movie previews. The problem is that their proposed screen surpasses the size limitations set by the city. They're fighting to change the bylaws. Opponents are claiming that the ad will distract drivers and increase the probability of accidents, while the movie company is stating that there is no evidence of such a thing. The sad thing is that the city is even considering it, from my understanding. The entire purpose of the screen, it seems to me, is to distract drivers as the screen is not visible to anyone other than people in cars on this highway, so I can't even fathom how the theatre's claim has any merit whatsoever. It boggles my mind.

I mean, we're constantly being bombarded by advertising. Now when I go to the gas station, I have LCD screens ON THE GAS MACHINES blaring loud advertisements in my face. Similarly for the subway stations, which have essentially become painted with ads for TV shows. The hubcaps of taxis are now advertisements for TV stations. It's rare that I have a day where I don't end up using a urinal that forces ads into my face. Often, these ads are so wasteful from a resource perspective that I can't wrap my mind around it; for example, we have a TV show up here in Canada called Canada's Worst Driver. One of their advertising mechanisms is for a tow-truck to pull around a severely decimated car with a huge advertisement for the show printed on the side of the car. This is permissible in an era where gas prices are soaring and smog is becoming a huge problem in Toronto?

How can I possibly show even the slightest hint of respect for an industry that gladly stomps on my toes at every possible opportunity it gets? As far as I'm concerned, there is no lifeform worth less on the face of this planet than those in advertising, who bring almost nothing beneficial or worthy to the table of humanity, only forcing more mental pollution upon us. I once met someone with whom I was quite compatible, but upon hearing that this person was in college studying marketing, I sent them packing as I could never date someone with those ambitions, regardless of how amazingly we got along.

Re:I block and avoid as much as possible

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that I'm a high functioning person with Asperger's syndrome

Self-diagnosis is a more serious condition than any condition itself. If you truly believe this to be the case then see a doctor. Assuming you are when you are not will not enable you to resolve anything; not seeking a professional's assistance when you are will not resolve anything.

Your belief is a few steps away from hypochondria, and the self-involved nature of many slashdotters (and Asperger patients) leaves them more vulnerable to such things.

Seriously, if your friend had a rootkit installed they would come to you; if you had a malaise you would see a doctor.

Re:I block and avoid as much as possible

[st0rmshad0w]

I use opera and use Mike's Ad-blocking Host File (goole it I'm lazy) to get rid of the majority of ads. Works pretty well.

Re:I block and avoid as much as possible

[dzurn]

It's rare that I have a day where I don't end up using a urinal that forces ads into my face.

Uhh, then you might be using it incorrectly.

I don't.

[NanoGator]

I don't block ads. I block annoyances, such as popups. I don't mind the ads. I certainly prefer them to having to pay subscription fees. Then again, ads these days are far less annoying than they were 3 or 4 years ago. Heck, I even find the occasional thinkgeek ad interesting. I don't think advertising is automatically evil. I can understand being against the annoyance, but I've seen so many extreme views here that are really quite obnoxious. "Even though these ads are what is keeping this site I enjoy so much alive, I'm blocking them because of the principal of it." Yeah, right. If you were really operating on principals, you'd pay the fair price for viewing the site. Sadly, this sort of attitude doesn't earn as much karma around here.

For those of you that think all ads are evil, I have some random bits of info for you to read:

- I have my dream job right now because of a community site supported by ads. It is a massive site that is expensive to run simply because of the sheer number of users. I know others that can tell a similar story.

- Slashdot, an ad driven site, has provided me and LOTS of others many many hours of entertainment. (admittedly, it's the extreme twerps that provide the most entertainment for me.)

- Serenity, the movie trailer that lots of Slashdots tripped overthemselves to get, is an ad intended to get you to spend $8+ at the local theater.

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

- Any time you get excited by the latest processor or the newest video card or even the whoop-de-shit gaming system coming out, you're hearing about it because of advertising. Despite popular belief, there's really not that much difference between news and advertising.

Anyway, I'm done ranting. Moving on to a more constructive topic: I think advertising services are missing a critical component here. Opera had it right for a while. Way back in version 5, they actually used a .gif based ad instead of Google's text based ads. They had comics rotating through the ads. I found myself glancing up there regularly so I could catch the latest comic. I miss that. In that sense, it was more like TV. The ads became tolerable because I was being rewarded with content. Fair enough. I think some would-be cartoonists could make an interesting living, there. I think this is the right idea. Unfortunately, most sites try to play it as though the content they're providing is enough. Pity, really. Tripping over ads is not the way to keep your userbase. That's what drives people to block the ads. I can certainly understand that. Heck, even TV isn't immune to this. Lost is very hard to watch without a PVR. Tone it down, dudes.

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:I don't.

[mdielmann]

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

Well I tricked them! I bought the Futurama DVDs - now I can skip all the ads. They're not even interleaved in the episodes.

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:I don't block ads

[vorpal22]

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).

Slashdot, as well as every website I can think of that employs ad-based content could certainly find ways to cover costs and generate revenue without relying on ad-based income. LiveJournal, for instance, offers enough value-added content to subscribers that thousands and thousands of users happily pay; never has LiveJournal had to rely on ads. This is a business model which more online companies should seek to emulate.

Wrong country, that's why

[Spacejock]

1) I live in Australia and 90% of the sites I visit are flogging stuff to US-based internet users. I couldn't buy the stuff if I wanted to.
2) Most ads are large, very colourful and very distracting.
3) It's so easy to block them. Right-click the offending image, choose Adblock, shorten the url and stick a * on the end for a wildcard match.
4) My first broadband account had a 500mb month cap and 15c/meg over that. If I did a lot of web browsing I could literally end up paying to view ads.
5) When I'm in the market for a big-ticket item I read reviews and compare prices and features. No amount of advertising will influence my decision to purchase. If a manufacturer wants to influence me they need to make a product so good that it's a no-brainer. E.g. the Subaru WRX.
6) I usually buy small ticket items on impulse. I'm there in the shop, it's staring at me, I buy it. Online ads for small ticket items are pointless. (Freight + waiting time)

Re: Re:the ad fight is worth it

[DoorFrame]

Nobody even made fun of you. You should have just let it go and nobody would have noticed.

My Wife...

[russh347]

my mother, and my kids will click on the ads. Then I have to spend time cleaning up the mess.

Ads in magazines aren't active, they don't make a mess in your living room just because you read them. If web ads didn't leave a bunch of pop-ups and malware, I probably wouldn't bother.

I hate playing whack-a-mole.

www.pimpmysafari.com

[pomo monster]

Then use a different adblocker, like SafariBlock.

text/html

[morcego]

Those who view HTML-based e-mail have similar problems - any spam you open with a blank, embedded image link (provided you view images) will result in the spammer instantly obtaining vast amounts of data about you

HTML-based e-mails are the main reason I use a CLI (text-ui) e-mail reader. More exactly, Mutt. HTML messages get rendered using a CLI web browsers (w3m). I would love to be able to use Thunderbird. It is really neat, has some nice features, and is easy to use. But (mostly) because of the HTML based e-mails, I simply can't.

So, I end up having to use a plendora of different programs (fetchmail + procmail + mutt + w3m + spamassassin + exim) to be able to read e-mail.

I have considered simply filtering all html based e-mails directly on my mail server, but since I receive a lot of business related e-mails from people who simply think that adding their company logo on the body of the message is something important, I can't do that.

I really miss the time when I could simply sit in front of my AIX workstation and use elm to read my 20ish daily e-mails.

Yeah...

[Auraiken]

That's exactly what scissors were made for... :)

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.

Should be a poll--as if /. could do a useful one

[shanen]

Anyway, I haven't read all of the posts (though I spent more time on "insightful" and only saw more evidence of poorly considered moderation), but I didn't see this position expressed, and certainly not clearly, so...

Actually, I don't actively block the less intrusive ads, but as the advertising techniques used become more aggressive and privacy intrusive, I do respond with increasing vigor. Of course the worst bastards are the jackasses that are trying to infest my computer with browser hijackers and various other forms of spyware, but they are only extremists on the same scale. Therefore I say the fundamental problem is the "free lunch" mentality created by "free" radio broadcasts. Radio broadcasts were not really free, but by having the advertisers sponsor them, the radio stations were able to build a profitable business model. However, the chickens always come home to roost, and the result of this kind of "free" was ultimately very bad, especially as applied to television, and now as it is invading the commercial Internet.

The interests of the advertisers are NOT the same as the interests of the public. The advertisers do not want people to be well educated and well informed, because in that terrible case (from their perspective) the best product value (in each product category) would be known, and that product would capture the bulk of the sales. Except for the sellers of the best product, the companies who are paying for the advertising want people to be as easily manipulated as possible, so that they can twist as many of them as possible into buying not-so-valuable products. Actually, from the perspective of the "purest" advertisers, selling nothing at the highest price possible is the ultimate goal.

In conclusion, take a close look at Dubya to see what they can sell. Your children and grandchildren (and more) will be paying for that "sale" for a long time.

Re:Mentally or Technologically?

[KillShill]

be careful. they just might.

The point of ads is to make you unhappy

[anomalousman]

I block ads whenever it's easy. I use my PVR, Firefox's Adblock, and a "No Advertising Material Please" sticker.

Internet ads are exactly like TV ads, except they cost me money to download. I don't like magazines where the ads are so prevalent, they genuinely get in the way of finding content. Content. Haha.

The REAL question is: why do you watch ads? Why do you download them? It's not like you need to be aware of ads these days to know what to buy when you want to buy something. When I want to buy something I look on the internet retail and review sites just like everybody else. Until that point, the only point of ads is to make me unhappy. Ever seen an ad whose message was "everything is great, you can be content and change nothing?" The answer is no. The point of an advert is to make you dissatisfied with soemthing in your life so that you take some action (each advertiser has a preferred action) to fix it.

These people are professionals, too. There is a serious amount of science put into figuring out ways to make people unhappy. I don't feel like subjecting myself to that needlessly, even though I am a happy little consumer.

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.

I block ads to help the advertised products

[dalangalma]

See, if I see an ad on a web page (especially a large / moving / flashing / content-obscuring one), I think less of the advertised product. There's no chance I'll shop at Orbitz, and I don't even know what they are! I just know I dislike the company from their ads. So by blocking the ads, I'm doing the companies that placed the ads a big favor by increasing the likelihood I'll buy their products.

Besides that, the one time I browsed without Adblock recently I was amazed that so many news sites I liked to read were so crowded with ads I could barely read the text! No thanks - the website is much more pleasant without ads.

Send them a bill

[ChaosMt]

If you were american, you'd send a bill to accounts payable for consulting hours.

Re:Send them a bill

[Associate]

If he were American, the original web developer would sue him and win.

Re:Send them a bill

[Wade Tregaskis]

If he were American, he wouldn't be using an ad-blocker because it'd be illegal under some obscure clause of the DMCA.

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.

Because I'm not that sort of consumer

[sremick]

I block ads because advertising doesn't fit the sort of consumer I am. While I understand the desire for companies to advertise (and the desire for sites to provide free content in return for advertising), that only works for consumers who are sensitive to advertising. I am not like that, however. I am a different sort of consumer. I am the knowledge-empowered, researching sort of consumer. Not only will advertising not get you any points with me, but will probably work against you.

When I'm online reading stuff on a web page, I'm not in a frame of mind to be advertised to. I'm working on something else, thank you very much. Interrupt me and it's not much different than a salesman calling me while I'm trying to eat dinner or enjoy a good book. If I'm ready to purchase something, I will then do research and find reviews sites, discussion forums, and other such stuff. I could care less what the manufacturer says about its own products. Half of it tends to be lies anyway. So advertising gets a company absolutely nowhere with me. If you have a product worth buying, it's going to have to stand on its own due to its merits, and not because you spent $X million advertising it. Some of my best products I've ever purchased are well-known only to enthusiasts in the field, and usually never advertise. Because they don't need to.

Not every consumer is like me. So granted there is a market for advertising. I am not that market, however. So why should I waste my screen real-estate and bandwidth for material which will never obtain its desired purpose with me?

I use AdBlock with Firefox and block EVERYTHING with a ruthless passion.

However I don't deny the success of advertising and I do use it a tiny bit myself. Other consumers are passive and depend on advertising to proactively notify them about products, vs themselves doing the work.

Re:Because I'm not that sort of consumer

[alan.briolat]

I thought you made a good point, and took everything you said seriously, right up until the PowWeb advert in your sig. Thank that people can't put invasive advertising in their Slashdot sigs!

Not true.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

For "Jew", yes. For "Jews", no, no message. And, that message is targetted at the hate sites that come up when you search for "Jew" (If you had looked at the results, and actually followed the link www.google.com/explanation, you would know this).

However, if you Google for "JewS", there is no message, and there is indeed an eBay offering.

You know what will happen

[benhocking]

All they'll have left are the bottom and strange quarks, and the bessel functions of the second kind. Good luck with those - can't even build a decent nuclear generator with that.

I block ads because they waste my time and money

[Grail]

I'm Australian.

That means two things when it comes to ads: first, I pay to view them. Second, I usually can't buy the product being advertised anyway (or certainly wouldn't want to buy it and pay the cost of shipping).

Internet access in Australia is usually charged in terms of per-megabyte, or with a fixed quota (after which your speed is restricted to fast modem instead of broadband). Some sites I've been to serve me a 3k HTML page, a 1k CSS file, and a 10k Flash animation. By blocking those ads, I've effectively increased by ability to use the World Wide Web by a factor of 4 (I can load the whole page four times faster, and I can view four times as many pages in total).

More often than not, the spam ads are for offers which are only of use to people in the USA (eg: mobile phone, home shopping, cable TV subscription, magazine subscription, yadda yadda). Other times they're for a product which I'd save $10 on the price, but pay an extra $30 for shipping. Target audience folks, it's a key word in marketing. I am not your target audience, you can tell that from the ".au" on the end of the domain name of the IP address I'm connecting to you from.

I also find it really distracting when I'm reading an article on a famous Geek website (article might be abou the Microsoft anti-trust case, or Microsoft's latest buying out of some foreign government), and an ad for something like Visual Studio comes along. Get with the program - I don't even use an Intel box!

Perhaps if advertisers would acknowledge the basic facts available to them, I'd stop being so upset about advertising. Here are the basic facts: I'm in Australia, and I use Mac OS X. Don't advertise Windows-Only software to me, don't advertise export-restricted products to me, don't advertise services to me unless they're available for use in Australia.

Where do I start?

[oneandoneis2]

why do you block ads?

Well:

• Most ads are for US products, and I'm in England.
• Most ads, popups in particular but plenty others too, are incredibly annoying. Advertisers seem to have lost their minds when it comes to the Internet - they throw good sense out of the window and aim for the most obtrusive, annoying adverts they can think of. Flashing colours, animation, NOISE, or just obscuring the parts of the page I actually want to look at. Less annoying ads, such as Google's, I don't block - I even click on google ads occasionally, because they have a high chance of being something I'm actually interested in.
• Every website I regularly use that offers the option, I'm a paying subscriber of - such as slashdot - or a supporter of indirectly - such as Dilbert.com, which I Adblock with a clear conscience since I own every Dilbert comic strip ever published in a book.
• I don't buy ANYTHING on the strength of an advert. Advertisers lie. Before I cough up cash, I look for feedback from consumers.
• Many years ago, before Adblocker appeared on the scene, I made a resolution never to click on any advert that used annoying tactics like pretending to be a system message, flashing colors, whatever. So if I'm not going to click on it, why waste my and the advertisers bandwidth looking at it?
• Slashdot often links to sites that have posted sensational lies in order to get lots of people visiting their page & giving them a boost in advertising. Blocking the ads on their site means sites I specifically DON'T support don't get money from peddling their tripe.

And with what?

Firefox's adblocker, the AdBlock extension, and a list of the worst advertising offenders in a "block stuff from these" file.

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

• Yes: I hardly ever watch TV, and when I do, I almost entirely watch the BBC - which has no ads.
• More to the point, TV ads don't use up my paid-for bandwidth, and are kept rigidly separate from the programmes: You don't get banner ads plastered across the top of the screen in climactic moments of the TV show, but you frequently encounter them on web pages.
• Lastly, TV ads aren't specifically created to be annoying and hard to get rid of. They're generally quite entertaining. Many TV ads have made me laugh, for example. No internet advert ever has.

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

Don't buy magazines very often. . . But when I do, I'm happy for them to have ads. They don't have "peel off this ad to view the actual content" ads stuck all over the pages, or ads with flashing lights or so-called humerous noises. They have well-designed, undemanding ads that are relevant to the rest of the content.

It all really boils down to: Most internet ads seem to have been designed for no other purpose than wasting my time and pissing me off. So I block those ads. If that makes life hard for a website I use, then they should either: Offer a "pay for ad-free pages" like Slashdot does; or find advertisers who aren't determined to push ads that will alienate the very users the site depends upon.

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.

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 ?

Wherre I set on Google Text Ads and ads in general

[Mr Z]

Oh, they aren't pretty compared to, say, a flower in a vase. But, bless their little hearts, they just sit there. They don't blink. They don't flash. They don't scroll by the top of the screen. They don't periodically hop in front of the content I'm trying to read. They don't even cycle through a handful of images, updating every couple seconds. They just sit there and get noticed when I feel like noticing them.

And that, my friends, is beautiful.

I've actually clicked on some Google Ads purposefully. But I generally won't click on a banner except by accident. Sites that affront me visually like the Vegas Strip are less likely to get a return visit from me.

You see, I don't watch TV regularly. I haven't for a decade or so. Now, when I go to restaurants, when there's a TV on somewhere, my eyes will drift to it: "Moving picture box funny! ::blankfaced drool::" It could be golf of all things. My ability to filter out noisy moving sh*t has gone away. So, if I end up at a website with even just a couple animated ads around the edges, I have a supremely hard time reading the article of interest before I've nuked all the ads. That includes that scrolling headline marquee so many news sites seem to love. (I love the Nuke Anything extension to Firefox.)

So maybe it's just super common among the handful of us that don't numb ourselves on the boob tube every night that really get annoyed by ads. Dunno.

I do know I usually don't bother with the newspaper or most magazines (and get annoyed playing "find the article" in the latter when I do), and I still don't turn on TV. (Who wants to see the same feminine hygene product commercial 3 times in a single commercial break? You do? Ok, I prescribe watching TBS and UPN for the rest of your days.) What magazines I do subscribe to (Mother Jones and Pontiac Enthusiast) have low ad content of high relevance. They get my renewals year upon year. (Heck, I would've never learned of ZZPerformance if it weren't for a tasteful ad in Pontiac Enthusiast, and they've gotten a few thousand $$ from me over the years.)

Ditto with websites. I return to the ones that don't assault me like a gaggle of epileptic clowns, and make my visit worth my while. Google text ads are a tool to enable that, and that my friends is beautiful.

--Joe

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:Because I can.

[jasen666]

That's the cost of serving content on the internet. Unless your site is a pay site, and says so, you cannot expect to make money off of random visitors. You put up a site knowing that hosting, bandwidth, and content are going to cost a certain amount, and I think any website based on a business model of getting paid simply by ad views was made to fail. This is not radio, TV, or print. Your consumers aren't obligated (or rather forced) to view/listen to your paid ads. I can't skip an ad on radio. But I sure would if I could. Same with TV. I hate commercials. I would live in my own little ad-free world if it were possible.
Since I can skip ads on websites, I do. I don't care whether they're annoying or not, obtrusive or not, or even relevant to the page. I don't want to see them. If I want to buy a product, I'll go look for that product. If you want to make money from me to help pay for your website, sell something I might want. Make the site subscription based... if the content is good enough I'd pay. But understand that the old days of getting paid by mandatory ad viewing are over.
You can't make the internet in the image of TV, it's not the same and never will be.

PARENT IS ALL YOU NEED

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

To whatever marketing consultant posed this question - the parent gets it in a nutshell one you need to read. I block flashing/moving ads. I block large ads. I don't go quite so far as to block ads that don't fit the colour scheme, but I just might start.

For ad designers - many ads only make it to the viewer's brain after 20 or 30 page hits. I was on /. for a year before I decided to check out one of those thinkgeek ads (and glad I finally did). If you get blocked, you won't have that chance, even if you get them to look over at "that damned flashy thing" the first time it loads. It's just another annoying ad of many. On sites like this especially - where viewers are coming day after day, month after month - you will want to design many different ads promoting different aspects of your business/product. Only after a proper gestation period will the viewers begin to consider the product.

For site owners - don't alienate customers with your ads. It doesn't even need to be said that the flying-across-the-screen-close- now-or-I-block-the-article ads are a disservice to your customers. I (and others here) have stopped going to entire websites specifically because of their ads that are designed to get around the blocker-of-the-day. Ad-blockers aren't the root of the problem - the sheer disrespect for the page viewers is.

Another quick note for advertisers - I *always* de-animate my gifs, so make sure all your info is on the first frame. Even better, don't animate - you risk blockage.

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.

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?"

Magazines without ads

[Erich]

Cook's Illustrated, my favorite magazine.

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!

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.

Re:Someone else should pay for my free.

[bbc]

"Oh lovely. The same argument people use to justify pirating content makes an appearance. "I would have never bought it, but I will download it to use". The web version "I would have never bought anything, but I will download the content to use"."

Oh lovely. Now you're comparing people who do not wish to see ads with criminals.

BTW, only the middlemen--you know, the real profiteers--are cynical enough to call creative works "content".

"the rest of us [...] put you on our hate list."

Oh lovely. The same list the terrorists use.

Re:Vote with your wallet

[stickyc]

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!

FYI - There IS a fuel efficiency requirement for hybrid vehicles in California carpool lanes. As a result, only the Honda Civic Hybrid, the Honda Insight Hybrid, and the Toyota Prius Hybrid are actually eligible, and on top of that, there's only a limited number of permits available, so even some eligible vehicle owners will be left out.

Here's the California DMV's chart on eligible vehicles (hybrid, electric and CNG): http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/carpool/carpool.htm