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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."
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.
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.
If I could block ads in magazines, or stop them on TV I would.
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.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
I Block ads because they take too long to load on my 56k modem.
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."
there's more than one way to do me.
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."
So who should pay for content if ads shouldn't? Would you "subscribe" to a website?
---- join dshield.org Distributed Intrusion Detec
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.
-"I still believe in revolution; I just don't capitalize it anymore." - srini!
...dogs lick their balls?
Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.
That would just be plain unfair.
The Mothership
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.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If you were american, you'd send a bill to accounts payable for consulting hours.
Democrats and Republicans only disagree about how to enslave you
why do you block ads?
Well:
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?
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.
So.. it has come to this
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.
::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.)
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!
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
Program Intellivision!
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 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 ad designers - many ads only make it to the viewer's brain after 20 or 30 page hits. I was on
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.
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