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The Morality of Web Advertisement Blocking
An anonymous reader writes "There has been some recent coverage of the over-hyped boycott of Firefox, in response to the rising popularity of the Adblock Plus Firefox extension. A recent editorial on CNET looks into the issue, and explores the moral and legal issues involved in client-side web advertisement blocking. Whereas TiVo users freeload on the relatively fixed broadcasting costs paid by TV networks, users of web ad-blocking technology are actively denying website owners revenue that would otherwise go to pay for the bandwidth costs of serving up those web pages. If the website designer has to pay for bits each time you view their website without viewing their banner ads, are you engaged in theft? Is this right? "
But is there a moral difference between not downloading the ad vs. not seeing the ad? For example, I use my userContent.css file to not display advertisements in older versions of Mozilla (I like the full suite of apps darn it!). *My* bandwidth is still used to get the file, *their* webserver still logs a request for /advert.php?foo.... but I never see the ad. As long as the request for the advert is made and it is sent, does it matter if someone sees it? Of course, if they don't see it they can't click it, but still...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
If the website owner feels it is necessary to use ads to support the cost of being on the internet, then the least they can do is avoid the flash "Bonk the _____ and get a ______" ads. If they aren't willing to do that then whether they like it or not I'm blocking their ads.
I go to websites primarily for content, and if thats disrupted by advertisement then I'm not getting what I went there for.
If you want me to view your advertisement it better not.
1. Have sound. If it does your so forever block from my browser and wallet its not even funny
2. Overlay what I am reading. Having to click your ad away from the article text means I know exactly who I am never buying from.
3. Pop a window, over or under, its the same, your gone.
4. Any ad which causes my HD to spin up to load the damn support required for it, aka Flash and JAVA. If it pauses my experience it ends your chances.
5. Heaven forbid you dare ask me to download something.
You want might business. Then target those pages with simple and to the point banners and block ads. Do not animate my webpage. Put in bold letters why I should even pay attention to you. If you animate, make noise, or otherwise disturb my surfing you are intruding into my life and don't have that right
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
As a publisher of a variety of blogs and a hoster of dozens of forums, javascript-based advertising accounts for nearly 30% of our income. Another 30% is based on direct advertising or link-sales along with paid-for-articles (which we fully disclose), and the rest is made up by subscriptions.
We openly advertise that our ads are blockable, and that users who are not interested in ads SHOULD block them. For us, users who are not interested in the advertisers products should block the ads so that our click-through rate is actually higher. When one of our users blocks ads they won't click, our CTR goes up. When our CTR goes up, our direct customers pay MORE for the outreach than if we forced ads on everyone, even those who don't want ads.
We've been slowly updating our sites to actively disable ads for anyone who logs in and sets their ads to "none" (even if they aren't subscribers). Again, this is no concern to us.
The clicks we do provide to our advertisers are generally good clicks, with users interested in the site or product. This makes our site even more valuable, as we have had more than a few dozen advertisers submit bids for our sites specifically, rather than just random appearances because of the site being "on topic" for the ads. Directly bid ads get us a LOT more CPC or CPM (sometimes in the $1-$2+ range), so again it is good that non-interested readers would disable ads, making our click-through even higher for those direct ads.
Considering that we're making a decent 5 figures annually, more than 1/2 of that from direct advertisers rather than random AdSense ads, I think it's a win-win situation. Users who like what we write will either pay, or accept ads. Users who don't want ads don't display them, but they still give us a profit by being responsive to things written via e-mail or combox responses. I'd rather get 5 minutes of a person's time to respond than $0.15 for some random ad click.
When you run an ad-sponsored site, you have two choices: get a lot of crappy traffic and get low CPM (barely covering your hosting cost), or get GOOD limited traffic and get a high CPM from those accepting ads (or getting a profit through a subscription or an intellectual profit from a reply or an e-mail).
I ran two websited that used contextual ads (from the likes of vibrant media and kontera) as well as banner-based stuff (google, yahoo, etc) and I can tell you that the worst person to piss off is the one that doesn't want to see the ad. They were never going to click on it anyway, so why should you care? Most of our deals were cost-per-click revenue anyway so I didn't care to serve an ad to a person who wasn't going to click it and have to deal with pissing them off. A few months before I sold both sites (and am glad to be out of that business, though I miss the revenue), I made it so that folks could disable contextual ads through a profile setting, and added the ability for them to pay a paltry sum ($10 per year) to remove all ads site-wide. Folks were thrilled to pay a cheap price, I made some good cash, and everyone was happy.
I knew of folks using ad blocking software (hell, I use adblock plus myself!) and would never have done anything to that group for the sole reason that I wasn't going to make money on them anyway and might as well make em happy instead of mad.
Oh - and I determined that most of my ad-clicks were unregistered folks who visited my site for the first time - one of those dirty little industry secrets.