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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? "
If things weren't so horribly intrusive and capable of tracking a user's entire internet experience, for the sole purpose of selling you stuff, people wouldn't bitch.
I'd like to live in a fantasy world where I'm simply entitled by default to ad revenue, and I only have to deal with insidious "users of web ad-blocking technology" who are "actively denying" me my solid gold razor scooter. Fortunately for users, in the real world, a webmaster has to earn ad revenue by finding content that users want and ads they are willing to accept -- not by taking it for granted that they will just gaze longingly into the CRT clicking on everything that swirls.
For a long time, advertisers were able to support a huge number of frivolous web sites, partly because they could bombard the user with page after page of obnoxious flashing garbage for which no technical countermeasures existed. The collapse of the dot-com bubble eliminated the most unviable popup-pushers, and the rest are beginning to get the message. Popup blockers are normal mainstream software, and Google has had significant success selling all-text advertisements.
The website owners seem to think that we've pushed back hard enough, and should just deal with the sea of repellant Flash banners they want to drown us in. I guess those website owners are wrong, because clearly there are plenty of people who are not willing to tolerate the barrage of useless ads. We'll find a balance eventually, somewhere in between no ads at all and the websites whose masters believe they are entitled to a tithe every time their server sends a 200 status.
What's next step? Forcing people to actually look at the adds? Or press at it? Or are you a thief if you don't buy a product of an advertiser of a web page you visit?
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?
No more theft than it would be if you were viewing web content with a browser that couldn't physically render the content. What if everyone used Lynx, for example?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
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
Those poor innocent spammers need to pay (somewhere, at some level, be it money for bandwidth or time to write the virus..) to send you those viagra ads .. if we block those messages, and never see them, is it theft of some kind from the spammers or the viagra company?
I fail to see how using Firefox to ignore the ad banners and such is morally any different than throwing out the advertising supplements to the newspaper without glancing at the ads therein.
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
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.
Going to the bathroom during TV commercials is theft!
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
No, it is not theft. I ask a server for a page and it gives it to me. I control which parts of the page will load and which parts won't. If websites don't like it, then they need to find a better business model.
What ads?
I'm using their bits, eh? Well, they're using my CPU with all their annoying flash ads.
As soon as people learn that annoying (and often intrusive) Flash ads aren't appreciated, then there won't be a major reason for adblock.
"Our revenue model is broken, and exploiting said brokenness should be illegal."
Skype is too convoluted... Now I'm reverse-engineering the Kyoto Protocol.
As far as I understand it, the pay-per-view advertising model has gone the way of the dodo, and they're all pay-per-click now. Telling me I have to let the ads through on a site, when I have zero intention of ever clicking on them, is pointless. In fact, since I'm never going to click on them, by not displaying them, I'm saving the advertiser bandwidth.
Liberty in your lifetime
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?
In order for me to view their banner ads, my browser must actively request the data for that banner in a separate transaction from the one used to get the rest of the contents of the page. I see no reason for me, as the computer's owner and operator, not to forbid the browser from doing so.
As a good citizen of the internet, I think it a good thing that I don't clog the tubes with advertising bandwidth which I do not care to see.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
No. If you do not get the reaction you expected from me, then you have simply lost that portion of your investment. I have not stolen anything from you.
Next up on Slashdot, if she won't blow you after you buy her a drink, is she guilty of "theft of resources"?
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.
When I transfer a + c bytes, that's OK. When I transfer only c bytes, I'm stealing. So in this case, it's stealing when I take less than normal?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
There is no such thing as a guaranteed business model. Just because it would be convenient for the world to work a certain way, or because it has worked that way in the past, does not mean that it will continue to work that way.
These businesses (and many others) have been built on the assumption that in return for content, consumers are willing to be exposed to advertising. If that assumption proves to be false, then they are going to either have to find a new business model, or else convince the consumers that they should watch the adds. If the business is build on people looking at advertisements, and the consumers are refusing to look at advertisements, there is a basic disconnect there that does not bode well.
The other side is that if consumers as a whole refuse to support add supported business, we are going to have to pay in some other way. Figuring out the balance of this struggle isn't just important for websites. It is the same disconnect that we are seeing right now in television.
You know, before TiVo people used to skip ads by (1) going to the bathroom, (2) getting a snack, (3) changing the channel, or (4) talking. Does that make OTA tv-watchers freeloaders too?
This attitude is irritating. Over the air content is provided for free. There is nothing that says "to watch this TV show you must watch the commercials." Same with radio. Radio content is provided for free. There is no implied contract that I must listen to advertisements to enjoy the content.
It is my choice whether to watch/listen to the ads or not. This isn't a question of morality at all. It's also my choice whether I buy a product or not. Does not buying mean I'm being immoral?
If a car dealer says "If you don't buy this car, I'll starve and you'll kill my family," would you still buy the car?
What about my bandwidth? They're trying to say I'm OBLIGATED to take everything on their page, not just the parts I'm requesting. I can assure you that I'm requesting their content, not the ads. They're forcing unnecessary bandwidth requirements (and slow load times) upon me by their advertising.
With a pipe, there ARE two ends to it you know.
Companies have been buying good reviews since before there was an Internet. Not blocking Internet ads won't stop them from doing so. YOU can't have it both ways, you can't have neither. But the advertisers can and do have it both ways, both ads on the side and embedded ones.
A casino has a cheap buffet because they *hope* you are going to gamble before/after you eat. You, being a clever person, attend the buffet and leave without spending a dime on the slot machines.
Arby's has a "five for five" deal where you buy five items for five bucks because they *hope* you will spend five dollars instead of, say, two dollars. You, being a clever person, realize you only want two of the five items, so you spend $2.50 on two items and leave.
Circuit City sells printers for only $30 because they *hope* you are going to pay $20 for a high-margin Monster Cable. You, being a clever person, buy the cheap printer and purchase a generic cable for $2 from Fry's.
CNN.com offers their content for free because they *hope* you will click on their ads (or at least glance at them) while you visit. You, being a clever person, ignore the ads or disable them outright.
The point is, any free or below-cost business model is a risk that the provider has accepted, and they are inherently providing these extra "benefits" at *no obligation* to the consumer. If the provider isn't willing to run the risk of people not following their suggestions, then it is time to turn that suggestion into an obligation (pay websites, or otherwise restricted-access websites). This is not a morality issue for the consumer, it is a business issue for the provider.
Who will be the first to write a Firefox extension to block the Firefox blocking? Gentlemen, start your coding!
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).
For the last 100 years it never occurred to advertisers on radio stations that users who turn down the sound during commercials were "stealing" from them. They knew better. They were given a license to use a portion of the PUBLIC'S electromagnetic spectrum as long as they operated in the public good. The public still has the opportunity to visit radio stations and read their license stipulations and leave comments about the radio station's performance.
Then, corporate greed took over when TV stations (licensed to use other portions of the PUBLIC's electromagnetic spectrum) started claiming it was THEIR medium and that if you didn't watch the commercials but only the content they were broadcasting YOU were a THIEF. Absurd. They can transmit content and commercials but no one, absolutely NO ONE, has to watch every photon they transmit during any particular time period. That's the risk they take, especially if their ad content is so trivial or dishonest or begins consuming too large a segment of the time period.
There was a time when commercials took only about 6 to 10 minutes of every hour. Now they take 20 minutes or more, and in the case of Infomercials the full 60 minutes. It's NOT uncommon now for 6 or more commercials to run during every commercial break, with some breaks exceeding 10 minutes in length with only 2 or 3 minutes of show in between.
Infomercials should be outlawed. The cable companies are double dipping. They charge the advertiser for channel, and they bill the cable customer for "offering" the infomercial channel as part of the cable lineup. Are we stealing if we don't watch the Infomercial?
To make matters worse, the TV shows deliberately focus cameras on brand name advertisements and include product hype within the script of the show itself. And they not stealing time from us?
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
It's your computer and your browser and your net connection.
On the other end there's another persons server, content and bandwidth. If they don't want to serve you pages, then they don't have to.
Everybody's happy.
It may be your computer, but guess whose web server it is?
With that in mind, the web page is on a private server which is open to the public. However, the owner of the machine has every right to block users who do not allow for advertisements.
See, with big sites such as CNN, I feel that their service is an auxiliary mode of delivering information in addition to their other services. However, with smaller sites such as communities, etc., I allow their advertising to pass through because I realize that for most of them, the advertising is the only thing keeping their servers up.
That's my logic. Feel free to disagree, but I feel it's probably more accurate than the parent post.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
"Your business model is not my problem".
Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU
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.
Especially when you combine it with the 3rd big problem of irrelevance. Web ads are very, very often for things you just don't give a shit about. TV ads are actually quite targeted, they get demographic information on shows and pick what ads to run based off of who is likely to be watching. However many web advertisers simply smear their banners over and and every site. Not to mention that many are borderline fraudulent.
I've found that when you have ads that don't have this problem, not only do I not mind, I can even be happy with them. Google ads are an example. They hold the record as the only online ads I've ever bought something from. More, I've done it several times. I don't mind them at all. The servers seem to be fully capable of handling the load, so they aren't slow, the ads are very unobtrusive and on Google itself blend right in, and they are very relevant to what I'm doing.
For example I'll search for something I'm interested in purchasing and rather than looking at the normal search results, I look at the ads. Here is a list of people willing to sell me what I want. The ad usually takes me right to the relevant page. Now that's useful.
However that's not how most advertisers want to do it. For some reason everything they know about advertising seems to fall out of their brain when it comes ot the web, and they believe that the answer is invariably make it more obtrusive and it'll work.
I'm sure there's some fancy latin term for this fallacy, but I'll just call it the War Games defense. (The only winning move is not to play.)
The parent poster is saying if an ad is static text or image--no flash--and doesn't track you past the single page displaying the ad, then it is immoral to block the ad. Interesting.
I say, my stand on blocking ads has nothing to do with the ads. My argument doesn't depend on ads being obtrusive or anything else. I simply say, I control what I download. I choose not to download from certain sources.
You see, I don't get into a debate on types of ads. I don't even really address the issue of ads at all. I just say, I download what I want to download. If I think I'll never have any reason to request data from a domain, I might use a HOSTS file to direct requests for that domain to 0.0.0.0 just to protect myself from any inadvertent requests I may make.
Someone who wants to take the position that there is something wrong with not viewing ads on a web page has to play on my field and explain why the ISP connection and the computer I pay for are obligated to accept someone else's data without my request.
I don't sift through every page and Adblock everything.
Check into AdBlock Plus subscriptions. You won't have to sift through any pages. The ads will be blocked automagically. That's what this discussion is mostly about.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
See, if the ads were hosted on the page you were viewing, then you'd have a point...But they're not. AdBlock and similar wouldn't work if it wasn't that the advertisers served their own ads for the most part, making them super easy to block. I mean, if I was browsing with Lynx which doesn't even offer images, or hell, browsing with wget or something, would it still be the same?
HTML isn't like television. Television is 25 still images a second; there is nothing to filter out except the entire stream. HTML is discrete chunks, and I can very easily tell my browser that I only want to view certain chunks...It's part of the design. I can change the fonts on the pages, I can reset the background color. I can turn off flash or javascript. Don't tell me I HAVE to view it like they "intented"...Hell, using Firefox it's often enough that you can't do that anyway because of some IE only horseshit.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Adverts on a web page are sent to my browser as links, which my browser must in turn request from the appropriate server.
This means that each advert on a page causes my computer to actively send and then receive additional data.
This results in real additional bandwidth usage on my part.
If I am using any kind of metered access, or even if I am using unmetered access but with one of the major ISP's who arbitrarily enforce unofficial bandwith caps, then I incur a real cost for viewing that advert.
So, me configuring my computer to not waste resources in that way is no more immoral than the web site configuring their page such that viewing the advertisements makes use of my resources.
The parent post ties in rather nicely with a short piece I wrote about two years ago (but never published) in defense of my work on Filterset.G. It may be a bit outdated, but I think it's finally appropriate.
The Economics of Blocking Ads
Preface:
I have nothing against advertisers or advertising. I have no interest in eliminating advertisements from the internet as a whole. Filterset.G is a tool, and is not tied to an ideology; there is no ulterior motive. Many people believe that Adblock, Filterset.G, and similar projects will be "the death of the free internet", and attack people developing tools to block ads (including myself). I have no desire to "destroy" the internet or advertising.
Reducing Costs to Suppliers and Consumers
Advertisements are unwanted distractions to many people (i.e. those who don't buy from ads), and ad-blockers provide an easy way to remove them. Transferring advertisements to people who ignore or don't buy from them is costly to both advertiser and advertisee. Bandwidth isn't free, and the bits often travel thousands of miles through dozens of machines to reach consumers. For those who have no intention of buying advertised products in response to ads, it is a waste, and can become very expensive. The host of the ad pays to transfer it, and many ISPs charge users by the amount of data transferred, so they pay to see it. Advertisers rarely pay sites for ads based on impressions (views, not clicks/sales) anymore, due to the difficulty in gauging its success, so passive ad-viewers (who look, but don't click), needn't be considered.
Increasing Profit Margins
People who don't buy from ads are negative in the expense/profit ratio for advertisers. Eliminating the cost of advertising to non-purchasers increases profits given a constant userbase. The risk, of course, is that people who buy occasionally might also block ads and thereby decrease profits. For this reason, I strongly urge people not to install ad-blocking software on other people's computers unless they express a desire for it. The greatest threat from ad-blocking is from people pushing it on those who do buy from ads.
Demand Keeps Suppliers in Business
Let's hypothetically say that all internet advertising was eliminated overnight (which is not going to happen). That would cut a major source of funding for web sites, which would force many to close, decreasing supply. Demand, however, would still exist. As supply decreases, demand would bring capital to the "best" remaining suppliers. Subscriptions, donations, grants, and sales keep many ad-free sites alive today, and can easily continue to do so in the future. Hosting a small web site is fairly cheap, and the increasing userbase that drives up costs also increases the number of potential donors, subscribers, and purchasers. A worst-case scenario would be a drastic reduction of economically unsustainable sites, which definitionally provide too little benefit to users to warrant their covering the costs of operating it. Many people would call this a "best-case" scenario, separating the wheat from the chaff, though I take no stance.
Making Ads Less Obtrusive
If public perception of ads becomes increasingly negative, they will become decreasingly effective. Advertising strategies will necessarily shift to less offensive and distracting forms. Many users vocally support the replacement of banners and other obtrusive advertising methods by text ads in areas distinct from page content. Unobtrusive, low-bandwidth ads may not be as eye-catching, but they are well tolerated by all but the most aggressive anti-ad folks.
Forcing Ads
Many advertisers and site owners are researching methods of bypassing ad-blocking software. If ad-blocking is only done by those who do not buy from ads, the outcome will become increasingly negative as their efforts increase. Many people are becoming more and more fed-up with in-your-face ads, and are starting to boycott co
G
If the site serving the ads does not have to use the bandwidth to serve up the ads, then it costs less when an AdBlock user is viewing the content. Since Firefox/ad blocking are a minority of viewers, the number of ad-blocking users is therefore low. Hence, the majority of non-ad blocking (i.e., well, IE users), they are costing the site more money, while effectively subsidizing the ad-blockers.
Seems quite reasonable and equitable to me.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
As someone else here has already stated: It's my computer, it's my paid-for connection to the internet, it's my right to see or not see whatever I do or do not want, unless I choose to surrender my ability to choose (e.g., the way Netzero used to be). Personally, I'll rip the damned cable out of the wall myself the day that happens and go back to writing code for entertainment (and yes, I'm aware my rant is starting to reach "Stay off my lawn you damned kids" proportions; I'm taking a step back from the edge now).
If they're grousing about Adblock Plus, I'm sure next they'll be whining about the Flashblock plugin. Not like the over-use of Flash animations on websites has become SPAM 2.0 or anything like that. :p
I was given to understand that this is exactly how AdBlock operates: Your browsers goes ahead and fetches the blocked content, it is simply not displayed.
In other words, the advertiser sees you downloaded the ad, but has no idea whether it shows up on your screen.
The best of both worlds.
splunge (n) -- A good idea.. but it could be lousy... and I'm not being indecisive!