Will Mainstream Media Embrace Adblockers?

Blarkon writes "Slashdotters are aware of and often use Adblock Plus," and notes that "if newspapers wanted to hit the online content industry hard right now, they would be running non-stop information about how to obtain and use Adblock Plus.' That a scorched-earth approach to blocking Internet advertising through AdBlock Plus might collapse free online competitors by starving them of revenue. If more people are aware of Adblock plus, it will be more tempting for other browser manufacturers to include similar ad blocking functionality. Might Rupert Murdoch's apparent 'traffic killing' move to paywall content be a desperate gamble to avoid the impact of a future crash in the ad-supported online business model caused by everyone's browser including something like Adblock Plus?"

Comments

Why does ad-block have to be on a browser

[goffster]

why not put ad-block on the router itself, you could then enable it for a whole organization.

Re:Why does ad-block have to be on a browser

[Jugalator]

Gahh, curse Slashdot for not allowing edits. Sure, Proxomitron is one, but Privoxy is the one that is kept being developed now.

BTW, this is coincidentally also a way to do efficient ad blocking in Safari 4 or Google Chrome. Granted, Safari has ad blocking as a plugin, I think, but I also think that plugin was Mac only.

Re:Please don't

[the_other_chewey]

A good example is to look at how YouTube has ads baked into the flash.

Those ads are still individual streams, and not part of the main video. Adblock Plus
takes care of those without any problems - it sees "object subrequests".

Re:ad blocking could have been entirely avoided...

[Richard_at_work]

I disagree - ad blocking software was inevitable, regardless of how obnoxious the ads were.

Re:How sites can embrace the AdBlock model

[Dare nMc]

I know the ad-block plus authors offered to add a whitelist, but I don't see the option currently. I would prefer a adblock option to "show one advert of maximum bandwidth/size/type..." perhaps even give websites the option to pass a flag to adblock for that one advert, and if they fall outside the rules, they get no adds through.

Re:No problem. So what's the alternative?

[Z00L00K]

The worst problem is not the small ads that are there and are static it's the flash (or whatever) ads that hogs 100% CPU when they are displayed.

So it's not surprising that there is a market for AdBlock Plus.

Re:No problem. So what's the alternative?

[commodore64_love]

>>>That with quality content, public radio and TV stations have a (relatively) easy time getting people to *give* them money for their "free" content.
>>>

False. Half the money that supports PBS, NPR, and other donation-supported stations comes from *compulsory* sucking of money from taxpayer wallets. In fact a lot of these stations in Pennsylvania are whining (yes that's the correct term) that they are doomed to disappear if the proposed budget goes through, because it means public broadcast will lose about 20% of their funds. My response which I sent to my representative(s) was:

"PBS frequently asks, 'If we don't do it, who will?' The answer is obvious. CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, CPSAN 1 and 2, History, Learning, National Geographic Channel, Bravo, Lifetime, Disney, Nickelodeon, Qubo, and so on. PBS was necessary in an era of 4 channels. It's not necessary in an era of 100+ channels and thousands of websites. I'm glad the budget is cutting funding, because PBS has a lot in common with other obsolete things..... like horsewhips and hoop skirts. Let it stand on its own two feet without taxpayer assistance."

Re:How sites can embrace the AdBlock model

[sqlrob]

It's there, just prefix the block pattern with an @

Re:No problem. So what's the alternative?

[Lumpy]

I never minded ad's. in fact my income was based on ad's as I was an IT manager in an advertising company.

Then I started paying with a new on the block kid called MythTV and Freevo. back when the TiVo first came out. I can skip ad's with a single button. Cool, then I discovered Privoxy and added that.

within a year I became hypersensitive to advertising. I was annoyed when I was at friends places and you either had the internet advert crap everywhere or had to wait 5-10 minutes for the damn ad's to continue watching the game, etc..

Remove advertising from your life and in short order you get annoyed by it when it's in your face.

Re:Please don't

[Koookiemonster]

Check out Autopager: an add-on for firefox, that automatically loads the next page when you scroll down. All fetched pages are displayed on one page. "It just works" for many sites -- some sites aren't configured, but you can configure them yourself.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4925

Re:No problem. So what's the alternative?

[kipin]

Although the ads on the "free" porn sites are obnoxious and I don't know of a quick and easy solution that combines FF's Adblock with IE's 'In-Private Browsing'.

Firefox 3.5 has a private browsing mode

Re:No problem. So what's the alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

So when you find someone who is producing material that is of high quality, it seems worth shelling out some buckos to get easy access to all of it in a fat pipe without worrying about yet another porno-rick-roll.

It's called cheggit, empornium, and puretna you dumb shit. As well as a plethora of other torrenting sites.