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: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.