Ars Technica Inveighs Against Ad Blocking

An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica recently conducted a 12-hour experiment in which story content was hidden from users of popular ad blocking tools. Explaining the experiment, Ken Fisher appealed to Ars's readership: 'My argument is simple: blocking ads can be devastating to the sites you love. I am not making an argument that blocking ads is a form of stealing, or is immoral, or unethical, or makes someone the son of the devil. It can result in people losing their jobs, it can result in less content on any given site, and it definitely can affect the quality of content. It can also put sites into a real advertising death spin. As ad revenues go down, many sites are lured into running advertising of a truly questionable nature. We've all seen it happen. I am very proud of the fact that we routinely talk to you guys in our feedback forum about the quality of our ads. I have proven over 12 years that we will fight on the behalf of readers whenever we can. Does that mean that there are the occasional intrusive ads, expanding this way and that? Yes, sometimes we have to accept those ads. But any of you reading this site for any significant period of time know that these are few and far between. We turn down offers every month for advertising like that out of respect for you guys. We simply ask that you return the favor and not block ads.'"

Comments

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[hairyfeet]

I have to agree with them 100%. I whitelisted Ars because they asked nicely, but from the looks of things they will be blocked next week and if they pull their experiment blocking content bullshit? Well it isn't like there isn't a metric fuckton of geek sites out there.

Now I don't mind ads that actually might appeal to me in the slightest, Newegg shows PC gear? makes sense. But let me give an example of how fucked up the ads at Ars is. Out of all the ads that came with this article, and there were a shitload of ads, there was only ONE, I repeat one, that someone who actually reads sites like Ars would be interested in, and that was for a new IBM bladeserver. The rest? Fricking jock ads for crap like GQ. WTF? I'm a geek, do you really think I give a shit about some sports players?

If you want me to keep ads you have to give ads that make sense. If I am on a review site for PC hardware? Well show me the ads for the latest ATI GPU or the latest prices for the parts I'm reviewing. Make the ads have a point. By selling to any old ass that walks through the door Ars has shown me they don't give a crap about the readers or what they might like, it is all about the cash. So next week they'll be back on the blocklist. Because I'm not wasting my bandwidth for a bunch of ads for crap I wouldn't take on a bet.

Re:It's the freeloaders time

[hairyfeet]

No, it is called basic common sense, which sadly the world has a severe shortage of it seems. Let me give an example from ars. clicked on the article about how to shop for a Windows 7 netbook. Now logic and basic common sense would say that ads should be for netbooks or Windows 7, yes? Nope, all jock crap like GQ.

I mean Good Lord man, it is a fricking geeks site! Let me show you how easy it would be if I were choosing ads to be displayed there. The latest ATI and Nvidia GPU ads, the latest Intel and AMD chips,netbooks, notebooks, gamer desktops, Windows and Mac ads, gamer mice, servers, PMPs, tv tuners, wifi cards, see how easy this is?

I could understand non targeted ads on a complex site where many different kinds of stories are run, but this is ars for the love of Pete. nearly every damned story there is hardware, software, or OS based. You can't tell me there aren't a shitload of geek ads they could be running instead of non geek crap, it is just laziness on their part. I'll give them a week but if their ads don't get better? Back to the blocklist baby.