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Game Site Wonders 'What Next?' When 50% of Users Block Ads
6 writes "Destructoid, one of the few remaining bastions of independent game journalism online, wonders what to do now that nearly 50% of their users run ad-blockers."
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Use weather.gov. It's where all the weather sites and TV stations get their weather info. The big plus, no ads!
Self awareness - try it!
Ready answer - nectar the ones who complain are not willing to pay a dollar even for some of their favorite sites. Slashdot allows you to choose to turn off ads by paying. Something like 0.001% pay. 99.99% won't pay.
Some time ago I wrote a shareware program that does something no other software does. 100,000 people downloaded it. It got top ratings everywhere. About 60 people emailed me saying how much they like the software. Exactly ONE person paid the $5 "donation" for it. Web sites are like that - people will visit daily, they'll talk about how awesome the site is, but no way they'll fork over $1. They just don't.
However very often ads are the only way of creating revenue. Just like with tv, the ads is what it is about and the shows are there so we watch the ads.
In Britain the BBC doesn't show advertising. They are funded by an annual fee that TV users pay. 145UKP (216USD). And that gets more than just the lack of advert breaks. It also gets programmes that the commercial channels don't find profitable to make, such as period dramas, and science programs.
Abusive ads have one or more of the following:
These are the ones I block. I suggest advertisers start treating people as people.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
My Ghostery blocked 14 scripts from loading on that site. The sad thing is, with all that blocked, the entire left and right quarter of the screen came up blank. If a site needs that much revenue from ads for mostly re-reporting what other people have already written they do not deserve to be in business in the first place. I can't stand that most of these types of sites have nothing but garbage opinions and things I've read elsewhere AND think they have a right to gather my information for free, even if its just my IP. If it was for their own metrics, fine but not to 14 entities that I never clicked on or agreed to share with. I've never clicked on disable advertising on Slashdot and yet I'm still looking at most of my screen showing content. I don't have Musinex ads screaming out of my speakers. If they want to survive, sites like Destructoid need to figure out how to do it in a way that consumers are willing to put up with.
If you serve the ads yourself, then afaik no ad blockers block them.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
> and click on the ads?
Not necessary. With Flash and Java all the virus writer needs is a 0-day in the plug-in and you still get pwned, even if you only visit 'trusted' sites. Also some of the jackass flash ads that are small for a moment then explode to half the screen size if you get close to them make accidental clicks common.
> It's the obnoxious, intrusive and privacy-stealing
> ads that are the problem.
Which is to say, most of them. :-)
My rationale for blocking ads: Most ads come from ad networks. These networks can be hacked to serve malicious ads (or maybe people just pay for malicious ads and they don't get caught by QC -- don't know, don't care.) The fucking New York Times fell victim to this so it's not a minor problem. I block ads as a security measure.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.