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Study: Ad-Free Internet Would Cost Everyone $230-a-Year

Posted by Soulskill on from the monopoly-money dept.

Several readers sent word of research into the cost of internet content without ads. They looked at the amount of money spent on internet advertising last year in the U.K., and compared it to the number of U.K. internet users. On average, each user would have to pay about £140 ($230) to make up for the lost revenue of an ad-free internet. In a survey, 98% of consumers said they wouldn't be willing to pay that much for the ability to browse without advertisements. However, while most consumers regard ads as a necessary trade-off to keep the internet free, they will go to great lengths to avoid advertising they do not wish to see. Of those surveyed, 63 per cent said they skip online video ads 'as quickly as possible' – a figure that rises to 75 per cent for 16-24 year olds. Over a quarter of all respondents said they mute their sound and one in five scroll away from the video. 16 per cent use ad blocking software and 16 per cent open a new browser window or tab.

2 of 611 comments (clear)

  1. Re:$230 by almitydave · · Score: 4, Informative

    Totally with you. FWIW, YouTube offered to let me "monetize" my videos - I assume by showing annoying ads - but I've declined because I hate YouTube ads so much, and also because it'd probably net me a whopping $0.05/year.

    Anyway, I created a toolbar bookmark in all my browsers with the following in the URL field:
    javascript:window.location=String(window.location).replace("watch?v=","v/");
    If you click it while watching a video on YouTube, it causes the video to fill your browser window (for better resizing control, also to get [nearly] full-screen Flash in Linux), but also has the unintended but welcome side effect that it skips the preroll adds. Obviously this won't work if the "v" parameter in the URL doesn't come first, but that's rare enough that doing it by hand isn't a nuisance.

    --
    my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
    I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
  2. Re:$230 by Mousit · · Score: 5, Informative

    Also FWIW, Adblock Plus by default blocks YouTube ads. Has for a long, long time. I haven't seen a YouTube ad in so many years I literally tend to forget it even HAS them.

    Occasionally jars me when I see people complaining about how horrible YouTube ads are and it reminds me "oh yeeeaaah.." :)