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Study: Ad Blocker Use Jumps 41 Percent
Mickeycaskill writes: A report from Adobe and anti-ad blocking startup PageFair says the number of ad block users worldwide has increased by 41 percent in the past 12 months to 198 million monthly active users. The study suggests the growing popularity of ad blocking software is set to cost online publishers $21.8 billion in 2015 and could reach $41.4 billion by 2016. "About 45 million of them are in the United States, with almost 15 percent of people in states like New York and California relying on these services. The figures are even higher in Europe, where 77 million people use versions of the software. In Poland, more than a third of people regularly block online ads."
even put an ad up!
In this day and age of malware being delivered even by supposedly reputable third-party providers, using an ad blocker is just plain responsible browsing. I'm sorry that web site owners are out some revenue for it, but if you want to make money off of me, you're going to figure out some way to do it other than leaving myself open to attack from malicious users.
There are a handful of web sites that I actually support financially specifically for this reason.
Mute the TV. Fast-forward recorded TV. Screen the calls. Block the ads.
Fuck'em if they cant take a joke.
I have no objection of watching ads. After all, it's the bread and butter to support a lot of sites. However, some of the ad scripts are so badly written that they basically bring my PC to a halt. This is particularly serious for flash scripts. I block them for my PC health actually.
I love how they quote figures for "losses to online publishers" with a confidence interval of 100%, while completely failing to address how GDMF ANNOYING the modern web is if you don't block ads. If I couldn't block ads on sites I otherwise like that choose to run super annoying ads, then I would simply block the entire site and not visit any of the "content" there. Hey online advertisers: Here's How To Keep People From Blocking Your Stuff With This One Weird, Old Trick! All you have to do is stop being so annoying. Really, that's it.
Nope. Not how it works. Not getting revenue from someone who wouldn't have clicked on your link if it were full of adware (for them) is not a "cost." The actual cost is in bandwidth, etc. and is much less than beelions of dollars.
Lets make ads even _more_ invasive! Surely that will work this time!
it's because ads are pollution of the mind, advertizing agencies (not just on the internet) commoditize people's brain runtime without asking their permission, and people generally FUCKING HATE IT.
Gee, what a surprise...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
It's going to be an arms race now.
I was testing out some stuff with privacy badger and I noticed that it does block at least some ads (all the ones I tested with).
But it seems to be based on the domain serving the ad. Maybe next we will see companies using random domain names to serve their ads in an attempt to bypass this?
I think it's funny that they think I'm somehow obligated to download and render every little bit of their website.
You mean "deny". This is like saying a fence "cost" a wolf some chickens. I understand paying for content by watching ads... but the popups, the tracking, and the auto-play videos are getting out of hand.
The industry loses money because they don't understand their mistakes.
I don't mind seeing ads in their little corner, not flashing, clearly labeled as such. Hell, I even welcome targeted ads!
But when an auto-loading, auto-playing full page Flash add with sound suddenly pops over my screen and scares me to death while I'm trying to read an article... well then fuck you, I'm gonna block the shit out of it and everything that comes from that website until the end of time.
Many games I found and play were initially found by me through ads. So ads do help. They're just, for most part, intruding and badly designed.
The ad industry doesn't understand that AdBlock is an effect, caused by their shitty race to make ads "more visible". I guess they're a victim of their own "success".
I've seen websites that don't let me view any content on them if I have AdBlock, I blacklisted them entirely.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
And now all of these companies will try to claim we're "stealing" revenue from them by not viewing ads.
Sorry, but we're under no obligation to watch your damned ads. We don't owe you the ability to display stuff on our screens, nor do we owe you the revenue associated with this.
Boo fucking hoo, the mean old internets are stopping allowing you to make money for embedding crap in our web pages and providing a vector for malware.
That's simply tragic.
But you can bet the lobbyists are hard at work telling the politicians this is a vital part of the economy and if people are allowed to block ads world will end.
Bloody parasites.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
“It is tragic that ad block users are inadvertently inflicting multi-billion dollar losses on the very websites they most enjoy,” said PageFair boss Sean Blanchfield.
Failure to generate revenue apparently is a loss.
Everyone on earth is losing trillions every second.
They aren't losing. It isn't costing them. The public chooses not to participate. The web companies can make pages not load at all if the ads are gone but they don't cause they know the public will leave them like rats leaving a sinking ship.
Business needs to change its methods. Bombarding people with advertising is unreasonable and it doesn't matter whether it is by the net, the phone, or junk mail. I can not believe that we do not at least have a common phone system that prevents advertising, sales, and charity calls from ringing my phone without my explicit and very direct, written consent. At the very least auto dialers could be sensed and blocked as could robo calls. We may have an opportunity to stop 100% of all phone sales and so-called telemarketing dead in its tracks.
I have no objection of watching ads.
Really? Because I do. I particularly object to pop-up ads, interstitial ads, large banner ads, and ANY ad that tries to track my behavior or browsing activity. Ads waste my time, intrude on my privacy and sometimes are malware vectors. I never have any interest in whatever crap they are trying to sell me so pretty much all the ads are nothing more than a waste of my time. My attention is valuable to me and I don't give it out for free. I don't buy shirts with large brands on them because I'm not being paid to promote them. If an ad company wants to pay me directly for my opinion on a product we can talk but it's going to be a direct negotiation most of the time.
I'm willing to pay for content which I think I have a reasonable chance of finding valuable or enjoyable. I occasionally purchase/rent/go-see movies. I subscribe to some journals. I subscribe to a few websites I find valuable. But if a company wants to use ads as their primary revenue source then chances are good I'm going to block or otherwise circumvent their attempt to hijack my time and attention.
After all, it's the bread and butter to support a lot of sites.
Their shitty business model is not my problem. If your business depends on pushing obnoxious ads and tracking my activity then you deserve to be blocked.
It was the autoplaying video-adverts that flipped me over (about 6 months ago). I tolerated them when they first appeared, but once they defaulted to having the sound switched on, it was clear that the situation had gone beyond reasonable bounds.
The advertising industry should do whatever it can to make life unpleasant for those companies that rolled out those noisy monsters. I was prepared to tolerate ads up to that point, so that particular development has cost the industry a good few ad-views (and I doubt I'm alone in having found the game of "which browser tab is making the noise" to be my breaking point).
I wish they would focus on shifting ads away from the current "be as annoying and in your face as possible" trend, and over to more non-intrusive forms of ads. I'm sure the reason ads have become so obnoxious is that it leads to more clicks, but that so many now choose to block them might be a good indication it's time to reevaluate.
My adblocker accepts non-intrusive ads by default. Get your ads on that whitelist and the problem is solved. Personally, I don't care about a static image or text box. I do care about blinking pop-overs with audio. Whenever I get a "we see you are running an ad-blocker, would you mind telling us why?" questionnaire from a website, I tell them the same thing.
Just as downloading music screwed those of us that didn't.
At work we block ad's company wide. Allowing online Adverts is a giant security flaw.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
While most americans may be content with things like the 'welcome back we'll be right back' nature of television and radio, its actually a pretty glaring annoyance for the rest of us. turning everything into a commodity is a very recent notion, and not one I might add that many people care for.
I block routes to known advertising servers, and i use the firefox microblock plugin for anything else. what advertisers often completely neglect is that theyre on my bandwidth. I pay the bill, i decide the content, end of discussion. the ads are often just another vector for exploits in the browser. The product almost never pertains to me, and i dont want it to. I dont want advertisers dickriding me into the sunset trying to exploit my personal interests. Instead when and if i need a product i want advertisers to focus on what the product does, and how well it does it. Do not pander endlessly about how good or noble a person im to become if i dole out cash for the product.
Good people go to bed earlier.
They asked us to punch the monkey... and we did. What do they expect with dropper-infested, bandwidth-hogging, slow-loading, auto-play with sound enabled "advertising" they keep showing on us?
They turned cable into never-ending commercials, people responded by record-and-skip and cable-cutting. They turned media sites into never-ending commercials, people responded by blacklisting and blocking advertising. I think the advertising industry shows clear pattern of shitting the bed, as such this is of their own making.
This finding is a big, blinking, sound-enabled, GIF-filled page full of caution signs webpage for advertisers that their operational model is NOT WANTED.
They don't seem to be seeing it.
Maybe they have a common sense blocker?
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Well, I'm of two minds on this subject. I have never installed adblock and its ilk, because I know that "free" content comes at a cost. So as much as possible I sit through commercials from network TV's streamed shows, I allow sidebar ads to populate some screen real estate on websites, etc.
But I have my limits.
I suppose in the end that makes me no better than folks who aggressively block every single advertisement in any form -- "We already established what kind of woman you are; now we're just negotiating on the price". But it helps me sleep better at night knowing I'm at least willing to try to give them some of my attention in return for free content.
I'm amazed they're not accusing ad block users of stealing.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Let's see. In most sites I visit, I noticed that most of the content is tied to ads functions or unknow "affiliate sites". Usually I count more than ten scripts whose function is unclear at least and the overwhelming majority of ads shown is in the style of "Clean My PC" shit. And still they have the courage to complain when I block mercilessly this malware vector?
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Your English was much better this time, brosky. Keep working on it.
Rise in insect repellent use costs malarial mosquitos millions of gallons of blood and new disease victims.
Advertising is necessary, to be sure - up to a point. As a business, you have to attract customers, no doubt, and to do that, you have to advertise. But there a huge difference between putting a small, factual advert in a few, strategic places, and spurting out a deluge of mindless shite over everybody. That sort of advertising is simply immoral in so many ways - and I use the word 'immoral' very deliberately, because I think it is also a moral issue.
The enormous amounts of adverts tend to drown out any coherent message there might be, not to mention the actual content of many websites. Most adverts are at best irrelevant noise, at worst blatant lies and in any case unproductive, and therefore worthless to the companies paying for them.
This is also a moral issue, IMO, for many reasons; one thing is the large part of advertising that is shamelessly fraudulent, but there are also issues like encouraging (or even bullying) people into wasting their money and sometimes health on unnecessary comsumption, as well as luring businesses into wasting their money on worthless advertising. Advertising agencies are for a very large part nothing more than parasites, and the sooner we get rid of them, the better.
And just to have it said - I do know the arguments about 'nobody forces people to ...'; not true, simply. It is very easy to see the direct connection from massive advertising campaigns that encourage drinking amoungst young people, to the increasing trend towards young people binge drinking every weekend. Producers of things like alcohol and sugary or fatty consumables, and companies like loan sharks and betting shops, deliberately target the most vulnerable, contributing to a culture of mindless consumption and indirectly to peer-pressure; after all, who wants to be seen as un-cool - a lentil eating outsider?
For those who think ad are ok:
âoePeople are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply youâ(TM)re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
âoeYou, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
âoeFuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. Itâ(TM)s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
âoeYou owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially donâ(TM)t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, donâ(TM)t even start asking for theirs.â
â" banksy
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
probably that *one* little host IP that is left unblocked .....
At least that's what I think of when I read that nonsense of a post advocating APK, it just reads like a scam email.
That's next. Anti-piracy in music was originally framed as "costing" the publishers money and then later framed as outright theft.
They somehow believe that our screens are yet another billboard on the e-road. Just like those big blinking street banners in America. Flashing right into your windows days and night. Equally unrelated content that someone thinks is better for us. I really do not need enlarging any parts of my body. They are already big enough :3
But beware! A new sales person has recently joined the hood. His name is Windows 10.
Not happy about this. Now that "normals" have slouched onto the blocker band wagon the ad pushers will develop more aggressive techniques plus deny content to blocker users (more than they do already.) Blockers only worked because they weren't popular; there are a LOT more ad-mongers than there are blocker makers.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I only use it for 2 reasons. One is because the ads have become so intrusive and annoying. No longer is it good enough to put a banner ad on the page. But now it has to take over my entire browser window and run 100 scripts that slow my browsing experience down (especially since I use older computers) but they also can't seen to get control of the malware issue. Again, if they wouldn't allow all of the scripts then malware wouldn't even be an issue.
said PageFair boss.... this is the problem.
I remember the old days, WebHostingTalk forum in fact, that had ads, only they were embedded into the page. The site operators themselves had a pdf of the site demographics, users, visits and suchlike and would offer advertisers a number of banners or images they could send to the site in exchange for a set amount of cash. That worked - it was difficult to block those ads without blocking other parts of the site (though it was still possible, I don't think anyone did it though as the ads were not excessive).
The ads were also closely targeted towards to site demographics - no ads for lawnmowers on a forum discussing web hosting!
But then... we got Google adwords and the other middlemen who insisted that putting ads on your site was something they'd take care of for you, and you'd get loads more money as they'd be targeted at the users based on user's past preferences (ie they could charge the advertiser more because of some bull about only showing them to people interested in them) and they would only take a small cut of the proceeds, whilst the site operators suddenly find they can jut put this widget here and .. loadsamoney, with no effort required.
And this is why your damn OS phones home continually, and there are more ads popping up and flashing at you than ever before, and many of them are useless anyway (like the time I went looking for some new windscreen wipers, I bought them and for a fortnight afterwards I was bombarded with ads for wipers that I would never buy because I just had some brand new ones!).
So, too bad, I have zero sympathy. If a site wants to host adverts directly, I will typically not block them and the adblockers won't have them in their lists anyway. To the numerous rip-off ad merchants.. fuck you. Put that in your damn tracking cookies.
Does your hosts file magic automatically block your constant shitposting?
Shouldn't kill the goose that laid the golden egg, but it's always killed. So be it.
To be fair, even by their crazy definition there has to be some opportunity to make money before it can be "lost". In other words the millions of people who bought lottery tickets last week lost tens of millions. The lottery should stop making them lose money and select their numbers next week, if they want people to carry on playing their game.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Failure to generate revenue apparently is a loss.
Everyone on earth is losing trillions every second.
They're using RIAA/MPAA math.
They could have woken up and realized that part of the reason Google's services did so well was that they presented a certain amount of advertising in a non-disruptive way.
Instead, they decided that blinking, audio, video, flash, javascript, animations, interstitials, anything that could be made as annoying as a six year old who wants attention was the right model.
Then they didn't mind their content and made it too easy for malware to get injected into their highly automated processes to boot.
And now they complain about ad blockers? Do they even realize how obnoxious their ads are?
We Salute You!!!
An ad blocker "costs" an advertiser NOTHING. The whole narrative is wrong.
Is ad revenue reduced? Yes. But that is not a cost. It's a reduction in income or a reduction in gross receipts. A "cost" is when your expenses increase, not when your revenue decreases.
Given how the population of the US is ~319 million, 45 million is almost 15% of the total US population. Therefore, I'm not sure what the summary (or the article itself, which doesn't provide any further detail) is trying to achieve by stating that almost 15% of people "in states like NY and California" use ad blockers -- saying they are statistically average compared to the other 48 states seems to add no value. To me, it would be more interested to know how much variation there is between states.
It will be interesting to see what happens when ios9 is released. It includes the capability to block ads cuz you can install an ad blocker in mobile safari. I'm sure that android has had options for a while, but iOS is a large market share and valuable cuz demographics. Also, I imagine it's a techie process to install on android, while maybe they can make it one-tap easy to install on iOS. Don't worry, I'm sure iAds won't be blocked...
Adverts are little different than the email spam that used to clog many an inbox. Adblockers are no different than spam filters.
These advertisers have simply overwhelmed and saturated the user experience of so many web properties to the point where they aren't tolerable. Try to going to any wikia.com site without adblock and see how slowly it loads and how impossible it is use the site. Frankly, slashdot is among the worst offenders. I just visited halo.wikia.com and ABP reported 25 blocked adverts. It's pretty much out of control. I mean fuck, shit, cock, ass, titties, boner, bitch, muff, pussy, cunt, butthole, Barbra Streisand!
Ad block software will not cost publishers publishers $21.8 billion in 2015. Those numbers are invalid because (1) many ad block users would avoid some sites they normally visit if they had to suffer through ads, (2) the incremental traffic from ad block users will not likely generate a proportional amount of sales for advertisers, and (3) advertisers will not like pay a proportionally higher amount if ad block software was not used.
The irony of unblockable spam posts being used to push adblocking software.
Nobody ever said it is your right to make money on the internet. If you want to post information, pay for hosting, that is your business. You are not guaranteed to make a profit doing so. The internet is there for sharing information, not for making money.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
We decided, a long time ago, that the web would be supported by advertising. Other business models are possible, and were explored, but subsequently abandoned. So be it.
OK, so show me good ads. Cut the "weird trick" ads. Lose the pop-ups, lose the auto-play videos, lose the bad HTML that makes web pages fidget and bounce around while the browser figures out what size your image really is. Lose the web pages that never finish loading. And please lose the Flash ads that freeze the entire browser.
When I loaded this page I got a BMW ad, an ad for a camera store and an ad for shoes. I can deal with that.
...laura
waaaaiiiitttt... I thought we solved this problem with a tax on blank cassette tapes. Sounds like you're proposing allowing double-dipping here, mate.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I wonder why.
My latest ad hate: Play some Android game on silent in bed, level ends, game blasts video ad on full volume. Not sure who to hatemail.
I see ads; text ads. Google itself inserts text ads in some places. They work, I sometimes read them, sometimes follow a link. But pop-up ads, videos, slide shows, obstructive banners and any visual or audible noise are banned. Tracking web bugs and many scripts are banned. Often sites don't work for me because of this, so I just leave. Other than my bank and very few other businesses, all sites are disposable.
Advertisers are hurting themselves as well as those of us who have to suffer them. Sensible text ads can work, and they are very hard to block.
Does anyone here remember Burma Shave ads along rural highways?
http://theshaveden.com/forums/...
Everyone loved them, cute little rhymes that concluded with a reminder to buy their product. Creativity in advertising today seems to be a matter of producing bigger, more obnoxious noise. There is much that can still be done with a whisper.
...omphaloskepsis often...
I didn't use any ad blockers until I encountered a page with information I needed and the page had an ad on it... That after about a minute would start playing a video AND shift the browser focus to that video. I would have to then stop the video and then scroll down the page to where I was before I was so rudely interrupted. And since that process took close to a minute (it was a very large page with a lot of dense information), I would only get 10 to 20 seconds or reading before the damn ad once again restarted and shifted focus. So ad blocker was installed and since I'm a lazy son of a bitch, I don't bother to turn it off on other pages that act responsibly. So In a nutshell, one asshole advertiser resulted in the blocking of every advertiser on my computer.
Just wait until these ad companies start sending checks to politicians. You'll have a congressional hearing on the use of ad blockers.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Can APK block APK spam posts about APK?
Your idea of marketing is incredible. Or retarded... Or incredibly retarded.
Considering the fact that ads are paid for when shown, and that companies have a limited amount of money to spend on advertising, showing more ads would only mean that the price per ad would be lower. In the same way, if it's harder to show ads for people, they can cost more.
It makes no sense to claim that people who live from showing ads on their websites (here called publishers) would make more money, or have increased costs, because of ad-blocking. The only difference on costs are bandwidth, that isn't that expensive anyway (and can be passed from the publishers to the advertisers).
So, your idea is to spam and anyone that doesn't like it or criticize your spam is a sock-puppet???
You sir are a special kind of stupid. Honestly, I could care less about technical validity if you present yourself like a warthog in heat.
Why would anyone choose an anti-spam/maleware/phish solution that markets itself by spam/maleware/phish?
No, trust us, this is a good ad.
Those ads that hack your monitor, by taking up all the space? No, we promise this one won't do that. Oh no, we won't sign our name to it, or a sign a document saying so. But trust us, this ad won't hack your monitor. It uses up only some of the space, not all of it.
Those ads that hack your browser, by popping up or popping under? No, we promise this one won't do that. Oh no, we won't promise or be accountable, but this one doesn't ignore browser settings like that.
Those ads that hack your inputs, by spoofing a close icon, or tying events to it? Or by looking like a system message? No, we promise this one won't do that. Of course, it could, at any moment, if our jobs depend on it or we are paid off, but we promise it's a good ad.
No, this is a good advertisement.
It's designed to hack just YOU. You should allow this to happen. You believe that only gullible or weakminded humans are affected by advertisements. We believe otherwise, and we spend millions of dollars on this topic, but you're probably right. It probably won't hack you. It's just designed that way, crafted by decades of doctorates, trial and errorred in a multibillion dollar industry. That model of a homunculus in your head is probably correct. You aren't even gonna be affected by this advertisement. After all, if you could be affected by the advertisment, then it would mean you are a human. And humans clearly aren't affected by those, just as long as they are strong willed and intelligent. No, no study has ever shown that correlation, but trust us.
This advertisement will just hack you. It will create a sense of fear, and offer to calm you. It will create a sense of dissatisfaction, and attempt to satisfy it. Were you hungry? Did you have a need to eat? Here's a picture of some food. And people enjoying food. I'm sure that has no affect on you. Here's a picture of a willing mate, a happy family, some offspring. Certainly you aren't some emotional wet robot that is subject to this.
I'll just put all this ball of mind poison right here. It won't pop up, pop under, be boring, be annoying, ring bells, have a fake close key, stutter, install a toolbar, or anything else.
No, this is a good ad.
It just hacks *you*.
Especially if you don't think that's possible. Please don't think that's possible, or you might question this whole thing.
If you spend any applicable amount of time online, you just get tired of every web page looking like times square. The more shocking thing here is that advertisers are surprised that people don't want to be sold to.
I think the question you need to ask yourself is when you're on your death-bed will you think, "boy, I sure do feel guilty for viewing all those corporate websites and blocking the ads and thus, their potential revenue", or "boy, I sure do wish I had all that time back I spent watching ads, being distracted by ads, closing pop-ups."
For me, the only valuable resource in the entire universe is my time. And I will fight very hard to protect it.
Sadly this study docent tell how much all those unwanted advertisement bandwidth would have cost to internet users..
On a DSL/cable/fiber connection ? Maybe a few cents per month if you include HD video ads. On wired connection, most of the cost getting you access to the internet. After this, bandwidth is super cheap, especially if CDNs are used, like most advertisers do.
It is a bit more for mobile data considering that the EM spectrum is a much more limited resource. So maybe a dollar or two per month for heavy users (with video).
I am talking about bandwidth costs for the ISP, not how it actually changes your bill. But the end result should be this assuming a neutral ISP (i.e. not affiliated with an ad network).
Surprised it has not taken companies longer to deny content to the user if ad-block is detected.
I have seen several sites that have a paragraph where the ads have been blocked stating that they won't get money if you block their ads.
It is awesome to see the awareness and number of users utilizing ad blockers, however there will be a point when the sites will have to figure it out to force to you see advertisements.
*On another note - Black Mirror had a great episode on advertisements and making people pay to not watch them.
I agree completely. I'm OK with seeing a few ads if they support the free content I want to access. If that's the business model we're going with, then so be it. Slashdot itself broke my own camel's back, though, with the amount of crap I saw even after I clicked "Ads Disabled" (because of the amount of crap I was seeing). My decision was reinforced after the most recent monthly session of Dad Cleans Up The Kids' Gaming PC from all the junkware they'd installed (my youngest is 7; sometimes he doesn't make the best choices).
Sorry, ad industry. I was willing to work with you but you made it too hard to accept. This is your own fault.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Lets say I have a website about cats. lets say it gets 1m views a day
I put a banner ad up at the top that gives people seizures that should pay 1k/mo for 1m views
The addition of advertising to my website causes my daily view count to drop to about 800k
So now it only pays 800/mo. this still pays for server maintenance and bandwidth.
But I want a new Dice bobble head doll so I add a bunch of pop under,pop up,redirects and sponsored content.
This makes the view count drop down to 500k but now 97% of users use adblock so I only make $15/mo on the 15k users that don't know how or are unable to use adblock.
So to compensate I add even more offensive advertising (and some malware redirects for good measure) to my website that pays better.
But the stats don't change much and I make much less than when I started out.
Now 490K People use adblock that didn't use adblock before.
Thus I have irreparably damaged my user base as even if I go back to just the one banner ad I will never be able to get as much as I did with that single banner ad when I started out.
Plus those adblock users now block ads everywhere not just my site which increases the percentage of adblock users on other websites even those without obtrusive advertising which in turn causes their ad revenue to go down.
Oh woe is me those thieving ablock users should have just put up with cryptowall, malware, popups, pop unders, redirects,sponsored cats, nasty and annoying advertising.
Its all the adblocking users fault its certainly not anything that I have done.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Am finding these p3rvy autoloud vids to be way too much.
Might have to install Ad-Blocker
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You should know that posting these kinds of stories is like screaming, "beetlejuice! beetlejuice! beetlejuice!" in a crowded forum.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Someone should explain to the folks paying for the advertisements that when you have visually intrusive ads, ads that start playing sound, or ads that obscure the content, there's only two options available to the person viewing the page: close the tab right away, or use an ad blocker. The more intrusive and annoying the ad, the more likely I am to harbor bad feelings about product being advertised, stop buying their crap, and will bad-mouth their products all over social media. Likewise, someone should explain to the sites that hosting the ads that allowing keyword ads and things that bring up popups while browsing the site may pay you more per visitor, but it also assures that I'll not be visiting your site to see those ads. Would you prefer $.02 per visitor for 200 visitors, or %.01 per visitor for 10,000 visitors? As far as the people that create the ad software itself, they really don't give a fuck if it harms your experience with the site you are visiting, or how their tactics harm the perception of the advertisers - they only care about getting their number of ads served as high as possible so their paycheck is bigger, even if it is actual malware they are serving. That many folks would take great joy in working them over with a baseball bat isn't a deterrent. The only way to really get them to change is to attack their pocketbook.
Don't you think it's ironic you have, on this article alone, plastered at least a half-dozen spam posts that are essentially ads. Do you have anything that would let us block you?
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Nice try, APK.
Well, I'm of two minds on this subject. I have never installed adblock and its ilk, because I know that "free" content comes at a cost.
I feel the same. Recently I changed my opinion, and you should too. Here is why:
Malware gets served in ads. All the major ad networks serve malware, because they don't properly monitor ad buyers. If you browse without ad-blocker, you are putting your computer at risk of being hacked. It is irresponsible.
(As an aside, I can tell you that ad networks have very low motivation to clean up or monitor ad buyers, because that is their source of revenue.)
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
After seeing this spammed all over this page, I know what adblock software I'll *never* use
I just ignored ads. Until I went to sites that had ads jiggle to catch my attention (tip via paypal!!!), autoplay videos (even without sound - the movement is annoying when I am trying to read an article), pop ups, pop unders, and of course delayed load ads and modal ad dialogs. SO FRUSTRATING! So I installed an ad blocker (uBlock) that not only doesn't slow down my browsing - it speeds it up! I doubt I can go back to the way it was before seeing how much better the web is without awful ads.
What can publishers do to reverse this trend? Ads that load quickly and aren't obnoxious. That simple. Throw in privacy as well for bonus points.
The one worry I have is that people don't want to pay for news anymore, and that is hurting the industry. We need *old school* investigative journalism that understands you can have a position without having bias - and I don't see a way to fund that.
Ad-Blockers are nice and all, but I've pretty much abandoned the web except for a few sites I read daily... if the company I want doesn't have an app at this point, they may as well be dead to me. It's just way too frustrating having to deal with clicking on something never doing at all what I was expecting.
More work for the company to produce an app? Yes, sucks to be you. But this is the world we are moving to rapidly.
On a side note, I'd like to thank Slashdot for not having any crappy click hijacking that opens new windows or frames.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is the reason I proudly browse with Ad Block Edge.
Content paid for by ads is not produced in my interest, but in the interest of the purchasers of the ads. In most cases it would be better if whatever is paid for by ads were not produced at all. That would make the voices of those speaking to share their thoughts, relatively louder in the marketplace of ideas, compared with the voices of those speaking to attract eyeballs in a way that won't reflect badly on a brand.
To an extent, content in the service of ads BECOMES an ad. I crave what is left when nobody can make money off the internet.
The rest can fsck off and die.
If something only exists in a form paid for by ads it is either 1) not necessary for anyone to create without the ads given the easy availability of ad blockers, but would be available if the existing sources went away or 2) is garbage or at best empty calories.
If a site wants to require ad-blockers be disabled to view the content, let them. I won't view their site if it's too hard to get around their ads. I won't link to their site because I won't view it and so won't know what's published on it. And neither will any of the people who use ad-blockers. And since people clever enought to know what an ad-blocker is, ( a low bar, but a bar nonetheless ) these tend to be the most savvy, interestin, and the most apt to generate traffic by their actions. The site that enforces no-adblockers soon gets forgotten.
Unless the site serves up tripe appealing to the lowest common denominator. But then it needn't bother blocking ad-blockers because its audience is literally brain-dead, and won't install them. But if they DID force viewing of ads, then well, nothing of value was lost.
...
You shouldn't respond to APK guy with your actual account. Now he is going to stalk you. On a related note, his hosts program is actually pretty good, however his methods of forum hijacking are a little eh.
The fight against the invasion of the minds has not started yesterday.
Ads utter to you in not always subtle ways the same message. To try to fix your miserable existence and be happy you need to spend more, own more, bigger, shinier. It's an aggression, an unrelenting crime against humanity.
A while ago, when I only disliked advertising, there is a nice game I used to play:
If I saw or heard an ad more than a couple of time on a single day (radio/TV), I used to ban the product for a few months/years. I was kind of happy to know that in retaliation to their indelicacy towards myself, they would at least lose the few tens or thousands I may well have given them otherwise.
Later I ended up stopping watching TV altogether (how about that, it was roughly 20 years ago), and started buying tapes, then DVDs then Blu-rays. It was a bit more expensive but so much better than TV, and no ads.
Then with the year more and more of the discs started to display hard-to-skip ads even before the menu, so I stopped buying.
I'm now on a popular (legal, paid, ad-free) streamer for TV and another for music (They shall remain nameless of course).
I guess I'm still vulnerable to product placement, but that's usually subtle enough ... so far.
Today the rule of the game with advertisers is simple : if I notice an ad, I cut the medium.
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
I wonder what advertising agencies spend every year on IT services. I wonder if they are aware that they could severely drop that cost by installing some ad-blocking utilities/hosts files.
ABP doesn't spam on forums...
- Raynet --> .
Yeah, you're enabling the websites to make more money.
Do you deliberately drive recklessly in order to maximize the profits of your life insurance vendor, or do you drive carefully? just curious
when will you write an application that actually works? Because you know, I gave yours a try, and after 50 minutes of being unresponsive I had to kill it. If you don't know how to merge sort lists of strings, then I question the rest of your application. And also I block all those sites on my firewall, no need to do that on the hosts file.
it helps me sleep better at night knowing I'm at least willing to try to give them some of my attention in return for free content.
I feel better blocking all ads and knowing that I've contributed to pressuring websites to find an alternative model to stay afloat.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
There was a time when ads just displayed a picture or some text, over a link, which left little for us to object to. Today, there serve up malware, steal our data, track us and spy on us, making ads a huge security and privacy risk that any sane person would object to. Until the ads companies show a bit of respect for Internet users, they will remain something that must be blocked at every opportunity.
I've been on the Internet for 20 years and have never clicked on an ad, including sponsored Google search results. I have wasted a lot of time removing malware from the computers of those less cautious. Ads do not have to be evil but they are.
I tolerate sensible adverts that aren't too intrusive. Banners are fine. In-page popups are not, vibrant ads are not, and so on. For sites that advertise sensibly, I quite happily switch off ad blocking. But advertisers need to also realise that bandwidth is not always a plentiful resource, and go easy on it. If I didn't have unlimited broadband at home (but a 10gig cap), I would certainly use ad-blocking quite aggressively there. The thing is, if a page needs more than, say, 200k of data when the written content is maybe 3 pages long and that is the only point of the page, this is just profligate, and if someone is restricted to mobile internet (and possibly a cap of 2gig per month, or even 0.5gig per month), then the amount of bandwidth wasted by adverts is, quite frankly, unacceptable. If advertisers suffer because of ad blocking, as a community they only have themselves to blame.
John_Chalisque
Tasteful, Well, Placed Ads are not the norm. Instead, we have inappropriate ads, made for shock value, made to jar the senses, in your face, filling up your machine with cookies that wear your SSD. We have self-playing audio and video.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Can the HOSTS file block these incessant ads about the glory of the HOSTS file? Is it truly the final solution that will forevermore remove the blight that is APK Hosts File Engine spam? If so, sign me up!
You are correct. Adblock failed miserably to block your ad. It got through to my browser.
You shouldn't respond to APK guy with your actual account. Now he is going to stalk you.
Shouldn't that be a Slashdot achievement by now?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You might be right but.....we fucking hate you. It's one thing to be right but it's another one to be a fucking annoying shitstain as well. Die already.
Wasn't it just like just last week that Yahoo fessed up to having malware delivered through their advertising? In their zeal to reduce costs they apparently do little to review adverts placed via their own ad networks. I can't imagine browsing the web without an ad blocker these days.
ha!
I knew APK spam would tag the fuck outta this article
Same here. I signed up for Hulu+ and paid for a month (No free trial? Really?) because I thought I would be getting an ad-free experience. I watched maybe two episodes of something before I rage-quit due to being bombarded with ads. For all the good it did, I even wrote in the comments when I canceled that the paid tier should not have ads.
I'm surprised I didn't see Privoxy mentioned in the comments. It may not be as effective or updated as regularly as many browser plugins, but it's the only way to block ads across your entire network, on ANY device. This is one of the reasons I never encounter ads in iOS apps/games with iAds. I've been using it since the days of Internet Junkbuster, before ad-blocking plugins even existed. Aside from blocking ads, Privoxy has some other privacy enhancing features as well.
as much as possible I sit through commercials from network TV's streamed shows, I allow sidebar ads to populate some screen real estate on websites, etc.
How often do you find these useful?
you don't talk about adblockers. I agree it was nice while it lasted.
I can never tell if you're serious, apk, or if you just do this because you find it amusing. Do you actually believe that your responses pretending to be a different person are fooling people? And yes, I know what a sock monkey is, but that phrase usually sets you off, so I'm not going to use it. (Hint: my prior sentence contained humor in the form of a contradiction).
...speaking of ads.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
As soon as we are able to hold sites accountable for letting ad networks use their site for distributing malware, and scams then we can discuss not blocking. Until then your ad better be hosted by the site itself, and non-intrusive, and legitimate.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)