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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.
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.
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
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.
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).
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.
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.
Rise in insect repellent use costs malarial mosquitos millions of gallons of blood and new disease victims.
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!
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.
Adverts are little different than the email spam that used to clog many an inbox. Adblockers are no different than spam filters.
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.
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!
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
ABP doesn't spam on forums...
- Raynet --> .
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.