Who or what is to blame for adblocking?

[compl3x]

A friend and I were arguing about advertising on the internet and more specifically the effect adblocking has on site revenue. I maintained that advertisers had brought the wrath of users upon themselves because of years of manipulative, deceptive and sometimes borderline criminal methods of advertising (adware, pop-ups, embedded video with audio auto-playing when you visit a website, etc.) but he argued even if advertisers had been better and more subtle about advertising, adblocking would still be super popular because people just generally hate advertising. Since I don't hate advertising, sometimes it introduces me to new stuff, I disagree that people would be so quick to block adverts if they were relevant, subtle and didn't break the page they were on.

 

I whitelist a handful of sites who have ads that aren't intrusive or annoying (NeoWin is on that list). But everyone else is blocked and I don't feel particularly guilty about it. Some might even argue it is a security issue now. (demonoid.ph was blocked by Google recently because some advertising was apparently trying to install malware)

 

 

[John.D]

I dont like ads, I'm not interested. So I block them. Depending on what the site is I know of some people who have clicked on them, and installed crap on their system.

 

Because, they had no idea what it is, or what extras it installed.

[notta]

It's the fact that it's forced on me that I don't like it. Show some ads in the corner or something and if it's something I'm interested in maybe I'll click on it.

[seta-san]

i'd never buy anything from an ad. that said, that alone isn't enough to get me to block them. What gets me to block them are the obscene ads that grow and take up more of their screen.. or that just start playing video or audio. if it were limited to just static images i wouldn't block.

[Xilo]

It's the website admins. Allowing abnoxious ads, adsense, ads taking up a majority of the site layout, popups, audio/video, etc. Advertisers are generally disgusting scumbags. It's bad enough we are littered with ads everywhere else. You can't do anything without being bombarded by ads nowadays. I'm honestly sick of it.

[Dot Matrix]

Advertisers are the new paparazzi, and you're the "star." They have no one to blame but themselves for the massive backlash against Internet advertising. They are the biggest pieces of **** to ever crawl through the intertubes, and I have no problems blocking them and disabling tracking.

 

Advertising can burn for all I care. It benefits NO ONE at all except the people at the top levels of whatever shady company they're working for.

 

Our best and brightest are caught trying to figure out new and innovative ways of invading your privacy, and there is everything majorly wrong with that. I cannot wait for the advertising bubble to burst.

[The Evil Overlord]

Voted advertisers

no point in trying to ad to the discussion, I share the sentiments posted above

[+Warwagon MVC]

I vote the security risk of ads. How a single ad served malware to 2 million visitors of yahoo a while back.

[Anibal P]

Advertisers, I used to not block at allm but over time ads got worse and more annoying and disruptive so they got blocked on most sites, this one being one of the few exceptions 

[seta-san]

totally forgot about the ads on download sites like "download.com" that look like the button or link that you wanted to click on to download what you intended.. but instead has you downloading something else.

 

edit. i actually switched over to palemoon on this site because the ads were doing that expanding thing.

[+Warwagon MVC]

no point in trying to ad to the discussion

 

[+Red King Subscriber²]

Visual noise. Bandwidth. CPU use. Security. Cleanness of the page. Did I mention security?

 

No moral dilemmas as well due to being sub2

[Xilo]

totally forgot about the ads on download sites like "download.com" that look like the button or link that you wanted to click on to download what you intended.. but instead has you downloading something else.

 

edit. i actually switched over to palemoon on this site because the ads were doing that expanding thing.

That's horrible. Ugh

[seta-san]

i also voted others. it's the site's admins who are responsible. they could lay down the law and demand that the adverstiser only just have static images or, at worst, a gif-like animation that bugs no one.

[macmax]

When parent website spawns multiple advertising links. Page either takes long time to load or never loads.

pop-up. Sexual in nature (adultfriend finder etc.). You do not want that to happen when your parents or kids are browsing the internet.

Deceptive ads. Your computer is at risk, please click here to get rid of your problem. <Newbies or less educated> people fall for this.

[+LogicalApex MVC]

I'm extremely anti-advertising. Seeing advertising in any form generally annoys me and I avoid it as much as possible... I don't make buying decisions based on advertising.

 

More to the scope at hand, Internet Advertising, I wasn't in the ad block crowd for years as I felt obligated to view the ads as a sort of moral base. I felt that if I were to block ads then I would be hindering the site owner's revenue stream and, in a way, pirating their material. Advertising was a necessary evil I had to contend with since most sites don't offer you a way to pay your way out of the hole. Once advertisers went deep down the tracking hole I abandoned this stance. I don't feel I should surrender my privacy to view content. I now ad-block by default and don't maintain a white-list. The sites I care about I pay for a subscription to offset any loses due to me not wanting to see ads...

 

I don't maintain a white-list due to many sites making heavy use of social media buttons on their sites. Allowing the buttons to load ends up allowing social media sites to track me just as well as traditional advertisers.

 

There is now both a privacy and a security cost to pay in relation to dealing with online advertising. Users shouldn't have to give up privacy and security to access content...

 

Ideally, the future Internet is, at least, two tier. One where users can have an option away from advertising, in any form, and site operators still being able to extract much needed revenue. I like the subscription model, but I know some aren't a huge fan.

[trag3dy]

If I could vote for all 3 I would. 

 

Advertisers because they make the obnoxious intrusive ads to begin with.

 

Users. Because I hate seeing obnoxious intrusive ads.

 

Other. Site owners for allowing the obnoxious intrusive ads.

[+Warwagon MVC]

What has recently annoyed me is youtube on my iPad. I'll be watching a review for a game leave and then come back later. When I open the iPad I have to watch a non skip-able 29 second Ad.  Sooooooooooooooooooo Annoying.

[seta-san]

another visual example of ads that deceptive get clicks... and in this case could be filled with virus'

 

[astropheed Veteran]

I voted other, specify: They're both responsible.

 

I personally don't use ad blockers. People say I'm crazy. And it's not because I believe in 'supporting' websites by viewing them either; that idea is bull crap and you can take your sympathies elsewhere.

 

The reason I don't ad block is I don't want another company dictating what I see. I'll see it all, thanks. I'm well aware 99.998% of it is crap, but I don't want to miss that 0.002%. Also, I don't really trust them. In my experience the better something appears to be the more evil it slowly becomes. This may not always hold true, but it's true enough where I can pretty much bet on it.

[+Red King Subscriber²]

I feel like I should mention ***holes like Hulu here.

I can't use that service. They don't want my money - there is no option to pay to get rid of ads.

They want to stuff my mind full of advertisements.

[+Anarkii Subscriber²]

Ads have never worked for me, and so therefore I block them. 

Who is to blame for adblocking? Advertisers. 

[sagum]

I wish I could block adverting and tracking.

 

Right now, YouTube has started to use Google syndicate links on some of their related videos that pass the correct url as a referral. But sometimes the page loads, for a second and then comes up with page can not be displayed.
Or how google, and ebay as recently started to track their clicks via the same method, where it makes it impossible to simply click the back button as it immediately forwards you to the page you were looking at. You have to do the long hold on the back button and skip the crap forwarding ad-tracking link.

 

[leesmithg]

I turned off admuncher once to experience eBay without an adblocker.

 

It took me 10 times longer to browse what I usually browse for. 

 

My browser crashed a couple of times also.

[Dot Matrix]

Security was another major reason for me. Ads fall too easily to SQL injections, which then get passed on.