Your Thoughts on Ad Block Browser Plugin?

Community
41

Yes but are you providing something unique? Can I Google a related phrase and find 20,000 sites that provide what you are offering?.. Or is it unique content? If it is maybe you could set up levels of membership with your own ad blocking for different levels. I subscribe to websites like this and it was a pretty easy decision for me to pay the money for a premium membership without the ads and access to the member’s only section.

[ot]
Also don’t forget… The internet is free, you aren’t paying for the network and search engines so you’re actually the one who is getting a lot for nothing. Most places of business (bricks/mortar) have to pay for various forms of advertising and a place to hang their sign, you don’t. $12 for a domain name and a few $'s a month for hosting and you’re up and running with a download of WP plus a free template and you’re well on your way.

If you want to monetize it, that’s your prerogative but you don’t really have much to complain about. Just don’t slap some ads in haphazardly and expect the money to roll in because it won’t. The web is full of sites like that.[/ot]

42

Essentially disallowing ad blocking can be seen as stealing. People have to pay for the bandwidth they use to download web pages and forcing them to download things they don’t want is costing them money. They will be even less likely to click on ads on sites that are stealing from them than they will be on sites where they have a choice. In fact they are more likely to never return to your site and to tell all their friends about how you steal visitors bandwidth with unwanted ads so as to reduce the number of people visiting your site further. You will end up with fewer people seeing the ads if you force people to view the ads than if you allow them the choice.

Also the advertisers who are paying you to display the ads do not want you forcing people to view them as it also costs them money if people with no interest in their product actually click on the ad and so they will prefer that only those with an interest in actually buying click on the ads. It also costs the ad service bandwidth to display all the extra unwanted ads so their cut will need to be bigger to pay for it.

If the number of sites giving people the choice of whether to view the ads or not falls to the point where sites that force people to view ads becomes a big enough fraction of the market that they can actually hang on to visitors because there is nowhere else to go then the advertising services will probably ban sites from forcing people to view the ads as it is against the advertisers interests for sites to force their visitors like that. Possibly they do already - have you read the fine print of the ToS?

43

The bottom line is that nobody owes you anything just because you created a site. Even if you filled it with great content. If you want to monetize it, you need to market it and come up with a reason to buy in.

Blocking ads is stealing. The website producer made their site available with the condition that the ads are visible. You are taking content without paying for it with your exposure to ads.

If it were possible it makes perfect sense to me to block users that have ad-blockers.
A nice message like: Please unblock your ads to view this website.

The bottom line is that if people block the means of monetizing Web content, it decreases the incentive for creating it. This will have the effect of reducing the amount of quality content.

Its already hard enough to make any money off Web content. You are saying in addition to building the site and providing the platform we need to go through some additional marketing strategy. This creates a significant barrier to entry.

Anyone with a blog can stick some Adsense code on the page and start making money. What you are proposing will effectively block most small website producers from collecting on their hard work.

The biggest problem is the website producers that disrespect the user by using so many ads it makes the site impossible to read. The solution is to not visit these sites.

E

44

Wow… what a statement! So, watching commercial on your TV is stealing as well? They should disable the commercial to lower the electric bill? I can’t help but to laugh w/ this one.

45

That’s an opinion and it isn’t based on law. It’s based on arbitrary rules that assume people have to view your ads to visit your site. Being that the internet is virtually free, you can try that but I don’t think it will help.

You can probably sniff out most blockers and do that but again, internet users are fickle, you have a couple of seconds to grab them and once they’re gone, they aren’t likely to return so you really have to weigh the odd.

If visitor A comes to your site with Ad-Blocker on, will they appreciate your site enough to refer other visitors who don’t have ad blockers? If you stop them at the door and make it difficult to access the site, they won’t but if the content is compelling and they can get at it they just might.

Internet marketing, particularly with ad revenue is about numbers and referrals. If you try to stop some of the traffic, they won’t return and they won’t refer.

46

It makes as much sense as the opposing argument that blocking ads can be seen as stealing. Same coin, opposing sides.

47

NO, no and no. :slight_smile:

Website producer didn’t informed the user before hand that its site is ads based. So, you are in fact praying on the user by using keywords significant to him to come to your website to view… ads!

That said, are you using ads, advert etcetera as keywords for you site’s SEO? I think not. That makes you a fraud: you have something on your site you didn’t fore worn the user about. You are illegal!

Your website is like a store. If you start banning visitors you lose potential customers. It seems to me you’re breaking the very basic rule here: get the potential customer to come to you first and worry about product sale later.

I really doubt your ads are quality content. So you already are decreasing the amount of quality content.

Huh?! You want to make money on the web just because it’s easy for you to make a website? Hmmm, let me think, I believe 10 years old kids already are among your most serious contenders :wink:

What hard work? The blogs are filled to the rim with garbage. Small website producers… what? What kind, what subject. Can you honestly tell me that today, small website producers, bloggers, have sweated or did pay hard money for their websites? NO! They get hand-outs: Wordpress etcetera.

The biggest problem is for you to assume your ads are not offending me and that you have the right to feed me ads. On TV there is censorship. Do you apply any? My wildest guess is that you feed any ads that gets you k-ching w/o worrying about the user.

So the user has the right to protect him self. After all, I don’t have to watch street ads just because I get to walk on the sidewalk for free. I’m not forced to watch ads on my jogging sessions just because I don’t pay an entry fee in the park.

You, the ads server, you should to watch ads for the air you breed, for the sunlight and you should be banned from this planet the moment you dare to enjoy nature instead of watching and clicking on ads for God :slight_smile:

Bottom line: you want to ban me for ads blocking? Go ahead, I, and many like me, won’t mind. It’s a <snip /> move from your part that will make your so called quality content even less desirable to anyone. Your site will became extinct and nobody, NOBODY, will ever miss it!

48

It’s interesting that you chose to post this in your argument, as you’ve made a distinction between ad types based on personal taste.
You decided that it’s okay for adverts embedded in the content but not okay for a pop under, but lots of us have decided that neither are acceptable and choose to use adblock!

Incidentally I leave the room to make a drink when adverts come on TV :wink:

49

This argument is going round and round but it’s a distraction from the core matter:

Create great content and it’ll monetise one way or another - ads, no ads, or some-ads-blocked. Worry about the content first, then the ads. If you’ve got it the other way round it probably shows, and it’ll be like squeezing blood from the proverbial stone.

50

Precisely :smiley:

It takes nothing to slap together a shoddy WP site with a free theme (I’m not referring to any site in particular) and grab a bunch of content that likely mirrors what’s already out there and then slap ads inline. That’s might describe 99% of the ad-revenued websites out there. If you want to make some serious cash for your opinion or information, your site needs to be a cut above the rest and the content has to be unique.

51

I am started to get pissed off with a lot of websites due to:

It takes nothing to slap together a shoddy WP site with a free theme (I’m not referring to any site in particular) and grab a bunch of content that likely mirrors what’s already out there and then slap ads inline. That’s might describe 99% of the ad-revenued websites out there. If you want to make some serious cash for your opinion or information, your site needs to be a cut above the rest and the content has to be unique.

You are looking for some information and there are half a dozen websites all with the same information pressumably ripped off some body who did the hard works website and the whole artical is surrounded by ads. Some are even to lazy to post the artical and only have a link to the artical! I suppose this save server space therefore money ?

The whole web is getting inundated with ads and I get feedup having to wade through site after site trying to find something useful.
As has been said before it is not expensive to setup a website and I suppose it is the same as with SPAM - you only need one or two people to buy something from an ad on your site to get your money back.

As I said in an earlier post I do not need ad block software as I have basicly become imune to ads and only click on them accidentaly. Sometimes when I am waiting for a page to load fully.

52

Allow me to correct you, it’s 89.73% :slight_smile:

53

Website producer didn’t informed the user before hand that its site is ads based. So, you are in fact praying on the user by using keywords significant to him to come to your website to view… ads!

That said, are you using ads, advert etcetera as keywords for you site’s SEO? I think not. That makes you a fraud: you have something on your site you didn’t fore worn the user about. You are illegal!

Your website is like a store. If you start banning visitors you lose potential customers. It seems to me you’re breaking the very basic rule here: get the potential customer to come to you first and worry about product sale later.

I really doubt your ads are quality content. So you already are decreasing the amount of quality content.

Huh?! You want to make money on the web just because it’s easy for you to make a website? Hmmm, let me think, I believe 10 years old kids already are among your most serious contenders :wink:

What hard work? The blogs are filled to the rim with garbage. Small website producers… what? What kind, what subject. Can you honestly tell me that today, small website producers, bloggers, have sweated or did pay hard money for their websites? NO! They get hand-outs: Wordpress etcetera.

The biggest problem is for you to assume your ads are not offending me and that you have the right to feed me ads. On TV there is censorship. Do you apply any? My wildest guess is that you feed any ads that gets you k-ching w/o worrying about the user.

So the user has the right to protect him self. After all, I don’t have to watch street ads just because I get to walk on the sidewalk for free. I’m not forced to watch ads on my jogging sessions just because I don’t pay an entry fee in the park.

You, the ads server, you should to watch ads for the air you breed, for the sunlight and you should be banned from this planet the moment you dare to enjoy nature instead of watching and clicking on ads for God :slight_smile:

These comments really don’t make much sense. The seem to come from the point of view that everything should be free and the user is doing the content provider a favor by reading their information.

I am very familiar with annoying websites that have so many ads that you can’t tell the difference between the ads and the content. As well as the agregators that just list links to other people’s work. I choose to not visit these sites or leave immediately. A blog isn’t going to be successful without attracting repeat visitors. If it has too many ads, it will lose visitors.
It wouldn’t be very hard to make a Google custom search that excludes these sites.

Doing a basic site install is easy, but writing compelling content isn’t. I’m assuming most people use the Internet because of compelling content. If it were the cesspool you are describing nobody would use it.

You don’t pay an entry fee in the park because you have already paid it through tax dollars. When you read a newspaper, there are ads because like a website it is a commercial publication.

Bottom line: you want to ban me for ads blocking? Go ahead, I, and many like me, won’t mind. It’s a <snip /> move from your part that will make your so called quality content even less desirable to anyone. Your site will became extinct and nobody, NOBODY, will ever miss it!

I think you need to cool down a little. You don’t need to take this so personally. This argument is like saying that if you illegally download music you are making the artist more popular. This doesn’t amount to anything if the artist can’t make a dime off their work.

54

You don’t seem to get it: I’ve already paid more than enough:

  1. I bought a computer. I use electricity that’s on my bill.
  2. I maybe even bought a commercial OS. I may even have paid somebody for installing an OS (commercial or not) on my machine.
  3. I’ve paid an internet subscription.

What you’ve done for me? Nothing yet. You are adding costs for me w/o any gain. Because you just lied to me. I’m looking for content and I find ads I don’t want. Again, have you put, for SEO, keywords like “ad, ads, advert,…” for your site? I’m sure not.

You don’t give me a choice to avoid going to your website, but you want to force me your way when I get there. Guess what: your site is most likely a public site. That means, since I already paid tax dollars, as you see above. I don’t have to do <snip />. If you don’t like it, offer subscriptions and make it so I have to login.

Sure I take it personally. You say I should be OK and “pay” for the content by looking at ads, no matter what. What if all your content means zero to me? To decide if that content is good for me, I have to try it first. Why should I “pay” you even if I don’t find the content you offer useful?

What makes your site so much better than the likes of SitePoint, HTML Dog, A List Apart so I HAVE TO HAVE TO VISIT YOUR SITE AND BE FORCED TO SEE YOUR ADS???

Get this into your head: internet is a public network you didn’t do anything to help build, sustain, expand. Either software or hardware. But you seem to think you’re entitled to get to profit from it. WRONG!!! You’re just a leech! You seem to think you’re entitled to make rules and decide. WRONG!!! You’re just a tiny little user just like everyone else! You don’t get to “take over” the internet just because you’ve put together some websites! That is only for when you put REAL TIME, MONEY, EFFORT into internet it self.

Bottom line is you’re wrong in so many ways, your view is so narrow and conceited, I think you just need to know more before going further with this :slight_smile:

55

Yeah! that’s the best thing to do. “IGNORE” them! That’s part of technology!

56

noonnope
Your arguments are lot logical. Sure, you have bought a computer, software and Internet access. This does not mean that anything you can do with said Internet access should be free. By your logic, you should get your Internet access for free, because you already paid for the modem.

Paying person A amount X for service C does not mean you should get service D for free from person B. This is not logical.

Calling someone a liar because they have advertisements on their website is not logical either. True, no user will visit a website to view the advertisements, but that can be said about other parts of the website as well. By your logic, any company or webmaster which has a privacy policy page is lying to its users too. As long as the website contains the information you were promised, you have not been lied to.

Your suggestion to use a subscription-based business model in stead of an advertisement-based business model does not make much sense either. The most popular websites in the world, Google and Facebook, are almost completely advertisement financed. Would you truly prefer to pay a monthly fee to use Google, in stead of its current business model?

Nobody is taking over the Internet or making up rules here. Only using the existing rules.

I have websites which provide contents, which is not available anywhere else in the world; not on the Internet, and not in any printed medias. I make some money off the advertisements from some of the websites, yes. Will it ever make me rich? No, but it will allow me to pay to get even more unique contents. The contents I add to my website isn’t cheap to get, either. If I didn’t publish it, it is unlikely that it would ever get published. I don’t do any search engine optimization or promotion. I get traffic because users are voluntarily linking to my websites. I am not making any promises, only adding the information I wish to share. Does this make me a liar or a leech? Maybe to you, but apparently not to my visitors, who keep coming back.

If you wish to block my ads, then that’s your choice. As I’ve already explained earlier in this thread, I see no reason to block you. I do, however, resent being labelled a liar and a leech, simply because you don’t like my business model.

57

C. Ankerstjerne

Well, the point was not that you can’t show ads on you page. The point was:

  • that you should not demand ad blocking software to became illegal (STUPID!!!)
  • that you should not ban users that choose to use software that blocks ads (STUPID!!!) but rather
  • that you should ask for support (COMMON COURTESY)

And yes, your site it’s a trap. When I search on Google, I don’t do:

“html tables css styling with ads”

:wink:

Nor you are giving me the choice:

  • the page w/ ads
  • the page w/o ads

About you being a liar. You are.

Because, no matter why you’ve made a website, I get to decide my own terms to visit it. I may be offended by your ads. How can you make sure they don’t?

That’s one.

Can you vouch the ads on your page are genuine? Can you vouch the ads on your page aren’t part of some scheme? Can you vouch that all ads are harmless? What if an ad will possibly get me in trouble with the law? You have no control of what those ads might do to me. So, I have to take care: children, old parents, clueless victims that may fall into same trap.

That’s two.

Finally, there is a clear benefit FOR EVERYONE from using Google. There is no doubt about it. Can you say the same about your site? Will EVERY USER be accomodated?

Yes, if I care to block ads, I should be free to do so, no question about it. Anything else is just wrong. No “illegal” crap. You are illegal. As far as I know, income from ads must be charged.

I’m not on internet on your dime or your time. But you are on internet on your dime. If I go to your site and find something useful, than yes, I believe THEN it’s time for you to show me some ads and ask me to help and reward that.

58

You mean, on every page, have the question “Was this content useful to you” and a little radio button or something, and you click it and see ads?

I can imagine all 2 people of the 200 who actually found the content useful even thinking of clicking on the OMG YES PLEASE GIVE ME ADS button. : )

59

You are repeating the same illogical argument: The fact that users don’t specifically request advertisements on a website does not mean they should not be on the website. The page they land on is very likely to contain other elements they are lot looking for either. The important thing is whether the users get what they are looking for, not that they get only what they are looking for, and nothing else.

In regards to your two examples, they have nothing to do with being a liar or not.

You can decide how to visit a website. You can use any user agent you wish. The webmaster, on his part, get to decide what to show you. There is no implicit promise that you will not be offended when visiting an arbitrary website, ads or no ads.

The ads might be fraudulent, yes, but so can any website you find. A website which is listed on Google be fraudulent or contain virusses. Google can not guarantee that there are no fraudulent or virus-filled websites in their index, any more than a webmaster can guarantee the same about the ads he display. That is not how the Internet works. You browse the Internet on your own risk, and you have to make sure you obey the law; you, and you alone, are responsible for your own actions.

Google isn’t perfect either. Many searches will never find what the user is looking for. This alone invalidates your argument.

60

:stuck_out_tongue:

I’m one of those people for which aggressive advertisement just doesn’t work.

And, if I’m pointed in the right direction, I am grateful too.

What I’m saying is, if you really want, you’ll catch more flies with honey. Otherwise, you can scream “illegal” all day long like a greedy fool.