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Adblocking is Missing the Point

7 points by alanthonyc 17y ago

johnl 17y ago
My use of ad blocking came about the same time viruses came to a head and I decided to shut them all down to solve the problem. Maybe what's needed is a more intelligent ad-blocker that can discriminate against the more intruding ads and leave the "see and click" ads alone..
spot 17y ago
the author thinks he is immune to ads because he doesn't click. so... why all those ads before the internet?
- alanthonyc 17y ago
  Immunity implies disease. As long as we are talking about advertising in those terms, then something is wrong. Once we get a way to connect businesses to the consumers who truly need their product or service, then we have something to work with. And by the way: the advent of the internet was/is a pretty huge deal. Things before and things after are necessarily very different.
  - apu 17y ago
    Things before and things after are necessarily very different. I would say that "things before and things after are not necessarily the same."
noelchurchill 17y ago
People who use ad blockers are people who likely wouldn't respond to the ads anyway so the advertiser isn't missing anything. The problem is Ars is charging advertisers on a CPM basis so the more ad impressions the more Ars gets paid. They could just raise the CPM they charge to account for the lower impressions. Hopefully advertisers would understand the impressions are of more value because some of the low value visitors already "opted out" by using ad blockers. Or they can charge on a cost per click basis.
- wanderr 17y ago
  It's unlikely Ars has any direct control over their CPM; its likely determined by an algorithm that already takes CTR into account. It would be interesting to see the internal Ars numbers to see what happened to theid revenue after ad blocking people turned off adblock; theoretically their CTR should have gone down significantly, lowering their CPM. The question is, assuming that's what happened, did the excess impressions make up for the lower CPM?
arantius 17y ago
Single anonymous blogger claims that advertising is fundamentally broken, and, thus, that all the parties collectively investing billions of dollars into it each year are fools, who do no ROI calculations on their dollars spent. Yeah right.
- alanthonyc 17y ago
  By your logic, spam is also working fine because the people who invest money into it are getting the ROI they desire. Anyway, I'm hardly a "single" voice on the topic: http://www.drawar.com/articles/dont-let-ads-kill-your-site/61/ http://www.drawar.com/articles/dont-let-ads-kill-your-site/6... And here's a non-anonymous blogger who is/has spoken on the same topic at SXSW. I didn't make it there, but I'm looking forward to a synopsis or a video. "Online Advertising: Losing the Race to the Bottom" http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/617 http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/617 "How individuals and groups can maintain some shred of dignity and support themselves by creating ad and sponsorship programs that benefit and respect publishers, readers and advertisers. Presented by John Gruber of Daring Fireball and Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners and The Deck Network." (emphasis mine)

7 points by alanthonyc 17y ago

johnl 17y ago

My use of ad blocking came about the same time viruses came to a head and I decided to shut them all down to solve the problem. Maybe what's needed is a more intelligent ad-blocker that can discriminate against the more intruding ads and leave the "see and click" ads alone..

spot 17y ago

the author thinks he is immune to ads because he doesn't click. so... why all those ads before the internet?

alanthonyc 17y ago
Immunity implies disease. As long as we are talking about advertising in those terms, then something is wrong. Once we get a way to connect businesses to the consumers who truly need their product or service, then we have something to work with. And by the way: the advent of the internet was/is a pretty huge deal. Things before and things after are necessarily very different.
- apu 17y ago
  Things before and things after are necessarily very different. I would say that "things before and things after are not necessarily the same."

noelchurchill 17y ago

People who use ad blockers are people who likely wouldn't respond to the ads anyway so the advertiser isn't missing anything. The problem is Ars is charging advertisers on a CPM basis so the more ad impressions the more Ars gets paid. They could just raise the CPM they charge to account for the lower impressions. Hopefully advertisers would understand the impressions are of more value because some of the low value visitors already "opted out" by using ad blockers. Or they can charge on a cost per click basis.

wanderr 17y ago
It's unlikely Ars has any direct control over their CPM; its likely determined by an algorithm that already takes CTR into account. It would be interesting to see the internal Ars numbers to see what happened to theid revenue after ad blocking people turned off adblock; theoretically their CTR should have gone down significantly, lowering their CPM. The question is, assuming that's what happened, did the excess impressions make up for the lower CPM?

arantius 17y ago

Single anonymous blogger claims that advertising is fundamentally broken, and, thus, that all the parties collectively investing billions of dollars into it each year are fools, who do no ROI calculations on their dollars spent. Yeah right.

alanthonyc 17y ago
By your logic, spam is also working fine because the people who invest money into it are getting the ROI they desire. Anyway, I'm hardly a "single" voice on the topic: http://www.drawar.com/articles/dont-let-ads-kill-your-site/61/ http://www.drawar.com/articles/dont-let-ads-kill-your-site/6... And here's a non-anonymous blogger who is/has spoken on the same topic at SXSW. I didn't make it there, but I'm looking forward to a synopsis or a video. "Online Advertising: Losing the Race to the Bottom" http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/617 http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/617 "How individuals and groups can maintain some shred of dignity and support themselves by creating ad and sponsorship programs that benefit and respect publishers, readers and advertisers. Presented by John Gruber of Daring Fireball and Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners and The Deck Network." (emphasis mine)