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The effects you cite are not independent: 'costing them money' and 'denying them revenue' are the same thing, and both flow from 'nullifying their business mode

The effects you cite are not independent: 'costing them money' and 'denying them revenue' are the same thing, and both flow from 'nullifying their business model.' But lots of companies have their business model nullified (ask BlockBuster). They either find another one or they go out of business and a smarter outfit with a better model takes their place. If everyone blocked ads, no one would serve them. They would charge for content. This is probably the fairest model for everyone. But content providers like Ars want to mislead their customers into thinking they are getting something for free, so they make their money from advertising: that is, they don't sell content, they use content as 'bait' to attract attention and then sell that attention to advertisers. An ad-blocker is acting perfectly ethically and rationally by refusing to give their attention---after all, Ars is pretending to be free, you can hardly blame the viewers who take them up on the offer. The only ones being screwed by this are the non-blocking viewers, who are forced to give more of their attention to compensate for the blockers.

dandelany 17y ago
> 'costing them money' and 'denying them revenue' are the same thing No they're not. The point I was making is that you necessarily cost them money every time you visit a page, but by blocking the ad, you're also denying them the revenue that would balance out that cost. > But content providers like Ars want to mislead their customers into thinking they are getting something for free I think that even the least savvy of Internet users understand the advertising model. No one is "misled" to believe that running a site like Ars costs nothing. They're not "pretending to be free" any more than a newspaper full of ads is.
- vannevar 17y ago
  You're correct that visiting the page does impose an infinitesimal marginal cost. The economics would remain the same, however, if there were no cost at all for viewing the site. The content still costs money to produce. The real issue here is the denial of revenue, which as I said flows logically from nullifying the business model. Ars wants people to think that they are in the business of reporting tech news, when in fact they are in the business of selling individuals to advertisers. I don't see any notices on Ars explicitly asking people to view ads in exchange for viewing content. The reason is that doing so would confront people with the reality of the site and turn them off, even though many of them understand the ad model in principle. And yes, a newspaper full of ads is also pretending to be free. If Ars won't explicitly require their users to view ads, then they can hardly complain when people skip them. I have no sympathy.

dandelany 17y ago

> 'costing them money' and 'denying them revenue' are the same thing No they're not. The point I was making is that you necessarily cost them money every time you visit a page, but by blocking the ad, you're also denying them the revenue that would balance out that cost. > But content providers like Ars want to mislead their customers into thinking they are getting something for free I think that even the least savvy of Internet users understand the advertising model. No one is "misled" to believe that running a site like Ars costs nothing. They're not "pretending to be free" any more than a newspaper full of ads is.

vannevar 17y ago
You're correct that visiting the page does impose an infinitesimal marginal cost. The economics would remain the same, however, if there were no cost at all for viewing the site. The content still costs money to produce. The real issue here is the denial of revenue, which as I said flows logically from nullifying the business model. Ars wants people to think that they are in the business of reporting tech news, when in fact they are in the business of selling individuals to advertisers. I don't see any notices on Ars explicitly asking people to view ads in exchange for viewing content. The reason is that doing so would confront people with the reality of the site and turn them off, even though many of them understand the ad model in principle. And yes, a newspaper full of ads is also pretending to be free. If Ars won't explicitly require their users to view ads, then they can hardly complain when people skip them. I have no sympathy.