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> Adblock Plus’s lead developer, Wladimir Palant, has tried to quell the anger, replying personally to the disappointed commenters and explaining that the intro

> Adblock Plus’s lead developer, Wladimir Palant, has tried to quell the anger, replying personally to the disappointed commenters and explaining that the introduction of “acceptable ads” is true to his vision for the ad-blocking project. The project was never meant to rid the Internet of all advertising, he says, but of annoying advertising. This may have been his goal, but a lot of users (myself included) obviously don't want ANY advertising. It's not that I don't want to support content creation, I would just rather pay real dollars for the services I use than be sold as a commodity to advertisers. I put my money where my mouth is, subscribing to premium ad-free versions of music sites, and paying for online subscriptions to news sites. I also donate to Wikipedia. These are all great ways to support websites that don't involve being subjected to advertising. I don't mind if website operators want to use advertising as a revenue model, but they should be offering a "pay me to opt out". When this becomes widespread, Adblock Plus will be unnecessary. > “I just talked to a tech Web site here in Germany, they have seven employees and 40 percent of their users have ad-blockers,” he said. “There was a tech convention in America, and they couldn’t afford to send more than one journalist because so many of their ads are being blocked.” They should charge for their site. Some nontrivial number of those 40% users would pay, and a paid user is ridiculously more profitable in most cases than the highest CPMs.

avolcano 15y ago
> They should charge for their site. Some nontrivial number of those 40% users would pay, and a paid user is ridiculously more profitable in most cases than the highest CPMs. I don't think you understand why ads are the funding of choice for most of the internet. Imagine the last time you read a random article on a tech blog. You probably were linked to it on HN, or a friend linked it on Twitter, or on Reddit, or whatever. It's likely not something that is in your news feed. For most people, that is how they find content. There's a minority of users who will use RSS or follow specific sites on Twitter, but 99% of users will be linked to it, or maybe Google it, or otherwise stumble across it. They have no actual ties to that site, and will likely read what they are linked and then leave the site until it shows up on HN/Reddit/Twitter again. Now, there are a few sites that have loyal followings. I'm subscribed to GiantBomb.com, for example, because I love its content. But for most sites, putting content behind a paywall would destroy them. No one will pay to read a random article they were linked - and people won't link articles that they know their friends would have to pay to read. Instead, sites must make money from incoming traffic - and thus, ads. If you have 500 regular readers but see 10,000 coming in from a Reddit post, you'll get money from those page views. And, of course, this is also why "pay to opt out" is flawed: you're not going to pay every site you visit over the course of the day (possibly 200+, if you're an avid news/social bookmarking reader) to remove those ads, no matter how convenient. I know we like to pretend that web users will reward the best content by paying, but that model ignores the way the web works. It's not like there's 20 sites we all read; there's a ton we see every day.
- ianlevesque 15y ago
  Yeah, ultimately I'd love to see ABP offer a tip jar or subscription I could pay that could then be distributed to the operators of the sites I visit. Perhaps take all the sites I visited and divide out the subscription fee. This way you could support even infrequently visited sites without resorting to advertising.

avolcano 15y ago

> They should charge for their site. Some nontrivial number of those 40% users would pay, and a paid user is ridiculously more profitable in most cases than the highest CPMs. I don't think you understand why ads are the funding of choice for most of the internet. Imagine the last time you read a random article on a tech blog. You probably were linked to it on HN, or a friend linked it on Twitter, or on Reddit, or whatever. It's likely not something that is in your news feed. For most people, that is how they find content. There's a minority of users who will use RSS or follow specific sites on Twitter, but 99% of users will be linked to it, or maybe Google it, or otherwise stumble across it. They have no actual ties to that site, and will likely read what they are linked and then leave the site until it shows up on HN/Reddit/Twitter again. Now, there are a few sites that have loyal followings. I'm subscribed to GiantBomb.com, for example, because I love its content. But for most sites, putting content behind a paywall would destroy them. No one will pay to read a random article they were linked - and people won't link articles that they know their friends would have to pay to read. Instead, sites must make money from incoming traffic - and thus, ads. If you have 500 regular readers but see 10,000 coming in from a Reddit post, you'll get money from those page views. And, of course, this is also why "pay to opt out" is flawed: you're not going to pay every site you visit over the course of the day (possibly 200+, if you're an avid news/social bookmarking reader) to remove those ads, no matter how convenient. I know we like to pretend that web users will reward the best content by paying, but that model ignores the way the web works. It's not like there's 20 sites we all read; there's a ton we see every day.

ianlevesque 15y ago
Yeah, ultimately I'd love to see ABP offer a tip jar or subscription I could pay that could then be distributed to the operators of the sites I visit. Perhaps take all the sites I visited and divide out the subscription fee. This way you could support even infrequently visited sites without resorting to advertising.