3 ms·

It's a chicken egg problem. 1) Website owners use ads to earn money (server and employee costs, revenue). 2) Several Ad networks create ads that influence and

by frik 12y ago

It's a chicken egg problem. 1) Website owners use ads to earn money (server and employee costs, revenue). 2) Several Ad networks create ads that influence and annoy users and track their browser habits. e.g. blinking buggy video ads with sound that sometimes even crash the flash plugin 3) Visitors install Adblock+ because they dislike intrusive ads that don't adhere to the browser privacy settings. Some websites are unusable without an ad-blocker. Many websites even crash the mobile browser. 4) Companies buy ads cheaper as ads are clicked in reality by clicking-bots and are worth less than years ago. 4) Website owner places more ads because the earn less for the same amount of served ads as last year and because more and more block all ads altogether. 5) Even more visitors install adblockers and turn them on for all websites. 6) Website owners introduce a paywall so that parts of their content or everything is behind closed doors for paying customers only. 7) The visitors switch to alternative website that offer comparable content for free, monetized by ads or maintained as hobby. 8) and so on... Paywalls are not the solution. Another website will appear that offers comparable content for free. Example: The Microsoft Network (MSN 1) that was meant to replace the WWW in 1995 and shipped with Win95. Bill Gates had to rewrite his vision of the information highway, micro payments and Microsoft Network in his famous book "The Road Ahead", half a year later as MSN failed and WWW succeeded he released a second book edition that removed all references and now acknowledges the WWW. Pictures of MSN 1: http://winsupersite.com/windows-live/msn-inside-story http://winsupersite.com/windows-live/msn-inside-story Everyone has to change a bit, to improve the current status: * The ad-networks that still code flash-based ads should move to HTML5. * The companies that buy ad-space from such ad-networks should care more about the ad-quality. * The website owners should care more about which ad-network they select. * The visitors should use less adblock-plugins. * The WHATWG/W3C/browser developer should improve some situations with HTML 5.x so that there is no single reason for flash based ads.

cerrelio 12y ago
More of a vicious cycle. The ad networks bare most of the blame because they face a moral hazard. They can either deny annoying ads and lose revenue, or accept them and push the risk of adverse events to the publisher. The publisher will respond as you describe above. Ultimately the publisher fizzles out and their ad network drops them for non-performance. Most ad networks appear to be willing to accept trashy ads in lieu of instituting quality controls. This is my experience in working at a publishing network that did not have its own ad server.
oneeyedpigeon 12y ago
"Paywalls are not the solution. Another website will appear that offers comparable content for free." But as you've described it, that 'other website' is far inferior: it contains crap-loads of advertising that I need to take steps to remove in order to make the site usable. In such cases, I'd far rather pay a tiny amount of money to view unencumbered content.
zem 12y ago
"red queen's race" or "arms race" would be closer analogies than "chicken and egg"

by frik 12y ago

cerrelio 12y ago

More of a vicious cycle. The ad networks bare most of the blame because they face a moral hazard. They can either deny annoying ads and lose revenue, or accept them and push the risk of adverse events to the publisher. The publisher will respond as you describe above. Ultimately the publisher fizzles out and their ad network drops them for non-performance. Most ad networks appear to be willing to accept trashy ads in lieu of instituting quality controls. This is my experience in working at a publishing network that did not have its own ad server.

oneeyedpigeon 12y ago

"Paywalls are not the solution. Another website will appear that offers comparable content for free." But as you've described it, that 'other website' is far inferior: it contains crap-loads of advertising that I need to take steps to remove in order to make the site usable. In such cases, I'd far rather pay a tiny amount of money to view unencumbered content.

zem 12y ago

"red queen's race" or "arms race" would be closer analogies than "chicken and egg"