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Here's a thought experiment: Imagine someone invented "smart" sunglasses that detected billboard ads and filtered them out so the wearer saw only a blank billbo

• manigandham 12y ago
  You're talking about different things. 1) Impressions do work, that's what my example was about. 2) Ads are the trade for free access to content. If the ads paid for the road you're driving on, then yes you'd be "stealing" access to the road by ignoring the ads. The businesses aren't harassing you, they're just spending on ads and those ads show up on publishers who have opted to use the advertising model instead of subscriptions/paid access. There are lots of issues with paid access like not enough demand, price sensitivity, hard to gain new traffic/shares, etc. Advertising is just more reliable and easier to implement and allows for quicker growth. If sites are using subscriptions and still show you ads (and you're actually logged in as a paying member) then they're trying to extract more money or the price is not covering all of their costs or something in between. That's an issue with the publisher, not the ad companies. Everything is zero-sum when measured to GDP because there's only 100% of the GDP to go around. GDP is a VERY big number and it's growing, and thus the absolute dollar amount of advertising is also growing and outpacing supply of inventory. That being said, advertising won't become a larger part of GDP because there are only so many buyers that also have to grow as businesses first to increase their total budgets. It makes sense that it tracks in line with the economy and it's not really feasible to make big changes because businesses are not going to stop spending on something like manufacturing their product to instead divert it to advertising.
  • scrollaway 12y ago
    > If the ads paid for the road you're driving on, then yes you'd be "stealing" access to the road by ignoring the ads. Something which boggles the mind is how a lot of people who work in advertising still don't understand the concept that you do not have an innate right to your users' brains. Putting it down to the technical level: When you send me bits, I have complete right and control to refuse them on a selective basis. I have a right to write a program that will refuse them on a selective basis. I have a right to share that program with other people, and those other peope have a right to run said program. Adblock is not stealing, no matter how much you want it to be. If ads are paying for the content, the business that uses them should be made aware of the risks of adblock and the portion of people who are not willing to accept ads (and at which level they won't accept them). Advertising in its current form is broken by design. It's a wonder it works at all. And yeah maybe we would be better off without it. The businesses that depend on the kind of ads adblock blocks tend to be shitty, low-hanging fruits, "appeal to the masses" sort of sites. Yes exactly, Buzzfeed. That's a debate for another day, but the point still remains: broken by design. Don't blame the users who just fucking want to be left alone.
    • manigandham 12y ago
      ...what? Maybe try starting at the top of this thread and going through it again? Nobody's claiming a right to anyone's brain. It's the fact that you're accessing content that was only offered with the advertisements. Boiling things down to the technical level just avoids the actual discussion. Sure bittorrent is just a protocol and software, but downloading movies illegally is still piracy right? You can build whatever software you want, but if it's used to DDoS someone then there's a problem. It's not about the tool, it's what its used for. By blocking ads, you are breaking the terms of use of all the sites that provide you content for free in exchange for ads. If you want to be left alone, then just dont go to these sites... Advertising isn't broken, it's the morality of users who want anything and everything for free.
      • scrollaway 12y ago
        > By blocking ads, you are breaking the terms of use of all the sites that provide you content for free in exchange for ads. No... you're not. You're just not. When I visit a website, I don't agree to any terms of use. I don't sign anything. And if there's some out there that make me tick some bullshit box, it's nothing legal. You have a superbly warped view of the world and I really can only encourage you to get out of your advertising bubble and try to look at websites with a less-informed eye, a process which is not easy to do I'm well aware. Users don't want "anything and everything for free". They just don't want you. I'm happy to pay sites, apps I use on a daily basis but I'm not happy to let them serve me ads. Especially when those ads suck - and they do suck. This is content I am not willing to subject my retinas to, and by extension my computer because it only serves to slow it down, and sometimes be an infectious carrier. You're claiming a right to people's brains. You're claiming people who don't observe that right are breaking "terms of use" (they're not). "Just don't go to these sites" doesn't work. The internet is not a place where I research the publisher of the content I am about to consume before I even consume it by clicking the link someone just sent me. You're not fooling anyone, and I really hope you're not fooling yourself in thinking that.