There are dozens of adblockers to choose from, from the market dominator Adblock Plus to the new Silicon Valley darling – open-source uBlock – as well as those that block out practically everything but the sun.
The number of people blocking ads is skyrocketing apace: the adblocking population is now estimated to be around 144 million, up from 21 million in 2010.
All of us adblocking people are nibbling away at the revenues of ad-driven companies, and it’s adding up to a huge bite.
PageFair, a company that works with publishers to measure the cost of adblocking and to help them come up with non-annoying, less intrusive ads that can be whitelisted by the adblockers, estimates that Google would have made $6.6 billion more than it did last year if it weren’t for adblockers.
Somebody formerly at Google – a somebody who was close to the enormous sucking sound of lost revenues – has decided to fight back.
Ben Barokas, the former general manager of marketplace development at Google, is the adblock blocker guy.
Barokas is CEO and co-founder of Sourcepoint, which launched on Thursday with $10 milion in Series A investment funding, Business Insider reports.
Barokas told Business Insider that Sourcepoint has the technology to take online publishers’ lunch back from the people who are now eating it by sucking up content without looking at ads, thereby denying companies the revenues they deserve.
That entails “punching through all the ad blockers,” BI reports.
Sourcepoint isn’t the first company to offer ways for publishers to handle adblockers.
Other services, such as those offered by PageFair, encourage publishers to engage with adblocking visitors by appealing to, and educating, them, by testing the effectiveness of a given customized appeal, and learning what appeals to those visitors.
As Business Insider describes it, Sourcepoint’s adblock blocker works in a similar fashion, by giving publishers a few choices on how to proceed when encountering a site visitor who drops by with an ad blocker installed:
- Circumvent the ad blocker and serve the ad in spite of it,
- Tell the visitor that “our ads pay for your content, how about you choose to allow them?”
- Allow the user to choose how ads will get served up: three ads for three stories, for example, or
- Ask ad-blocking visitors to pay to subscribe.
Here’s the thing: if ads weren’t so annoying, nobody would choose to block them, Business Insider suggested to Barokas.
If you block the blockers, aren’t you just ruining the site experience for users, plus annoying them anew?
Barokas countered by pointing to what he called the extortionary practice of paying to get ads past Adblock Plus: a whitelisting process that lets ad-buying big boys such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and the content marketing platform Taboola quietly pony up money to keep their ads from being blocked on Adblock Plus, which is the world’s most popular adblock software.
Business Insider quotes Barokas:
It's blackmail. It's extortion. It's not fair. That being said, is not against the law. It's legal in Germany, the US, the UK ... but at the end of the day it's also legal for publishers to give people messages and say you can choose ads. It's not fair for journalists like you not to have food at your table, it's not fair not to have a roof over your head. It goes back to transparency and fairness ... if users opt-in to having advertising subsidizing the experience, we can serve that ad, [and if an ad blocker continues to block the ads] then that would be illegal.
Adblock Plus project manager Ben Williams has laughed off the blackmail charge, telling the BBC that
If we are racketeers we are terrible racketeers because 90% of the people on the white list don't pay anything and the criteria is the same for everyone.
The tug-of-war over eyeballs to market at rages along.
First there were ads, then there were adblockers, now there are adblocker blockers. We’ll probably next see adblocker blocker blockers.
At the end of the day, we’re still left with the vexing ethics of it all: the question of whether adblocking is, as many have suggested, theft.
Journalists have to eat. They have to pay their electric bills. They shouldn’t have to churn out content for free, without recompense.
VentureBeat’s Gerhard Stiene has compared adblocking to hanging out in a coffee shop, gobbling up its bandwidth without buying anything.
The Guardian’s website, for one, has already gone with Sourcepoint’s option of displaying a (guilt-inducing!) pop-up when an ad-blocking visitor visits, politely pointing out that it’s noticed you’ve got an ad-blocker switched on, so perhaps you’d like to support the Guardian in another way?
“Yes, I would!” I said when I saw it earlier this week, glad to be given a low-friction path to supporting my hard-working journalist brethren and sistren.
I clicked on the box that held out the option for paid membership.
Nothing happened.
I think my adblocker blocked the adblocker blocker popup box.
Image of online ads courtesy of Shutterstock.
Gerrit
I block a lot of things for security reasons, can’t help it that ads get blocked too.
Another Ad Victim
Well.. As a content creator with bills to pay, I can’t help it if you are now blocked from accessing my content because you are using an ad-blocker.. Sorry about that.
Anonymous
Well as a customer of Internet information and user of an ad block program, I cannot help that I will go to your competitor and view their content and still see their (non-popup) ads. Sorry about that.
Anonymous
“At the end of the day, we’re still left with the vexing ethics of it all: the question of whether adblocking is, as many have suggested, theft.”
So by that logic every time you press Fast Forward on your DVR, or you deliberately go into a movie few minute late to avoid the previews you would be committing theft. Does that sound fair?
It’s also unethical that they want the ad revenue, but they refuse to pay the cost of delivering it. What if the local grocery store forced you to travel across town to see a billboard ad, or visit another retailer and get a token before you’re allowed to enter their store to shop each time? I bet you wouldn’t go back to that store again.
You would be forced to expend you’re resources to view the ad. Same goes for the people on mobile devices when you’re forcibly redirected to a third party to receive content over metered bandwidth.
They have created their own problem, now they are suffering the consequences.
Vidal
I am intrigued by the movie comment. Because I disagree with the logic but it got me thinking about how you are paying to get into the movie ahead of time anyways so it can’t be theft. Which would lead you to ask, why have advertisements on something you already paid for? But most people like the movie trailers, it has become it’s own event. So I agree with you, and the point you are making (the DVR point stands as long as it is basic television you don’t pay for), but what interests me more is how do we make internet ads something that people enjoy. First steps would obviously be making them less intrusive and annoying. And now with data limits and the size of the ads it just adds another nuisance (and monetary cost) to the end user. Although I want people to make a living it shouldn’t be a living made by forcing people to be annoyed. So yes, these advertisers created their own problem and they will need to get creative to get past it. And not creative in a way that forces people to interact with their ads, like Ben Barokas is attempting, but creative in a way that makes people want to interact with their ads. (I did really like your grocery store analogy, LOL)
tj6james6
Less annoying and intrusive?
How about pop UPS instead of pop unders so I actually know something’s happening.
How about ads which don’t blare their commercial despite what your sound volume is at and won’t allow you to click out OR turn down the volume?
I could have sworn that Google was going to put ‘suggestions’ in the right column of their search results page to give us an alternative to advertisements?
I DO have an ad blocker and I have an extra one for Facebook. If I wanted to watch commercials I would still have cable television.
Personally I think that since I do not shop online, with the exception of ebooks, I shouldn’t have to deal with the advertisements any way *shrug*.
Another Ad Victim
Personally I think that since I do not shop online, with the exception of ebooks, I shouldn’t have to deal with the advertisements any way *shrug*.
You are the perfect example of clueless. I write reviews on different operating system software, it eats up a lot of time. It can take 8-10 hours to review a good piece of software and create a video to go with it. 10,000 people read it a day, I only have a basic hosting package because I’m no longer making the revenue from all those people viewing my content so I can’t afford more expensive hosting so my site is simply taken down when it hits a certain number of visitors before each month is up. I used to pay quite a lot of my bills from revenue from the ads from the content I write but now I’m not able to pay any of them from it.
So.. In light of your comment my reply to you is that you shouldn’t be allowed to access my websites.. There should be a way of denying access to people like you. Eating up my valuable bandwidth which I have to pay out of my own pocket with no way of getting the money back for your free viewing of the content I worked hard to create.
Ryan Vandenberg
Could you put up the content behind a link to, say, Paypal? Tell the customer what the content will cost and let them decide if they are willing to pay what you are charging? That is how most businesses operate. Why can’t the internet do the same? There are many other options besides ad-supported.
I understand where you are coming from, but I simply can’t allow ads. It’s too dangerous. My malware blocker used to get hit multiple times per day. Every so often, a new piece of malware would get through. Since I started blocking ads it gets hit once every few months. Until that situation changes, I will continue to block. My personal security is simply worth more to me than most content is.
nonnynonny
Just don’t write the reviews anymore. That way nobody will have to suffer ads to support you. Go and grow some crops.
Anonymous
I think the DVR analogy is flawed. If I look away from a youtube video advertisement, mute it, etc. is it not the same thing?
You still pay for your TV service, and that money goes to the network. They got you watching, and that’s all that matters – eyeballs on any given segment of their shows, commercials or regular programming.
Sun-Shiney
So, how exactly, Anonymous, would you prefer to pay for the articles someone else researched and wrote for you while you were earning your income? What’s the alternative you would be willing to agree to?
Anonymous
Your analogy is incorrect. An online publisher doesn’t get paid until an ad server delivers the ad, this is what ad blockers block. In the case of cinema or TV payment is made in advanced based on projected eyeballs but the content provider still gets paid if the ad is fast forwarded or ignored.
Anonymous
So where is it written that people are being FORCED to post their content to the internet? Is your editor hold a gun to your head forcing you to type out everything and post it?
I can do without those sites that think by blocking their content because I block those annoying ads.
I also dont go to sites that are subscription based, because I find that 95% of the drivel written is in those sites.
Nobody, I repeat nobody is forcing a damn one of you to post anything anywhere.
Anonymous
Wow really? Nobody forces mechanics to fix cars either. Except maybe the fact that fixing cars is how they feed their family and pay their bills. So yes, no one forces them to post things online, but that is their job, their career. I’m not a fan of ads but I’m not silly enough to blame people for trying to earn a living either.
Anonymous
I fix my own car and I allow the white listed ads. n if a script, css injection or java or whatever new technology comes out that is intrusive or a security issue I’ll block it too!
I also choose not to watch commercials and read dribble.
This is America ppl. Ahem free speech not paid speech.
R
Actually, this is the internet ppl…
John Doe
Yes it is, but that doesn’t mean you have to oppose free speech.
nonnynonny
Agreed. Senses of entitlement are replacing senses of hope. Still, once again it’s middle men who are strip mining the environment. Writers who go to work for big sites are being suckered.
Anonymous
I use adblocker and firewall rules for security mainly. I’ve been hit a few times over the years by drive-by infections from compromised ad servers. Add that to not wanting to be tracked as I web browse. Its even worse if its a shared computer. parent looks like adult items and kid then gets on later and sees less than acceptable advertisements ( including some that are illegal for minors to look at).
during some testing, I’ve been on electronics, book, even cooking sites and been able to get adult advertisement to appear ( without the aid of malware).
micchickenburger
I completely agree. For most of my clients, I install Chrome + AdBlock Plus by default because there are so many website advertisements out there with big DOWNLOAD text or CLICK HERE to remove the malware you don’t actually have but will once you download this. I personally don’t mind advertisements–I drive by billboards every day–but there are always the minority that ruin it for the majority. And security matters.
Greenaum
Yup, advertisers have blown the trust people had in them, and the tolerance they had, by all this creepy spying and tracking you stuff. People put up with ads for years before Adblock was written, it could have been created at any time before. But as advertisers became more and more antisocial, people got sick of them and a demand was created. It’s advertisers’ own fault. They blew it, from greed.
Johann Wilkerson
Oh, I see – what I want to do for a living doesn’t pay enough, because people don’t want my product enough to pay for it, either by watching ads or by ponying up with actual cash. I think people should be forced to pay me anyway.
Oh, boo-hoo. It’s a supply and demand world. If there’s no demand, pick a different supply.
Anonymous
News flash for Ben Barokas. When an add covers things, interrupts or plays an unexpected sound when using media – I LEAVE THE SITE. Then both the site and the advertiser loose. My time is more valuable than some stupid add blocking me from my research or entertainment. And yeah, I stopped watching TV 10+ years ago for the same reason.
Anonymous
Turn it off, and you’ll find the popup page genre is still alive and well. 10 minutes of surfing and you’ll have 20 extra windows. There’s a reason AdBlockers were developed. The abusive nature of the advertisers hasn’t abated in the least.
John Doe
Mmm, quite, quite. It will one day though. I’ve no doubt about it. That day’ll come, and it’ll be glorious. Quite.
shdwmage
I honestly wish I could get a good solid ad-blocker installed on my phone without rooting it. So many ads out there force you into the android app store.
If websites would get away from having all of the flashy annoying ads that can force browser redirects and viruses I would gladly turn my ad blocker off. Oh and if those ad companies wouldn’t track me from site to site. No one needs to know that much about my browsing habits.
Ads should be like they are in the newspaper. Static. No use of flash or Java.
I’ve gone so far to blacklist ip addresses on my home network so I don’t deal with the ads on my android devices while at home.
Hello
It’s surprising that there isn’t a plug for the UTM in here since it can filter web content (such as ads) by category. Works for anything on your network and that’s how I remove ads from mobile devices. Not simple to set up and you need a whole spare computer to make it go, but it’s rather good otherwise.
Paul Ducklin
There is a plug – subtle, but it’s there :-)
Bottom of the right-hand sidebar are links to our free tools, including the Sophos UTM Home Edition.
This is the link:
http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-utm-home-edition.aspx
JR
Most websites are completely unusable with all the ads and garbage… it often take 30 seconds to load many of these sites with ads, 5 seconds without the ads. If you keep me from using your site because I am blocking ads, well… I won’t use your site. Goodbye.
tattooed mummy
As others have said I don’t mind ads. I do mind ads that suddenly autoplay videos or sound or block the screen or flash on and off. If the info on the ad is good I’ll click – flashing lights and bells just annoy me, they don’t attract they repel. I wish more sites offered the option to pay a small fee not to see the ads as some mobile apps do – I always prefer to pay a small fee than be swamped with annoying ads.
kahomono
There is NO site serving ads that I need so badly I will allow them to bypass ad blockers. ABP and Ghostery are essential elements of my Chrome config, and as soon as a page won’t let me see the content because I am using them, I find an alternative.
Another Ad Victim
This is a funny comment because as a site owner I do not wish people like you to be able to access my sites and consuming my hosting bandwidth which doesn’t come cheap.. Do you see the issue here? You somehow believe you should be allowed to view the content I pay to provide for free? It takes up around 10 hours of my day writing content and I pay hosting costs, electric costs, mortgage etc Yet you somehow think it’s okay if you come along and take and not give anything in return?
The sooner people like you are blocked from accessing content from people who have bills to pay to provide that content the better.
kahomono
If you want revenue from your ads served, you have the primary responsibility to make sure they are safe. Flash and malware in some ads, unfortunately for you, disqualifies ALL ads.
If you think I am your problem, you are looking in 180° the wrong direction. You need to look UP your supply chain and ask the ad networks, why are you giving us thie sh!t that attacks our readers?
dresdenjohnny
The sooner people like us realise that we don’t need to support you in your production of verbiage that elevates you in your own esteem, the better. Spend those ten hours more usefully, please.
Anonymous
I don’t use an adblocker. Sites that have annoying ads are avoided in the future.
jonathanpdx
Advertising has become a festering wound on the psyche of society. It bombards us continually with its mind-numbing affirmations of our being less than worthy because we do not have or buy this product. (Just look at the stories of people being murdered for their particular brand of athletic shoes.)
How often do we hear that people seem so angry all the time? I believe advertising is the cause of this. The old adage that states when we are told something often enough we tend to believe it is especially true with advertising because advertisers pay obscene sums to discover the things that trigger our desires and uses them to bait us. As we are being constantly reminded that we are not worthy or as good as our neighbor because we don’t have this or that product, we grow angry and eventually lash out at others because of it.
The sole purpose of advertising is to generate revenue. Even ads that appear to be genuinely voicing an opinion regarding even the most charitable and atruistic endeavor are intended to persuade the viewer to spend money.
It seem that making money has become much more important than the actual principles embodied in the U.S. Constitution that protect the rights of the individual citizen which are now being used to trample those individual rights in favor of corporations and the super-rich and their greed.
IMHO, regardless of the arguments presented to the contrary, advertising is not “free speech” and should not be considered as qualifying for that status. People should have the right to opt out without being left out in the cold for refusing to subject themselves to the propaganda of greed.
Z. Bryan
Yeah, I use adblockers like a religion ever since my mother’s computer was slammed with a cryptolocker and we had to reinstall windows from scratch (no easy feat when you’ve got windows 8, but no access to the reset and re-installation settings that are built in.) – All of that, because of an ad that popped up on the sidebar of FACEBOOK. I’ve lost count of just the SFW level websites I’ve had to stop visiting simply because I kept getting viruses through the advertisements on the side, or in the pop-ups, or from the banners at the top.
Any site that I go to that’s gonna implement adblocker blockers…. yeah. Those are going on my browser blacklist. After having to shell out so much to get my computers fixed because of silly ads over the years, not worth the risk anymore.
Douglas
Publishers (generally) want ad revenue without the responsibility of any editorial oversight – which means you have ads that inject malware into browsers, ads that attempt to scare the user into clicking on what they believe is a warning from their antivirus product, and ads that flash in such a way that your eye is dragged away from what you want to see. Not to mention the fact that most ad providers track all your web activity with impunity and zero transparency.
None of this is an issue with print media because adverts are static and part of the page, and are by their very nature curated.
These days though, ad blocking is much more about keeping your PC and / or device secure and protecting privacy than it is about not seeing ads.
If publishers take some responsibility for the ads that are (at the moment) just injected automatically into pages, and take steps to protect their readers from rampant privacy violations, I would gladly turn off ad block for their site(s).
Michael Perry
Ad blockers are NOT illegal in the UK. The 1968 Theft Act applies in this case and the definition of theft does not include preventing unwanted advertising.
I run ad blockers because I have no interest in any advertising of any sort for any product or service that is outside of my personal interests. I have no wish to be shown any information about anything that is not of interest to me and I can choose what that is – it’s called FREEDOM.
If I am interested in any particular product or service that may be available via the web, then I will do the searching without the aid of unwanted advertising. I certainly do not agree to nor want any one or any organisation tracking my location nor what things interest me.
So I vote FOR effective adblocking remaining legal. If the advertisers want to earn more they must come up with much more attractive ways to grab my interest – perhaps producing a product I actually do want!
Anonymous
I’ve noticed something on youtube lately…………June, 2015…….their ads are actually CUTE and interesting. So I’m watching them. I may or may not buy the products, but if you give me the OPTION to SKIP ad and yet, at the same time, make your ads INTERESTING, you may get us to watch.
But jacking up the volume ten times louder than my speakers can go, and not allowing me a pause, skip or mute feature, well, I’m just gonna crash your site.
And that’s how I got here, searching for an ad blocker to install.
Either NOT read the content I want to read….. OR BLOCK your idiot ads? Hmmm.
Install.
Dale
Unfortunately, Youtube has gone downhill since then. It’s worse than regular TV now, and especially considering the irrelevance of the ads themselves, it’s uncharacteristic of Google, who at least got to where they are by advertising while NOT annoying people. Apparently they’ve forgotten the importance of that. Advertising killed television, and is now working to do the same with the internet. Enough said; this is the 21st century, and unsolicited irrelevant advertising has NO place here. But worst of all, advertisers are unscrupulous and often have infections in their ads, utilize full page pop-ups, and other things that ARE NOT LEGITIMATE ADVERTISING TECHNIQUES!!!! Until you can partner with trustworthy advertisers, don’t expect us to take your need for ads for revenue seriously.
Mike
Once I’m guaranteed to not be attacked through a malicious ad or that the amount of ads on a page don’t make it hard to use the page for its intended purpose then I’ll more than willingly embrace ads to help pay for what I like.
Ad Nauseum
When Ads become a problem, ad-blockers become a solution. It’s supply and demand, all over again. Remove the problem and the solution is not required. Make Ads a bigger problem, ad-blockers need to be more aggressive. Rinse and Repeat (ad nauseum).
Anonymous
I will NOT buy products if adds are intrusive and annoying.
Hipnog
I wouldn’t block ads if they weren’t mainly fake download buttons and scams. Seriously, I don’t want your damn iPads.
Andrew Ludgate
“Barokas countered by pointing to what he called the extortionary practice of paying to get ads past Adblock Plus”
So he proposes an alternative to /optionally/ paying Adblock Plus (and making your ads behave nicely): paying him MORE to get ads past Adblock Plus. If what ABP is doing (acting as the gatekeeper for well-behaved ads) is blackmail and extortion, what exactly is HE doing? ABP has an option to allow a curated set of whitelisted ads. You can turn this on or off; most leave it on. Barokas is attempting to circumvent this security check to inject unwanted browser code onto user’s browsers, if his customers pay him for the privilege.
See? That can go both ways. Better to do as this article suggests, and just make content people want to see. One of the things I like about old National Geographic magazines, for instance, is the ads. I recently found an ad for an electric truck in a magazine from 1913 — fascinating stuff, and the ads back then were really interesting, containing useful information and presented in a way that piqued your interest.
Maika Hotai
Do I steal when I block ads? Say I do… I cannot count the numbers of PC’s I was paid to fix because of malware hidden inside ads. Who is the thief? Me for being paid or the people who created the malware and the crying web publishers for aiding and abetting? And please, do not blame the user who is simply trapped in a gun fight against professionals while only being allowed to carry a pocket knife.
Nope
I used to have Adblock in the browser, but now I prefer to use my UTM’s ad blocking capacity. It’s stealthier and they don’t notice it. So they can’t serve me the “please disable your Adblocker” blah-blah…
Alan Robertson
If adverts were just adverts and didn’t track you, infect your machine, steal your bandwidth and generally annoy 90% of the population then people would accept them. The fact is even after all the adblockers they do this more now than ever.
The idea that you can annoy so many people and then complain when they take steps to protect their privacy and security is beyond belief – they are their own worst enemies and I have little sympathy for them.
I personally donate online if I like their content (Patreon / Paypal etc.) and will continue to do so. I’m not into taking something for nothing but I’m also completely against being tracked and potentially infected with malware.
I would also question just how effective these online adverts are? I rarely used to click on any adverts anyway as they were not relevant to the content that I was viewing. On the other hand, a well written article reviewing a product in depth with a link offering a discount to a product that I was actually looking for is more likely to get a response from me.
The simple fact is online advertising as we know it is finished and product placement / personal payment is the future now.
Joe
What a bunch of whiny nonsense. At the end of the day it’s my computer. I can block any damned thing I want. If advertisers want to be extremely persistent, I’ll just block the damned site. And if you’re trying to sneak something onto my computer, I’ll consider it a persistent threat, a virus, malware. Which is exactly what “blocker blockers” are.
JohnDafoe
Adblocker won last fight, so the new problem ist Adware…
Anonymous
I use no script, so the solution is to create a basic ad, not one that’s set to distract/annoy the user and it would get through most anyway. It’s the same as the TV shouting the adverts at you and then complaining when you mute the TV
ejhonda
If the ad networks want to address their track record for serving up drive-by malware and intrusive ads, then we can talk. Until then, no go.
Malcolm
As many said above, I also use a series of adblockers to prevent being tracked by everyone and their mother as I browse the internet. And, unfortunately for content providers, I’ll keep doing it, because the ad companies have an interest in tracking all behaviour.
LG
“thereby denying companies the revenues they deserve.”
I find that funny. When you open a portal for companies to pump my computer full of trackers, virus’s and SPAM, then NO, you DON’T “DESERVE” any revenues from my viewing of this offensive content. If you we’re responsible, you would just integrate a few static images into the background to the left and right of the text, saving me bandwidth and respecting my expensive computer equipment. Why should I suffer damage from going to a web site? And if you deploy “Adblock blockers”, then it would be just fine with me. If I saw a message box telling me I can’t enter, then I would know that “SPAM is behind this door” and would just turn away anyway. Good luck.
nullldata
Journalists who don’t earn money via payment for their work and have to rely on advertising which exploits the every day user via tracking private habits whilst also stealing their screen real estate… Should possibly look for a proper job.
I’m not saying journalism is not worthy of accolade or financial reimbursement, however if they have to rely on advertisers to get paid, they are in the wrong job.
We, the viewers, the readers, should be paid for the usage of our screen real estate.
If you should get paid, then so should we.
Rey
User blocks ad and website gets mad because they won’t be getting paid… But what about the additional cost to the user when they don’t block ads? That includes time, additional data, and fighting malicious viruses. The user should be pissed because they aren’t getting paid for the additional time, money, and frustration it costs to deal with ads.
Greenaum
I was on the web when it had just started. Wasn’t massively corporate, nobody was in it to make money, no f—–g Facebook and it’s associated stupid-quiz farms. No content farms, no clickbait. It was great.
Just pages from ordinary people, enthusiasts, and organisations. Nobody tried to make money just from having a website. Instead they had to do useful things that served society. Or else work in TV and print advertising.
I’d be happy to have that back. The commercial web is a heap of shit. I wouldn’t miss it.
In the case of this site, I’m pretty sure it mostly exists to keep Sophos in people’s minds, and give the impression that the company keeps up to date, and understands computer security issues. By giving that impression, people are more likely to buy their security software. Far as I know, this site doesn’t make money in itself. It promotes Sophos by putting up genuine articles (not advertorials), and Sophos the business sits quietly in the background, gently enjoying the benefits.
This is an example of how to do a website. Not awful “content farms”, with 2-line articles written by robots and journoslaves for below minimum wage. No awful attention-grabbing cliches, no weird secret that makes the experts mad.
The web was fine, before advertising came along, it was better. We can do without all that garbage.
Greenaum
Also, don’t know if anyone mentioned, but Adblock Plus’s blackmailing “whitelist”, is optional for users. Yes, a company can pay to be put on it, as long as their ads meet the requirements of unobtrusiveness. You can’t just buy your way on for any old ad.
But for users it’s optional, you can choose to ignore the whitelist and have no ads at all. I can’t think why anyone sensible wouldn’t do that. To do otherwise is to ask for advertisements. Ads are a plague and an annoyance. They’re something you put up with, in the TV you actually wanted to watch, or the magazine you wanted to read. Nobody WANTS to see ads. We tolerate them. Advertisers need to bear that in mind.
Dan
Today almost all of us choose to use AdBlock. Tomorrow many sites will be closed, and few of them will ask for subscriptions. Think just a minute! If this is what you want, then go ahead with Ad Blockers!
dummy see dummy hate
Well no sites of worth are gone yet. Anyways bring it on. I will tolerate non intrusive and nice adds that are just kind of there but dont take up all the space or make me have to do anything extra to see the content im asking for and are not filled with malware and shit like that. However any site that tells me I have to subject my self to that can go to hell and so can the people saying BOO HO I NEED THAT MONEY TO LIVE get a different job then because your just a pawn for criminals in my mind (the advertisers that do the malware, and malware scare tactics and change your code on your computer with out connect) Its like being the middle man in the mob and saying boo ho I need the money even though aIm not committing the crimes my self but just supporting them. get the bleep out of here with taht argument.. That argument is only legit when the advertisements are not annoying peaces of crap that infect and distory your computer as well as eat its CPU.
nonnynonny
That would work for me. Put the worst offenders out of business and let in the new.
Richard
“Journalists have to eat. They have to pay their electric bills. They shouldn’t have to churn out content for free, without recompense.”
And nobody said they shouldn’t eat. Nobody suggested they not pay bills, or work for free.
That being said, I will still use an adblocker. It is NOT theft, as I have taken nothing that I was not allowed to. If you post something on the interweb for me to look at, and you don’t charge for it, I’m not robbing you, you’re a friggen idiot.
Anonymous
I have an ad blocker enabled on my system yet still see nine advertisements on this webpage; that is roughly one advertisement for every four sentences written. Ad blockers don’t prevent authors from getting revenue; they prevent overly annoying ads.
I was just fine not using the ad blocker until I went to YouTube and couldn’t even see a video playing because there were SO many advertisements. I watched the same video after getting the blocker and could actually enjoy it.
Your industry ruined the experience for people visiting sites on the web without an ad blocker. To get so many netizens to download the blocker should be a wake-up call to better serve your customers. I don’t care that a news site blocks me for using an ad blocker; I will just use a competitor that gets why their customers are frustrated.
egregiousharm
“Journalists have to eat. They have to pay their electric bills. They shouldn’t have to churn out content for free, without recompense.”
Why not? This argument sounds a bit like the meat producers arguing that industrial scale atrocious cruelty to (other) animals is necessary because the producers need to profit.
It’s necessary to make a living, yes, so go and make something. There shouldn’t be any financial reward for opining. The net has of course become just another industry, and journalists are the microscopically thin end of that wedge. The owners of the big sites should be sent out into the rice paddies. Alternatively, we need to get the worst of the money grubbers into secure harness, indentured to cooperatives for example, so that they can obsess and plot and scheme and intimidate and manipulate (and everything else they do that doesn’t involve actually producing anything real) for the benefit of all workers, journalists included, not just shareholders. But no, perhaps not. They’re just too pernicious. Better give them matches or beans or some pretend currency as in in play pontoon, so that they can’t do any harm.
Let the net be free, basically. Happy to read home-made stuff on home-made sites maintained for love rather than money.
Anonymous
I haven’t ever clicked on any ad on the internet unless it is entirely by accident, because of it being so obtrusive. The very first thing I do on any computer I use is install a browser with an adblocker.
If I intend to buy something on the internet, I will have already done the necessary research and I will go directly to the website in question, making it a complete waste of time to advertise to me on the internet or within apps.
If a site tries to bypass my adblocker in any way, or force me to register for a premium (paid) account, I simply choose to never visit that site again. I consider it a personal affront to be subjected to ineffective, intrusive, and sometimes offensive advertising just to browse free content. If a site wants to make revenue from content, then they should charge for access to that content, just don’t expect ME to ever use your site. The internet is a VERY big place, and I can always find the information I seek from other sources.
Anonymous
well if the ads weren’t harvesting data or forcing crap down your throat and were simply JUST ADS there wouldn’t be such a need to block the damn things. However these douche bag “marketers” will do anything to generate revenue no matter the intrusion.
ACM
It’s really quite simple. Ads on the internet are often intrusive and obnoxious. All to often, they are graphics that pop up and interfere with content or they are videos that auto-play and disrupt those around you. They can infect your computer with malware or hijack your browser to a malicious website or app store and make it difficult, if not impossible, to return to the content without having to retype the address or conduct a search for the article. In-line ads that just sit there are attract your attention with flashy taglines or interesting graphics are one thing. I would not feel a need to block those kinds of ads, and I might even look at them. I would certainly feel more positive towards a company that advertised that way. But the ads I block are annoying, and those companies that use them will NEVER get my business. Furthermore, those websites that prevent me from blocking them will NEVER get my view. Being that I can generally find alternatives for the content I want, the publisher and advertisers are the ones losing out in all of this. Not me. So put up tasteful, creative, catchy, unobtrusive ads, and I’ll disable AdBlock. Otherwise, you lose revenue by losing a potential customer/reader.
Cee Cee
“First there were ads, then there were adblockers, now there are adblocker blockers. We’ll probably next see adblocker blocker blockers.”
I’ve had one installed on my computer for two years. Stops sites from sniffing my adblocker and demanding I turn it off. It blocks them from blocking me. Game on.
BOFH in the West.
It has been a while since I ran across this argument. Why this and not that? I still use adblockers for security reasons. If I get a polite request to “Whitelist” or turn off my online security so the publisher can get paid. I switch to a browser with Ad Nauseum. I don’t see ads and the auto ad clicker goes to work. I don’t get malware and tracking adware or drive by viruses with the additional security software added to various browsers. If you can’t hide. Obfuscate. You should see the odd marketing profiles – Somebody who drives and Edsel and trains goats for the circus. lives in 50 different ghost towns…You get the idea. When advertising agencies and ad providers take responsibility for their product. Adblockers will become less necessary to the user. Until then, the war between advertisers and consummers go on.