I really, really don't buy the idea that I should feel bad for using adblock. The whole "ads can be a way to provide quality services, and adblock removes that revenue" is the marketer's equivalent to the {MP|RI}AA's "every pirate is a stolen sale".
The whole thing with the Internet is about desintermediation, and marketing departments are nothing but middle-men between producers and consumers. Even worse that they actually sell the idea that producers need to "build a brand". Zero actual value-add to the chain, but work to increase perceived and actual costs of the goods produced.
I think this a good perspective. Advertising only has societal value when it helps connect people who want to buy something with services that want to sell it.
I can think of a couple other ways to get some sort of value from advertising. The first is using an ad to get someone to purchase something they otherwise wouldn't have. I suppose this creates societal value too, but in my opinion it mainly just benefits the advertisers. The second is to make "impressions" so that people remember your brand when they later choose (impulsively) to purchase something.
Since I don't participate in those two, I consider them pretty worthless. Showing someone like me an ad on a blog is worthless, because we have a zero percent click-through rate and a zero percent conversion rate. Showing ads on a search might actually be helpful if I'm searching for a product to buy.
Anyway, this leads me to two possible conclusions. Either we are in an advertising bubble where way more effort is put into ads than they're worth, or I just have no understanding/conception of the average Internet user's browsing and buying habits. After all, I guess enough people click on these things to make them profitable for the site, and enough of those actually buy something to make it profitable for the advertiser. So as a non-clicker, what do I know?
I agree with you that the MPAA claim is silly. But in this case, you're actually consuming the product - using their bandwidth, their servers, etc, all of which costs money - and denying them the revenue they use to support that service. The argument with the MPAA concept is that you're not denying them a sale, nor are you increasing their cost of doing business, but here you're you're doing the latter.
Do you really believe that advertising (which is only part of what marketing departments do) is "zero value-add"? How do you learn about new products? How do you think the press who review products learn about them? How does a product become available for your to buy at Walgreens on the corner? All of that is "marketing"...
Working on a company where 80% of our revenue is because of advertising I disagree.
There are two main difference between the RIAA "every pirate is a stolen sale" and adblock.
1)When you "pirate" something it doesn't mean that you "pirate" everything, while if you install adblock you block the ads on every site.
2)When you "pirate" something it doesn't mean that what you have pirated would have been a legal purchase. But if you go to a website you would have gone there with or without ads. You can say that you won't have clicked on the ad or won't have purhcased anything. But almost 99% of our ads revenue is on impressions and not on click or conversion, so it doesn't really matter if you click or convert the ad.
But, right know, the number of people that use adblock are not that big of a deal (at least on our niche market) that you have to work on fighting it because, right know (for us), it is not worth it.
marketing departments are nothing but middle-men between producers and consumers
This is kind of tangential to your point, but a good marketing department is a lot more than just advertising. The role of marketing can include getting an understanding of the market and helping to build the right thing.
Ads are a monetization platform and you as an individual are not relevant, until most people start using AdBlock.
I do agree that the argument is very similar to piracy arguments told by MPAA/RIAA. When such a thing happens, the smartest thing for businesses is to adapt.
However, for the moment I like the Internet services and websites that I'm using, while I don't like the content or the prices or the restrictions promoted by the media industry. Which is why I'm being a good citizen and so I'm not installing AdBlock.
But this issue cuts both ways. AdBlock when used by a minority, is actually beneficial to websites. Because otherwise that minority would get really annoyed with a lot of them and losing those consumers is worse than not having conversions from them.
So that's another reason why I'm not using AdBlock, because websites that annoy me to the point that I can't take it anymore do not deserve my eyeballs, while those where the ads are promoted with taste do deserve my attention.
I had no idea retargeting even was a thing, until one particular ad kept repeatedly showing up.
When my grandmother died last year we looked up the website for a cremation service to find their phone number. Then for the next week or so I kept seeing banner ads for the same cremation service all over the web, on completely unrelated sites.
I would expect to see a cremation service ad on an obituary page, maybe a local newspaper, etc. I would not expect to see it on, say, a tech blog or an Android user forum. And I could consistently refresh threads on that forum and keep seeing that particular ad from that same company. Maybe it was the nature of the service advertised and my frame of mind at the time I was seeing it, but I was really creeped out.
I cleared cookies and it stopped. At that point I realized that the advertiser was doing something in particular to tell Google that I visited their site and to start throwing ads at me elsewhere. I checked out the AdWords docs to see how they were doing this and figure out how to opt out.
I don't know how long this has been a service offered by Google. Up until that one instance I likely had countless ads retargeted at me, and I may have even clicked such ads. And it works great until one instance where I'm creeped the heck out and I push back.
What makes this worse is that you'll get the same ad used across the entire page. If one wasn't enough, why not have another in the middle of a paragraph, and at the top of the page, and down the sidebar, and at the bottom, and above the comments?
Why not show me several retargeted ads? If I don't click one, I'm not going to click one of the other dozen copies on the page, so why not put something else relevant there?
As it stands, viewing a retargeted advert on an ad-heavy page is like being mithered by an annoying child. "Buy this buy this buy this buy this!"
(Curiously I appear to have opted out, but I still get this retargeting stuff.)
When it started happening to me I was more or less indifferent other than to think: "why are they showing me an endless stream of ads for things I'm already a customer of?". I have more disposable income, so show me something new ferchrissakes.
Almost exactly the same thing happened to me. That's when I installed Adblock and Ghostery. (Hmm, I should install Ghostery in this browser, actually...)
Yep, totally useful if that's what you wanted. But like I mentioned in the article, I didn't want to turn off all re-targeting since some of those ads are relevant. Also to change your "preferences" you need a Google account, I have 100 of those :) I also don't want to manage categories of ads, I just didn't want to see specific vendors.
I checked that link, and Google's profile of me is way off. Earth Sciences? Seriously? This is a comfort, since I figure letting the system run on bad information is just fine. It does suggest that Google isn't using some information it has on me. I'm sure it knows my birth year, but my browsing habits seem to suggest someone much younger. I must be 'immature.'
Internet advertising is always at the forefront of the shadiest practices. I'm not about to constantly monitor it. Either the industry reforms or I have AdBlock on forever.
So very much this. My time is worth more than you could possibly charge per impression/click when one of your shady ad networks gives me some form of malware.
Until ad network administrators take responsibility for what's being shown under their name, adblock stays on.
It's funny that Hulu is supposed to have that "This ad isn't relevant" button to do exactly what he's describing (er, doing, I guess), but it doesn't seem to be effective for me at all.
Depending on what I watch, I get only cars, cell phones, foundations, and of course 5-hour energy.
I've always thought that this is because they don't have any other advertisers for that particular show. Like "this ad is not relevant but it's the only one we have so we'll show it to you anyway".
Pro-tip: look for the triangle in the top right of the ad. Usually clicking on it will provide an option for opting out, although it doesn't appear on all ads.
Now, let's be serious. If we all block ads, whic is really trivial to do, then the web would cease to be an important medium, the quality of content found through the web would drop sharply and our lives would lose the enrichment that online advertising brings. It would just be terrible. Don't block ads. A kitten is tortured everytime you do.
I think you have your tongue in cheek, but I'm going to bite because I have something to say even if you're not being serious ;-)
I'm an online publisher who has a significant percentage of income that comes via advertising and I think ad blocking is a good force for the Web. I don't use it, but I don't have a problem with those who do.
Ad blockers typically block poorly performing display advertising (the CTRs on banners nowadays is ridiculously low and the levels of recall have been shown to be abysmally low in studies) and text link advertising from the big networks.
Ad blockers typically do not block 'content marketing', videos on sites like YouTube, editorial mentions of products, references to products and services within content, adverts in podcasts, job ads (usually), sponsors in e-mail newsletters, and a whole myriad of other ways that smart advertisers and publishers are using.
It's about time we killed off mass market display advertising online. Why? Because it gives publishers an incentive to actually work to provide experiences that benefit both readers and advertisers and not sit on their fat asses collecting checks for doing sod all.
If you don't believe this is an important issue, then please consider the example of public television. The damage it has caused by denying income to advertisers has been immeasurable. Not to mention that the programs they show serve only to dull the minds of the population. Please do not block ads. My kitten thanks you for your anticipated cooperation.
That "Kudos" meter in the top right corner is inaccurate. I moused-over the black circle before I realized what it did, and it counted my "vote" anyway.
Don't ever make the mistake of looking up medical conditions you see on a show like House. You will forever be plagued by ads trying to address your condition!
Hey, at least you get to pick your ads. :P
Btw, a simple search for anything geeky gets me tons of dating ads. (i havent installed adblock on my Opera test-browser). Pics of smiling chicks may be preferred over ugly medical conditions.
Using gmail only makes it worse, as far as I can tell. I don't get the impression they pick your emails apart enough to distinguish between "bought this" and just "looking at this". I guess there's also the chance that, say, after buying a Frobnitz, you'll want to visit a Frobnitz-seller's website to buy accessories.
I have another addon instead: ad-block in Google Chrome. No problems at all. Sometimes I need it disabled for work, so I also have 3rd party cookies disabled. This way even if I come to coca-cola site I will not see it everywhere :)
I had this happen recently with airbnb.. I went to check out prices in a city, and decided youth hostels offered better value for the situation so left.
Virtually every single website i visited for a week was shoving airbnb in my face. Yes, i know you exist, i went there.
There has to be more complexity to the 'rule of 7' because i'm sure there must be better sales patterns than just shoving 7 ads in a row for the same thing at you. The same thing happens with comedy central's online shows.. every time the same ad-- it just makes me hate the product after the first few times.
The author briefly picks on Hulu's advertising methods, but I have actually been fairly pleased with their AdTailor(?) service. I don't see female-targetted ads anymore, and there has been a definite increase in advertising for products/services I might be interested in. It does still seem like there are a disproportionate amount of Insurance ads shown, and I'm not sure if that's because Insurance Companies have more advertising dollars, or because I have limited the pool of potential ad "archetypes" to show by using the AdTailor.
I can relate to his frustration re Hulu ads. Discovery Channel (here in Europe) advertises mostly for their own programs - often for the program you're actually watching. The remainder is for a handful of companies. Clueless about why they'd do that.
Last year I visited a site to do with laser eye surgery. I was then subjected to ads for laser eye surgery for 3 or 4 months, even after I had surgery and was definitely not going to be buying the service again.
This gave me an idea for how to prank a friend if they leave you alone with their computer for a short while. Just visit loads of sites for an embarrassing subject (maybe haemorrhoids, vaginal rash, penis enlargement, etc...) They will then be subjected to ads for that subject for months after, with no idea why :-)
ESPN3 and NBC Sports online are SO bad at showing the same two commercials at every single break. I assume its because nobody wants to spend their money on ads only to have them shown online, but damn. I must've seen that "We just had a Journey moment there" ad a thousand times while watching college basketball this winter. It doesn't help that they have some annoying catchphrase that stands out or high-pitched sound/song to up its annoyance factor.
Something really, really needs to be done about this.
Why do people even trust ads? Why would I pick a certain brand just because I see it over and over? Wouldnt someone intelligent just do 5 minutes of googling to find out which one is the best?
Not to mention that I think it grabs my attention from what Im trying to do and redirects it into me wanting to buy a product all of a sudden. No.
Companies are lucky if I use AdBlock, because my personal "Rule of 7" states that company adds I see more than 7 times make this company an automatic member of the "annoying company list" (Adds that blink or play sound (hear me coka cola?)) are immediate candidates.
[+] [-] rglullis|14 years ago|reply
The whole thing with the Internet is about desintermediation, and marketing departments are nothing but middle-men between producers and consumers. Even worse that they actually sell the idea that producers need to "build a brand". Zero actual value-add to the chain, but work to increase perceived and actual costs of the goods produced.
[+] [-] bo1024|14 years ago|reply
I can think of a couple other ways to get some sort of value from advertising. The first is using an ad to get someone to purchase something they otherwise wouldn't have. I suppose this creates societal value too, but in my opinion it mainly just benefits the advertisers. The second is to make "impressions" so that people remember your brand when they later choose (impulsively) to purchase something.
Since I don't participate in those two, I consider them pretty worthless. Showing someone like me an ad on a blog is worthless, because we have a zero percent click-through rate and a zero percent conversion rate. Showing ads on a search might actually be helpful if I'm searching for a product to buy.
Anyway, this leads me to two possible conclusions. Either we are in an advertising bubble where way more effort is put into ads than they're worth, or I just have no understanding/conception of the average Internet user's browsing and buying habits. After all, I guess enough people click on these things to make them profitable for the site, and enough of those actually buy something to make it profitable for the advertiser. So as a non-clicker, what do I know?
[+] [-] tomkarlo|14 years ago|reply
Do you really believe that advertising (which is only part of what marketing departments do) is "zero value-add"? How do you learn about new products? How do you think the press who review products learn about them? How does a product become available for your to buy at Walgreens on the corner? All of that is "marketing"...
[+] [-] Kesty|14 years ago|reply
There are two main difference between the RIAA "every pirate is a stolen sale" and adblock.
1)When you "pirate" something it doesn't mean that you "pirate" everything, while if you install adblock you block the ads on every site.
2)When you "pirate" something it doesn't mean that what you have pirated would have been a legal purchase. But if you go to a website you would have gone there with or without ads. You can say that you won't have clicked on the ad or won't have purhcased anything. But almost 99% of our ads revenue is on impressions and not on click or conversion, so it doesn't really matter if you click or convert the ad.
But, right know, the number of people that use adblock are not that big of a deal (at least on our niche market) that you have to work on fighting it because, right know (for us), it is not worth it.
[+] [-] MartinCron|14 years ago|reply
This is kind of tangential to your point, but a good marketing department is a lot more than just advertising. The role of marketing can include getting an understanding of the market and helping to build the right thing.
[+] [-] bad_user|14 years ago|reply
I do agree that the argument is very similar to piracy arguments told by MPAA/RIAA. When such a thing happens, the smartest thing for businesses is to adapt.
However, for the moment I like the Internet services and websites that I'm using, while I don't like the content or the prices or the restrictions promoted by the media industry. Which is why I'm being a good citizen and so I'm not installing AdBlock.
But this issue cuts both ways. AdBlock when used by a minority, is actually beneficial to websites. Because otherwise that minority would get really annoyed with a lot of them and losing those consumers is worse than not having conversions from them.
So that's another reason why I'm not using AdBlock, because websites that annoy me to the point that I can't take it anymore do not deserve my eyeballs, while those where the ads are promoted with taste do deserve my attention.
[+] [-] ben1040|14 years ago|reply
When my grandmother died last year we looked up the website for a cremation service to find their phone number. Then for the next week or so I kept seeing banner ads for the same cremation service all over the web, on completely unrelated sites.
I would expect to see a cremation service ad on an obituary page, maybe a local newspaper, etc. I would not expect to see it on, say, a tech blog or an Android user forum. And I could consistently refresh threads on that forum and keep seeing that particular ad from that same company. Maybe it was the nature of the service advertised and my frame of mind at the time I was seeing it, but I was really creeped out.
I cleared cookies and it stopped. At that point I realized that the advertiser was doing something in particular to tell Google that I visited their site and to start throwing ads at me elsewhere. I checked out the AdWords docs to see how they were doing this and figure out how to opt out.
I don't know how long this has been a service offered by Google. Up until that one instance I likely had countless ads retargeted at me, and I may have even clicked such ads. And it works great until one instance where I'm creeped the heck out and I push back.
[+] [-] FuzzyDunlop|14 years ago|reply
Why not show me several retargeted ads? If I don't click one, I'm not going to click one of the other dozen copies on the page, so why not put something else relevant there?
As it stands, viewing a retargeted advert on an ad-heavy page is like being mithered by an annoying child. "Buy this buy this buy this buy this!"
(Curiously I appear to have opted out, but I still get this retargeting stuff.)
[+] [-] larrik|14 years ago|reply
Of course, it replaced seeing EVE Online ads everywhere for years (literally).
[+] [-] dasil003|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Estragon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dasil003|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] vladd|14 years ago|reply
http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/
Retargeting is basically disabled if one opts out there (for the web, search&gmail or both).
[+] [-] nate|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] getpost|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niels_olson|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EvilTerran|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loumf|14 years ago|reply
http://support.google.com/adsense/bin/static.py?hl=en&gl...
[+] [-] shinratdr|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Karunamon|14 years ago|reply
Until ad network administrators take responsibility for what's being shown under their name, adblock stays on.
[+] [-] alecbenzer|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reginaldo|14 years ago|reply
I've always thought that this is because they don't have any other advertisers for that particular show. Like "this ad is not relevant but it's the only one we have so we'll show it to you anyway".
[+] [-] notjustanymike|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 12uu45dd|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petercooper|14 years ago|reply
I'm an online publisher who has a significant percentage of income that comes via advertising and I think ad blocking is a good force for the Web. I don't use it, but I don't have a problem with those who do.
Ad blockers typically block poorly performing display advertising (the CTRs on banners nowadays is ridiculously low and the levels of recall have been shown to be abysmally low in studies) and text link advertising from the big networks.
Ad blockers typically do not block 'content marketing', videos on sites like YouTube, editorial mentions of products, references to products and services within content, adverts in podcasts, job ads (usually), sponsors in e-mail newsletters, and a whole myriad of other ways that smart advertisers and publishers are using.
It's about time we killed off mass market display advertising online. Why? Because it gives publishers an incentive to actually work to provide experiences that benefit both readers and advertisers and not sit on their fat asses collecting checks for doing sod all.
[+] [-] gergles|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 12uu45dd|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lockyy|14 years ago|reply
They must or it wouldn't be a profitable system. Strange.
[+] [-] joejohnson|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nate|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rogerbinns|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Teapot|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thelastknowngod|14 years ago|reply
Then install TrackerBlock: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/trackerblock/
[+] [-] RexM|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sparkie|14 years ago|reply
Perhaps if I used gmail, so they could read my emails and see what I've bought already, I wouldn't have this problem. I'll pass on that idea though.
[+] [-] EvilTerran|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mephi5t0|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] polshaw|14 years ago|reply
Virtually every single website i visited for a week was shoving airbnb in my face. Yes, i know you exist, i went there.
There has to be more complexity to the 'rule of 7' because i'm sure there must be better sales patterns than just shoving 7 ads in a row for the same thing at you. The same thing happens with comedy central's online shows.. every time the same ad-- it just makes me hate the product after the first few times.
[+] [-] kayge|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toemetoch|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nate|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Digit-Al|14 years ago|reply
This gave me an idea for how to prank a friend if they leave you alone with their computer for a short while. Just visit loads of sites for an embarrassing subject (maybe haemorrhoids, vaginal rash, penis enlargement, etc...) They will then be subjected to ads for that subject for months after, with no idea why :-)
[+] [-] RobAtticus|14 years ago|reply
Something really, really needs to be done about this.
[+] [-] cnbeuiwx|14 years ago|reply
Not to mention that I think it grabs my attention from what Im trying to do and redirects it into me wanting to buy a product all of a sudden. No.
Proud Adblock user ever since it came.
[+] [-] pilot_pirx|14 years ago|reply