If I was a frequent visitor to your website, I would white-list your domain so ads would show up, but since I don’t, I am not going to load the address of your website into my browsers ram even day just so you can make a few cents.

And lastly, by your logic, people who browser the Internet with browsers like Lynx (which is text-only), or have JavaScript disabled, or even people who don’t have flash installed are stealing money from you (or what if I wrote my own browser for the very purpose of blocking ads). Is it not our right to choose which browser we would like to use? You can block access to your website from certain browsers if you want, but you will also have to put up with the decreased overall views of your site which will, in the end, diminish your readership due to the lack of people linking to it.

http://www.google.com/doubleclick/
http://www.google.com/dfp/info/welcome.html

This is once again that sense of entitlement. Lots of people start businesses, but that is no guarantee that they will make money. Nobody is entitled to make money just because they work hard. Sometimes their business model just doesn't work. This site and many others choose a business model that doesn't work well on the internet. They may have to fail for that. Maybe we will have to switch to a micropayment model instead.

Will it be the end of content on the internet? No. As it becomes more scarce, it will be increasingly worth paying for (at least micropayments). The internet could probably use some trimming down. I know you don't want to hear that, since you're one of the people who could potentially get laid off, but that's how the market works. It also works by adapting business models to the ecosystems in which they reside.

Personally, I have lots of subscription / pay / premium accounts on various web sites. I'm not averse to paying for content at all. However, I DO hate ads. I hope ad blocking becomes so ubiquitous that ads become extinct on the internet and we shift to a micropayment model.

Some people are against that, because they want everything for free. They ARE the freeloaders.

I've seen numerous people say this. You forget that there is no free lunch and *somebody* is paying for those ads. When we mindlessly click ads for things that we're never going to buy, we're hurting the companies paying for those ads.

After posting my comment, I went back and spent 45 minutes reading through all the other comments (and noticed that the issue that I brought up was already addressed several times). It’s just interesting how your argument completely devolved from “let’s have a civil, intelligent conversation about this” to “fuck you scumbags”.

I don't need crap popping up all over websites. We wouldn't have ad blocking if web sites kept it reasonable instead of popping under a bunch of ads, sliding surveys and dialogs over the pages, embedding a dozen tracking web bugs, and making sites you can't escape from. You killed the goose yourself.

You piece of shat webmasters better start watching what ads you allow on your sites this is the biggest reason I use adblock.

What is your response to that? Thats what I thought. Deal with it.

I know several people have already expressed their opinion on this post and I'm feeling a bit left out so I thought I'd leave my own;

Being the owner of multiple sites myself I understand exactly where Michael is coming with this argument. I would also like to make it clear that nobody using Firefox will be blocked from this site! He simply came up with a headline to get you all interested in the article.

You need to think about this argument from both sides, the site owner and the readers.

I don't think you can expect people like Everton, myself and other site owners who spend hours every day providing content and a service to people without any reward. Some people work on the internet like this as a full time job, but they still have to pay their bills at the end of the day as well. How else are they meant to make any money aside from charging you for content which im against.

The internet is a place where people are free to do pretty much what they like, if people choose to use adblockers that's there choice. I'm by no means at all endorsing this and I have and will never use one.

Why? Because knowing what site owners go through to provide content, I know it's morally wrong to just keep taking it without even giving them an opportunity to try and generate a bit of revenue in return. If everyone just kept taking without giving, we would never get anywhere in life. Sometimes I appreciate the work and time and effort somebody has put into something and I will click on an advert for them, it's my why of giving something back.

And on the other hand I can see where many of our readers are coming from, expressing their distaste towards adverts on the web. But it's just like the adverts in the newspaper, just because there there doesn't mean you have to read them. When I go onto websites, I pretty much block out adverts mentally, I just glance over them without a second thought, because that's what I'm used to doing. I don't feel the need to go and block them entirely.

So people please have a look at this from both sides, the web owner and the reader. This article was never to be intended to be about blocking firefox users,

You will NEVER convince me that I am wrong in this argument. If you use an ad blocker, but on the other hand you wouldn't pirate music, movies or software, than it is YOU my friend who are the hypocrite. One is ok and the other isn't? Bullshit. If you're gonna be a thief, be a thief. Don't try to dress it up in some self righteous argument about digital rights and personal property.

Sorry about my irate response, but I've been reading this garbage for almost half a year now, and the pro ad blocking segment hasn't become more convincing with time. Everyone gets that you don't like advertising, now grow up and quit crying about it.

Translation: don't steal from me by not reading my ads, steal from my advertisers by pretending I delivered a bona fide hit.

What an unprincipled hypocrite.

It is not my problem that you have based your business model (‘you’ as in whichever shadowy group of people did the structuring, not you, personally, Michael) around the (mistaken) _assumption_ that everyone who downloads copies of the site’s pages from you will also choose to download all of the other documents (ads) those pages reference, any more than it is my problem that people who put their sites behind paywalls base theirs around the assumption that everyone who wishes to view their content will be willing to pay to do so. It is your problem, not mine, that reality is not in accordance with your assumption, and it is your responsibility, not mine, to act to solve that problem.

Evidently you have decided to attempt to solve your problem by accusing your users of being in the wrong in order to guilt them into acting in accordance with your poorly-based business model. Don’t be surprised when that doesn’t work any better.

That said there are sites which I whitelist. The ads have to be unobtrusive and the site has to provide content I really want. I sometimes even click on the ads… just because I feel sorry for them.

Adblock is the moral equivalent of a labor union. If the controlling class pushes too far, the subjugated class pushes back, they often try in turn to subjugate the controlling class, stripping it of power and punish it’s supporters. One way of punishing a supporter is to ensure they get no income – boycott. For the particularly spiteful, there is also resource wasting – sit-in. When the public trust is abused, the public gets the idea that is ok to abuse the abusers; what goes around, comes around.

Now only if there were more folks who were moderate in the ads they displayed. Recently I was at MSN (I haven’t bothered to change the homepage for IE, I rarely use it) where there was an ad on the front page for a service that after digging through the promotional material and website became plain that it was a scam, bait and switch, it wasn’t evenly cleverly disguised but you could fall for it if you weren’t really really through and read between the lines. That sort of thing really irritates me. The law may absolve M$ of any responsibility but in the court of the common man they are complicit. Rarely do those who profit from ads try to make amends for the damages those ads do, they just brush it off.

Its not enough to promise to be good, any child can do that, they have to be held accountable, their have to be repercussions. Until the industry can protect users from their unethical clients, the industry will have to live with ad blocking.

P.S. Firefox isn’t the only browser with adblocking, all the major browsers via hook or crook can do it. Even those that can’t internally can access the internet through a manipulation proxy like Proxomitron.

which one?

While I probably have the same ad filter in my brain that everyone else does, I don’t hate them. I am not above being influenced by an ad. I appreciate when an ad steers me toward something I may be interested in. I love the new Brutal Legend/Dethklok commercial. I have seen loudspeaker ads on hi fi sites that led me to look into a company. I ate Black Jack Tacos at Taco Bell two weeks ago, because I saw an ad.

People who don’t want to see ads aren’t going to see ads, anymore than people who don’t want to pay for music and movies are going to pay for them when they can download them free of charge. I respect that people are trying to make a living or a buck off whatever it is they are monetizing. If I like their content, it’s a small price to pay to have a couple of AdSense units on the page. If I don’t like their content it has nothing to do with the ads.

It’s not like spam. Spam ends up in your mailbox, and you didn’t ask for it. Blocking ads is subverting a means of income someone has in place in lieu of not providing the content at all.

Which internet do you want? The internet that is full of crap, but that also has a lot more good content because people are successful at generating some income from an ad based model, or the internet with less of everything because of people who value their own comfort over the efforts of the people who provide a product they are interested in, the content?

People use ad blocking technology b/c they hate ads. You hate ads too, Michael. Admit it. Do you sit through every ad on TV? Do you fast forward through them using your Tivo/DVR? You do, don’t you? Of course you do, b/c you’re a normal human being.

A major reason why people use DVRs, rent movies from Netflix/Blockbuster (instead of watching them on TV), download serials from the Web, etc., is b/c they hate ads and try to avoid them whenever possible.

If you’re annoyed with people blocking ads, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This is just the beginning. Google is going to see its revenue from Internet ads collapse once add-ons like Adblocker go mainstream. Then it, and every other entity that earns money from advertising, is going to have to do what companies have done since the dawn of commerce: find another way to make a buck.

Shoving your product into people’s faces — most of whom aren’t interested — just won’t cut it anymore.

People use ad blocking technology b/c they hate ads. You hate ads too, Michael. Admit it. Do you sit through every ad on TV? Do you fast forward through them using your Tivo/DVR? You do, don’t you? Of course you do, b/c you’re a normal human being.

A major reason why people use DVRs, rent movies from Netflix/Blockbuster (instead of watching them on TV), download serials from the Web, etc., is b/c they hate ads and try to avoid them whenever possible.

If you’re annoyed with people blocking ads, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This is just the beginning. Google is going to see its revenue from Internet ads collapse once add-ons like Adblocker go mainstream. Then it, and every other entity that earns money from advertising, is going to have to do what companies have done since the dawn of commerce: find another way to make a buck.

Shoving your product into people’s faces — most of whom aren’t interested — just won’t cut it anymore.

Maybe try reading everything next time before you fly off the handle. Ultimately, you’re here reading the article no matter what your opinion on the topic, so excuse me for not being sympathetic to a hostile reader. Thanks for stopping by and keep reading Connected Internet!

Now it’s time for you to pay for your lousy web design. Get rid of the pop up ads, side bar ads, pop under ads. You don’t deserve anything from us visiting your site, other than the specific reason someone visits it – and it is not for the ads!

1. Does it produce a pop-up or a CSS type (not a new window but a block that covers the content) pop-up?
2. Does the ad produce any sound (even if it only does so when my cursor crosses it)?
3. Is the ad completely in appropriate or possibly illegal?

If ads on your site answer NO to any of the questions then they are safe and I don’t block them, so no need to worry about my Firefox AdBlock. So blocking permission to visit your site because I use Firefox is a bit presumptuous.