AD Blocking software to cause the end of free Internet?

[AGTDenton]

I watched a BBC News video the other week about ad blocking software on phones but as it didn't go into any depth, not to mention this is ancient news, I didn't think much of it.

Today they've published a slightly more in depth article, made longer by overly big pictures.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34268416

It seems ad blocking is about to hit the mainstream but no doubt attract bad press.
To cause the end of free Internet viewing is a bit overblown I think.

The biggest annoyance to me is that shopping websites; Amazon, eBay etc... are putting external and internal ads all over the place. So its little wander that people are getting a bit fed up with it all. Only in some cases are these type of ads blocked, for example when I log into eBay there is often some internal ad, but with an ad blocker nothing is visible. However, in other parts of the site internal ads are not blocked.

There are so few examples of adverts in the correct places, and adverts that don't make the site look cluttered and ugly i.e. a deterrent for future visits.

I will say the Hexus main site has it nearly spot on a tad cluttered but most importantly all relevant, and have been useful. The Forums are not as good, they're not intrusive but lacking something, perhaps there are limitations here as the ads seem wildly different to those that are on the main site, and a little odd looking.
https://gyazo.com/5fa7ca3920eff7a5fbc1ca02d6dfa6d0

What ad blocker does everyone else use, what type of ads annoy everyone else, and what good/bad examples are you aware of?

[Saracen]

What type of ads annoy?

Well, anything that pops into my SMS inbox or drops through my letterbox for a start. But I guess that wasn't what you meant.

In online terms, my three worst are, in no particular order,

- pop-up boxes
- animated ads, or ones with auto-playing sound
- overly bright, distracting colours

The first of those generally results in me leaving the site, never to return. Fortunately, I rarely get them now.

I don't respond to ads, EVER. Don't watch them on TV, don't click on them online, etc, on principle. If I visit a site and the ads get in the way of why I visited the site, I either block, or just dump the site. If they're there for those that are interested, but are not overly intrusive, I just ignore them.

In general, though, what I really loathe is those that are 'in-yer-face', obnoxious and objectionable, that go overboard in getting noticed and stray into 'hard to ignore', and my generic short fuse about adverts comes from having had a preponderance of that type inflicted on me in the past. Now, I'm pretty much zero-tolerance for ALL ads.

[shaithis]

ones with auto-playing sound

Yup, those are the ones that get my goat!

Sometimes, late in the evening, with my headphones on, they can actually make me a little jumpy, especially when they are on pop-unders!

But the article isn't that sensationalist. The premise of the article is correct. Everything has to be paid for and if advertisers won't, then the content viewers will have to.....or the content will have to be taken down. I think the more likely outcome is that as ad-blockers become the norm, there will just be less content available.

AVForums has an interesting way of getting people to accept ads. I think more sites will come up with worthwhile incentives to exclude their domains from your blocker of choice.

[Galant]

Yup, those are the ones that get my goat!

Another vote for sites that auto-play video or audio. Might well be my biggest internet pet-peeve. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

And they're almost guaranteed to have the audio way too high AND automatically move down a play-list.

Should say this isn't necessarily ads, though, often it's 'news' sites that do it.

Argh, how much I hate it. Really.

Grrrrr.

[Saracen]

Yup, those are the ones that get my goat!

Sometimes, late in the evening, with my headphones on, they can actually make me a little jumpy, especially when they are on pop-unders!

But the article isn't that sensationalist. The premise of the article is correct. Everything has to be paid for and if advertisers won't, then the content viewers will have to.....or the content will have to be taken down. I think the more likely outcome is that as ad-blockers become the norm, there will just be less content available.

AVForums has an interesting way of getting people to accept ads. I think more sites will come up with worthwhile incentives to exclude their domains from your blocker of choice.

Perhaps we'll get less content, and certainly less free content, but we might also find that if we're prepared to pay for content, we'll get better content. But as someone that's been providing such content for, oh, 25 years or so, believe me, I'm fully on-board with the notion of it being paid for. Oh, yes, indeedy.

The problem is that the mass mindset is that internet = free. And despite many attempts to come up with viable financing methods, few have worked with the exception of those with specialist, limited-alternative content valuable enough to put behind a paywall and have sufficient users be prepared to pay it. But then, it tends to be low-volume high-value content. If you've got what such users want, it can still be valuable.

[mikerr]

The problem with ads is they're all to often the only thing moving/flashing on screen.
I get that they're designed to grab attention, but it just has me reaching for the adblock button

Case in point, i often disable adblock on hexus, and what's up there - a static ad ? no a flashing AMD gif...! argh!

[GuidoLS]

I use ABP, Ghostery and NoScript.

I hate, absolutely, popovers, popunders, and autoplay Flash/HTML5 ads. I also hate flashing ads that try to look like they're neon or something.

Some sites, like Hexus forums, I whitelist. Others, like the main news page of Hexus, I block. Sorry gang, nothing personal, but the ads are obnoxious and detract from the news itself. I block all trackers, beacons, widgets, etc. I allow Google analytics, because I'm pretty sure that helps the site with its SEO ratings, etc.

Honestly, the issue isn't the blockers - they wouldn't be needed if a select few dozen or so top sites weren't so greedy as to make their sites pointless without blockers. It seems that the link in the OP actually agrees with this. And as far as pay to play goes, it was like that in the early days of the 'net. A lot of subscription services. A lot of paywalls. And while a good many of the paywalls still exist, they're very specialized, and a LOT of the sub services are dead, because someone was offering the same or similar content for free.

IMO, it's simply an empty threat - if a site isn't offering worthy of paying for, people aren't going to pay for it. There are literally billions of sites on the net. If 99% of them disappeared tomorrow, there's not a person on earth that could visit all the remaining sites, let alone get content from each and every one of them. Right now, at this second, there are 2,453,446 posts here on these forums alone. Giving a generous 30 seconds per post to read and digest said post, it would take just shy of 852 days (as in, 24 hour days) to just catch up from #1 to the last. To put that into context, if there were just 25 sites like that left on the net (and for more context, it's estimated that Facebook gets 218 million posts a DAY from the US alone), odds are good that each and every current member of Hexus would be deceased before they finished reading all the content on just those site.

So, honestly, a paywall on the BBC, which geo-blocks its videos to me anyway, is no loss. I'll go to PBS, watch the same videos with a slightly more manageable accent, and not be out a dime.

[peterb]

Tracking ads really get me. The ones when after visiting a site, ads for that site appear on other sites that use adverts. I visited two sites recently, and made purchases, now I see ads for those products on other sites.

[KeyboardDemon]

Another possibility is that the advertisers will just devise other means for getting their messages in to our browsers, some will be more obnoxious than others as is the case at the moment but I don't think for a minute that they will just throw in the towel because some more IT literate users have started using ad blockers. Not every person that browses the internet uses an ad blocker, most non-IT proficient users I know don't even notice the ads, some will run with the computers muted and only turn on the sound when they want it, others have just become accustomed to closing the annoying ad and getting on with what they want to do, in the same way that they use the ads break during their favourite soap to make a cup of tea or surf the other channels.

[deejayburnout]

I use adblockers on my android device and PC as all ads are a pain. I understand why sites have them but I am more than happy to pay a few pounds to keep them off my favourite websites. I never click on them anyways.

I do think that adblockers are making the issue of ads on sites worse as they are aggressively trying to raise revenue.

[Saracen]

....

I do think that adblockers are making the issue of ads on sites worse as they are aggressively trying to raise revenue.

Or conversely, if ad's weren't getting, and hadn't been getting, increasingly intrusive, dominant and irritating on so many sites, there'd be no need for adblockers.

If I don't have a headache, I don't take headache tablets.

[DanceswithUnix]

When some adverts are basically redirects to sites that attempt to upload malware onto your machine via flash and/or java exploits I think ad blocking is a basic self defence thing like having an anti virus package installed.

[BobF64]

Tracking ads really get me. The ones when after visiting a site, ads for that site appear on other sites that use adverts. I visited two sites recently, and made purchases, now I see ads for those products on other sites.

Which is utterly baffling. Ok, sure, if you looked at the site but didnt buy it makes some sense.

What often got me was when I went to the site of software I was already using, to check for new versions, read the help etc, and for weeks afterwards I kept getting adverts trying to sell me something I already have.

[shaithis]

Which is utterly baffling. Ok, sure, if you looked at the site but didnt buy it makes some sense.

What often got me was when I went to the site of software I was already using, to check for new versions, read the help etc, and for weeks afterwards I kept getting adverts trying to sell me something I already have.

This I have no problem with. Like many of us, I do not like trying to be given the hard-sell. When you already have the product, you can completely ignore the ad

TBH, most targeted ads for these these days are for Veeam due to how often I have visited their site. Luckily their ads aren't intrusive....

[Spreadie]

Or conversely, if ad's weren't getting, and hadn't been getting, increasingly intrusive, dominant and irritating on so many sites, there'd be no need for adblockers.

If I don't have a headache, I don't take headache tablets.

Exactly.

My response to the thread title was going to be "Intrusive ads that necessitate the use of ad-blockers to cause end of free internet".

Catchy, eh?

[abaxas]

Surely a clever site would turn the ads into content and the content into ads.......