Many moons ago I worked briefly on an ad prototype that aimed to replace banner ads, particularly those that sit in content with a single bottom overlay that would "smartly" unobstruct the viewing experience of the page. I was able to reduce a full page of horrible ads into a single box at the bottom of the page that could be closed whenever.
The idea fell completely flat for various reasons, but some off the top of my head:
- We have x advertisers that NEED to be on this page - how can we possibly get x on the page with just one box?
- I don't care if people use ad blockers, let them do their thing and we'll target those that are happy to see ads
- If people can easily close them, the reflex to close will mean no ad is glanced.
The sad stat that came out was that obtrusive ads, the kind that used popups or automatically opened apps to download were VERY effective. I could prove that my ads were several times more effective than "normal" banner ads and popups, but when you could sell 10x the ads it didn't matter if they were 10x more effective.
My brief stint in advertising made me feel that for many years people didn't care about those that blocked ads because there was always more shit to optimise or grow into. That has stagnated, so now the likes of Google are targeting "market share" by getting those that block ads to look at ads again. It won't work, at all, but it feels like they've now optimised themselves into a hole.
Panel #4: Me: "Your content is perfectly accessible without loading any turing-complete assets from your web server, thanks"
Basically how I browse the internet these days .... if I have to click on a bunch of stuff, sign up, register, accept a bunch of notifications, cookies, blah, blah, blah ... all because I want to read 200 words on your dumb site ... I'm not even going to bother with your site, skip and find a different source that is easier.
It's legitimately embarrassing how many people can't seem to grasp that this isn't the "fuck you" they think it is.
They aren't shocked or upset, they're not panicking because you left, because it's all the same to them either way. You either access the site while blocking the ads and they get no income from your views, or you go away and they don't get income from your views. Exactly nothing has changed for them except now they don't have you pulling bandwidth.
The point is not to get YOU to turn your ad blocker off, the point is it will get SOME people to turn it off who aren't you. If you're not willing to turn it off, then what you do matters very little because they appreciate there's no way they're getting income from you ever.
It's got the same energy as "You expect me to pay admission to enter this theme park? Well now I'm not going in, don't you feel stupid?"
Love when sites think you're a captive audience. Bye sucka!!!
Someday soon my "adblocker" might be a personal AI that reads the spam-ridden website on a virtual display in memory, identifies the actual content while pretending to look at whatever ads the site demands, and then passes the information I'm actually looking for along to me. Good luck captchaing that.
I will try to unblock ads on a new site one time. I want to see the whole article on one page, No click-through gallery of 27 different takes. There can be ads in the borders and margins. And maybe if I'm feeling generous one in the middle of the content. I don't want to see an unrelated pop-up video I don't want to see every paragraph separated by another ad.
If they can't play nice I block the ads, If I can't, by default, see the content without the ads, I'll find the article on another service. Everyone's literally just copying the same content back and forth with different wording.
If I can't see the content, and I can't find it on another service, I'll generally use bypass paywalls clean. If I can't see it through that I don't see it.
I'm not giving in for this b******* ads all over the place scenario. You can't even read a recipe page nowadays without an ad blocker.
It turns out the popular alternative is "force you to sign up (with a phone number) from critical mass/FOMO, track the snot out of you then slide ads in later." Oh, and the stuff you want is siloed away until you join, and buried in a mountain of rambling and engagement optimization junk.
Note that I'm largely talking about Discord, which is unfortunately where many of my interests have been shunted off to. People talk about Facebook, Google and OpenAI eating the internet, but I feel like Discord is the quiet trojan horse.
It really depends on:
- How intrusive the ads are
- If there is other invasive tracking
- How "corporate" the website is (SEO garbage AI spam vs genuine indie blogger)
- The quality of the article
But for some reason, 75% of the time I decide to willingly turn off my ad blocker, there's nothing to block.
Imagine if Newspapers were originally run like web site news
If you wanted to read A paper, you would have had to buy a year's subscription
Reader mode on
The companies that keep these are ones that people in certain professions (like journalism and politics) have to use, so their corporate paymasters just pony up the subscription costs.
Isn't this just the system working as intended? You gain benefit from the content of a website and the people who make the content get compensated via ad revenue. If you choose to not provide them with ad revenue, you don't get the benefit of the content. It's basically the same as walking into a store and choosing not to buy a product on the shelf. You're not "getting yours" by not buying something, you're getting nothing and paying nothing, zero benefit for zero cost.
