AdBlock Plus is Still Evil
Since writing a post last week suggesting that AdBlock Plus is an “evil predator”, I’ve received a lot of comments and read a lot of posts suggesting it’s the wrong approach. After all, we live in a world where people use their PVRs (aka Tivos) to happily skip through commercials so how bad can it be to use a Firefox plug-in to wipe out all that commercial “noise” on Web sites.
Well, I still think ad blockers are bad, bad, bad. Why? Because they castrate the commercial Web while hurting publishers, service providers, advertisers and readers/users. Sure, a Web site without all those annoying ads seems like a great concept but then you have to remember all these Web sites have people working for them - and those people need to get paid somehow. And I don’t buy into the suggestion that these Web sites have to come up with innovative or creative business models other than advertising. Simply put, advertising is one of the business models.
Look at it another way, what would happen to the newspaper, magazine, radio and television businesses if you could use some kind of technology to have them become ad-free. Sure, they’d be probably be more user-friendly but they wouldn’t be economically viable. You can’t eat your cake and have it too.
One thing that particularly ironic about this AdBlock Plus controversy is that the plug-in is among Firefox’s “recommended add-ons”. Doesn’t Firefox make millions of dollars through a search agreement with Google, which makes money from advertising? What if Google AdSense business started to decline because its ads were being blocked? I would think that Firefox would likely make less revenue to support its development. Funny how advertising works, doesn’t it.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Nick Carr’s post today about AdBlock Plus. To his credit, Carr actually downloaded the plug-in. Lo and behold, he like it:
“Now, I’ve never seen Times Square immediately after a snowfall, but I have to say that experiencing the web without ads - or at least with a whole lot fewer ads - is awfully pleasant. Imagine that somebody has been yelling into your ear for so long that it’s come to seem normal. Now imagine that the person suddenly shuts up. That’s the effect of ad-blocking. It’s like going back to the feel of the web in the early 90s, before it was strip-malled.”
Carr, who has advertising on his blog, then goes into an interesting analysis looking at the ethical and utilitarian sides of ad blocking. At the end of the day, he decided to remove AdBlock Plus - not because he thinks it’s a bad concept but because “but only because I would find it hard to write about the online world if I was seeing a different Net than most people see”.
Update: Daily Kos made its take on AdBlock abundantly clear in a comment. “If you use ad blocking software while viewing Daily Kos, you’re getting all the benefits of our site but we’re not getting any of the advertisement revenue associated with your visits. This site relies on ad revenue for daily operations: a decrease in the number of ads seen means a decrease in the funding available to run the site, to pay those that work on it, and to create improved site features”. Daily Kos suggests that if you do use ad-blocking software, it would great if you bought a site subscription.
September 11th, 2007 at 8:38 am
After reading your recent post I decided to give AdBlock a try. I ended up uninstalling it, because it just didn’t seem to work properly, or made the overall visual effect of the pages I was visiting just look wrong somehow.
That said, I think I’ve finely tuned my eyes to skip over web ads, and I can’t remember ever clicking an ad in a web page, except accidentally.
Marc
September 11th, 2007 at 9:54 am
[...] Mark wrote a follow-up article, citing Nick Carr’s post on the same [...]
September 11th, 2007 at 10:38 am
Marc:
I think online advertising is really no different ads that appear in newspapers, magazines and billboards. You not be focused on them but in some way, they do probably register or resonate - perhaps at a subconscious level.
September 11th, 2007 at 11:02 am
I’ve been using Adblock Plus (and similar predecessors) for years now. I know that I won’t buy stuff that’s advertised on banner ads, so to me they’re nothing but a distraction that I won’t look at anyway. Might as well just block them, save the bandwidth, and have web pages load much faster.
“Evil” or not, ad-blocking software has been around in various forms long before “Adblock Plus” came along, and it’s definitely here to stay. There are plenty of people out there that aren’t using ad blocking software, and last I checked, the web isn’t vanishing because there isn’t enough ad revenue to go around.
September 11th, 2007 at 11:36 am
I sell online advertising for a living and I have to say that I do find this evil to a degree. I know the web savvy all claim they don’t click ads and perhaps the majority don’t.
I know people who still buy pop up ads, doesn’t every browser and virus software suite offer you pop up protection?? Guess what? they still get through.
The advertising industry is very adaptable, for every action there is a reaction that is generally 10 steps ahead.
Nothing in life is free!
September 11th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
The more I think about this, people are willing to buy content without ads. Books do not have ads printed on every other page. Movies that you see in the theater do not have ads interrupting the movie (there are ads before the film). CDs do not have audio ads inserted between each track. You pay for these media and the expectation is that it isn’t littered with ads interrupting your entertainment.
Ad supported media equivalents do exist but I daresay they are not a necessity. Without broadcast television there’s still cable and DVDs. Without radio there are still CDs. Newspapers are fading fast.
What advertisers should really be thinking about is how all the free options are innundated with advertising, but consider that the people who are really lucrative to advertise to - those with money who can afford to pay for the ad free options - are increasingly moving away from free mass media.
September 11th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
I wrote about the relationship between Mozilla and Google a while ago: http://adblockplus.org/blog/mozilla-hurting-google-by-recommending-adblock-plus
And no, I don’t see Google loosing money because of Adblock Plus, quite the opposite: http://adblockplus.org/blog/ads-dont-generate-money
Sorry about the links but I wrote about this way too often already.
September 11th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
You said: “One thing that particularly ironic about this AdBlock Plus controversy is that the plug-in is among Firefox’s “recommended add-onsâ€. Doesn’t Firefox make millions of dollars through a search agreement with Google, which makes money from advertising? What if Google AdSense business started to decline because its ads were being blocked? I would think that Firefox would likely make less revenue to support its development. Funny how advertising works, doesn’t it.”
Well, we see things differently. We’re not in this to make money. We make Firefox to promote choice and innovation and to serve as an advocate for users on an increasingly scary Web. If doing right by users meant that our entire current revenue stream went away, we’d have to find a new stream because we put users first and dollars second — really. Mozilla is a public benefit organization and our mission, unlike most publicly traded companies (and many private companies,) is not to make money, but to make a public good and the Web, accessible to all, is that public good.
- A
September 11th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
There is no way you can relate ads found in the web similar to those of local mediums such as radio/tv/print. At least the ads found in local media is somewhat relevant to that listener/viewer/reader. AdSense can do a billion calculations to figure out the best words to go with my product but there is no way you can replicate the conditions that are found in your daily classifieds.
If it can, does it really matter what AdBlock can and can not do? Matter of fact though if online advertising is as big (or getting there) as you say it is. Should it somehow hit this as a mere speed bump?
Most importantly, the adblock plus plugin is part of mozilla firefox which is last time I checked it: open-source. You calling freedom evil?
September 12th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Asa: I think the point is Mozilla is indirectly using advertising as a source of revenue through its arrangement with Google. If this keeps Mozilla a vibrant and viable entity, that’s great. Still, I do find it ironic that AdBlock is among the “recommended” extensions. It’s like Mozilla wants to eat its cake and have it too.
September 12th, 2007 at 8:22 am
Mark,
Thanks for pointing out Adblock Plus. When I read about it, I propmptly went out and installed it. It seems to work very well.
The key question about programs such as this is not what impact they could have at business models based on web advertising, but what it says that people will (i) write such software and (ii) go to the trouble of downloading and installing it.
If display ads weren’t so irritating (particularly those that jump all over the page and block the text), there wouldn’t be much demand for this type of extension.
On the other hand, it appears to do nothing to Google’s text ads… so, maybe they don’t care what Mozilla promotes.
September 12th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
How many people will actually be savvy enough to use Adblock software? Depending on the website, very few or very, very many.
Maybe it’s time for the internets to find a new revenue model.
September 12th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Bruce writes: “On the other hand, it appears to do nothing to Google’s text ads… so, maybe they don’t care what Mozilla promotes.”
Actually, Adblock Plus works quite well at blocking Google’s text ads - you just have to update the filterset. I highly recommend using filterset.G (see https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1136) for details on the filterset.G updater, which automatically keeps the filterset up-to-date.
September 13th, 2007 at 5:54 am
Seems to me that if ad-funded sites want to protect their revenue, they need an AdBlockBlock, plus an ad-free subscription option.
In other words “You can look at my content, but you either have to accept the ads or pay to see it”. This seems fair and would let the market decide.
September 14th, 2007 at 8:11 am
George points out that Adblock Plus can filter out the Google text ads if I update the filter set. I’m sure that is true, but here’s the point that matters: I don’t care.
Text ads running along the side of a web page don’t take up much bandwidth, aren’t distracting, don’t suddenly jump all over the page or make noise, and are, occasionally, useful when I’m searching for something I might want to buy.
As a result, I’m perfectly content to leave the text ads, and certainly won’t go to the trouble of changing filters just to get rid of them.
Once Google completes the Doubleclick, they may be more concerned about this, but I’ve manually blocked them for years… Adblock just makes it easier.
September 17th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Ads are fine as long as they aren’t intrusive (pop-ups, flash, blinking, # of ads, etc.). When the advertisers and ad hosting companies start policing themselves (putting tags identifying properties of their ads so that filtering software can allow “good” or white-listed ads), then they will show up in the sites I visit. Until then, most of them will get filtered out as “bad” ads by Adblock Plus, even if they are “good”.
In short, companies that make their money by selling ads should quit blaming users for solving a problem that the ad companies created.
September 19th, 2007 at 3:22 am
I initially blocked adblock users, but that stopped a lot of readers that had adblock disabled for my site. Now, I use a script that checks to see if adsense is loaded. If it’s not, I remind the reader why they are able to visit my site, and if they don’t disabled the blocker or my site or for the very least, for adsense, they’re not welcome.
Personally, I think it’s the best compromise. Most readers that block ads don’t click on them, but for the adsense ads, we get paid (a little) to just display them, so let us at the very least display adsense ads.
As for popup/unders etc, yeah, I don’t think anyone likes those, and the ad industry should start thinking what they want to do with the net.
If this continues, between bad ads, ad blockers, virus and spam, the net will start winding down…
September 20th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Mark, I suppose you are next going to advocate for radios that prohibit listeners from changing stations when there is a commercial break?
September 21st, 2007 at 6:51 am
Flounder: Your argument is flawed given there’s no technology - yet - that lets people remove advertising from a radio station. Sure, they can change channels but the advertising on the channel they left is still there.
September 26th, 2007 at 9:37 am
[...] really love the AdBlock scandal (read up on it here). Now, let me explain something. Ad blocking software has been in public hands for a while now. [...]
September 28th, 2007 at 8:53 am
From http://adblockplus.org/blog/ads-dont-generate-money “…what happens if people start to block ads? … everybody who hates ads and wouldn’t click them anyway … blocks ads … mak[ing] advertisers really happy … instead of wasting their bandwidth (and money) they now only serve ads to people who are interested in them … get better statistics and can see which ads people find more interesting - without having to estimate the number of people who wouldn’t click any ad… a second group who blocks ads … people who … block them because they get so annoyed … ads that … play sounds or … overlay site’s content … ads blocked by … filter lists are likely to be the most annoying ones … will cause annoying ads to generate less revenue … economic factor discouraging annoying ads …”
From here ( http://markevanstech.com.nyud.net:8080/2007/09/11/adblock-plus-is-still-evil/ ) “…Text ads running along the side of a web page don’t take up much bandwidth, aren’t distracting, don’t suddenly jump all over the page or make noise, and are, occasionally, useful when I’m searching for something I might want to buy … I’m perfectly content to leave the text ads…”
Tah-dah! AdBlock Plus directly makes the web enjoyable for AdBlock Plus users, and indirectly makes the web enjoyable for others. Win win.
I’ll filter and block any dang thing I want to on it’s way to being written to my hard drive cache, thank you. If your content is so valuable, why are you giving it away? After you give it away, why are you whining about not being paid?
I see ads as I see sales calls interrupting in my evening - a byproduct of purchasing phone service. Do YOU listen patiently to sales phone calls at dinner time? I imagine not. I’m not interested in “Please wait to read my web page while this advertisement loads on your hard drive … and while we load these cookies … and while we send your IP data … and while we coordinate your browsing history … please wait … the web page you are seeking is coming soon … really soon … in moments, really … this advertisement is almost completely finished loading … hey, while we’re here, we see that you’re out of hard drive space - wanna upgrade your computer?” No thanks. I do not give you permission to clog my hard drive data storage space, nor my network connection bandwidth, with anything I don’t want!
“…If this continues, between bad ads, ad blockers, virus and spam, the net will start winding down…” Yeah, right. Maybe YOU’LL start winding down.
I can read an entire book or magazine or even a newspaper before purchase (or not). So, how are you gonna convince me that your content is valuable if you won’t show it to me?
October 1st, 2007 at 1:32 pm
[...] AdBlock Plus is Still Evil [...]
October 12th, 2007 at 10:01 am
• Firstly the people who block ads don’t click on them anyway, for instance if I want something I generally do quite a bit of searching around to find it cheaper elsewhere or an alternative. I also tune out advertisements and just find them an annoyance, the only ones that grab my attention are the ones that get in the way and just anoy me more. But mostly I’m just not brain washable enough to buy something I probably didn’t want before and can probably find a better product/retailer for even if I did want it.
• Secondly attempting to stop adblock will only make it worse, rather than just adblock because of the antiadblock code I also installed noscript, this is probably much worse for you since not only am I blocking the ads on your site I am also blocking all the stealth scripts that are harvesting my browsing habits without my permission and probably selling them onto market research companies, also the stuff that keeps track of your websites visits. without the scripts your site is perfectly navigational and it bypasses your anti-ablock code.
• The next step for you would be an attempt to make the scriptcode a necessary part of the sites viewing experience, for instance encrypting all the text then using javascript to decode it, the script would also include the anti-adblock code, but then I can use Firebug to modify your script itself to decode it but bypass the blockcode. At this point I would probably be annoyed enough to upload the changes to userscripts.org so anyone can bypass them.
• A much better idea would be to put a small floating image asking people to kindly turn off their adblock for your website and explaining that the ads are minor and out of the way, most will probably ignore it but then most people will ignore your ads anyway. Also change your revenue system, rate a book and then link to amazon.com entry with your affiliate id etc… Although I’m sure in future there will be heaps of bloggers giving inflated reviews in order to sell crap (well there are probably already is heaps).
• After i bypassed the ablock software I did check the site without adblock (I use filterset.G and it killed them automatically), the ads on your site are minor and out of the way so I personal wouldn’t object to seeing them and wouldn’t have bothered to block them myself, but I also no that I’m never going to click on them so there would be no point in me displaying them (unless you get payed perview rather than click/sale which I’m sure is not the case). In my case displaying them would only be costing the advertisers bandwidth (although not much).
• By blocking the adblockers, it makes them less likely to recommend your site to other people, If I was talking to someone about something, googled about it and found your site, I would be included to just cut and paste your site to them rather than try and explain to someone why the link I sent is a message about ablock and not whatever I was talking about. Granted this might be a copyright violation but this is the internet and if I really though you would be going to the effort to try and sue me I would post through Tor
• Lastly by posting anti-adblock you are just alienating your audience, maybe 1 or 2 will go, “oh I never though of it that way” but %99 will just immediately hate you. This happed when someone else did it and it ended up on Digg “Why firefox is banned”, this did result in a lot of views on that guys site but they where all views of the anti-adblock message followed by thousands of posts that where obviously not favor of the site.
• In the end its not too different to the RIAA, they have legal and ethical rights to money from artists, even if its overpriced or crap or in a CD format when everyone wants MP3s its still the consumers choice not to buy or to buy and put up with it, but the fact of matter is everyone will just pirate the music and probally with justifications such as I wasn’t going to buy it anyway, or the RIAA are scum, the old business model is busted. In the RIAAs case they can just sue people and probably get more money that way than from legal sales, if it goes well for them lawsuits will be their business model and primary revenue stream, they already have a website where you can pay your infringement with credit card and bypass the pesky system of justice.
October 28th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
I don’t think you understand the way the internet works. When dealing with information exchange, there is no ‘right’ to have ads viewed. Companies have managed to port their old media advertising schemes over to the net with some reliability, but there is no reason that they should be able to dictate what a user chooses to see.
If you want totally captive advertising, go buy some TV ads. Otherwise, please leave the internet alone- you’ve inspired plenty of morons to install JS that redirects me to your page when I visit their site with AdBlock installed.
Which is funny, all they’ve accomplished is to lose a potential reader. I guess they’ve also brought your neurotic ramblings to my attention.
November 30th, 2007 at 12:57 am
Adblock is evil?
What nonsense is this?
I love adblock, now not only do web pages load much faster, but the screen is not filled with all manner of advertisements wanting me to buy junk I do not want nor have any interest in.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:03 am
I don’t have a problem with ads on the internet in general. It’s the talking ads, moving ads, brightly colored flashing banners, etc that I have issues with. There’s no need for flash based advertising, or intrusive advertising.
Therefore, I block all advertising.
February 10th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
I swear, the dumbest people on the internet seem to be adblock users who can’t figure out why adblock is evil. Of course it’s evil. The only reason 99.999% of big/good websites exist is because the people who devote their lives to creating the content are able to get ad revenue in exchange. If ad revenue disappeared, so would 99.999% of good websites. Newspapers would no longer share their content. Bloggers who copy from newspapers wouldn’t have content anymore unless they were going to just go buy the paper and type the text in. Big blogs would shut down or get much smaller. ESPN.com wouldn’t exist anymore or would be much smaller. I swear, I’ve read a bunch of these sites where adblock users justify their use and I’ve never seen a bigger lack of logic. The only reason X exists is because Y funds it. If you remove Y, then X is screwed. Is that too complicated for you fucking morons? Also, if ads load but you don’t click them, the ad still has value to the advertiser just because even if most people don’t click them, a lot of people still sorta see them out of the corner of their eye. It still has value. But if the ads don’t even load then the ad has literally NO value to the advertiser, and the advertiser will just disappear. If everyone on the web blocked ads, 99.999% of the good big sites on the web would shut down. You fuckiing idiots.
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Hey “DUHHH”,
The Internet was designed around the concept of information exchange, and when sites try to force advertising contents onto *my* computer, I and everyone else have *every right* to block it. Making adblock illegal is no different than someone being harassed because they change the channel, turn off the TV, walk away or fast forward through TIVO every single time they are bombarded with useless content.
The expense of creating a page, registering a domain and uploading it’s content is *paltry* in comparison to national advertising on the radio, TV or newspapers and magazines. Those advertisements are all expenses, and their sales and use are designed to make up for those costs. People know ahead of time that watching a TV show involves commercials, or reading a magazine will involve advertisements tailored for the readers.
Having a business web page *is in and of itself* an advertisement for your good or service. If I am a heating and refrigeration company, I can create a website, be referenced by any search engine…and people will be able to interactively read about everything I have to offer. They, after reading about me, will hire me because of my content. However, in virtually every case where adblock becomes necessary, the website is attempting to *pimp content for other websites* in an attempt to make back some money. In other words, they feel they have the right to take up my bandwidth foisting things I wasn’t looking for or asking for onto a machine they don’t own. They want to take the minor expense of running a website and reverse it from being a small business expense for their good or service into one that becomes a private money-maker off of the bandwidth back of users. That is not possible in other forms of advertisements because they are not interactive. Hence, traditional advertisement patterns have been replaced with aggressive domination of the users they are attempting to sway with their content.
This is not about people hating advertisements. If TV or radio shows had the same equivalent content to advertisement ratios as web sites, there would be about 5 minutes or less of useful content for every hours worth of broadcast. People would simply stop watching TV.
Companies that have blatantly abused and exhibited hostile patterns of user control are the ones who have just been hit with this broadside shot. Users do NOT have to pensively sit and be forced to waste time and money wading their way through useless content that has been aggressively forced on users. Had companies not taken this abusive stance, then people would not have deemed such a tool necessary.
So before calling the rest of us “f@#%ing idiots” because you are too immature to rationally argue with the rest of the world that disagrees with you, I suggest you switch to decaf and grow up.