Well ... I never used add-block. Unistalled it a long time ago. And that's because I live in a country that just isn't on the advertsing radar that much. So i get very few adds, and those I get don't end up bothering me that much because they usualy are a small commercial or something that gives me the option of closing it after 5 or 10 seconds. So I'm cool with that. I keep hearing about these intrusive adds everywhere, but i never ran into them. I guess it pays to be under the radar of the retarded, bloated, useless hype and marketing machine that is eating away at modern society
That and a good antivirus to stop pop-ups and a lovely tool to prevent marketing bots from tracking my web surfing (in case you didn't know every site on the internet right now has some form of data-mining code running through it that stores your ip and keeps tabs on what you watch, what sites you browse and then sells this info to marketing companies. Why this very page of the Escapist has data-mining code from facebook, adnexus,google analytics, comscore beacon, quantcast and viglink. And that, at least where I live, is violating my privacy and is considered a crime that can warrant jail time)
As for the whole addblock debate: Really the problem here is one of tolerance. A very close friend of mine is actualy responsible for making adds and comercials, so I had a chat with him on the issue. The problem is that advertising companies quite frankly don't give a rats ass for the consumer. Adds are today actualy designed to use any and all means to grab attention, force you to notice them and even include techniques used to influence said consumers to make certain decisions. And everything is done with the subtelty of a sledgehammer to the face.
Site owners and admins need revenue from adds to keep their sites up. It is a fundamental fact of life. That beeing said, cosidering marketing companies actualy need to BUY the space for adds on your site, might I suggest that admins stop tolerating every single bullshit add that they get asked to post? For example: you get asked to place on your site an add that, when a certain page is accesed, begins playing a loud fanfare and has a mute button drawn on, but actualy clicking it opens a pop-up window with even more anoying music and the product it's advertising. How would you feel admins if something so stupid happened when youm were just trying to watch a god damned 3 minute clip of funny cats? How about you tell that add company to fuck off because that is not consumer friendly and will actualy hurt your site's popularity and tell them to come up with more apropiate adds? Another smart thing might be having a policy on what adds are allowed. To give an example: spoonyexperiment.com . Every single add on that site is either a silent banner about something related to the sites content (games, movies, webcomics, other sites of the same type), a simple donations link, or a comercial before the video that never goes over 30 seconds (and when it does it has a close button after 10-15 seconds that is actualy a close button) and again is usualy related to the subject matter.
So really this is a vicious circle: Marketing companies have a too high tolerance for bullshit, admins have either a too high tolerance for same bullshit (or don't care as long as they are getting payed) and the consumers have a verry low tolerance for that crap. Consumer blocks adds, marketing firm sees reduced income from it's adds and ges full retard in making even more intrusive and idiotic adds, site admins whine about people blocking adds (or go full on campaign of terror on them), consumer blocks new more retarded adds, rinse and repeat. Marketing firms will only change if they loose clients and that will happen when site admins start thinking not just about revenue but about the ease of acces of their sites to the consumers.
Just my 2 cents on the matter. And I know I just hit a nerv and will probably get some form of punishment from the admins (happened before when I pointed out site admins carry about half the blame for the whole problem). I just hope enough rational people will read this.
PS: As long as you are just a content creator and not also a site admin, then I have absolutly nothing against you and no blame should go to you for what adds are played over your content. So I got nothing against Jim here, maybe just the fact that this episodes feels more like a "please don't addblock me" he was told to make by a higher up (and a correct "fuck you" to shits who go "I use addblock because you suck"), and less of a discusion of addblocking in general and why it exists in the first place.