Why you MUST not use an ad blocker - unless you want to pay for content

[movienut]

You're basically saying there is no difference between QUALITY of content and QUANTITY of content - the free market decides all. Perhaps I'm a socialist Canadian, but I see a little bit of a problem with not paying people for what their work is worth. It's exploitative.

I am waving my socialist Canuck flag right beside you, I just like the idea of there being multiple options for the creative contributors to get paid. This also has the practical off shoot of, I am unintentionally not helping out right now and I feel bad about it. I don't know if it is because I am using Firefox or what but I have never seen an ad on this site and (despite my join date) I have been watching videos here for about 2 years now. I have just now found out about the Publisher Club, or just now noticed it anyhow, so I have been kinda freeloading for that time and I feel bad. I have never attempted to block anything other then pop ups so I am not sure how I am getting away with this...

I know you weren't directing the above comments to me, I just really liked the your comment and wanted to jump off of it.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

I disabled my ad blockers a little while ago and good freaking GOD there is so much garbage on the tubes. Why can't game related sites stick with game related ads? (without pulling a gamespot) Why is there an advertisement on the videos here, are they worth many times more than a banner or whatever those things are?

Actually yes, considering that the introduction of Zero Punctuation alone has boosts web traffic substantially.

How much more are the video ads worth in comparison to the others, and why is it worth more when you could load a static ad away from the video. How much income are all those ads bringing in per month and how much income is needed for them to get rid of the video ads? The video ads (both inside zp and on the main page) and the banners are the only thing I didn't like when I unblocked. (not all directed at you but i'm curious if anyone has info on this)

Well on the question of how much WE must pay to get rid of them, its gonna be a fucking lot. Everyone who joins the Publisher's Club is a loss to the Escapist. Once again, I don't know the exact number, but it'd be more then you and I could possibly muster. It's run by a buisness, it costs money to fund these videos and to fund the websites and staff, therefore, you need to make enough money to fund a staff of, I wanna say 50 people and that is just a guess as well. Then you need to have enough money left over to make sure people like Yahtzee and the LRR crew can get paid. In Massachusetts, the minimum wage is 8 dollars. At the end of the week, given you worked 40 hours, you'd make $320- income tax so somewhere in the high $200s

200 x 50 = 10,000 dollars a week for the staff alone at minimum wage and the Staff may be bigger or smaller, I don't have an exact number. But you can see why we need the ads in the first place.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

Isn't it against the forum rules to promote Ad blockers? I apreciate that the OP is far from promoting them, but a 6 page and counting thread might put the idea into some minds. Anytime something is condemned someone somewhere is going to think "cool, gotta try that..."

It is, on page 3 I actually gave an open warning about it and asked people not to mention them. Not many heeded my words and very few most likely saw the post.

 

[The Austin]

I don't see the big deal about adds, anyways. It's a 40 second video. Whoop-de-freakin'-do.

I'll spend that 40 seconds doing something productive like getting peanut-butter pretzels out of my pantry.

 

[theklng]

morals as strong as these are what religions are made of. so i'll just point out that i'm an atheist and move on. (that means, no thank you to ads of any kind, i get enough spam in my inbox to get by.)

 

[nofear220]

If people don't see advertisements, the ads don't get clicks and don't get their message across. This means advertisers pay the websites less and less, and lose confidence in the internet as a marketing system because it doesn't really seem to work.

When websites don't make money, they close down shop (after all, a business isn't in the business of providing you free entertainment), lay off employees, and certainly can't afford to pay content creators fair value (or any value) for their work. Sure, content creators can work for free to do something they love (something I personally did for 7 years before LRR started working with the Escapist), but at some point, you have to give up a hobby that costs you money and time and find a real job.

Heres where your argument goes wrong, I use an ad blocker because I NEVER, ever click ads in the first place. So if a website's ads are not going to be clicked once by me no matter what, they are just an annoyance and it will not hurt the site any more than if I didnt block them. This is true with at lot of the people who use an ad blocker. So if they arent going to get clicks from me anyway, why should I be annoyed by them constantly?

 

[nofear220]

snip

Heres where your argument goes wrong, I use an ad blocker because I NEVER, ever click ads in the first place. So if a website's ads are not going to be clicked once by me no matter what, they are just an annoyance and it will not hurt the site any more than if I didnt block them. This is true with at lot of the people who use an ad blocker. So if they arent going to get clicks from me anyway, why should I be annoyed by them constantly?

5 points hes bang on.

thanks

 

[thedeathscythe]

and leave your computer vulnerable to attacks, when i say vulnerable i mean VERY likely... i don't think im going to take that risk to see something i dont want to see in the first place.

I was thinking that too, I mean a legit company won't get at you, but you do leave yourself pretty vulnerable. Pop ups used to be the shit but later people realized how open they were when they got a pop up from every site. Now even ads on the side can be dangerous too. I don't give a shit if it's bad for the site I'm visiting, it's potentially bad for my computer so I'm going to do all I can to protect it.

Stuff like those youtube ads aren't bad, those little banners that appears 10 seconds in where you just click em away? Those 30 second ads before a 40 second video are super annoying. One day advertising on the internet will just make sense, when it evolves and we'll all know it'll just fit right.

 

[Nailz]

snip

So despite your wall of text, I still don't feel bad about people using adblock.
There's a billion areas that have free content without advertisement, if they can do it so can you. I have faith in the ability of the internet to deal; with or without these advertisements.

Next thing I hope for is a people block. One day...

 

[smashmaniac64]

im mostly fine with ads
the only ones i bother to block are the ads that have sound that repeat themselves, especially when im tryin to listen to music while readin manga

 

[FortheLegion]

I don't get adds....maybe it's becuase I'm in Australia. And what are Slim Jims?

Delicious Meat Sticks

 

[tehroc]

Quite honestly your asking me to not use noscript. Noscript keeps my system secure from viruses and other nasties.

 

[FinalGamer]

But....I NEVER click on ads I don't like, so this is moot to me.

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

I'm not that annoyed by the ads in general. They're only 30 secs at the most, which is barely anything time at all. Plus some of them are funny or interesting. The only time I start to dislike them is when I see the same one over and over again (I'm thinking of the one Slim Jim add that was the only one that would ever pop up for a couple months and that I didn't like the first time). But if that's what keeps the Escapist up and running, well then I'm willing to endure.

 

[tjcross]

i never click on the ads anyway nor do they effect any aspect of my life so why should i waste my time i watch about 2 hours of internet videos (not including the commercials) a day in about 5 minute videos the average ad i saw was about 45- one minute long so do the math and you get about 15-25 minutes of wasted time and i don't believe me skipping the three adds a day from this site (escape to the movies,zero punctuation and extra credit) will break the bank i don't mind the little pop-ups but when i have to wait to watch i tend to start watching less and playing more videogames instead i do not promote adblocker or any other ad blocking add-on but i value my time

 

[Zhukov]

Question:

I do not use an adblocker. (Not for moral reasons, just cannot be arsed.)

However, I do not look at ads. I, like many other people, have long since learned to mentally filter them out of existence. I do not read them, I do not watch them, I do not click them. (Seriously, if I were to count ever single ad I have ever clicked, I wouldn't even run out of fingers.) If an ad starts playing audio, I hit the mute button. If it's one of those incredibly obnoxious bastards that plays before a video, I mute the bloody thing and switch to another tab for a couple of minutes.

How is the effect of this any different to the effect of an adblocker?

 

[geldonyetich]

Sorry, it's not going to be that simple to get people to uninstall their ad blockers or even add Escapist Magazine as an exception.

The thing is, a few stupid advertisers decided it would be a good idea to utilize techniques such as popups, pop-unders, sound bits, fake system alerts, and so on. These and other jarringly annoying techniques are so intrusive that they encourage most web users with a modicum of computer familiarity to find some kind of software solution to make sure that they will never have to deal with these things ever again.

Once installed, those ad blockers aren't going away, as no one would want to revisit that misery. If you want to blame someone, blame those few idiot advertisers whose techniques ruined Internet advertising for everyone else forever.

Heck, I've got a blog myself whose self-serving content probably drives off everyone but I enabled Google AdSense on it. Knowing that everybody's running an ad-blocker, I've actually had to put up a little text message that says something along the lines of, "if you like this, please add this page as an exception on your ad blocker." That's about as much as I can ask, and I know the minute Google Adsense greenlights some advertiser that resorts to the above annoying techniques, I can count on the page getting re-blocked forever.

Lately, the Escapist Magazine has taken to putting this giant advertiser bump on their videos. That's just close enough to a pop-up to encourage me to investigate ways to circumvent the standard video delivery method. When it comes to Internet advertising, the harder you push, the harder you push your customers away.