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

[Kimarous]

Do not confess, teach, admit to, or promote ad-blocking software that will allow users to block the ads of this site.

Taken straight from the User Guidelines on the top of this forum

People, the rule is as clear as day. You can't make an excuse if you get punished when the rule is written in a manner that targets that subject. That said, I can pull out at least 8 users who have admitted to using Ad-blockers in this thread alone. Please people, I'm not a moderator, but think about what you write next time. The moderators have a very strict stance against ad-blocking and those who were here when it happened probably remember the infamous bans that have taken place because of it. Do yourselves a favor and don't put yourselves up for mod wrath like that.

Talk to Kathleen about that one. She was the one who started this thread and it's impossible to discuss the matter without mentioning it somewhere along the road. Not all of us are going to agree with her and will want to provide counter-arguments. We aren't sheep for liking the stuff and we aren't going to act like sheep by instantly changing our views just because she says we should. If we, the community, get in trouble for discussing an issue that a member of the friggin' staff made as a discussion, then this site has serious justice issues.

 

[Lord_Panzer]

Question to those who use ad-blockers:

Even if you have it disabled on this site, do videos sometimes stop loading before they're complete? As in, a video will load 10, 20, 50, 99% of the way and then stop?

I disable it when I'm here (even though I'm a PubCluber) but it seems like it creeps in when I try to play videos every so often. Annoys the piss out of me.

Anyone else have this problem?

 

[SimuLord]

So here's an idea. Back in the golden, olden days of radio, when the spoken word was new entertainment, there wasn't really "advertising" as we know it now. It hadn't been invented yet. However the radio stations needed to pay writers and actors for creating the popular radio shows of the time. To make money, each show had a corporate sponsor. Show might have been called something like "The Burmashave Family Hour with Allan Ball" (a name I made up) - Allan Ball was the draw, but Burmashave paid the bills, mandated the inclusion of Burmashave into the storylines, and had final say about what was acceptable content. (ie, that storyline is too racy, Burmashave is a family product, so there will be no implications of sex in this show.)

This could be one option instead of the type of advertising we have now? Is this better because it's 'less intrusive', or is it worse, because it muzzles creative freedoms?

On the Net
Don't Be Rushin'
Or You'll Miss
A Great Discussion.
Burma-Shave.

(OK, now that's out of my system...)

There are a few cases where I've supported content on the Internet without allowing a single ad to cross my eyes. I'll summarize them, and consider them in the context of answering Kathleen's core question of "how do the content providers get paid?" because I don't want the answer to that to be "through intrusive ads that people are going to block and that benefit nobody."

- First, and most obvious, is the pay-for-content model. I bought a PubClub membership because hi-def videos, no ads, and the warm and fuzzy feeling I get from supporting a site whose contributors and staff I like and respect is worth it to me. I've been an ESPN.com Insider before---for $40 a year you get all kinds of interesting sports content, and I'm a huge sports fan. The quality of the writing is worth the three bucks and change a month. In both cases the offering matched the price in a way that encouraged me, the consumer, to pay it.

- There's also merch. This doesn't work with me, but someone's buying those T-shirts on Splitreason. It ain't just ads that makes Yahtzee such a charismatic stallion to Themis Media's marketing department.

- While this probably wouldn't fly for most sites, if a company has enough clout it could create a video streaming service that is paid for not at the consumer level but by the ISP. This is how ESPN3.com works, and it's part of the reason I'm an AT&T customer; even though their DSL is pure shit on a stick, I switched in 2009 because they were the only ISP at the time that offered access to the ESPN3 content. Considering I don't own a television ($40 a month for basic cable is too much money for my media-averse self), it was worth the switch, and back when I was still married the wife and I would watch Friday Night Fights every week together. ESPN got paid, AT&T got a customer, and I got...annoyed, because I was married to the kind of squirrel's-attention-span girl who can't put the fucking iPhone down for a minute to spend time with her husband. But I digress.

My point is that there are a lot of ways to make money "honestly", so to speak. Annoying your customers, no matter how much you yell at them that you're doing them a favor by giving them something free, is ultimately a long-term loss because it engenders hostility between the customer and the content provider. Sell merch, give them a value proposition, or bury the costs where the customer can't see them, and you've got a much more viable business model.

Advertising is dead. Smart companies realize this.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Spoiler: *snip*

There might be a flaw in yours.

I appreciate what you're trying to say Kathleen, esp. since I'm currently studying to be a content creator myself at college right now, but there's a flaw in your logic.

When you use an adblocker - who are you hurting with this seemingly innocent act?

Advertisers? Yes, a little bit, they lose some eyes on their message.

Not really since odds are I wouldn't be interested in what they're offering anyway.

Maybe, maybe not. A lot of advertising isn't to sell you a product, but to increase back of mind awareness - for example, you want a snack. If you've seen a billboard for a snickers, you're not going to run out and buy one right away, but you might remember snickers the next time you're looking at candy bars.

Websites? Yes, a little bit, as they lose a fraction of a cent for each ad you don't see.

Not really since they get payed by the Advertiser whether I actually see the advertisement or not.

Not quite. Advertisers typically pay money for a certain amount of impressions, the less impressions, the longer the ad has to run, the less space they can sell to other ads. Also, low impression rates mean the website can't charge very much for the ad placement.

Content Creators and regular people? Yes! Why? Crap flows downhill my friend.

Not really, see above.

Dude, I assure you, if money doesn't come in, it doesn't go out.

You? The most - read on.

Well that's debatable. Again since I said the Advertiser pays the website creators regardless of whether or not I actually see the ad. So if the website is still getting paid and paying it's content creators, I'm not losing anything.

See above. If the website can't sell ads, or make money, there's nothing left over for people to make money with.

The only one you could legitimately say is harmed by my use of an ad-blocker is the Advertiser, but as I said before, since odds are I wouldn't be interested in their product or service anyway, and as such not clicking on the ad, well what's the difference? And since many of these ads are obnoxious and annoying, I don't feel particularly obligated to have to put up with them.

Bad ads are bad, irritating and shitty. However, not all ads are bad. What about the Old Spice ads? The problem with blocking ALL ads is that you're cutting advertising out of the content equation. Without money feeding the system, people don't get compensated for their work, and can't run their websites.

What exactly do you mean by "impressions"? 'Cause if you're talking about hits, I already covered that by stating that odds are I wouldn't be clicking on the ad anyway.

Believe me, I'd love it if my Ad-blocker was sophisticated enough to just filter out the bad/shitty/obnoxious ads and just allow the good ones so I could give back to the system and whatever, but unfortunately it isn't, so instead I prefer the mass extermination approach.

I mostly employ the Ad-blocker to block ads for malicious spyware programs and other malware. I suppose I could tell it to not block ads on the Escapist, but when I browse the Escapist at college where there is no Ad blocker, I noticed most of the Escapists ads are for the Escapist's own content so I fail to see a reason to.

 

[Ekibiogami]

I use ad blocker, But im selective of what I block. If it annoys me, or is something I hate "Make it bigger ads and the like"
Thats the way I run it anyways, like you said the site needs that money.

 

[Sporky111]

...Ad blockers are the reason they're so invasive, because they need to make money regardless of what the people are doing to stop them.

Wait, what?! Nooooo, no no no no. That logic is fundamentally flawed - it doesn't matter how obnoxious or shiny you make ads, those with a blocker still don't see them, and those without get steadily more pissed off until they maybe decide to do something about it.

Obnoxious ads aren't ones that people are likely to click on, clever, engaging ones are. It wasn't ad blockers that created bad ads, bad ads caused the creation of blockers. The 'you've won! Click here!' ads have been around forever, not as some cynical move to grab a larger share of a dwindling population as ad-blockers squeeze the revenue out of the interwebs.

Basically, the ads would be just as bad even if no-one used blockers; blockers are irrelevant in a marketer's mind because if you're blocking them then you are no longer in their potential audience, you're out of the equation. They're just focused on those who can still view them, and as you can see from the responses in this thread, that a healthy majority even amongst a tech-aware crowd would could probably all easily do something about it if they wanted.

Excuse me, you seem to have missed the rest of my post where I explained my 'fundamentally flawed' logic. Let me reiterate.

Because the sites responsible for putting them up would still have to make money, and I'm sure they make plenty more cash from a tab-opening, screen-covering ad than they do for a banner at the top of the page.

The sites I'm talking about aren't the ones making the ads, I'm talking about the ones hosting them (like The Escapist) Now, if you were running a site would you want to put up those annoying ads? No, you wouldn't. Because people would hate for you for it, and either avoid the site or get a blocker. BUT, since they aren't getting as many eyeballs due to ad-blockers and such they have to resort to such measures in order to make money.

I'm not saying Ad blockers created the problem, I'm saying they're perpetuating it and making it worse. You'd be hard-pressed to find a site that WANTS ads on their site, much less annoying ones. It distracts from the contents they worked on. And if they didn't need them to keep the services running, most wouldn't use them.

So, in conclusion: you support the site, you get less ads. Because they only increase them when they're short on cash. They can't fight ad blocker, so they make it harder on those that don't. More ad blocker means more invasive ads, until potentially we reach a point where nobody sees the ads and the site stops running. How's that benefit you?

 

[Mcface]

i hate that i can't fucking scroll down anymore without clicking on a black ops of *cough* VINDICTUS AD.

Break is a good example of what not to do with ads. they are everywhere.
The escapist is no better.
30 second ad before video, giant banner, giant side ad, small video ad, bottom bar ad. really?

 

[maddawg IAJI]

Do not confess, teach, admit to, or promote ad-blocking software that will allow users to block the ads of this site.

Taken straight from the User Guidelines on the top of this forum

People, the rule is as clear as day. You can't make an excuse if you get punished when the rule is written in a manner that targets that subject. That said, I can pull out at least 8 users who have admitted to using Ad-blockers in this thread alone. Please people, I'm not a moderator, but think about what you write next time. The moderators have a very strict stance against ad-blocking and those who were here when it happened probably remember the infamous bans that have taken place because of it. Do yourselves a favor and don't put yourselves up for mod wrath like that.

Talk to Kathleen about that one. She was the one who started this thread and it's impossible to discuss the matter without mentioning it somewhere along the road. Not all of us are going to agree with her and will want to provide counter-arguments. We aren't sheep for liking the stuff and we aren't going to act like sheep by instantly changing our views just because she says we should. If we, the community, get in trouble for discussing an issue that a member of the friggin' staff made as a discussion, then this site has serious justice issues.

So you have to mention ad blockers in order to talk about the importance of advertisements on the internet? Or in any form of media? You don't NEED to mention it in order to prove your argument.

"ADs are loud,annoying and bad for X reason." Talk about it chewing your bandwith if it does, or how it causes loud sounds that can't be muted or how they are constantly popping up in front of you at the worst convenience. No argument would be affected by the exclusion of an ad-blocker.

No one is asking you to change your opinion on the advertisements. We're asking you to just not include the mention of Ad-blocking software or not admit to it. Plain and simple.

Not to mention that Kathleen isn't a member of the staff. She makes videos for the site. I don't know exactly how close among to the staff she is, but she has about as much power on this site as Moviebob or the Extra Credit guys have.

 

[Jennacide]

He's a counterpoint: Ads on TV cannot infect your television set with brain crippling viruses that takes numerous hours to remove.

That's why adblockers exist. Not some high and mighty belief that we want everything for free. They exist because virus makers are assholes. They come up with increasingly clever trojans/viruses/what have you, and also come up with increasingly clever infection vectors. Adblock was created for SECURITY. Additionally many people use them not only for security, but massive annoyance prevention. Not only did the advent of Flash ads start more virus makers than anyone would care to count, it started ad companies making really obnoxiously voiced ads that won't go away and are CONSTANTLY TALKING. Go to any of the Nexus sites for prime examples. It is a non stop talking ad in the Nexus sites, and it starts on every. single. page. You will hear the first 10 seconds while you navigate the site until you go crazy and want to murder people. TV also does not do this.

And assuming everyone that uses them is a high and mighty asshole doesn't help your case at all. I run AdBlock and NoScript on Firefox. Both are turned off here and the small handful of other sites I frequent. Sometimes it's left on for the very reasons I mentioned.

Honest, this seems like the least thought out arguement since California tried to declare games equal to porn. (And the fact that has reached the Supreme Court makes me cry.)

 

[instantbenz]

it's a security problem for me ... with so much essential data on my machine (like my portfolio AKA livelihood)

yes i back it up, but i haven't the time to do a full back up every week.

 

[zehydra]

Regardless of whether or not the ads pay off, we've had the internet for over a decade now, and it is still flourishing.

Pop-up blockers are, btw, a safety issue, because for a while, Trojans on websites would hijack your computer via pop-up ad.

Agreed, and a good way to get around ads is to make a GIF ad

it's harmless, animated, and CAN'T BE BLOCKED

Unless you blocked all gifs on a website, which would be kind of stupid. Thing is, I think for most companies who are trying to look into constantly more sophisticated online advertising, using gifs would look like a step backwards (especially to those who don't really understand the internet)

 

[acosn]

mmmmm...No.

I use noscript, which isn't directly an adblocker but it does basically the same thing- it stops scripts from running which also includes a whole slew of malicious programs.

My problems with adds online are many, many fold.

1: I'm paying for my bandwidth, I paid for my computer, not them. If they want to clog it with their adds they can pay for my internet and my computer, not the other way around.

2: There's a fairly lax controls by even the agencies that run advertising for what gets posted. Gold farming adds on Blizzard's official WoW forums? Yup. It happened. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Thottbot was running adds that linked to key loggers before I stopped using them.

3: They're annoying as fuck. If it's 11 PM and I'm trying to browse the internet just about the only thing making noise is any music I'm playing or youtube. When an add decides to make noise on it's own it's annoying.

 

[phxprovost]

With the exception of this site and a few others I will continue to block adds. Its nothing personal its just ive had my browser hijacked by to many malicious ads, and it happens on sites you would never expect. So im completely willing to accept all ads if the content provider is willing to provide me safe reasonable ads, there is no other compromise .

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

My problem with ads, in general, is only when they unreasonably intrude on the experience. Sure, those little video ads at the beginning of escapist video content can be annoying (especially when they run for several weeks. Seriously, the Slim Jim commercial was clever and amusing the first time. As I saw it again and again (on average 5 times a week) it made be resent the very existence of Slim Jims) by they aren't really intrusive. I am, after all, watching a video.

But, when someone bombards me with a video ad on a page that has nothing to do with video, all it inspires is for me to hit the mute button on my keyboard and ignore the thing. Just as bad are the pages that pop up the giant ads on top of the screen and force me to go hunting for the close button (or, in the worst cases, simply reload the page). To put this in perspective, it's basically like having a man with a poster board pop out when I try and walk into a store who valiantly attempts to block my access. Sometimes, I actually have to leave the store for this lunatic to go away.

 

[Red Albatross]

The amount of fucking high horses in this thread could build that space elevator to the moon that NASA wants.

 

[Lady Kathleen]

I don't really buy the argument that it hurts me because it might limit content etc etc. I can go to youtube and find any sort of sketch, review, comedy I wan't. If LRR stops creating vids it just leaves a hole for other ppl to create content willing to do it for free. If there was a system wide drop in content(sure lol) then it will increase demand and willingness to "buy" content. It simply seems an economic issue, content is unlimited atm(practically) so my willingness to pay for it is nil.

What you're saying here is that if a content creator can't make money, someone will come up and do it for free, therefore, your willingness to pay for content is nil. This means you don't value content at all. Doesn't Susan Arent (a content creator) deserved to be paid a fair wage for her writing and editing? She can't write the great articles she does if she has to work for free - being good at something is a full time job.

Aside from that, from a pure economics issue, let's go on a thought experiment:

What do you do for a living? Let's say you work at the Acme button company. You make buttons for $10 an hour. Acme buttons isn't doing so well, so they have to let you go, and they replace you with someone who maybe doesn't make buttons nearly as well as you, but will work for $3 an hour. Or they move the Acme button factory to India, where people make really bad buttons for 30 cents an hour.

However, you get a new job!

You now work for Marvel Magazines. You write specialized marketing content for in-flight magazines! Oh boy! They pay you $15 an hour. But Marvel Magazine also isn't doing so well... ad sales are down. They lay you off and replace you with an intern (who's not a very good writer yet) who's willing to write for free. When that intern is done and ready to get a real job, instead of hiring them, Marvel Magazines just replaces them with another intern who will work for free.

Is this wrong? No, this pure supply and demand. There is an excess of people who want to write, make content or stamp out buttons, so what's the problem.

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.

 

[Drakmorg]

I completely ignore ads on internet sites, so my using an adblocker is really just to get rid of the annoying ones that fill up the screen or intrude on my viewing of content.

 

[cobra_ky]

Now I'm confused. I surf all over the internet and encounter all sorts of ads. Ads that play on their own (which I can turn off or mute), ads thats that load before the article I want to read (which I wait for), but never pop up ads that give me viruses...

What kind of sites are you people going to? ^_^

Destructoid for one. A malicious ad there opened a popup which loaded a trojan and rootkit onto my laptop, forcing me to reimage it. Ironically, its purpose was redirect webrowsers to generate ad revenue via clickfraud.

I'm sorry your revenue model sucks, but quite frankly i don't think we have any obligation to support it. If adblockers really hurt the bottom line that much, then maybe you or Themis media or whoever should find an advertising strategy that isn't crippled by them. While I doubt it would work for this site, <a href=http://www.projectwonderful.com/abouttheinfiniteauction.php>here's one example.

I don't block the ads (i don't watch the videos that often and the rest are easy to ignore), but i think it's sad that content creators are reduced to begging us to support what is essentially a corrupt business model.