Ad Blockers Considered Harmful
March 22nd, 2008 - filed under MiscellaneousI did some research on ad blockers a while ago and thought I would share it here while we are waiting for a working beta of SWF encryption software. After my research I realized that ad blocking software is very bad for the web as we know it, and more damaging than software piracy (since I believe that most pirates wouldn’t buy the product anyway). It doesn’t affect this website as I don’t have ads yet, but it has hurt some of my free website projects in the past.
The problem is not that ad blocking software exists, but that the design is severely flawed. I like the idea of being able to block annoying ads. But surprisingly, of the dozens+ of ad blocking programs out there, not a single one will let me do that! They are all set to BLOCK EVERYTHING BY DEFAULT – including the inoffensive ads and the sites you use daily and want to support. Some let you “whitelist” sites where you want to see ads, but this is a red herring. The harmful flaw of this software is due to the power of defaults. No significant number of people is going to go through this process for every site they want to support: [disable the ad-blocker, find out if a site has inoffensive ads, enable ads on that site, reenable the ad-blocker]
While researching this issue I installed an ad-blocker with no intention of keeping it – but I liked it, and now I understand the problem. You want it for that damn 5% – those annoying websites with popups and flashing ads. But being an ethical person I want to support the other 95% of sites I like. When you install an ad blocker, it’s a real eye opener to see how differently a sizeable chunk of people are seeing your website.
At worst, ad-blockers hurt the free web. At least, they are ripping us off. People who use ad-blocking software are being subsidized by people who do not. Everyone who runs this software (MILLIONS of people) is leeching off the free web, and depending on those who do not leech to keep their favorite websites free. There are no good estimates that I could find as to how much revenue is lost due to this problem (it’s very hard to measure), but since the number of users is in the millions (just one program boasts 1.35 million subscribers), I would guess that between of 10%-30% of revenue on free websites is being lost due to leeching, most of which is not the fault of the users but software makers who have no vested interest in fairness to free websites.
The logical extension of this problem, if everyone installed today’s ad-blocking software, is that large portions of the free web would dry up, either going subscription-based, or out of business. That makes this flawed software hostile to my business. But where is the public rage, or at least the mild annoyance? This issue is not in the public consciousness. It is mentioned on a few public forums, where virtually everyone is in support of the ad blocking software. I think this reflects a real misunderstanding of this software’s effect.
One potential solution I came up with is to convince companies to change the paradigm from block everything, to block ON DEMAND. I think this option would be popular, because it lets the user lack the smack down on bad websites, while being much more friendly to the good ones. It’s the way I would like the software to work, speaking as a user, not just as a website owner. This active censorship could even have the effect of discouraging annoying ads from being run in the first place.
I wrote to a few developers of the largest ad blocking products to suggest this change, and I was greeted with indifference and even rudeness – not surprising. They already know their software is costing us money. Maybe the proper negative attitude toward software with this flawed design will eventually convince these companies to listen. This issue needs better public awareness. Webmasters that rely on ad revenue to stay in business should be aware of the harm being done to them personally by this software.
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Is Norton Blocking Your Internet Marketing Efforts?
“Even though these products are sold as “Security” THE DEFAULT IS SET TO BLOCK ADS”
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“If banner ads fail, more and more sites will be forced into a pay model, and the days of the “Free Internet” will be almost over.”
Legitimate products
These appears to be more legitimate products, only blocking popups and adware, but not stripping ads from webpages.
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March 22nd, 2008 at 7:51 pm
What about the harm done to users through the time it would take to block each individual ad? What about their loss of privacy from spyware? What about the users loss of bandwidth from pages that have ads ten times as bandwidth intensive as the content?
March 22nd, 2008 at 10:03 pm
I don’t think you read my post very well. Users would block per-site, not per-ad. Spyware and online ads are two completely different concepts. And the type of pages you mention would be perfect candidates for on-demand ad blocking.
March 23rd, 2008 at 6:54 pm
I will address your points on at a time:
“Users would block per-site, not per-ad.”
-This would still interrupt my browsing experience far to often.
“spyware and online ads are two completely different concepts.”
-True, but online ads very often put a tracking cookie on you computer, most people consider this spyware, DoubleClick is one of the companies that puts tracking cookies on peoples computers..
“the type of pages you mention would be perfect candidates for on-demand ad blocking.”
-pictures are way, way bigger then text so any site which I just want to read the text on falls into this category, which includes… a vary large portion of the sites I go to.
I just don’t find it worth my time to sort the annoying ads that I don’t click on from the non-annoying ads that I don’t click on.
April 4th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Blacklists for bad ad publishers would solve the problem. Also, it is possible to automatically block ads that send tracking cookies and popup ads without blocking the other ads.
Did you know that you can disable automated downloading of pictures in Firefox, Arnos? If you only want to read text, you should try that feature.
April 6th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
With Adblock off, I run into another problem that I didn’t mention, there are a fair number bunch of ads (say 1 in a 1000, that may not sound like a lot but if the food you ate was poisoned .1% of the time then you’d be in trouble) that, if ads had a rating, would be rated M. It’s not possible to sort the ad’s out without looking at them and once you look at them and then it’s too late. Plus ads are just ugly and annoying and take up screen real estate. I’m not willing to look at such junk just so that the webmaster of whatever site I happen to be on can make a few cents.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Maybe you’d think differently if you were a small publisher, developer or webmaster of a large non-profit website
It’s true about the mature ads, but usually those ads are only displayed by less recommendable websites… A blacklist would solve that, or block ads in advance for those websites before visiting them, or just don’t visit them. Sometimes the publisher isn’t aware that some of his ads have explicit content, so you can contact him and let him know. but as you wrote, it’s very very rare outside less legal or decent websites (0.1% is 1 in 1000).
April 7th, 2008 at 9:45 am
By the way, hi Adam. You may not remember me, but I’m the guy who offered to make a flash Jetpack last year. You said you’d do it yourself, and I said I’d trust you with it ;P I came to this website for news of your progress, and I must admit I was a little surprised to find out that you’re actually working on it. I’m sorry for my lack of faith ^^ I wish you the best of luck, and I’ll be around to lend you a hand if you need any actionscript help. Provided I don’t forget about it
April 7th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Lol thanks, I’m more in need of art than anything else!
April 7th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Perhaps I was exaggerating the severity of the bad ads. The ads that annoyed me, I saw at casual, normal, games blog (http://freegamer.blogspot.com/ and http://jayisgames.com/ to be precise), they were advertising some stupid MMORPG, I guess that after seeing no ads for such a long time, I over-reacted.
Btw, when I said one in a thousand I meant 1 in 1000 ads, not sites.
April 8th, 2008 at 5:57 am
I agree that blocking all ads is harmful. The hosting of my website dosbox.com is payed from advertisement income.
If I don’t get enough money from that anymore. I will probably simply unplug the plug. Making free software or other free products costs resources enough already. I don’t want it to cost money to deliver it to you.
But some people don’t see understand that. To support other sites I don’t have any adblocking software installed. Off course sometimes there is an annoying ad, but that is a small price to pay for the free things you get in return.
Unfortunately people like Arnos only think about their own profit and might lead to the downfall of the free internet as we know it.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:48 am
See link. “Considered harmful” considered harmful. I just wish we’d all stop using this “considered harmful” crap. This is a good example of “‘considered harmful’ considered harmful.” “Ad blockers considered harmful” is not a meaningful title, and it produces the wrong impression. Read the “‘Considered Harmful’ Essays Considered Harmful” essay. (No, it’s not mine, not my website, and not related to me in any way.)
April 17th, 2008 at 6:45 am
Link removed, since you’re spamming for your own site. I’m aware of the history of “considered harmful” but your crusade doesn’t seem especially meaningful.
May 24th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Opera is pretty handy with pop-ups, you can choose how it handles them which is nice. If ad-blockers exist that block the actual ads on pages, that’s definately wrong but pop-ups are less of an issue and if they have to exist, it’s better if they pop-up under your website in a seperate tab and perhaps close automatically after a short while.
It’s also important for ads to be relevant and non-disruptive…Which used to be much larger issue than it is now.
August 17th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
I have issues with “ethical ad blocking.”
1) Taste. I don’t need to be seeing advertisements of females in various stages of undress on Facebook and other sites. This is a big issue for a lot of people.
2) Flash is still largely crap on Linux. It no longer completely crashes my browser every three ads or so, but this is a relatively new development. Not having Flash installed is extremely close to using an ad blocker. Am I “hurting the free internet” by not using a buggy closed source plugin which is fond of crashing my browser?
3) Both your approved ad blockers appear to be Windows only and commercial. Bravo.
4) AdBlock Plus, the most popular adblocker for Firefox, defaults to blocking everything and allows the user to whitelist sites with two clicks. This is more than reasonable. Having to manually blacklist every single site I don’t want to see ads for is ridiculous; I go all over the net. It’s far more reasonable for me to whitelist known inoffensive sites I visit regularly and enjoy.
5) Ads make websites take longer to load and waste bandwith, something dialup users and people with restricted throughput detest.
6) The tiny fraction of users are using adblock are not cutting deep into your profit because they aren’t the people clicking on these ads in the first place.
7) Adblock Plus features custom subscription blacklists. A lot of your complaints could be addressed with such a list. Care to recommend one?
September 18th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
I use Firefox and Adblock. I have to say… you know, it’s a valid point and all, but it’s the advertising companies doing all of this bullshit like making ads that scream at you and ads that spawn a million popups that made the advertising model fall into the hole. The business crushed itself by becoming too annoying for the consumer to put up with it anymore.
It’s not like they ever payed well in the first place. If you have something that you need to support itself, you’d probably be better off selling some kind of merchandise or having ads contracted on a smaller scale from people within the same field of interest so that they wouldn’t be blocked by default.
February 2nd, 2009 at 4:06 am
I have to agree with Jonathan, the problem started with large, unscrupulous ad companies (like Doubleclick) that made annoying, browser-killing ads in the first place. Smaller ad-rings and custom ads, which are designed to fit the site in question, and are not designed to annoy users, are the answer. These don’t get blocked by the big lists because they’re different. Google’s text ads were a good idea, but they have one big downfall; load times. Google’s server response is just too slow, it causes pages to take an extra 15-30 seconds to load, even on broadband–something that’s just not acceptable in these times.
Now, I’m not against webmasters trying to stay afloat, or even make a buck. All I’m saying is, the reason ad blockers exist is because advertisers went too far. This problem can be remedied, but only if advertisers take more care to make less annoying ads, and the writers of block lists take care to judge ads by how bad they are, not just make catch-all lists. A 1-10 scale would be appropriate, and let the user decide what level they want to start with.
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:24 am
The free web is unlikely to disappear, even if marketing does. I’m not sure if you remember, but the web was almost entirely free in it’s former iterations. There are other ways for quality sites to remain; Wikipedia for example. My company also hosts a Mediawiki project on our websever without charge or advertisement. Web-hosting has become so ridiculously cheap that any small to moderate size host who decides to ’support’ their fee’s with advertisements is probably greedier than those users looking for a smoother browsing experience.
Working for ad-blocking software is most definately the ilk of ISP caps. Flash ads and images take up considerably more bandwidth than text. They take a long time to load, and in the case of java or flash, they can cause instability. These ads then, while bringing in individually insignificant amounts of income for the webmaster, are also costing their readers a similar minor fee.
And yes, this is most definately the result of webmasters and ad companies together. It is the fault of your counterparts, not grubby users. Consider a 7 page article with few words – the text representing say 20% of the screen space. We all know the ilk. Or the fly-overs, pop-ups, pop-unders, flashing banners, etc. Ad-blockers are the seeds come due.