Ad blocking - more harm than good?

Epos Nix on 20/3/2010 at 22:12

Just out of curiosity, how many people have actually clicked through an ad link and then gone on to purchase the product?

A significant percentage of online users must click through these ads at least once in a while considering how the online ad industry is booming at the moment. But I can honestly say I've never even considered clicking an ad on a site, let alone done it with some regularity. So who the heck is fueling the ad-storm industry?

And just for the record, once ads started talking over my YouTube videos, compromising my system through vulnerabilities and slowing my computer to a crawl, I too went down the nuke-all-flash-ads route. Static ads are a-ok in my book though.

Nameless Voice on 20/3/2010 at 22:18

Quote Posted by Epos Nix

This is what I don't get, either. Not just about advertising on the Internet, but about advertising in general. Who buys something because an ad tells them to?

The only case I could imagine being swayed by an ad is if it's for something that I didn't know existed, but would have wanted to buy once I discovered that it existed anyway. That works for something like computer games, I suppose ("Hey, I didn't know there was a sequel to that game! I have to go out and buy it now!"), but I can't see how that works for things like shampoo.

Renzatic on 20/3/2010 at 22:22

"Head And Shoulders 2? Now with added support for scalp exzema? OH I HAVE GOT TO GET THAT!"

doctorfrog on 20/3/2010 at 22:38

Quote Posted by Stitch

What is new is the fact that we have the tech to override ads now, which means that the model is going to have to change. Developing content costs money.

I said this but with more words, god damn you

Quote Posted by Nameless Voice

For advertisers, it's actually better that you don't click through. Impressions are cheaper. It's pretty much proven that if you see 20 ads for Head & Shoulders, you're more likely to pick it up at the store.

Do they have ads for shampoo on the internet? I seriously don't know because I use adblock and I'm gonna be smug as hell about it now.

Yakoob on 21/3/2010 at 01:11

Quote Posted by Epos Nix

A significant percentage of online users must click through these ads at least once in a while considering how the online ad industry is booming at the moment. But I can honestly say I've never even considered clicking an ad on a site, let alone done it with some regularity. So who the heck is fueling the ad-storm industry?

Your mom. And everyone else's mom too, as a matter of fact :|

Muzman on 21/3/2010 at 01:22

I always block flash ads since they used to routinely slow or crash a lot of the pages I used to visit at one point. It was basically the only way to stop it at the time.
It worked out well since the average big advert maker seems to think (like much of the content on the net these days) that everyone in the world is on unlimited bandwidth at very high speeds. I mean, all those ridiculous things with videos in them or splashes that take over the site for a moment? Happilly doing without.

There's talk of whitelists for some sites here and there, but I don't see how that'll help much based on what the article is saying. Back when ad providers used clicks more than pageviews, from memory, they found reasons not to pay up when sites asked readers to click on ads to help out. It's not "real" impact. I expect them to be similarly grumpy at the idea of a readership merely whitelisting a site they like. They'll move onto some other metric like unique views or growth or something. The seemingly harder stats of 'net advertising (and I do mean seemingly since advertising is still the same vague crapshoot it always was, just with more numbers attached to it) have just given them more power to pay less or avoid paying up altogether.

Matthew on 21/3/2010 at 19:26

Quote Posted by Epos Nix

Just out of curiosity, how many people have actually clicked through an ad link and then gone on to purchase the product?

I followed an ad link to a webcomic that I didn't know about and then ended up buying several anthologies from them, so I suppose I count.

SD on 22/3/2010 at 03:32

LeatherMan on 28/3/2010 at 05:09

Anandtech.com got hit by some malicious ads today, most likely due to a hacked ad server. A lot of visitors got a malicious fake antivirus called "Antivirus Soft" (formerly Antivirus Live) installed and had to clean their machines.

Thanks to the Ars Technica article I decided to whitelist Anandtech (and only AT), but due to excessive flash ads I had to disable plugins so flash ads wouldn't load/run (I only allow jpeg and text ads). Even if I were on Windows I wouldn't have been infected thanks to the disabled plugins.

The exploit used the Adobe Reader plugin to load a malicious PDF, so any Windows users who had the AR plugin, allowed scripts and plugins, and weren't using IE's Protected Mode got the malware. Even Adblock and Flashblock were not enough to protect Firefox and Chrome. I highly recommend uninstalling Adobe Reader and any related plugins, and install Foxit Reader for viewing PDFs.

You can read more about it in the (http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2062175) Anandtech forums.

scumble on 28/3/2010 at 21:15

Just to throw in my 2p - I don't use ad blocking at all, even though I found adblock did speed up page loads significantly when I tried it. However, I tend to prefer sites that stick to a small number of advertisements - some sites are so stuffed with random adwords stuff and little annoying panels that I tend to hit the back button in disgust.

anandtech is not one of those sites - the ads aren't very intrusive and tastefully tucked into the layout. Other sites just have an ad frame slapped across in a haphazard fashion like a hippo landing on the road in front of you.

I suppose I think it makes more sense to support sites that have a sensible ad strategy and shun those that really lay it on to the point of detracting from the main content.