On a broad scale, we have moved from a culture of ads as info, to ads that push you to buy whatever the factory produces. This huge supply and false demand for things we don't really need has a huge impact of consumption culture, personal distress - an ongoing feeling that you always lack something, ecological waste and people wasting their hard earned dollars on things they don't really need. God bless ad blockers.
Who gets to decide whether something is necessary or not?
Maslow understood that humans "need" pathways to self-esteem and self-expression. An extensive collection of Marvel action figures could slip through that loophole.
Francis of Assisi lived in abject poverty, and would be a much harsher judge than Maslow, and would probably criticize either of us for bothering to own any electronic devices.
I'm neither a Franciscan nor a Maslowian, but the concept of "human needs" hardly lends itself to immediate and universal agreement.
Extreme cases are never good examples for a general make sense rule. Most of the west ads induced consumption is not self expression purchase, but rather a desire to confirm to an imaginary false standard that ads present as something real. The aim is not self expression, but the bottom line of corp. xyz. The effect of the massive ads everywhere is found (IMHO) even in your comment: identifying self-esteem and self-expression with buying something. For a simple argument, consider all the things you buy and never used, the piles or garbage a typical western society produces.
But its the content creators being punished, not the ad companies. If anything ad blockers are in their interest since the type of person who blocks ads is probably the type of person to ignore them anyway.
I don't think so. If an ad isn't displayed, then the impression probably doesn't count and the publishing site doesn't get paid. It would certainly hurt the content creator more.
>It would certainly hurt the content creator more.
I think you could make the argument that you affect the content creator to a higher degree (larger percent of income) but I suspect you affect the ad company to a higher dollar amount. Nonetheless it's a negative for both.
The content creator gets paid by the ad company for showing you the ad, the ad company gets paid if you click on it.
With that in mind, there is a net-positive outcome for the ad-company if users who aren't going to click on the ads use ad-block, because that means they don't have to pay the content creator for showing ads that nobody clicked on. They only miss possible profit if you're using ad-block but would have clicked on an ad were it presented to you, which is unlikely considering ad-block is generally opt-in. Depending on the ratio of how much they make per-click vs. how much they pay the content-creator per ad, they could definitely come-out with more money due to users using ad-block and not requiring them to pay the content creator when they wouldn't have clicked on the ad anyway.
Not all ads are click based. You're thinking primarily of AdSense and a lot of retargeting ads but most ads are still bought on a CPM basis based on views. Yes, if a publisher consistently shows ads that have a low CTR (clickthrough rate), then the ad network should optimize out of displaying that ad on that site.
Its disproportionately high for the publisher. Niche sites with demographics that overlap with adblockers demographic get hit harder than other sites. The ad company will find other places to serve their ads (unless its a product catering to the same demo). (Full disclosure, I work in ads and ad blocker has never cut into our cash money. That being said I'd be interested to hear from another advertiser who has been affected)
Maybe ad blockers should emulate downloading and displaying ads, perhaps via proxy servers to minimize throughput. That would protect content creators, no?
That is a weak argument. You don't need advertising to make money if what you're doing is valuable. People will compensate you for it because they know it will go away if they don't. Take the No Agenda Show[1] for example, they have no advertising. Two podcasters make a living creating six hours of original content every week and are solely supported by their listeners.
That sounds nice in theory but in actuality is complete BS. On a site like Teamliquid.net, a video game/eSports forum and team, over 50% of visitors have ad blocked enabled and they in no way make of this missed revenue from donations or TL Plus ($5/mo for ad free).
Everyone always says they only have ad block on for obnoxious sites, but that's such a load of shit. The free internet is run by ads, like it or not, and as someone who uses ad block I accept that I actively hinder it.
I don't mind if people use ad block, it's just the moral high ground people take that annoys me.
I'm responding to this post because it's a good segue (esports). I'm an esports fan myself and count as one of that 50% on the few times I visit that site. It is, unfortunately, not their fault. I have on several occasions uninstalled my ad blocker for a time -- one time it was a few months, one time it was a couple years. Both times it was ended by a single website that was a bad actor. Once it was autoplaying audio ads, which frustrated me enough that I nope'd right into installing AdBlock Plus. The second time it was a flash ad that, after about 30 seconds on the page, began consuming about half of my CPU. After I figured out why I immediately nope'd on over to AdBlock Plus once again.
For me, at least, it's a tragedy of the commons out there. All it takes is one bad actor to spoil it all.
This isn't theory, it is a concrete example of content creators who make content and make a living with absolutely zero advertisement. If you need yet another example, LWN ( http://lwn.net ) runs mostly on subscriptions, instead of ads (90% of their revenue is subscriptions).
People won't pay for bad/terrible content, that is the hard truth.
> You don't need advertising to make money if what you're doing is valuable.
Not necessarily. There is a threshold of value that must be met to make people pay directly for it. For example I run a niche site that gets 5K uniques each month - clearly I'm providing some value - but I doubt that what I provide is enough to make people pay me directly. Ads are the most effective way of solve that problem: reward content producers that can't meet that threshold but still add some value.
While I like your poetic verve, this isn't true. Ads were always garbage. Old ads lied just as much and tried to instill the same feelings. They just had less direction since they didn't know how to measure and optimize on outcomes.
