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Do you block advertisements on the Internet?

Do you block web advertisements?

  • Yes

    Votes: 66 71.0%

  • No

    Votes: 27 29.0%
  • Total voters
    93
I love Adblock. I go out of my way to block things on sites I know I'll never visit again in hopes that it ends up blocking something on a site that I might visit. Sometimes I get overzealous and block something that I shouldn't have. Then I have to figure out what piece I need to unblock. The internet is so peaceful without advertisements.
 
Cassie said:


Well I feel like I'm ripping off the people who paid to put the ads on TV. They paid good money to put it on there, and I feel like they at least deserve to be watched, even if I'm not going to buy whatever it is they're selling.

The only reason I own a TiVo is so I can watch programs when I want. I always watch the commercials.
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Meh....whatever floats your boat I suppose.
 
Cassie said:


Well I feel like I'm ripping off the people who paid to put the ads on TV. They paid good money to put it on there, and I feel like they at least deserve to be watched, even if I'm not going to buy whatever it is they're selling.

The only reason I own a TiVo is so I can watch programs when I want. I always watch the commercials.
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Who's checking to see whether or not you watched the ad?
 
ghall said:
The way I see it, I don't click on ads anyway, so it's not like the website is losing any revenue (am I understanding how web ads work correctly?)
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Not entirely. Earnings can be awarded based on cost-per-click or cost-per-thousand-impressions, so it is possible that a site would receive money just for having the ad visible.

EDIT: Looks like I actually asked the same question earlier in this thread, so it looks like I've learned something in the past months!
 
yg17 said:
That's why I love my TiVo. I record programs I watch, start watching them about 10 minutes after their scheduled start, and can skip right past all of the ads.
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I do that with my Comcast DVR so much that when I have to watch something live, it is almost painful.

I block pop-ups but not other ads on my computer.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)

on my iPod, I can't :/ but on my comp I do. They get there money out of me, as 90% of my time is on my ipod
 
Yep, I do as i hate them... There are some web-sites where there is a pop-up advertising and it is impossible to close it immediately because the cross that closes it appears in a few seconds... So annoying... :(
 
The vast majority of the net relies on ad revenue. I don't block ads, they don't bother me, and they help fund the sites that I love - like MacRumors.

I do avoid sites that go OTT on the advertising or use particularly evasive creatives.

Phorm, however, is out-and-out wrong. I will never allow my browsing habits to be intercepted for the purpose of advertising.
 
Cassie said:


Well I feel like I'm ripping off the people who paid to put the ads on TV. They paid good money to put it on there, and I feel like they at least deserve to be watched, even if I'm not going to buy whatever it is they're selling.

The only reason I own a TiVo is so I can watch programs when I want. I always watch the commercials.
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LOL. Wow. I use MythTV and strip out all the ads and commercials on my DVR.

And on the web, you bet I block every single ad I come across (firefox and adblock... mmmm)

I've even distributed my adblock list to my coworkers and friends. The thing is huge. Having a problem with it? Nope. I just can't stand ads. I even complain to sites that use ridiculous page layouts to maximize their ad-space. c-net is one of them. the content on a page there is less than what is in this single post. You have to click through 10 - 15 pages to read one article, but see 500 ads. Not for me. I avoid sites like that if I can help it.
 
Can we talk about a plan to stop advertising sexual dysfunction medications, penis enlarging devices, and $9.95 copies of Adobe CS3 to me? The biggest problem with web advertising is the shear lack of effort put in by advertisers and agencies.

They have all this data available to them regarding me and my habits, and they just don't use it. They know perfectly well that I don't make impulse buys of computer software or hardware, and buy these things only infrequently and with significant research. Clothes, perfume, accessories, books, music. I make impulsive buys in those areas all the time. And yet, with all the data available to them, online advertisers do a much worse job than advertisers in any magazines I read at reaching out to me. Even when they do target me (like the Google advertisements), they're overpopulated by poorly reputable or shady sites.

I think any discussion of condemning ad blocking has to include asking the question of why advertisements in fashion, news/analysis, and even tech magazines, and even most newspapers, are actually valuable to the readers, and online ones are almost uniformly considered onerous, even by those who do not choose to block.
 
I block flash ads. I frelling hate them...they're intrusive, often loud and cpu intensive (double so thanks to the really poor flash plugin available for Macs :eek:).

Text based ads (or the odd jpeg or animated gif) I don't mind...actually they can be quite handy at finding bargains, "sexual dysfunction medications, penis enlarging devices, and $9.95 copies of Adobe CS3" aside...what kind of sites are you frequenting there, mkrishnan? :p
 
Mitthrawnuruodo said:
"sexual dysfunction medications, penis enlarging devices, and $9.95 copies of Adobe CS3" aside...what kind of sites are you frequenting there, mkrishnan? :p
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Those three are probably just from Macrumors. :rolleyes: ;)

But that's exactly my point... I frequent sites that are consistent with the habits, I think generally, of people like me. But that doesn't mean that I want to buy related products. If I open threads on Scientology and Fed Ex here, it means that I'm active in current events. It doesn't mean I want to join a religion or ship a package. But that's the mentality that targeted ads work on.
 
I block them. They're slightly annoying from a visual perspective - but it's the performance issue that I hate the most. A page rammed full of flash ads adds a certain syrup effect to the performance of Safari. Frustrating as hell. Those that pop-over content I REFUSE to allow, and many now use sound and again, that's a complete no.

And for the poor person who feels guilty about fast forwarding through adverts for things they don't intend buying. Do you know how utterly insane that is? Watching car ads when you're not buying a car, or drink adverts if you don't drink, or male deodorant ads if you're a women (and vice versa). Thats just a misplaced conscience thieving your life away from you.

Doug
 
I don't block ads. If a site (such as MacRumors, for example) is providing me with services for free, they have every right to place ads on their site, and in no way do I see it proper to block them.
 
Yes I do, the sites that would benefit and subtly advertise are far outweighed by the sheer amount of irritating sites with horrible flashing banners.
 
Yes. They're annoying as **** and advertising companies are scumbags. Plus, I'm paying money for internet service so I don't want to be subjected to ads too.
 
psychofreak said:
Yes I do, the sites that would benefit and subtly advertise are far outweighed by the sheer amount of irritating sites with horrible flashing banners.
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Generally, I avoid websites with annoying ads altogether. ...I suppose that's a type of ad blocking. ;)

zioxide said:
I'm paying money for internet service so I don't want to be subjected to ads too.
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Don't you pay for TV and have to watch TV ads?

You're paying for access to the internet, but that bill is solely to provide the medium in which you connect, not provide the websites you visit with an income. Similarly, you pay for your television connection (assuming you have cable or satellite), but this doesn't provide broadcasting companies with a source of income, therefore they run ads during their programming to recoup their costs.
 
adblock plus makes sites appear to look so clean... like !m4g35h4ck for example, and sites with flash ads that take forever to load are gone. it's pretty smart, knowing what to block. occasionally I'll have to manually block the ads but that's not a lot of work :)
 
I block them. I'm deaf and what I look at is important to me. I'm easily visually distracted, and I just cannot read an article with jumping waving ads on either side, dancing monkeys, intel blue men hopping, flashing colours etc. No bloody way. This is my screen, and I choose what goes on it.

Adblock on FF for the win. Even though it also buggers up some flash games/videos (they go blank unless part of the flash window is offscreen) it's worth it for me.

I don't mind google text ads at all.

Just as national lotteries are a tax on the superstitious and the mathematically inept, so web ads are a small tax on the technologically inept. 99% of people who use websites see the ads.

Being able to fix it so I don't see the ads doesn't make me superior in any way, just a side benefit of my interests being in computers. Same as a car nut will have a better tweaked car than me - it doesn't make him a better person than me, just someone who has a passion for cars. I'm inept with cars, he's inept with computers, it balances out.
 
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