I've mentioned in more than one place that nothing you visit on the Internet is truly free. The bottom line price you pay is the yielding of personal information about your life on the Internet, and in many cases your life in general. By far the people who use this collected information the most are advertisers. They want to get their specific message to a clearly defined target audience. Doing so insures a profit on their investment.
Online advertising is currently a $140 billion industry. That's A LOT of ads in your browser and a lot of personal information collected. It's no wonder people have become put off by ads because they are frequently intrusive, block content, and consume inordinate amounts of your computer resources. The most popular antidote seems to be to install programs specifically designed to block those ads. Most of the ad blocking programs are effective, and that is causing a problem. If enough ads are blocked then the return on investment by the advertiser drops to zero. That investor then stops paying for advertising space, and the website that depends on that income faces extinction.
The dilemma has a solution, or so thinks Wladimir Palant the brains behind Ad Blocker Plus. The article is interesting from an historical perspective as well as from a pure information point of view. It turns out ol' Palant found a way to make money from blocking ads. Then again, he also found out he can be sued. It's an interesting read in general, and my be particularly enlightening to you ad blocker users.
http://www.technologyreview.com/feature ... refers-it/
Ad Blockers
Re: Ad Blockers
One of the browsers I use has it built in. There may be a few less ads but it always amazes me how any got through the filter. Now I know there is a "do not block" list built into the software if a company wants to pay for that feature.
Re: Ad Blockers
I use both, AdBlock Plus and AdBlock Pro, but not necessarily for blocking of ads per se. They do that automatically unless you turn off blocking.
My primary purpose for using them is to remove display boxes covering up things on my monitor.
Farcebook is NOTORIOUS for placing items DIRECTLY OVER the control boxes for other things.
They also cover up their own ads with their display boxes.
Take the Chat Window on Farcebook as an example.
If you have Chat open, it stretches up the screen covering the ads on the right.
If you have it Closed, it sits at the bottom of the screen.
Until recently, this was not a problem.
But Farcebook decided to EXTEND the width of this box so it reaches a good way into the inside of a flash window.
The ONLY CURE for Farcebooks STUPIDITY was to use an AdBlock program and hide this Chat box on the window where you have a flash player in use.
When I visit a website, and the first thing I get is a POP-UP covering what I went there to see, I immediately leave the website. I don't even bother trying to hide the pop-up unless it is something I really wanted to read. Most do have a close button, but that is beside the point. I don't have to tolerate anyone being IN-MY-FACE. It is about the rudest thing they can do. WISE website owners my have a pop-up with the same info in the lower right corner, not blocking the content of the page. Although I don't like the pop-up at all, it is not done in an intrusive way. Now those websites I may visit many times.
The money spent on advertising does not go to supporting the web as the article claims. It may support some of the websites on the web, but not the web itself. It's akin to saying having advertising on the side of your commercial truck supports the truck manufacturers.
My primary purpose for using them is to remove display boxes covering up things on my monitor.
Farcebook is NOTORIOUS for placing items DIRECTLY OVER the control boxes for other things.
They also cover up their own ads with their display boxes.
Take the Chat Window on Farcebook as an example.
If you have Chat open, it stretches up the screen covering the ads on the right.
If you have it Closed, it sits at the bottom of the screen.
Until recently, this was not a problem.
But Farcebook decided to EXTEND the width of this box so it reaches a good way into the inside of a flash window.
The ONLY CURE for Farcebooks STUPIDITY was to use an AdBlock program and hide this Chat box on the window where you have a flash player in use.
When I visit a website, and the first thing I get is a POP-UP covering what I went there to see, I immediately leave the website. I don't even bother trying to hide the pop-up unless it is something I really wanted to read. Most do have a close button, but that is beside the point. I don't have to tolerate anyone being IN-MY-FACE. It is about the rudest thing they can do. WISE website owners my have a pop-up with the same info in the lower right corner, not blocking the content of the page. Although I don't like the pop-up at all, it is not done in an intrusive way. Now those websites I may visit many times.
The money spent on advertising does not go to supporting the web as the article claims. It may support some of the websites on the web, but not the web itself. It's akin to saying having advertising on the side of your commercial truck supports the truck manufacturers.