The Sick World of Advertising
I enjoy reading about the never-ending battle between advertisers and those who block advertisements. I am in the latter group. I aggressively block ads.
I aggressively block all kinds of domain names and not just advertising sites. Weekly I update my lists and block a few hundred thousand sites at the network level.
No serious ad blocking advocate is going to surrender to third party advertising. These ads cannot be trusted because of malware, security, and tracking issues. Owners of these content delivery networks have refused to monitor and control this problem. People are tired of the mass surveillance. What do advertisers not understand about these issues?
The only hope to get blockers to see ads is to host ads directly from the same server. Suppose a few web site owners get smart. They stop using content delivery networks to show ads.
I do not have the Flash web browser plugin installed. I will never see Flash based video ads.
Aha! Cries the desperate web site owner. I will push HTML5 video ads. Nope, not gonna work. I disable auto-play.
I use No Script. Without JavaScript being enabled, both Flash and HTML5 videos fail to run. Anything triggered by JavaScript will not run in my browser. I block iFrames too.
Aha! I will push animated GIFs! Nope. For more than a decade I have configured GIFs to animate only once. If self-hosted ads got irritating I would disable GIF animations altogether.
That leaves self-hosted static banner ads. Just like the old days.
Beacons and web bugs? I block them too.
If a graphical ad consumes too much bandwidth and is slow to load or a web site owner wants to pummel visitors with too many ads I’ll just disable graphics in the browser. Just like the old days when I needed to conserve bandwidth on dial-up.
Or likely I would not visit the web site.
My security and privacy have utmost priority over your web site content. I can live without your content or products and already do. I don’t give a rat’s backside about your revenue generating challenges. The advertising model has long been abused and over abused.
Actually, I do give a rat’s backside. I want you to succeed. Just do so without advertising in my face and without tracking me. Why do you need to track me?
People have been blocking ads since the invention of the VCR. Actually before then. People would mute the sound when there was a break to show advertisements. Traditionally that was when people rose to grab refreshments and relieve themselves.
Fundamentally, the battle about advertising is about trust. Trust is a cornerstone of all human relationships.
Posted: Category: Commentary, Usability Tagged: General
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