Of late, there’s been a debate about the use of Adblockers, with some calling it immoral (see a rebuttal here). Needless to say, Adblockers are popular: 300m people in the world have downloaded an ad blocking extension and about half have actually installed it.
The crux of the argument against their use is that Adblockers deprive the ‘content creators’ an earning and that it will eventually lead to content creation becoming unviable. Some have even argued that if we find advertising intrusive on some sites we visit, we should simply not visit them. My views:
Any technology which is available, found useful and free will be used extensively. Adblockers, like DVRs fall into this category. There is no point in content creators or media folks whining about it. If on regular cable TV channels the average viewer was given an option to block advertising, she gladly will. In fact, she is already doing it without any sophisticated technology. She either ‘switches off’ mentally when ads come or simply switches channels. Isn’t that loss of revenue and ‘insult’ to creators of the advertising? Is it immoral to not pay attention to the ad when its on air? Fact is, people access their channel or website for content. The distinction between ‘content’ and ‘advertising’ is inflicted by media owners and ad agencies, not by the consumer. So if an ad is enriching or rewarding as the content they seek, viewers may not switch channels or mute the ads. But that happens rarely.
Adblockers on browsers make a huge difference to content consumption, especially on Indian portals. Popular news portals have simply surrendered their real estate to advertising, user experience be damned.
TOI with and without ad blocker pic.twitter.com/Zz6MfQ3VAz
— bhatnaturally ? (@bhatnaturally) May 19, 2015
In such cases, can the user be faulted for blocking advertising? How many times have we encountered auto-playing video ads in a sea of open tabs? Annoying, pesky ads aren’t the only problems with online ads:
@bhatnaturally I’ll disable adblockers if those collecting personal data from these terribly invasive ad cookies demonstrate data protection — Ashok (@krishashok) May 19, 2015
So I think its unfair to blame users for resorting to adblockers. As a blogger who has placed Adwords on my site (no, I don’t earn much from it) I can see why publishers feel deprived of their earning through adblockers. But summarily blaming those who use such Adblockers as immoral is not right. Why should they put up annoyances when they have an option not to. The onus is also on the publishers to not be greedy and cram every available space with ads, often intrusive and annoying. We all know how irritating it is when sports telecasts (especially cricket in India) are interrupted to accommodate an ad. If viewers had an option they would block it. Advertisers and creative agencies too need to work a bit harder in earning the online viewer’s attention.
4 Comments
I concur with your views. On the same page I am.
Basically small & honest content producers who still maintain a good UX suffer due to big bad publishers bombarding us with ads. There are no visible behavior of anyone allowing ads on some sites in Adblocker. It’s all or none. This also means that advertising as a revenue source for smaller player offering quality content is not viable
Any examples of such websites? Beautiful Pixels is a good example of the kind of website you are talking about. Any other?
These points of view were about to come to light as most of the online-driven businesses fetch a considerable amount of revenues through ad feed services. Also, there are online start-ups who optimistically allocate/ forecast major chunk of income via ad feeds. These companies do have every right to display ads according to their wish but no way can they complain that I as a consumer am not supposed to block the ads.