So many....erroneous comments in this...where to start? For one, some of our sites actually provide unique information and answers to help you can't find anywhere else. So, your argument about it being like games / movies is invalid. Sure, someone downloading a movie may not have watched it without downloading it, but if you can't find that information anywhere else on the internet, you are going to use that site to get that information, period. Or cry in the corner...whichever.I don't know your site and I don't know the ads running on it. I feel like the majority of the people posting here don't have a problem with ads - just with specific types of ads that have started taking over a lot of websites. Now, maybe you only have very limited, very non-intrusive ads. In which case, sorry that your ads might get blocked by people, you probably don't deserve that.
However, a lot of the ads are very much intrusive and mostly just a pain to the users. As long as a lot of companies / websites keep using those, a lot of people will keep trying to block them. And maybe you feel it's theft, but would you honestly feel better if all those people would stop visiting your website?
Ultimately, I think it's the piracy in games / movies argument; the people that are currently 'stealing' access to your website were likely never gonna use it without the adblock anyway. I know I would have stopped using youtube a long time ago due to the stupid amount of honestly very frustrating ads.
P.s.: users leaching but giving nothing in return? For a forum? How about all the free content your users have provided you with over the years which you didn't pay them for?
But if this is true, then why are (most) website not 'paid to access'? You wouldn't have to put up ads (which in turn can't be blocked so your income in unaffected), and people would pay fairly for your content. And if they don't see the value, they can simply not visit, no harm done. Seems like it would solve all the issues, so why do you think this doesn't happen?
Possibly. But if you have thát kind of unique content, you could probably get by on other ways than ads as well (Wikipedia, for example). I get your point though.
Try cutting them out and see how much visitors you get then. It depends on the kind of site you run of course, but there are plenty of sites (forums being among them) that rely heavily on user content. More posts from users -> more content -> more google hits / readers -> more ad revenue. Again, depending on the type of forum. Anyone saying that users are just leachers and their content is just a headache should in my opinion try to cut all users & their content away from their side and see how their unique visitors and monthly income will do then.
Fair point.
But yes, this was kinda what I was aiming at.
So is bandwidth for many internet users and ads are basically a waste of it. Surfing without adblock is pretty much impossible nowadays.
Never had Adblock and surf all day everyday. Again if a site is going overboard with ads or serving malicious ads I black list and never return. But I don't expect any webmaster to treat me their end user as a charity case.
You must have a high level of pain resistance. Or maybe too much time. I don't and that's why I block most cross-site crap, not limited to ads (but including).
No i just have decent broadband.
Rest assured, the bandwith I have available is most likely higher than yours (unless you sit directly on the backbone), but that doesn't matter. Bandwith isn't everything and doesn't help you a single bit when a site embeds stuff from some overloaded crappy adserver. Add to that the deficiencies of the current HTTP protocol (there are reasons why HTTP/2 will handle a lot of things differently) and you get poor page loading times, no matter how much bandwith you have available.
lol why are so offended that i don't have a use or need for ad blocking software? Like i said earlier it probably boils down to the types of sites you surf vs the types i surf.. Relax and run your adblock and surf your precarious sites to your hearts content.. At any rate i didn't subscribe to this thread to get in a pissing match with you over broadband speed..
Last time I checked, it wasn't me who mentioned "decent broadband" first, but judging from your other posts, I see why you do not like adblock - you're just "sitting on the other end" and from that point of view, your arguments may very well be valid. Not from my point of view though.
No i just dont surf porn anymore.. well not frequently enough to need adblock anyways.
Funny thing is that you rarely find answers in forums or blogs, given that the vast majority of forums or blogs nowadays are content aggregators with little to none original and good content. If 90% of all those sites would vanish tomorrow, nobody would even notice, let alone give a damn.
If you think, *that* is the only reason to use an ad blocker, you're wrong. Very wrong.
No, I meant $5 a month for any forum that I actively participate in since that's where the real money is. Very little real money in drive-by advertising.
