If you're reading this post, you're presumably familiar with online advertisements. Whether they're on the side of your screen, at the top or popping up right in the middle of a page, ads seem to be taking over the internet. I found Jennifer Valentino-DeVries' blog on The Wall Street Journal's website on this subject particular interesting. In it, she discusses the technology news site Ars Technica and the experiment they recently tried: blocking the content of the site for all those users who block advertisements. This experiment ultimately resulted in confusion, apologies and ingidnation, says Valentino-DeVries. The website's editor, Ken Fisher, ended up writing an article called "Why Ad-Blocking is Devastating Those Sites You Love" to explain this little experiment and the reasons behind it.
So then the question still remains; to block, or not to block? Both Mr. Fisher and David Croteau and William Hoynes' book Media Society explain the reasoning for online advertising. Advertising is the key source of revenue for mass media channels such as newspapers, television and the internet, explain Croteau and Hoynes. Fisher states that unless a site is a subscription-based model, the majority of sites solely rely on advertising to survive, and while some ads are on a pay per click system, more are pay per view. Therefore, those who utilize ad-blocking tools are denying the revenue to the sites kept alive by those ads.
Some people block ads because they just don't want to see those annoying, often flashing or otherwise moving ads on their screen when they know they'll not likely buy anything because of them. Others block because it distracts and interferes with their web-surfing. Why should we care about this? Well, think about your favorite, most visited (non-subscription) sites online. Take out the ads and they have very little to no money to continue the upkeep of these sites for your viewing pleasure. (Example: No more Facebook?! Nooo...!) So, to echo Valentino-DeVries' enquiries, do you use any ad-blocking tools? If so, how often? And my own questions, are there more effective ways to promote online advertising without 'annoying' web surfers, or perhaps as of yet unheard of ideas on funding for sites without advertising? What do you think?
peace and love,
sheila.
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