Some people may block ads because of privacy or malware, or out of some stick-it-to-the-man sense but I suspect more than a few are blocking the ads because the ads are by and large uninteresting retail garbage with BUY NOW and CLICK HERE emblazoned like giant neon lights across the bottom.
They are aesthetically horrible and intrusive.
Not sure why we'd be baffled since Adland contributors have been contributing without financial remuneration since 1996. Thanks for being presumptuous, though. Let me know how that value pays your server costs. Oh, right-- you don't need to worry about that. Someone else does.
I know the astroturfers keep throwing the same point about Techdirt's consistency in all the comments and @mentions on Twitter but if you read the article and took the time to understand it, you realize I am not saying anything about Techdirt that suggests they are inconsistent.
My point was, if you give people a free option they usually take it. And now that Techdirt has done so, we'll see how that goes.
Should I explain it again or will this suffice?
If by mocking you mean being realistic about ditching ad revenue in hopes of making up for it completely, then yes we are. If you mean actual mocking, you didn't bother to read the article at all. But by all means please keep astroturfing and please post more strawman arguments. We love those..
It's not just the publishers who are panicking, let alone the brands who want people to see their ads. It's also the companies whose job it is to take the ads we come up with and build them. Take Celtra for instance. My agency works with them all the time and they are great in building rich media units for us, especially in mobile. If ad blockers become even more successful, they'll displace a cottage industry of media companies and tech-based companies who employ tons of people.
I'm not saying I like banner ads or mobile ads any more than the consumer; I hate them in fact. And I also believe for the most part any click-through rate is purely accidental, especially on mobile where the "X," button to close to ad always seems not to work. Conspiracy theories aside, I feel bad for the companies whose job it is to help us build the ads and place them.
The companies like Gawker and Buzzfeed who profit off of sleaze and lowest common denominator content? Not so much.
I'll bet it went like this:
Agency: There's this album called Exile On Mainstreet, it's the most influential album they Stones ever--
Client: Never heard of it. Give me that Disco song.
Agency: But that came out six years after the fact.
Client: *scoffs* It's not like anyone will notice.
Oh, we noticed, all right.
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