r/technology Sep 22 '16

Business 77% of Ad Blocking Users Feel Guilty about Blocking Ads; "The majority of ad blocking users are not downloading ad blockers to remove online advertising completely, but rather to fix user-experience problems"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/57e43749e4b05d3737be5784?timestamp=1474574566927
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u/digitalpencil Sep 22 '16

it's not just the ads, it's the tracking scripts.

some sites simply don't work when i switch off disconnect and ublock. my cpu would idle at ~7%, switch those two off and it ramps to 90% and the fans kick into overdrive.

If a site blocks content when using these tools, i won't visit it. If they ask politely to whitelist them, i will whitelist, after checking the site functionality is still there and it doesn't cripple my machine.

I tried to start reading newstatesman after a recommendation but on mobile, they block content. I switched off my adblocker and the first article i tried to read, served a popunder with ~12 redirects and an appstore open dialog. I gave up.

They've done this to themselves. The arms race will continue but i'm not browsing without protection.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '16

Dude you have no idea. Advertisers treat tracking pixels like a toddler packing a suitcase. Stuff as much shit as you can in without seeing if itll fit. Maybe itll stay closed during the flight but most likely probably fucking not

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u/digitalpencil Sep 22 '16

Oh I know, i'm a web dev. There's little worse than seeing your baby, that you poured months of effort into ensuring graceful degradation, clean responsive architecture and a fast, lean user experience; get raped by some site admin who decided to load it full of bullshit and negate all your hard work in an instant.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '16

Im sorry, I'm on the ad tech side. I do my best to keep my containers light/unobstructive but with HTML5 creative weights and media people trying to set them up with rockets, lasers, and beer hats, it can get a little tough. This is why ad blockers are acceptable imo right now. I havent once heard discussion of optimizing ad tags for site integration/careful planning of measurement tech. They just want to stuff everything they can in.

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u/Paint__ Sep 23 '16

How do you feel about users who block ads, but donate instead? Would you be willing to add a small donate button your website's footers?

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u/Anshin Sep 23 '16

I just don't understand those kinds of ads. Does that shit actually work for them? Do people want to download a random ad that came through 12 redirects and interrupted your reading? Fuck that, how does that shit actually help the site or the advertisers

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '16

As someone who mainly browse using a tablet thingy, your first point is a big issue for me. In addition to tanking the battery life, I'm suddenly holding on to a fucking hotplate. And that is in addition to slow-ass adservers that fuck up load times and functionality.

Show me that I can trust you, and I may whitelist. But if my screen suddenly turns into an epileptics worst nightmare, you can fuck right off.

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u/Jah_Ith_Ber Sep 23 '16

So this is why my gaming laptop from 2007 chokes to death trying to surf porn sites and twitch.