Are You Stealing if You Use Ad Blockers?
There’s a discussion going on in the DigitalPoint forums about the ad blocker for Firefox, and whether it’s ethical, or content theft, to use tools that remove all (or the bulk of) advertising from free content websites. What do you think? Do you think it’s OK to remove ads from a site that’s offering free content? What if the ads aren’t of the intrusive variety (not hijacking your system, gathering excessive stats, or using heavy resources)? Or do you consider it stealing to remove the income stream from something people put hard work into?
I fall predominantly into the second group. As far as I’m concerned, visitors to my sites don’t have the right to alter my content or format without my consent, and that includes taking away my ability to monetize my effort. If it weren’t for the advertising, I’d have to charge for memberships to my bigger sites.
Some people were comparing it to Tivo or clipping ads from magazines. Personally, I don’t think either is a completely valid comparison, and here’s why:
1. Tivo can’t cut out all income streams for television programs. While major TV networks can bring in a good bit from product placements, merch, etc., most webmasters can’t earn as much (especially early on) with similar methods as they can with more traditional ad networks.
2. As for clipping ads from magazines, if anything, taking the time to focus on them means you’d be giving them more attention than if you just read the magazine and tried to ignore them. Even if you did that and gave the mag to someone else, the ads were still heavily exposed to someone, which isn’t the case if you use an ad blocker to block everything.
Now don’t get me wrong…. I can completely understand blocking intrusive ads like pop-ups, which take away a certain amount of basic control of your own system, and I can understand blocking animated ads if it’s an unusual strain on your system (or if you suffer from epilepsy or something like that where flashing ads could be a medical issue). But I see no acceptable reason for blocking things like still banner ads, Adsense ads, etc.
Content producers are giving that content to you as a reader for free, and without being able to monetize their work, many wouldn’t be able to afford to continue to put the same effort in.
On another issue, if the ad blockers become too widespread, I see an even bigger issue. They’ll never completely stop advertising. Webmasters will just have to get more creative to get around the blockers. For example, you’ll find even more ad links embedded within content (that look like natural links). And I bet when that’s done even more, we’ll hear more bitching and moaning from readers saying there’s not enough editorial integrity because of it. By blocking the major ad networks, you also lose the extra screening, and therefore may find yourself exposed to more “unsavory” ads in the process (let’s face it… a lot of webmasters don’t have the time to constantly re-screen their advertisers, and others would put the money before the advertiser quality if they had to do the ad recruitment themselves).
Anyway, those are a few of my thoughts. What do you think about the issue?
(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)
Loading ...
Posts
2 Responses to “Are You Stealing if You Use Ad Blockers?”
By Jonathan Bailey on Aug 20, 2007 | Reply
On the ethics of ad blocking, I’m somewhat on the fence. If someone is so annoyed by ads that they seek out an application to block them, odds are they aren’t the type to click ads anyway. That being said, my time as an advertising student taught me that people will swear to not be affected by advertising, to never follow up on it, but inevitably do.
What really worries me about ad blocking is, as you point out, that it only escalates the cat and mouse game. We’ve already seen some of that escalation though. Think about sites such as PayPerPost, which hides advertising messages as actual content.
If separating ads and content only results in the ads being filtered out, then the two will be mixed, only disaster can ensue…
By Jennifer Mattern on Sep 10, 2007 | Reply
I think it’s honestly much less about people being “annoyed” legitimately and much more about people being “annoyed” because they have this attitude of entitlement. On the Web, some people simply believe that you should create quality content, and they should be able to access it for free. They don’t care that it takes time, skill, and effort to create sites and blogs, and that if people can’t be compensated for that time, they’ll simply stop. If you want a quality Web, people have to be able to make money. Otherwise we’d be left with nothing but half-assed resources like Wikipedia, pretending to be a legitimate and accurate source for readers… just another way to breed stupidity on the Web.
It’s easy for people to say they wouldn’t click on ads. I’m personally pretty ad-savvy. I know what’s real vs hype (PR is my business, so I’d better). But if an ad appears that actually looks worthwhile, I’ll click. Anyone would… unless they’re blocking them of course.
I heard someone make a REALLY stupid argument in support of ad blockers on the DigitalPoint forums recently. They essentially said that people can’t say ad blockers are equivalent to stealing without also saying that the ads (and site owners) are “stealing” their bandwidth. Of course what they neglect in their all too common ignorance is the fact that it can’t be stealing when they make the conscious decision to visit that site. People making a decision to publish content is not the same thing, b/c they have a reasonable expectation to be able to profit from that content if they so choose to. If their terms regarding free content mean ads are displayed (within reasonable limitations), they’re not automatically giving people the right to the content ad-free as well (as I’ve heard some people claim).
I don’t think pay per post hides anything. You have to include a notice that a post is sponsored. There’s nothing wrong with sponsored posts. I don’t use them here currently, but I probably will in the future. I do on my business blog though (independently and not through a PPP-like company). As long as you’re transparent and honest with your readers, and you don’t “sell” your opinion (paid reviews have to be honest; good or bad), there’s nothing being “hidden.” Of course if people don’t do that, they’re just unethical, and that’s a personal issue; not one with the form of advertising. It essentially equates to advertorials in many cases. I’d like to think that at least my readers are smart enough to read a disclaimer and take something for what it’s worth.