Kirk McElhearn addresses the ethical issue of ad blocking. Good, solid read.
Ads are a necessary part of the modern publishing equation. But as Kirk, and John Gruber before him, point out, ads don’t have to be evil. There is a threshold, a threshold of proper behavior. Hidden ads/video? Ads that mysteriously gobble your data plan? Ads that force you to interact with them before you can get to the content? All of these are on the wrong side of that threshold.
The key is to find a way to allow proper behavior, to block the evil ads, but allow the basic ads that keep sites like Daring Fireball, MacStories.net, Kirkville, SixColors, The Loop, and many others who don’t cross that threshold in business.
I’m not sold on the equivalence of skipping TV ads or print ads to blocking web ads. Those actions do not harm the same party.
A TV or print ad I ignore hurts the advertiser, but not the content provider. I’m already watching the show or reading the periodical: the content provider has already accrued whatever compensation he gets from my reading his content.
A web ad I block hurts the provider, but not the advertiser. The content provider has already yielded up his product, but he won’t be compensated for the ad that doesn’t load. Nor will the ad network (and by extension, the advertiser) have to pay for my reading of the content.
Your point is valid.
However, the magazine doesn’t make me wait to start reading the next article while it consumes a page of paper and some ink from my printer as it custom generates an ad that is unique to me.
This is, in all honesty, why I am blocking the ads. The ad networks have violated the social contract by pushing code to run on my machine, using my memory and my CPU cycles, in order to optimize their sales price.
The magazine publisher printed the ad at their own expense on their own time. Kind of like an old-school banner ad that is integrated into the page. Or like the ads you see on Daring Fireball or Loop Insight.
When my web browser crashes because the ad-network sent me a crappy script, they crossed the line. Worse yet, when the ad network sends me MALWARE in their script, they obliterated the line.
But blocking all ads and trackers because a few sent you a bad script is a nuclear option. It’s part of the reason Arment pulled the Peace ad blocker app: it was nuking everyone, including the friendlier ad decks like used by Daring Fireball.
Also, I’ll submit that you knowing about the scripts and code isn’t a fluke, and it’s likely fairly well known that these things track you, whether it be to rather innocuously deliver more relevant ad content or do something more nefarious. So, that is part of the social contract: you pay with your eyeballs and a bit of data to read the content instead of paying with your money. Your other choice is to not go read the articles, just as you don’t get to walk out of a store with a paper magazine without paying up.
While what you mention is a problem, I’m not comfortable using a blanket “they” and nuking everyone. I think I’d rather just not go to the websites. In fact, there are some sites I do not visit on my mobile devices; I wait until I get home to the computer where the bandwidth is much less costly to me.
The whole web advertising model is hooked on a false assumption that “pay for performance” is the only metric worth owning.
Display all the ads you want; interstitials, takeovers, etc. But allow me to control my own experience.
Point me to the IOS ad blocker that only blocks the bad networks and I’ll switch from Crystal in a heartbeat. I am 100% willing to look at simple ads that don’t push script onto my machine.
I was going to switch from Crystal to Peace because I thought Marco was going to do that. But then he changed his mind (which I fully understand him doing, by the way).
If a website chooses to block my browser because I have an ad blocker on it, I will happily avoid that website going forward. They could also choose to run sponsored posts or use an ethical ad network or something along those lines.
I was informed in another thread that unfortunately right now iOS is all-or-nothing, which disappoints me. Hopefully more fine tuning will comes its way. In the meantime, I won’t use an ad blocker and will, instead, simply not go to sites using my mobile devices where I don’t appreciate the ads. I know sometimes I might click a link that takes me to one, and if it gets too long a wait, I can cancel and then not return.
Your point about a site blocking you for using an ad blocker is a good one. I believe that has already begun.
I am glad iOS contains the tools for this. It’s definitely high time for this debate and correction!
I have occasionally used ad blockers on the desktop which are able to fine tune for particular types of ads or types of code in ads. Currently I have none installed, but I’m not against that kind of thing since it still allows for some revenue for the content provider while informing them and the advertisers of what I don’t appreciate. (I’m sure they get statistics on what isn’t being delivered.)
That comparison is also valid, but I’m disappointed (not specifically in you, Thoughtful Texan) at the continued use of the “social contract” to justify stealing. “Stealing” is a pretty extreme way of putting it…but I think that’s what it is. Taking the produced thing (the content) and not paying the producer.
(It’s a good time to put in, here, the restaurant-menu comparison, that you don’t–and can’t–know the price of the content without first loading the page. This is true…but that price has been established on the site’s first page load, or the first few. After that you know what you’re getting into.)
The appropriate quid pro quo is not to block the ads but to go to a different site for the content.
“A TV or print ad I ignore hurts the advertiser, but not the content provider. I’m already watching the show or reading the periodical: the content provider has already accrued whatever compensation he gets from my reading his content.”
For that instance of the ad, yes, but the net effect is that advertising will leave shows with high skip rates and will move to avenues with low skip rates. One side effect of this is the arms race for media companies to acquire rights to sporting events (one of the last bastions of live viewing).
I hear where you are going, but I’m not sure I agree that I know the price.
Trackers, as an example, how do I know what trackers are installed on Loop Insight? Are they visibly displayed on the screen with a little text bubble that says “You are being tracked by the Google Ad Tracking Service”?
Or, are they hidden as a 1×1 pixel frame buried four layers underneath the article I am trying to read?
And, by the way, are the publishers that sell adds that are buried down on the fourth layer stealing from the ad networks? Because that has been found to be happening as part of this debate.
In all honesty, until Apple announced this was coming at WDC, I had no idea all this was going on. I knew that some websites were much slower than others on my iPad. I knew that some websites crashed all the time. But I had no idea why until I started reading the blogs of folks like the Crystal developer.
FYI — Safari has not crashed a single time since I installed Crystal last Wednesday afternoon. I used to get 3 or 4 Safari crashes per hour of browsing.
Until the ‘content folks’ acknowledge that the reason we ‘users’ want to block ads is because of user costs – security, bandwidth, viruses, privacy, interruptions – I will continue to block ads.
It’s very hypocritical for content to complain about their costs and lost revenue while ignoring users’ costs and lost income/time.
I don’t have an answer, but balancing the costs on both sides needs to be acknowledged before there’s an actual good solution for everyone.
What would be beneficial would be a running list of “good behavior” ad companies, like The Deck and some others that provide unintrusive, non-tracking ads. That way, these ad networks can be easily whitelisted by adblockers or users of adblockers.