It doesn’t have to be this way.
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All this might help users navigate, but it also threatens the livelihood of websites and publishers that depend heavily on advertising revenue – companies like Google, Hulu and The New York Times.
Being able to avoid an ad-blocker’s filter may sound like a good thing for publishers and advertisers, but it might not be such a great idea afterall.
No one really likes ads – and most people can’t stand the noisy, flashy, blinky, autoplay kind that give online advertising a bad name.
But a straw poll conducted by Dean Murphy, the developer behind the iOS ad-blocker app Crystal, found that 71% of ad-block users would proactively whitelist sites that are optimized for performance, maintain transparent privacy policies and only serve ads that meet “acceptable” criteria. If today’s ad practices get too annoying, he said, they could disappear just like pop-up windows, which many browsers now block automatically in response to consumers’ annoyance with them.
Every little bit can slow down or freeze a browser. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, one developer pulled his app from the Appstore after realizing he didn’t want to be a furnisher of an ad-blocking app. The profiling is just part of what the websites do and how they make their money.
The threats to websites are about to get bigger. With the built-in content blocking features of iOS 9, we’ve seen a spate of developers take advantage of this feature and release ad blockers.
Purify Blocker, another top-selling app, restricts users’ access to on-line shopping. That’s a problem Darius Kazemi is highlighting with the Ethical Ad Blocker, a new extension for Google Chrome. Besides the irritant factor of online, mobile and in-app ads.
Right now, the U.S. ad-blocking rate is around nine to 10 per cent, with an upward trend that is concerning even for native formats, as currently no native (or advertising) solution is immune to ad blocking.
Hulu, for instance, simply replaces commercials with an unskippable message prompting you to turn your ad blocker off. Or, you can pay Hulu $12 a month to go ad-free. In return, the companies compensate Adblock Plus for allowing their ads through Adblock’s filters. Microsoft declined to confirm the report. Amazon got a free pass, while Target and Walmart had no chance. Hulu declined comment. Peace required that all ads be treated the same – all-or-nothing enforcement for decisions that aren’t black and white. The frequency of advertisements displaying even while Adblock is supposed to be blocking them will most likely increase.
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Perhaps there’s another way – a truce, of sorts. For some time now, their tracking capabilities have turned them into the black sheep of the Internet. We rarely find respite now from the onslaught of constant messaging: everywhere we turn, from our phones to our built urban environment, is plastered either physically or digitally with increasingly intrusive advertising. “Everything should be on the table: fewer ads, different types of ads, no ads”.
