Steve Smith talks about Ad Block software, how it came to be, and why there is currently a war only between advertisement companies and advertisement blocker developers.
Episode #6-05 released on October 5, 2015
The Internet is full of advertisements, it is on virtually on every page of the Internet, even my own web-sites have advertisements. The idea of the advertisement, and even how it affects a person's experience of the Internet is a large debate, where content creators scream foul when you block our advertisements, and users getting content for free don't want to see advertisements, at all.
Here is the thing, most web-sites serving advertisements, use the revenue to generate salaries, pay for hosting, software, rent, etc. basically, advertisement profits make content creators money. Since, placing an advertisement is often easier, and less annoying that forcing an upfront fee to view content, most web site developers do use advertisements instead of access fees. This is how most of the content is free. However, this means you are the product, and the web-site no longer is.
For a long time, people just lived with annoyance with advertisements on every page, whether the web-site is rated G, or NC17. Adult web-sites that don't charge a fee, also, use advertisements, and for a while people were being bombarded with advertisements and pop-ups. With pop-ups, special software was developed called popup blockers. This prevented many of the advertisement pop-ups from even being able to load. However, even that can be defeated. However, for many, this was not enough, all the advertisements had to go, and this is where advertisement blockers like Adblock, Adblock plus, etc. come from. They are plugins in browsers that prevent the advertisements from loading when the page loads on the screen. These were originally designed to prevent advertisements on adult web-sites.
Now, what ended up happening is users started using them on all web-sites, and the application developers made it possible to use on all web-sites. And, recently, with the uptick in adoption rates of Advertisement Blockers the amount of money companies and web-sites are earning from advertisements is on a significant decline. This has led some companies to this anti advertisement block coding that blanks the page when advertisements are being blocked, and some companies like Google, have gone as far as disabling skip features in videos, and bypass advertisement blockers altogether.
Now, the question is this, your screen or their content? Being a content developer, I can tell you that it is immensely expensive to generate content, being a user I can understand that your computer is your computer. However, where does one draw the line? I personally allow people on my web-sites to block my advertisements and newer designs of my web-sites do have fifty percent fewer advertisements based on the overall expense of the project, however I do ask that people contribute to my Patreon, or other fund raising projects voluntarily. YouTube is supposed to bring in a subscription model that allows YouTubers to watch their favorite shows without advertisements for a flat fee per month. Will other web-sites go to this paid models, or will they fight back against advertisement blockers. Only time will tell, but there is a significant difference in the business model in either case. If the web-site is advertisement support, you are the product. If you pay to access the content, then the web-site is the product. And, while the argument for your screen your choice usually should hold true, unfortunately, their media, you agree by using it usually overrides this thought process altogether. Tell me what you think, is advertisement blocking a fad that will disappear when we code around it, or will this lead to the Internet making a lot of subscriptions, again.
Host : Steve Smith | Music : Jonny Lee Hart | Editor : Steve Smith | Producer : Zed Axis Productions