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Blocking text-ads, no revenue left for web-writers?

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justice:
Just been reading Gizmo's article on disabling Google's text advertisements. I'm realizing it has come this far: people have been increasingly annoyed by advertising on their favorite websites. N now even Google's textads are targeted because a small percentage puts the ads on the page people have become annoyed. So they disable the ads. That's their right.

However that leaves millions of bloggers without a possible revenue stream to support their writing so I am thinking what it can be replaced with. I've no idea. Personally I wouldn't donate to a website because I liked a certain article, donationware works best for 'tools'. I don't think I can get paid for putting legitimate search results underneath a post, which would be a benefit to readers, which is a shame. Subscription services go against the nature of the web (hiding content from public). I wouldn't buy a mug just because i read a website. Maybe that means that it's just too hard for an individual to recoup their costs?

That said, the majority of people will not have adsense blocked. And I think the majority of bloggers don't blog for money, but because they like to discuss.

Grorgy:
Now, how do we disable the ads in that advertising brochure that masquerades as a newsletter?

Lashiec:
Well, the idea is to always support those sites you regularly visit by whitelisting them in the adblocker you use. Both Opera and Firefox (via Adblock Plus) require a few clicks to achieve this, and global apps should be similar.

In any case, it's not exactly clear you're denying revenue to a site by blocking their ads. While it must be true for those that rely on clicks (and let's be realistic, not many people remember to click through), it seems like for those that use page views as a measure, ad blocking does not affect them... and now I can't find the reference. Besides, the number of users of adblock is not as high as you might think

mouser:
we should all support sites we like.
if you block ads -- find another way to support them.. maybe it means donating, maybe it means telling friends about the site, maybe it means just sending them an encouraging note, maybe it means leaving a comment on their posts, etc.

personally i find the ad-based web quite troubling -- i can't quite put my finger on why it bothers me so much.. it's not so much the ads themselves that bother me, as much as it is the fact that the entire content of the web is being warped in a bad way in order to appeal to advertisers, and the fact that we are basically living in google's world now, where the entire internet is increasingly focused on creating stuff that advertisers want to advertise on, and google's goal in life is to sink it's teeth into everything it can get its hands on in order to ensure that they are the advertising middleman for every site on the planet.

Are we soon going to get to a point where music and books are all free, but filled with google advertising? And book content is written mainly with the aim of attracting advertisers and click-through users? ugh.

Anyway -- in my dream world, individuals would donate and help sites (and artists) that they like, and the advertisers and advertising middle-men can go sit in the corner and suck on their thumbs.. but i know it's just not realistic currently -- people just don't donate enough (and it's not easiest enough to donate) to make that a feasible way for sites to get funded.  so the ads may be the best way for small sites to get funded -- and i don't for a minute say they shouldn't.

Bottom line -- support people who do stuff you like, so they can keep doing it.  If you can't support them one way, find another.  Even if its just putting out a little good karma in the world.

kartal:
Google adsense is so widespread it is like virus, it is google nonsense to me anymore. I get so many wrongly diagnosed direct advertisements which means that whatever they are showing has no relationship to my liking or needs. Anyways I have never clicked on a banner in my whole life. So I would block any ad as much as I can. If the visitor needs to support his favorite website then s/he needs to find other means and ways.

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