Reformed Adblocker Speaks Out

Like most internet users, I am annoyed by ads. So I use Adblock Plus in Firefox to eliminate ads. Seems like 28,742,796 people agree with me, since that's the number of downloads Adblock Plus has had, according to Mozilla.com (as I write this). That's a lot of people saying one thing: "Stop bugging me with ads." But is it throwing out the baby with the bathwater?

Many (most?) web site survive on a mixture of ad revenue and sales. One of which is minute (ad revenue hangs around $0.005 per view, so 1,000 views will pay $5.00), the other is relatively large (buying a shirt at $30 or so). Used correctly, the two can be used to create sustainable income. Sustainable for the site bills, not necessarily for the owner's, anyway. But the problem comes from logic that "if a little is good, more will be better," in this case, a little advertising generates X dollars, then more, intrusive, annoying advertising will generate X+Y dollars (I'm not even going to bother to make up numbers).

Those of you who have been around long enough remember the progression. First, a banner ad at the top of the site. Then, an X10 pop-up (remember those?), then an inter-site ad between pages. Now, all of those above, plus the textual-context pop-up and whatever else they can think of. At some point the line was crossed and Adblock became a lifesaver. People said "Enough blinking, flashing punching of monkeys!" and blocked it all.

Then along came Google, with simple, targeted text ads. It's like the English butler of web ads. "Excuse me sir, if I may, I have some products that may be related to what you are looking at. They're over here if you'd like." Compared to the used-car salesman method used before, Google single-handedly overhauled the web advertising model. But, how many people can see them, assuming they are blocking all ads with Adblock? Some may argue that they will look for products when they look for products and content when they look for content and don't want the two to mix. That's fine, those people are not the ones I'm worried about.

I think a reasonable middle-ground can be reached. Use Adblock, but with a whitelist to approve of sites that you enjoy/aren't annoying with their ads. Start with this:

@@/pagead2.googlesyndication.com/*$script,subdocument

to unblock Google ads. Then remember to right-click on the Adblock stop sign icon and click "Disable on site" so they can get some of their revenue back.

I think a more permanent solution can be found with something like OpenID. With it, you can have an account and log into any participating site. Using it, a site (or series of sites) can track how much a user has contributed and show/hide ads appropriately. If a user makes a donation of $10, they don't see ads for a year. Like a subscription, but applied to all the sites under the umbrella. Recognizing that:

• people want something other than being bombarded by ads
• web sites won't survive without revenue

will create a new model that benefits everyone.