Many consider this to be a controversial topic and there are generally only two camps that most people fall into. There is the “content creators live off the ad revenue they receive and the ads are not that bad” and then there is the “ads are ruining my browsing experience, so they are going to have to go when I browse“.
My position on the ads that are shown on websites has changed over the years. At first I was extremely annoyed by them (no matter the type of ad) so when the various ad blocking extensions arrived for Google Chrome I jumped right on them. Later on I took the position where the ads were not too annoying so I did not use any ad blocker. Now I have come back into the camp where ads on sites are just plain intrusive, in your face and annoying, that ruin your browsing and content consumption experience. If I was a major content provider I would make sure that the ads that I was offering were non-intrusive.
The type of ads that I don’t mind are the ones that sit in the background, don’t play any audio or video, and absolutely do not change the way that the website is presented; YouTube ads obviously are a different story and because I subscribe to YouTube Red I don’t see YouTube ads. What I found while not using an ad blocker extension recently was that there are more and more ads being shown on the various sites that I visit that completely rearrange the website’s content and either have intrusive audio playing or banners popping up. The worst experience that I have had was on mobile where the page’s content would load and then all the ads would load which rearranges the content or there is a pop up that has a difficult close button to press.
If content creators were so concerned about the ad blockers being used then maybe the ads that they show should not be so intrusive. A good example of intrusive website ads from a couple of weeks ago was on the video gaming site IGN and there was a promotion running. Not only was the home page of the site littered with ads for the promotion (banners on the top and both sides), but a large pop up ad was shown that played a video with muted audio. If you did close the pop up and started scrolling a small banner would follow that detailed the same promotion. This situation right there is intrusive and in my opinion should not be allowed. It ruined my browsing experience, slowed the site down, and also made actually viewing the content much more difficult. With the ad blocker on the page loaded significantly faster, there was no banner ads and the annoying pop up ad was gone.
As long as these types of practices for ads being displayed on websites continue then people are going to use ad blockers. I am fine with the top and side banners displaying the ads as it did not take away from the content itself and they did not ruin the experience. Having an ad pop up play a muted video and then have a banner ad follow you as you scrolled through the page is not consumer friendly and intrusive. So for the foreseeable future if websites continue to provide these intrusive ads then I am going to continue to use block the ads. If a site however is providing consumer friendly ads then I will white list the site and allow the ads to be shown. What are your experiences with ads on certain sites? And do you use an ad blocker while you browse the Internet?
Christopher Tom Kochovski 