To Block or Not to Block Online Ads

By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries

A Conde Nast site’s attempt this weekend to block users who block ads presents yet another question about the painful transition from traditional to online media — what to do about anti-ad software.

Technology-news site Ars Technica tried an experiment Friday: It blocked its content for users who were employing a particular ad-blocking tool. The response from the site’s readers consisted of confusion, some apologies and a considerable amount of indignation — prompting editor Ken Fisher to pen a piece entitled “Why Ad-Blocking Is Devastating to the Sites You Love.”

The gist of Mr. Fisher’s argument is this: Unless they use a subscription model, sites rely on advertising to survive. And although some of this advertising is on a pay-per-click basis, much of it is under a pay-per-view system. Furthermore, unlike in the world of print and television advertising, where measurement is fuzzy, advertisers online count whether an ad is loaded or not. This means that people who block ads are denying revenue to the sites they visit. As he puts it: “Imagine running a restaurant where 40% of the people who came and ate didn’t pay. In a way, that’s what ad blocking is doing to us.”

Mr. Fisher was careful to say that he wouldn’t call ad-blocking a form of stealing, and he wasn’t referring to the pop-up blockers that are now standard on Web browsers. But he painted a dramatically grim picture of sites that are forced to cut staff and content because they rely on ads that people are blocking.

Some of those who are blocking ads simply don’t want to see any advertising, ever. So much of the content online is repeated from other sources that it becomes a commodity — a case that many commenters on the Ars post mentioned. And a cadre of Internet users are of the opinion that content “wants to be free,” not in a freedom-of-information sense but in a free-lunch sense. It’s a problem that media companies have been facing for several years now.

Still others make the case that ads interfere with their browsing experience. And it’s true: Nobody likes ads that fly in from the margins and sit over text that you’re trying to read. Ads that send your information to third parties rightly provoke concern, as do ads for potentially dangerous sites.

But there does seem to be a middle ground between blocking all ads and being inundated. As Mr. Fisher pointed out, he and others at his site had assumed that people who were blocking ads were “doing so with malice.” It turns out that, after being told of the problem, many readers “whitelisted” Ars Technica — or set their software to allow ads from the site.

Readers, what do you think? Do you use ad-blocking software, and to what extent?