Blocked ad banners.

Is it right to block banner ads and such from being rendered on a page?  We're talking just personal use, ignoring site policies, etc.

Appending to my post, let's not argue over differences between an image not being rendered or some peice of software actually removing the image from the page, keeping it from downloading altogether, it's over the idea of keeping the user from seeing it because the user chooses not to.

Wrong?  Of course not.  Advertisers are paying for the right to display their ads on a web page.  You're under no obligation whatsoever to look at them.

If you were driving down the highway, you'd be under no obligation to read billboards if you didn't want to.  You could just keep your eyes on the road and keep driving.  You can channel surf whenever commercials come on and come back when your TV show returns.  The internet is no different -- you can pay attention to whatever you want, and ignore everything else.

If you block ads, the site may earn less money because there's less views on the ad, and thus the site itself may be hurt for lack of funds.  For that reason, I'll generally not block ads on sites unless they're particularly annoying or gum up my browser somehow.

>>3

You don't have the right to chop billboards down, or jam the TV station's signal whenever the commercials come on.  How is advertising any different?

>>4
but the billboards are being displayed on my personal 'space'. i think i should have control over that

>>4
When your get one of those packets of 4x6 advertisements with your mail, you can do whatever you want with it.  Including taking a nice fat black marker and marking out anything you don't like.

On a side note, after installing NoScript (a Javascript blocker/allower) for Firefox, I've gotten a lot less ads without much reduced functionality for most sites.  And I only wanted to block advance popups and stop poorly written JS from eating my cpu.

>>4
True, but you also don't have the right to crack into a webpage and remove the ad scripts.  You do, however, have a right to fast-forward through commercials or throw out newspaper inserts without even looking at them, if you so desire.

Advertisers pay for delivery, not results.  After the webpage delivers the ads (by giving you the code to load and display them), it's up to you what you want to do with them.

Advertisers pay for delivery, not results.

As a webmaster, let me say: if only.

If impressions were all that counted, 4chan wouldn't need to have donation drives either. What a wonderful world that would be.

I block ads because for 1/2 of the websites I visit, I feel that I'm doing the owners a favor by visiting them, not the other way around. What's ironic, is that the more I feel that way, the more ads the website has and the more annoying they are. See: shit news websites, AOL, forums, reviews.

As for websites like 4chan, torrent sites, or informational: I block ads because I would never click them, not because they annoy me. I feel the same way about TV commercials: their single  purpose is brand name dissemination, not advertising.  In my opinion the only advertisements which ever work well are Google AdSense because they're strictly relevant to what you want, not what they want you to want. Once advertisers realize this and drop Flash, I may rethink my stance. For now: fuck ads.

>>10
Because you block ads from 'websites like 4chan, torrent sites, or informational', you are losing them money because I think they pay the websites by how many people downloaded their ads.

No, they don't. If you're lucky they'll pay you based on clicks. The norm seems to be based on whether someone clicks and buys something.

However, removing ads still works against the site. Ads are shown knowing that maybe 0.01% will click on it. If adblock is used, that's 0.00%. That miniscule difference can spell the difference between life and death (or subcriptions) for a site.

Come to think of it, maybe impressions are sufficient for the really obtrusive flash ads, but of course they're also a sure-fire way to drive people from your site.

Intestitial ads are teh suck. So is flash. So are animated ads.

Advetisers should really use less moving pictures and blinking lights in their ads. I learned to ignore them in less than a month after I started using the internet until I found adblocking software. There is less of chance of people adblocking it too.

Im doing the advertizers a favor by blocking thier ad, I dont use thier band width, and I dont kill people because I got so pissed waiting for a page with 50 fucking adds to load.

The day I first came upon a flash ad featuring sound was the same day I took a proactive stance on blocking ads.