The Unseen Effects Of Ad-blocking On Websites

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The use of ad-blocking or ad-filtering is becoming far more common for web users and brings with it a real danger to paid search marketing. Essentially ad-blocking ad-ons (that’s a tongue twister), which are free and easy to download for all major web browsers prevent ads of all types (video, text, interactive) from being viewed by the user. I downloaded the Firefox ad-on at the start of the year and couldn’t believe I didn’t do it earlier. No ads on google searches, no annoying pop-ups when downloading music and most noticeably no Youtube ads whilst your video loads; a true utopia it seemed.

 

 

So what effect does using this feature have on the online world. Straight off the bat all PPC (pay per click) and PPV (pay per view) advertising is essentially killed because without the ad being viewed there’s no way you can click or view it. Who cares, you say? What does it matter if the advertising company doesn’t get their ad view to you? Well the real damage of this actually hits the websites we use and love. Most websites, especially those with free content, gain their main source of revenue from advertising. So blocking these ads you are essentially blocking your favourite website from being paid. This can result in lesser quality content and site performance as corners need to be cut to salvage the site. Ken Fisher of Arstechnica, describes it as the equivalent of eating a meal at a restaurant and not paying, you’re using their facilities but giving nothing in return. It seems this utopia comes at price after all.

 

 

It leaves me and I’m sure others in an awkward position. On the one hand the feature of no ads is extremely beneficial and time saving however knowing I’m damaging favoured websites by not doing something as simple as ignoring ads also makes me uneasy…

 

What do you think? Are you a proud ad blocker? Were you aware of the harm ad-blocking can cause to websites? Do the benefits outweigh the costs? Let me know in the comments…

7 thoughts on “The Unseen Effects Of Ad-blocking On Websites”

  1. I’ve never tried ad-blocking. I don’t find ads to be too much of a time-waster, but maybe that’s a misconception – once I block them perhaps I would realise what a distraction they are!

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  2. I haven’t really thought about the harm that blocking ads can cause to websites, but it makes sense! Going a bit off-topic here but when you think about it, we can download so many apps on our Smartphones for free – all we have to do is put up with a few ads. But once we wish to remove these ads, we have to pay for our favourite apps and services, so hopefully the majority of websites don’t have to go down this path. Personally, I haven’t used an ad-blocker but then again I don’t really notice those ads floating around google searches – only those highly annoying ads that you have to watch before a YouTube video loads!

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  3. Adblockers have brought my website revenue down to just enough to pay the bills. There is no sense in any further development as there is no money in it. I have blocked adblocker users from my most popular sites, there is no sense in letting freeloaders use bandwidth that I pay for.

    Adblock users get belligerent when you tell them how they are hurting the future of the web. The future holds premium and paid websites only because the days of ad supported free web is coming to an end.

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  4. Thanks for your comments, Scott it’s interesting and unfortunate to see the real damage ad-blocking has done to your website and earnings. I think it is going to become more and more common for companies and websites to use a freemium earning structure to combat the increased frequency of ad-blocking.

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  7. No, I’m not aware of this. I mean I do understand that some websites use the ads as revenue but I’m sometimes annoyed with the ads. If the ads is not too hard/annoying . I will be fine and I respect that

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