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Forums - Website Topics - Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love

rendo on 06 March 2010
phxprovost said:
Personally i would like to know when exactly it became my moral responsibility to look at all the ads that sites are willing to throw at me. Last time i checked its not my problem if your overwhelming revenue takes a small hit because i value my pc's health and maintaining my ISP bill. Honestly if sites want to start locking content from those who do not view adds then by all means go for it but dont be surprised by the victor in that war of attrition when people leave your sites in droves

Just like people who pirate games and find cracks for all the DRM, there will be a way around this.  I'm not too worried about it.



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epicurean on 06 March 2010
ioi said:
Games4Fun said:
People get up grab snacks, use restroom, or change channels with the other ads you mentioned. So in many ways the I dont want annoying ads so ill just remove them happens to those also.

No one like ads no one ever will. The day some people (myself also) can not block them is the day they will not bother to visit any of those sites.

No, that's the distinction here. There is a difference between not taking notice of an ad and preventing it from displaying. In the first scenario the media company still gets paid, in the second they don't.

You can ignore ads all day, no problem, but physically blocking them from displaying is a different matter entirely.

 

To address other points, I know a lot of people block ads because of genuine security concerns, spyware, viruses etc and this is the counter-argument given for why adblockers are good. I absolutely agree that it is the responsibility of the website to ensure that ads are free of this and while there have been 2 occasions (in nearly 5 years) that I recall that we've had a malicious ad, this hasn't happened for a while now. The last couple of issues have been with people placing malicious code in their forum sigs which is somethinn we have worked to fix now as well.

In terms of general comments about how annoying ads are - I'm share the view of some of the comments here in that I don't really know what all of these annoying ads are that people are complaining about. In the US we have ads like Dragon Age, Dawn of War II, Heavy Rain, Bad Company 2, The Show 2010, Just Cause 2 - premium ads from premuim ad providers. In the UK we have Final Fantasy XIII, Xbox Live, recently we've had White Knight Chronicles, From Paris with Love. A lot of work has been done to provide high-quality gaming ads (they pay better plus they fit better with the site) and remove the low quality ad networks so I'm not really sure where comments of weight-loss and evony ads are coming from either...


I'm glad you are doing what you can to clean them up.  As I stated above, I had a malware attack in the last week.  Luckily I have Windows 7 on that computer and I don't think the malware knew how to get past its security, so it didn't affect me.  I'm not sure if it was from an ad or a signature, but it popped up when I came to the home page. 

If the issues are only signature related now, is there something enabled on this site that isn't on other forum sites?  I don't have problems on other sites (though to be honest, I dont visit a lot of other forums).  I'm guessing if it would cut down on the attacks pretty much everyone would understand if you had to disable something in the sigs. 

As for the evony and weight loss ads - I don't care as long as they don't have viruses, but I have an evony ad on my page right now, and just saw a weight loss ad on the previous ad.  I'm in the US (Nebraska) running IE8.



Owner of PS4 Pro, Xbox One, Switch, PS Vita, and 3DS

rendo on 06 March 2010
ioi said:
rendo said:

I pay for the internet to view websites, I don't need to "pay", as per your view about ads, for sites.  When the internet first started there were no ads.  But everything has to make money somehow so ads were created.  And ads became annoying so something was created to stop ads.  It is my very right on what I want to see or not see on a website, just like if you decided to block content to people who utilized ad blocking, that'd be your right.  I think you should really count your blessings and deal with the percentage of people that block ads.  Blocking ads is no different than turing off the radio during commercials, since radio is free, but is paid for via ads.

As I said a few posts up, the difference with radio is that the station gets paid for the ad whether you listen to it or not. There is a difference between taking no notice of an ad and blocking it being shown (and in the process preventing it from being counted and paid for).

You say it's your right on what you want to see or not to see - not exactly. You use the website under the terms of service offered. If we were to try to combat this issue and made it so that users with adblockers would be blocked from using the site then you have two clear options as I listed - view the site + ads or pay to have ads removed (three if you count not visiting the site at all). It's not your right to be able to view the site without ads (morally at the moment but potentially enforced in the future).

 

As most of you know, if we ever have a serious site issue with ads I'm always active in trying to rectify the issue as soon as possible. There is again a difference between ignoring / allowing a problem (which we don't) and trying to fix a problem but it taking a finite amount of time to do so.

And you get paid regardless by people who don't block the ads.  What's your point?



phxprovost on 06 March 2010
ioi said:
rendo said:

I pay for the internet to view websites, I don't need to "pay", as per your view about ads, for sites.  When the internet first started there were no ads.  But everything has to make money somehow so ads were created.  And ads became annoying so something was created to stop ads.  It is my very right on what I want to see or not see on a website, just like if you decided to block content to people who utilized ad blocking, that'd be your right.  I think you should really count your blessings and deal with the percentage of people that block ads.  Blocking ads is no different than turing off the radio during commercials, since radio is free, but is paid for via ads.

As I said a few posts up, the difference with radio is that the station gets paid for the ad whether you listen to it or not. There is a difference between taking no notice of an ad and blocking it being shown (and in the process preventing it from being counted and paid for).

You say it's your right on what you want to see or not to see - not exactly. You use the website under the terms of service offered. If we were to try to combat this issue and made it so that users with adblockers would be blocked from using the site then you have two clear options as I listed - view the site + ads or pay to have ads removed (three if you count not visiting the site at all). It's not your right to be able to view the site without ads (morally at the moment but potentially enforced in the future).

 

As most of you know, if we ever have a serious site issue with ads I'm always active in trying to rectify the issue as soon as possible. There is again a difference between ignoring / allowing a problem (which we don't) and trying to fix a problem but it taking a finite amount of time to do so.

I find it amusing that you are throwing around morality in this situation when about 98% of the information i view on this site comes from other sites on the internet.  So are you not being moraly bankrupt by taking content from other sites and reporting it here and making a profit off it?

AND LAST TIME I CHECKED THERE WAS NO TOS FOR SIMPLY BROWSING A WEB SITE



thranx on 06 March 2010

I haven't had a chance to read all of the posts, but I do agree with what the author says, but at the same time consumers (us viewing ads) need assurance that ads will not hurt our computers. And I know the staff here tries to do that but the only reason I got an ad blocker was because of this site. I caught at least one bad virus because of intrusive ads, and for awhile couldn't even visit here as every link redirected me. What are we as users supposed to do especially when it takes days for ads to change sometimes. I will give this site a shot again will the ad blockers off, but if the ads get all intusive and start causing problems up it goes again.

Also i do not frequent any other game sites so I do not know how bad their ads are, but I have never had problems Like I have had with the ads on this site. I dont know if its a us (or america) thing but I browse all sorts of other sites with no issues.



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phxprovost on 06 March 2010
ioi said:
phxprovost said:

Personally i would like to know when exactly it became my moral responsibility to look at all the ads that sites are willing to throw at me. Last time i checked its not my problem if your overwhelming revenue takes a small hit because i value my pc's health and maintaining my ISP bill. Honestly if sites want to start locking content from those who do not view adds then by all means go for it but dont be surprised by the outcome in that war of attrition when people leave your sites in droves

Nobody is asking you to look at the ads, I'm saying that technically you don't have the right to block them from showing (even though you can).

As I've directly commented, the health of your PC and not spreading malware or viruses is of prime importance to everyone who runs VGChartz. Whether you believe it or not, the occasional issues we have are no more frequent than on any other site.

As for blocking users with adblockers, since those users are already blocking ads anyway we'd be no worse off from a financial point of view - obviously it would be a shame from a personal point of view to lose certain users but you'd hope that those serious enough about the site would either disable their adblocker or pay to have ads removed...

Show me the agreement i accepted that tells me i dont have the right to block them



zone16 on 06 March 2010

I'll keep blocking all ads. They are annoying to me and sometimes they can carry a malicious code and infect your computer with viruses.



rendo on 06 March 2010
ioi said:
phxprovost said:

So me the agreement i accepted that tells me i dont have the right to block them

I'm telling you now...

http://www.vgchartz.com/terms.php

 

Where exactly is it in there?



epicurean on 06 March 2010
ioi said:
phxprovost said:

Personally i would like to know when exactly it became my moral responsibility to look at all the ads that sites are willing to throw at me. Last time i checked its not my problem if your overwhelming revenue takes a small hit because i value my pc's health and maintaining my ISP bill. Honestly if sites want to start locking content from those who do not view adds then by all means go for it but dont be surprised by the outcome in that war of attrition when people leave your sites in droves

Nobody is asking you to look at the ads, I'm saying that technically you don't have the right to block them from showing (even though you can).

As I've directly commented, the health of your PC and not spreading malware or viruses is of prime importance to everyone who runs VGChartz. Whether you believe it or not, the occasional issues we have are no more frequent than on any other site.

As for blocking users with adblockers, since those users are already blocking ads anyway we'd be no worse off from a financial point of view - obviously it would be a shame from a personal point of view to lose certain users but you'd hope that those serious enough about the site would either disable their adblocker or pay to have ads removed...


I'm honestly not trying to be confrontational, but when you said "the occasional issues we have are no more frequent than on any other site", all I can say is that in the US, at least where I live, this is simply not true.  Over that past year, I have had more problems/attacks on my computer from this site than from every other site I go to combined.  And its not even close.

I say that not to be mean, or be on the "ad-blockers" side, but simply with the hope that you realize that there really is a problem with the ads in Americaon this site. 



Owner of PS4 Pro, Xbox One, Switch, PS Vita, and 3DS

phxprovost on 06 March 2010
rendo said:
ioi said:
phxprovost said:

So me the agreement i accepted that tells me i dont have the right to block them

I'm telling you now...

http://www.vgchartz.com/terms.php

 

Where exactly is it in there?

Its not in there but this is "You may be exposed to content that you find offensive, indecent, or objectionable or that is inaccurate, and you bear all risks associated with accessing or using that content."
So pretty much according to the admin here not only do you not have the right to block an ad, its completely your responsibility if that ad has malware in it and messes up your pc, or if you find the ad offensive you simply have to deal with it