Old guy checking in. When ad blockers first became a thing, my then-teenaged boys started using one and were trying to talk me into it. I was pretty dubious. I said my concern was that the model most of the web was built on was ad-supported. That is, people created content on the web to try and get visitors, and made money by selling ads on their site, or used monetized links. If everyone started using ad blockers, I said, that model would break down and either people would stop creating content or they’d go to a new model, like subscriptions. I figured few people would take time equivalent to a full time job to create content for free.
I think that largely came to pass. A lot of great online publications have closed their doors, and the are lots of paywalls now. The things is, the sites are just as much to blame. Most people wouldn’t have been driven to use ad blockers if the ads hadn’t gotten so untenable. A banner or a box here or there is one thing, but when there are a giant number of pop-up windows, autoplay videos, windows you can’t back out of, and all the other hellish stuff, people are going to be highly motivated to find a way to stop it.
That whole arms race was one of the things that ruined the internet, in my opinion.
I think it is worth mentioning that patreon also surfaced as a means to provide income for creators. Whether this was a direct result of ad blockers may be debatable. However, patreon certainly provides creators with an avenue to generate income that is not dependent on ads services.
Then there are also creator focused platforms like nebula and curiosity stream, which aim to provide creators with a fair share of generated revenue.
All in all, my take on the developments over the past ten years or so is that ad revenue sharing (with creators) provided an important impulse to establish the field of online content creation, and that shortcomings of this model are now being addressed. Mainly to funnel more money to the content creators rather than platform owners.
Eh, I’m not sure it’s much improved. In the ad model, the content creator owned the site and got money from selling ads. The more traffic they got, the more they could charge. In the new model, a corporation owns the site and takes a cut of whatever the creator generates.
Not necessarily. For instance, YouTube uses the old ad model and is of course not creator owned.
Additionally, you can use patreon while also using (and capitalising on) your own content distribution systems.
This is all to say, I do think the ad model may stay somewhat relevant, however, I also think that other income avenues are helpful and enable content creators more flexibility in terms of the manner in which they think they can best reach their audiences while generating income
Worth pointing out that ad blockers don’t work for ads that are inserted into a video stream, so there was no need to change that model there. Also, YouTube is an example of a site that’s not owned by the content creator. YouTube makes the money from the ads, then gives the significant creators a cut.
I wonder how stable the situation for in-stream ads really is. Paid sponsorships are nothing new, yet with browser extensions like sponsorblock becoming more and more popular I doubt the arms race will stop any time soon.
Not sure if arms race is the right way to put it when 1 side is deploying nukes and the other is only deploying shields. Money ruined the internet, ads is just one way how it did that.
That actually is a major facet of the military arms race. Side A develops a missile. Side B develops an anti-missile missile. So side A develops a missile with multiple warheads or builds more missiles so they won’t all be shot down, etc. The defensive systems spawn the development of more or more-devastating offensive systems.
I used to not care about ads in Google because they were minimal. I was OK with ABP “acceptable ads”.
But I’ve since gone full scorched earth. Fuck them all, their trackers, their fake news, the terrible products. I’m still OK with ads in my search results (no longer using Google) because they are often relevant to something I’m looking for. But for the rest, the Web stopped deserving my respect. I don’t consume that much content online, and I pay for most of the few things I do consume.
As a software and data guy, having my search results tainted by paid content is pretty infuriating. I wouldn’t care if there were ads to the side or something, but I find things like Amazon’s search results almost completely unusable. And early on I used to point out to people how amazing Amazon’s search engine really was. It was a marvel at getting you to exactly what you were looking to buy. Now it’s optimized for showing you what they want to sell.
It really doesn’t matter what the users did in response, because the MBAs’ greed is such that they would have eventually ruined everything anyway no matter how compliant or patient the users were. It doesn’t matter how much they get, it’s never enough.
I’m also old (well, middle-aged is the right word I guess), but having lived through the adpocalypse that was the early 2000s, when the majority of sites were rushing to demonstrate their lofty stock valuations and satisfy their debtors by bringing in as much revenue as possible no matter the cost to the user base, I never really had that much patience for this business model, especially not once they discovered the concept of pop-ups (or worse, pop-unders).
I’ve also personally worked for a site whose business model was entirely based on SEO and click funneling and that has further eroded my patience to pretty zero. Pretty much none of our developer meetings were ever about “how can we make the product more useful to our users so they’ll actually WANT to come back”, it was always “our numbers are declining, how can we jam in more ads in order to meet the quarterly revenue goals?”
Yes, there are some sites that DO work hard to make actual, original content in order to earn those clicks, but for the most part, it’s an amoral, downright parasitical industry that doesn’t deserve any sympathy or goodwill.
I’m perfectly happy to pay for things I value, especially if the alternative is being forced to pay with my time and attention. The evidence also doesn’t entirely support your argument, since plenty of places that you pay for still try to show ads.
The evidence also doesn’t entirely support your argument, since plenty of places that you pay for still try to show ads.
Where was it ever said that a site could only use one model? The same is/was true of newspapers that cost you a subscription but also sold ads. Without the ads, the subscription would be much more expensive.
I personally am unlikely to pay for a huge variety of news sites and other publications, but I really appreciated having access to all that content for free. Sure, I might pay for one or two especially valuable sites, but my personal opinion is that it was better when the sites were making enough money to make it worthwhile for them by selling a reasonable amount of advertising, and the content was free to the users.
If your claim were accurate, they wouldn’t have to resort to putting ads on websites that are subscription based.
Unless you want to make the argument they’re just greedy bastards, which then means your first argument is bull, because they were already greedy bastards enshittifying it all well before adblockers were even close to commonplace.
And again, adblockers even today account for a fraction of users.
42% is a fraction, but it’s a huge fraction. Higher in some demographics, lower in others.
If your claim were accurate, they wouldn’t have to resort to putting ads on websites that are subscription based.
How do you figure? Most business ventures will ask themselves how much a customer would pay for their product. If the answer is lower than enough to make product, they either won’t enter the market or they’ll figure out a way to lower the price. Selling ads is a way to lower the price. Also worth noting that ads used to generate a lot more revenue than they do now.
As I said elsewhere, for most products, the makers ask how much they think people would be willing to pay for it. If that price is lower than an amount that would generate reasonable profit, they’ll either no go to market or they’ll look for ways to reduce or offset costs. Ads are a common way of keeping the price within what people are willing to pay.
You’re right that ads supported the model, but the model was also generally anarcho-communist in nature. That people wanted to experience it without ads was expected, and considered fine. It is fine.
Old guy checking in. When ad blockers first became a thing, my then-teenaged boys started using one and were trying to talk me into it. I was pretty dubious. I said my concern was that the model most of the web was built on was ad-supported. That is, people created content on the web to try and get visitors, and made money by selling ads on their site, or used monetized links. If everyone started using ad blockers, I said, that model would break down and either people would stop creating content or they’d go to a new model, like subscriptions. I figured few people would take time equivalent to a full time job to create content for free.
I think that largely came to pass. A lot of great online publications have closed their doors, and the are lots of paywalls now. The things is, the sites are just as much to blame. Most people wouldn’t have been driven to use ad blockers if the ads hadn’t gotten so untenable. A banner or a box here or there is one thing, but when there are a giant number of pop-up windows, autoplay videos, windows you can’t back out of, and all the other hellish stuff, people are going to be highly motivated to find a way to stop it.
That whole arms race was one of the things that ruined the internet, in my opinion.
I think it is worth mentioning that patreon also surfaced as a means to provide income for creators. Whether this was a direct result of ad blockers may be debatable. However, patreon certainly provides creators with an avenue to generate income that is not dependent on ads services.
Then there are also creator focused platforms like nebula and curiosity stream, which aim to provide creators with a fair share of generated revenue.
All in all, my take on the developments over the past ten years or so is that ad revenue sharing (with creators) provided an important impulse to establish the field of online content creation, and that shortcomings of this model are now being addressed. Mainly to funnel more money to the content creators rather than platform owners.
Eh, I’m not sure it’s much improved. In the ad model, the content creator owned the site and got money from selling ads. The more traffic they got, the more they could charge. In the new model, a corporation owns the site and takes a cut of whatever the creator generates.
Not necessarily. For instance, YouTube uses the old ad model and is of course not creator owned.
Additionally, you can use patreon while also using (and capitalising on) your own content distribution systems.
This is all to say, I do think the ad model may stay somewhat relevant, however, I also think that other income avenues are helpful and enable content creators more flexibility in terms of the manner in which they think they can best reach their audiences while generating income
Worth pointing out that ad blockers don’t work for ads that are inserted into a video stream, so there was no need to change that model there. Also, YouTube is an example of a site that’s not owned by the content creator. YouTube makes the money from the ads, then gives the significant creators a cut.
I wonder how stable the situation for in-stream ads really is. Paid sponsorships are nothing new, yet with browser extensions like sponsorblock becoming more and more popular I doubt the arms race will stop any time soon.
Not sure if arms race is the right way to put it when 1 side is deploying nukes and the other is only deploying shields. Money ruined the internet, ads is just one way how it did that.
That actually is a major facet of the military arms race. Side A develops a missile. Side B develops an anti-missile missile. So side A develops a missile with multiple warheads or builds more missiles so they won’t all be shot down, etc. The defensive systems spawn the development of more or more-devastating offensive systems.
I still see one party racing with arms and one party trying to survive.
I used to not care about ads in Google because they were minimal. I was OK with ABP “acceptable ads”.
But I’ve since gone full scorched earth. Fuck them all, their trackers, their fake news, the terrible products. I’m still OK with ads in my search results (no longer using Google) because they are often relevant to something I’m looking for. But for the rest, the Web stopped deserving my respect. I don’t consume that much content online, and I pay for most of the few things I do consume.
As a software and data guy, having my search results tainted by paid content is pretty infuriating. I wouldn’t care if there were ads to the side or something, but I find things like Amazon’s search results almost completely unusable. And early on I used to point out to people how amazing Amazon’s search engine really was. It was a marvel at getting you to exactly what you were looking to buy. Now it’s optimized for showing you what they want to sell.
It really doesn’t matter what the users did in response, because the MBAs’ greed is such that they would have eventually ruined everything anyway no matter how compliant or patient the users were. It doesn’t matter how much they get, it’s never enough.
It was already being enshittified, adblockers had fuck all to do with it since even today they represent a fraction of all users.
The jack wagons who decided to push web 2.0 as a money making gig are to blame, not the users.
I’m also old (well, middle-aged is the right word I guess), but having lived through the adpocalypse that was the early 2000s, when the majority of sites were rushing to demonstrate their lofty stock valuations and satisfy their debtors by bringing in as much revenue as possible no matter the cost to the user base, I never really had that much patience for this business model, especially not once they discovered the concept of pop-ups (or worse, pop-unders).
I’ve also personally worked for a site whose business model was entirely based on SEO and click funneling and that has further eroded my patience to pretty zero. Pretty much none of our developer meetings were ever about “how can we make the product more useful to our users so they’ll actually WANT to come back”, it was always “our numbers are declining, how can we jam in more ads in order to meet the quarterly revenue goals?”
Yes, there are some sites that DO work hard to make actual, original content in order to earn those clicks, but for the most part, it’s an amoral, downright parasitical industry that doesn’t deserve any sympathy or goodwill.
I’m perfectly happy to pay for things I value, especially if the alternative is being forced to pay with my time and attention. The evidence also doesn’t entirely support your argument, since plenty of places that you pay for still try to show ads.
Where was it ever said that a site could only use one model? The same is/was true of newspapers that cost you a subscription but also sold ads. Without the ads, the subscription would be much more expensive.
I personally am unlikely to pay for a huge variety of news sites and other publications, but I really appreciated having access to all that content for free. Sure, I might pay for one or two especially valuable sites, but my personal opinion is that it was better when the sites were making enough money to make it worthwhile for them by selling a reasonable amount of advertising, and the content was free to the users.
If your claim were accurate, they wouldn’t have to resort to putting ads on websites that are subscription based.
Unless you want to make the argument they’re just greedy bastards, which then means your first argument is bull, because they were already greedy bastards enshittifying it all well before adblockers were even close to commonplace.
And again, adblockers even today account for a fraction of users.
42% is a fraction, but it’s a huge fraction. Higher in some demographics, lower in others.
How do you figure? Most business ventures will ask themselves how much a customer would pay for their product. If the answer is lower than enough to make product, they either won’t enter the market or they’ll figure out a way to lower the price. Selling ads is a way to lower the price. Also worth noting that ads used to generate a lot more revenue than they do now.
“Without the ads, the subscription would be much more expensive.”
That’s not at all how it works. How is it that adults think prices are based on costs? They teach supply and demand in high school.
As I said elsewhere, for most products, the makers ask how much they think people would be willing to pay for it. If that price is lower than an amount that would generate reasonable profit, they’ll either no go to market or they’ll look for ways to reduce or offset costs. Ads are a common way of keeping the price within what people are willing to pay.
No, that assumes that prices are based on cost, which is not true. Ads are a way to make money on top of what people will pay.
He didn’t write a multi page thesis covering every single use case, quick tell him he’s wrong!
No, that’s what ruined the web.
You’re right that ads supported the model, but the model was also generally anarcho-communist in nature. That people wanted to experience it without ads was expected, and considered fine. It is fine.