Adblock doesn’t scare me
Adblock doesn’t scare me. Adblock will not signal the end of the commercial web. Adblock will not bring Rapture upon the internet faithful before Armageddon. I don’t care if they claim 300,000 people are downloading it a month. It just doesn’t phase me. It’s only physically blocking ads from people that mentally block them anyway.
I make money on the internet. I make money off of online advertising. if anyone should be afraid of Adblock, it’s me. And yet I’m not.
Ask any online publisher — Firefox users click less ads. The sweet spot of online visitors are Internet Explorer users who came from a Yahoo/MSN search. They’re the ones clicking the ads. And quite frankly, they’re too stupid to install Adblock. They’re the ones we make money off. So what’s the use if we start blocking ads from people who already mentally block them out? It’s kind of like passing a law to remove all meat from Vegetarian stores.
Adblock is good for the online ecosystem. There was a time on the internet when banner ads could fetch $5-$10 CPM no problem. Those days have long passed, and CPMs can be as low as $0.05 now-a-days. That decrease is a direct result of the ineffectiveness of banner advertising. It’s ineffective because people mentally block them out. If we allow people to install Adblock — we start narrowing our targeting down. We start targeting the people who buy things. And CPMs go up.
If online advertising is one thing: it’s trackable. We can track where visitors came from, how they got to our site, what they did on our site, and finally what products they bought. This obsessive amount of analytical power generates an extraordinary ROI-driven marketplace in which specific advertising can be exactly correlated with revenue. As effectiveness of advertising rises or falls so does the price of said advertising.
Google is not going out of business. The online advertising business is stronger than ever — and it’s shown no signs of slowing down, let alone dying because a few people installed Adblock. I say bring it on.
7 Comments, Comment or Ping
horsecrap
That’s horse crap. The amount of times an ad is shown is also considered part of a sites value, so even if it doesnt get clicked- views are still used as an indicator in selling adspace. Honestly what planet are you from? If you actually had a high volume site you would have some real numbers to use and would be writing an adblock blocker instead of this assinine post.
Sep 5th, 2007
K
Brave fellow who uses real email addresses: Do you even know what CPM means? Please read the post or grow some balls.
Sep 5th, 2007
James
An important factor to consider is that Adblock does not prevent the ads from being downloaded. I wish it did, because they slow down browsing, but doing that would be considerably more difficult.
In fact, all adblock does is keep them from being displayed. It just slaps a display:none; on them, but they are still there.
Sep 14th, 2007
Whiskey
That’s not true.
Ad Block prevents the ads from downloading.
Any decent ad blocker does.
Sep 16th, 2007
cb
@James: Actually, that hasn’t been true since the 0.3 version of the original “Adblock” extension. Later versions of “Adblock” and its progeny “Adblock+” that we all know and love today does prevent files from being loaded. I think it’s discussed on its home page’s FAQ. Note that an ad-blocking user style (for UserContent.css or Stylish) does work like you say because it doesn’t have access to browser internals to do more than that. AB(P) is fancy!
Sep 17th, 2007
Karol Krizka
I totally agree with you, and I have just finished writing an article on my blog about it. If someone knows about AdBlock, then it is highly unlikely that they will click the ads anyways. I rather they have a better experience and visit my blog again, than be distracted by ads.
Sep 28th, 2007
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