Why you shouldn’t block ads

David Dorn explains why all these programs that purport to be able to help you keep Web advertising hidden are a bad idea, and could cost you serious money in the end.

In many ways, the Worldwide Web is very much like traditional paper publishing. Leaving aside all the e-commerce sites, what you are left with is a selection of magazines and newsletters that are there to provide information.

Some may be linked to e-commerce sites as a sort of freebie – many manufacturers, for instance, will have screeds of informational and tutorial pages on their sites, some of which may be very useful to the likes of you and me.

Others are nothing more than sales pitches hiding behind some clever graphics. I don’t want to pass judgement on either of those kinds of sites, though, because they’re not the subject of this piece.

What is the subject is the small Web site that’s trying to exist as a source of editorial – a magazine on the Web, as it were. An e-mag, if you like. That. effectively, is what Practical PC is.

History

For those of you who don’t know, Practical PC was a proper magazine, printed on paper and sold in newsagents. For reasons that are not important here, it got closed, and became and online-only publication. At first, the team did it for love, but you can’t feed kids on fresh air, and so a source of revenue was sought. As it happened, AOL was in need of a partner magazine for Computing, and, happily for both parties (and, more importantly, you…), Practical PC came to live here in the Technology Channel.

In that respect, we who bring you PPC every weekday are very lucky. We have a home and we have a revenue stream – we make a bit of money for what we do.

Others, though, just as worthy of earning a crust, have to survive on what little they can make from carrying advertising (actually, AOL is not immune from this either – advertising is a source of revenue for every major publisher, and a very important one at that).

Now, here’s the thing. If everyone that surfs blocks every advert that every Website serves, then the revenue from advertising will dry up completely. The process has, indeed, already begun – advertisers are now aware that they can push prices down, and, indeed, are also aware that they can attract surfers to their own sites on the “if you build it they will come” basis, and by tagging their URL onto every television and print advert they use.

Fatal

The end result is that informational sites, as opposed to sales oriented ones, will find their revenue streams dwindling to a trickle. The net result is obvious. If they can’t support themselves, they’ll go under, or have to find another way of making a few bob.

Now, the only way that can happen is if they start to charge for their content. You may, at this point, throw up your arms and shout “NO! The Web is Free!”. You’d be wrong, of course, since it isn’t. As in paper publishing, the advertisers pay for your reading pleasure. What you pay for a magazine only buys the paper it’s printed on.

Exactly the same applies to the Web. What you pay to get connected only buys you the means to see what’s online (other than with AOL, of course, in which case it also buys you every channel on the system, and more reading each day than most folks would be able to manage – the content on here is vast!). Advertisers and affiliate deals actually pay for the content you read on purely informational sites.

So, one more time, just for emphasis…

If everyone uses ad-blocking software, then, advertisers will see no results for their money, and so will stop paying to advertise. The inevitable result will be sites similar to Practical PC out on the Web having to charge – the concept of a Free Web will no longer apply.

Indeed, it’s already started – certain largish Web sites have already instituted a subscription model in order to keep the money coming in. Whether they’ll be successful remains to be seen.

What to do?

So what is a surfer to do? Well, like everybody else, I get fed up of pop-under adverts, and dismiss them without a moment’s thought. I tend not to dismiss what I refer to as “open” adverts quite so readily – pop-ups and banner adverts are at least honest and don’t use stealth to get onto your desktop. In fact, I’ve been known to click through on adverts that interest me, and I make a point of clicking through on an advert featured on a site that I find interesting, just to show my support.

I may not always buy (I rarely buy, in truth), but the mere click through to the advertiser’s site adds another notch to the originating site’s tally, which gives them a better chance of retaining some funding.

I never use ad-blocking software, I never block adverts at all – I mean, you wouldn’t rip all the advert pages out of a magazine, would you? I’d exhort you to follow my example, or else we’ll have a poorer resource, and perhaps a more expensive one, in the Worldwide Web.

Click the adverts – keep the Web free!

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David Dorn