On Blocking Website Advertising

Ever wonder how blogging platforms (you know the ones I am talking about) can be offered free? On Saturday one of my Facebook friends said:
"yes, those ads for dating services are terribly annoying. but I have to remember that ads are why these websites are free."
Of course my initial response was to say that I would still be using Chrome Adblock - one of my favorite extensions.. I also employed it when I used the Firefox browser. I have also installed other Ad-killer Chrome extensions to hide ads in Facebook too. But it does cause me to ponder how websites would "make money" if everyone used the Ad-blocking software. That leads me to ask a few silly but thought provoking questions:
  1. How does certain big search engine companies make any money providing "free" services like pop3-email and blogging services? These services do not use advertising.
  2. Apart from mega-bloggers does anyone really make money from blogs? I personally find ads on blogs to be a bit annoying.
  3. Does the presence of advertising affect the content of what is written on blogs? Can advertising present a conflict of interest?
  4. Would you pay for access to some of your favorite blogs if they agreed to not have advertising? Do you pay for content from online news sources like the Wall Street Journal?  I would not and I do not.
Yes, I realize that this is a bit silly of a topic.. but I do wonder about these things. Do you?

You also might want to click on the image above for a discussion of the ethics of Adblock.

4 comments:

  1. There are some sites I want to support, so I modify the adblocker to do that. Bill Tammaeus' site for example. His ads just help him pay for the cost of doing a blog that I read almost every day. --Joe Barone

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  2. I did not know Chrome now had ad-blocking. Not being able to block ads was one of the reasons I stopped using Chrome before. And everyone was saying, "Google will never allow ads to be blocked because that's how they make money." So I stopped using it and went back to Firefox. I'll have to check out Chrome again. Thanks for the tip.

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  3. @Joe - good point.. ad blocking can be selective.

    @Steve - I was glad when Chrome finally came out with extensions. IMO it is a much faster browser than FF.

    Interesting enough I just got this email today:

    "Don’t miss your chance to experience the power of XXX with the free $100 offer we sent you recently. XXX delivers customers who click on your search ads—and ZZZ shows you how to make the most of your search campaigns. Research shows every dollar you spend on search can return an average of $21.85. Get more for your business today."

    Guess they didn't read my blog today :)

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  4. i haven't seen a site or blog that i'd pay to get content from except maybe medical journal articles... but thats not exactly a website. I just ignore the ads

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