Why we might need ads after all

[hazel]

I hate internet advertisements! That's why I use Adblock Plus. But I've just read this and it's given me cause to think. After all, it might well apply to LF too. What do other people feel about this?

[elija]

Ads are a necessary evil.

Eye-popping flash ads that eat my bandwidth and distract my eye and worse suddenly appear from nowhere when I move my mouse are just plain evil and will be blocked.

[reed9]

When I was using ad block, I always unblocked linuxforums and other particular sites. But I realize, I just don't care that much, so I stopped using any. I barely notice ads really.

[Rubberman]

I use Adblock Plus and it makes a very major improvement in the viewing environment. Unfortunately, some sites (like Yahoo) are REALLY degraded in viewing that way. Such morons!

In any case, I don't mind occasional and discreetly placed ads on a web page. But what REALLY tickes me off are the unblockable flash ads that overlay the content I'm trying to read! Those sites have lost me as a reader permanently! I'm talking about ABC News, et al. Unfortunately, Adblock Plus doesn't deal with those very well, and I really don't want to disable flash in my browser since I use it to view video clips on a lot of sites. If everyone followed the "Simple and Discreete, Don't Irritate Me" rule, then we could get rid of Adblock Plus and similar stuff and still have a nice internet experience. Unfortunately, the chances of that happening (Simple, Discreete,...) are somewhere south of nowhere.

[GNU-Fan]

I don't have any feelings of guilt if I block stuff. It is the designer of the website who forces me into doing this. Like Rubberman said, it is often a question of space. For example, the navigation bar on the left is a useless space eater, so it will be faded out.

The blue square ad at the very bottom of the page does not disturb my, so it is allowed to stay.

JavaScript&Flash are not allowed at all for advertisement purposes on my computer. I'd rather have my account deleted than letting these buggers run.

[Rubberman]

Another peeve of the same sort (JavaScript+Flash cruft) are sites that automatically start SHOUTING at me with someone babbling or some sort of Night of the Living Dead music! I usually have some nice jazz streaming on my workstation during the day, and it is REALLY irritating to have some moron shouting at me when I navigate to their web page! And usually there is no way aside from the system "mute" button to turn the idiots off! Gah!

[gruven]

I am alright with ads. I like some ads, and usually won't block them.

That said, I HATE intellisense ads using keywords, because when my mouse accidentally brushes one of these words, then I get a popup, and depending which browser I am in, it is hard to get rid of sometimes. I have never seen a site with intellisense ads where they work correctly and swiftly. It wouldn't be bad if the ads and popups weren't so slow, and went away when I moved my mouse away. I just tried on this site, and on my 15 Mbit connection, took a good 30 seconds just to load the popup. Not acceptable.

That is the sole reason I use adblock. Flash ads don't bother me, and I find some useful, and google ads are fine because I have been known to click one or two, but if your site uses intellisense, adblock is on.

Edit:
In this thread alone down to my post are 6 Intellisense ads. I accidentally brushed 3 of them, and slowed my browsing because one of them started to play a video. Adblock turned back on.

[Jonathan183]

I use noscript always ... use adblock when I get annoyed by an ad ... or find things like posts having three words to a line rather than using the full screen width the rest of the space taken up by ads/other stuff I dont really want.

Think of 20 clever words that will make me want to click on the content or don't bother ... flash/popups/animations will just get switched off ! If you want to offer text based, less intrusive ads I'll consider them - otherwise consider ads blocked

[gruven]

I just noticed that on my iPhone, there are no intellisense ads. Nice.

[cousinlucky]

I am a cranky old man that does not like to be bothered by salesmen at my door or by any on-line ads. It is just my opinion but I would rather pay for my LF membership ( even though I do not have the foggiest notion about whatever is being discussed ) and not see any ads at all!! That is just my personal opinion however!!