The New York Times had the article Whiting Out the Ads, but at What Cost? about the effects of using the wonderful Firefox plugin Adblock Plus. I've been using an ad blocker in some form or another for years and have a hard time surfing without one. I love the comparison to watching TiVo instead of TV.
The question is, is viewing a page but not viewing the ad a problem? Is it breaking the advertising model of the web? If it becomes popular will advertisers no longer pay to sponsor sites? I use a style sheet in Safari that blocks image ads but allows (google-like) text ads. I hate the slower load times and flashing images from animated gifs and flash. My question is, if I'm not going to buy from the ad anyway, is it wrong not to view them? My browser should load the page but not the ad, so accurate counts of ad views should be possible so the advertiser's billing should be right and the sale percentages should be higher (with the same number of sales). Still some people call not viewing ads theft.
Does the server get to define how I see the page or does the browser have any say on the matter? I can configure fonts, colors and whether links are underlined right? If I use a text-based browser like lynx I don't see pictures, is that theft? What do screen readers that blind people use do? Do they read the ads too? Do they do them before or after the page? Wouldn't it be rude to have to listen to an ad before hearing a page?
I think google's text ads are fine. They don't make things slower and aren't gaudy.
Howard
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