Question of the Week: Do You Go Out of Your Way to Avoid Ads?

April 11, 2011 by Pamela 5 Comments

Online ads—most commonly consisting of graphics and text—are a key component of many informational or “free to use” web sites. Advertisers usually pay for ads on a per-click basis.

Some ad campaigns, however, interrupt our visit by using overlays (graphics and/or videos that cover up the site’s content and require us to wait for the ad to lay through or click a skip button) or animated distractions.

There are many tricks to bypassing ads, including using additional software or browser plugins. Some sites are getting smarter about this, and use modern techniques to help advertisers deliver their messages.

Do you use software, plugins or other tricks to bypass online ads? Do you go out of your way to avoid ads when viewing “freebit” content (like news articles and games)?

Most importantly, do you feel such circumvents are justified on “legitimate” sites (sites that aren’t guilty of passing viruses)?

Nochecazador

I use Adblock. I started using when I was using Firefox and now use it with Chrome. There are some sites that show advertisements that I give a green light to though (I know for sure the type of advertising they normally have up). For the most part, being a Mass Comm major, I understand the need for advertisements to pay for content that I get to use for free. However, often times the content of the advertisement and/or the delivery of it are the reasons that I block it. In my IT experience another reason for ad blocking is to block harmful ads that are not regulated. One bad one can cripple a network as it spreads a worm/trojan/virus. nnI block for peace of mind.
- Pamela Hazelton
  
  Thanks for the input. Do you find that many ads don’t follow the theme of the site itself – and, if so, is this another reason to block?
  - Nochecazador
    
    Google Adsense ads seem to do a good job, but some of the others are way off base. Especially when I have a profile at sites such as Pandora which gives them details for tailoring ads. My profile says married, yet I still get ads tailored towards singles.nnMSN and Yahoo are the worst offenders. The ad content is mostly the problem. The stuff rarely ever applies. What good are cookies for? Have we been lied to all of these years about the use of cookies and how they can help better target ads? Ads are more sponsor driven than analytically driven I find.
    - Pamela Hazelton
      
      Interesting points. My reason for asking about ad avoidance is in regard to arguments about “free” content vs. paid. nnLooks like I need to delve deeper in respect to specific tailoring. I wonder if very many block specifically because ads don’t apply. That, I’m sure, would take a great deal of digging around.
      - Nochecazador
        
        I think for the majority it has become more habit than anything else. You can lend thanks to obnoxious ads of the early Internet days.Think of that ringtone add that made all of the noise. I forget what it was called, but it was the reason I dropped AIM like a bad habit.