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Sophie Curtis reports at the Telegraph that an ad-free internet would cost each user about £140 ($230) a year – a sum that the vast majority of UK web users say they would never pay. Ebuzzing calculated the average ‘value’ of each web user by dividing the amount of money spent on digital advertising in the UK in 2013 (£6.4 billion) by the number of UK web users (45 million).
However in a survey of more than 1,400 UK consumers, 98 per cent said they would not be willing to pay this amount to browse the internet without advertisements and although most consumers regard ads as a necessary trade-off to keep the internet free, they will go to great lengths to avoid advertising they do not wish to see.
"It’s clear the ad industry has a major role to play in keeping web content free, but we have to respond to what consumers are telling us," says Jeremy Arditi. "We need to get better at engaging, not better at interrupting. That means introducing new formats which consumers find less invasive, more creative ads that are better placed, and giving consumers a degree of choice and control."
The study also looked specifically at the mobile app sector and found that 77 per cent of consumers never upgrade to paid for versions of free mobile apps. "Publishers of mobile apps will remain heavily reliant on in-app advertising to fund their content creation," says Arditi. "That means the same rules apply – they must give consumers ads that offer choice, relevance, entertainment and brevity."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Saturday August 23 2014, @03:05PM
Great post, I would only add that I have gone toe to toe with many of these "creators" on their websites who scream about adblock and if you want to shut them up quick simply ask if they are gonna pay for the cleanup when their third party ad companies serve up malware to their patrons. By making ABP part of the default install I've watched malware infections among my customers drop right off the map and based on what I see at the shop I would be surprised if any less than 90% of malware infections come from infected ads.
This is why I say its high time we hold these websites accountable for the malware they are spreading, they either use best practices and vet the ads they serve or they pay the cost of cleanup. Its not our job to fix your broken business model, its your job to find a way to exist without putting the public at risk.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Lagg on Saturday August 23 2014, @03:35PM
Same, when I was doing home repair I had people who would have these massive infections but then I'd put adblock on there (and try to get them to use firefox if they could, oddly enough I found more people using it than not at the time) for them and never get a call from them again. This was a few years back too. One can only imagine how much worse the malware has gotten since then.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Saturday August 23 2014, @11:00PM
Oh believe me Lagg I do NOT have to imagine, I live it every week and I can tell you that the only infections I see after installing ABP is the classic "You want teh hot lezbos? We got teh hot lezbos, just instal "Iz_Not_Viruz_Iz_Codex.exe" to watch all teh hot lezbanims u want 4 freez!" and I was able to get rid of a good 80% of those by finding a site with full videos for free without malware. But every customer I get through the door without adblock software? Its just full of malware, spyware, toolbars and crap yet when I install adblocking and hand it back? poof, its magic, all gone.
Oh and to those that defend ads that say "Oh they probably just didn't call you back" sorry, i have some of the most loyal customers on the planet because I am the only guy around that will make housecalls when they have problems at home, so I still get to see and interact with their PCs its just not for malware but things like troubleshooting their wireless network, setting a printer share up so everybody can use it, wiring a laptop into a TV and setting up MediaPortal so they can use it as an HTPC, etc. And I can state for the record that with adblock installed in either PaleMoon or Comodo Dragon the infections just disappear.
BTW for those that are curious and want to see how badly infected the ads today are? Go download Virtualbox, install it, then pick up a copy of "Windows 7 Tiny" from TPB. this version of Windows uses less than 256Mb of RAM and less than 3GB of HDD space installed so it makes a perfect VM testbed. Then simply install the browser of your choice and start surfing major sits like Yahoo, the Escapist,video sites,etc. You surf for a couple hours in Tiny 7 and reboot...tada! Suddenly you have toolbars and browser hijacks and all kinds of shit you didn't choose or agree to, all thanks to infected ads. BTW if you want the full effect install Java into Tiny 7 before starting, because thanks to minecraft that asscancer is making a comeback and malware ads target java a LOT. You'll see with your own two peepers that you won't go a whole day without some form of malware ending up on the system.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.