I just got a new laptop and hadn't got around to installing uBlock yet. I'm comfortable saying the mainstream web is literally unusable without ad blocking. I watched the download notifications in the status bar iterate through dozens of ad servers, for 1-2 minutes, per page. I could barely scroll at all. I couldn't tell where the actual content was. All 3 columns full of ads. You have to hunt for isolated paragraphs of content.

The other glaring thing I noticed is the browser becomes a festering petri dish of promiscuous cookie-sharing. Every site obviously knows everything I'm doing on every other site.

> a festering petri dish of promiscuous cookie-sharing

Shouldn't that be impossible? What browser lets one site access another's cookies?

I mean tracking in general. I feel violated every time FB or Google reveal they clearly know where I've been recently.

Afaik, there may not be sharing across domains, but there surely is across pages.

Pixel tracking is trivial to implement.

> I can't imagine how much crazier ads have been getting

I would certainly argue the way this comment (and many others in a lot of threads about ads here or elsewhere) seems to imply that ads are at their worst ever.

I mean either people forgot or are too young to remember, but in the 2000's alone ads had both their "pop up and sound and unclosable javascript spam" and their "flash everywhere turning your modern supercomputer speed into that of a 80's calculator" eras, and probably a lot of other ad-cancers that my brain chose to forget. The entire reason the ios/flash debate happened was because 1 - flash was on every page and ad, 2 - flash was eating every resources you would throw at it and still need more.

I mean, I agree totally that the web without ad blockers is insane, but I think many also see how it used to be as much better than it actually was.

I remember those days. Back then I'd say 99.97% of those horrible ads you describe were on spam / bad websites. The normal, good sites that we went to every day had very, very tame ads. For the most part, as long as you visited reputable sites back then, the ads were not a big deal.

Today the reputable sites are an absolute mess with huge, bloated and completely unusable ads. So yes the ads back then on non-reputable sites were worse because of what the browser makers allowed websites to do but when you compare the reputable websites? There is no contest that today is far, far worse.

Remember pop-unders? I don't miss closing my browser and finding a dozen ads hiding under the window.

Of course in that time you had no tab indicator to nicely tell you who was playing sound.

Nothing quite like those search that took you on sketchy websites and their porn pop under blasting orgasmic noises in your home / office while you frantically try to find who does that (and then close everything because it's taking too long).

"The good old time", as they say.

Sound indicators ... that time? Like a year ago?

I understand your jest, but for reference by "that time" I referred to back when pop under were still a thing.

Searching for which tab makes sound is one thing, searching for it and not finding it anywhere because it's a pop under positioned at the bottom right of your screen is a whole other experience.

I was there, and I only started using ad blockers a couple of years ago. It is much, much, much worse now.

Different opinions then I guess.

I prefer a (collection of) ads that obfuscate the entire page I'm trying to read but doesn't bother me while I look at something else and happily let me close and go away than something that makes everything a hog and crash my browser randomly while I might not even see it because it's five tabs away in the footer of some website.

Ads were terrible, they continue to be terrible, they used to and still do provide most of the money needed to run sites, and it's still hard to get users to pay for content like articles on the internet. We still haven't solved these fundamental problems with funding quality content on the web. There are models that kinda work, but ads sadly seem to work the best in terms of giving everyone access "without paying", even though you're paying with your privacy, time, and eyeballs. Many people prefer this vs something like paywall games or subscription-only services.

I subscribe to a lot of sites and newspapers and they still show me their ads.

What's more amazing is that they never learn. As if blasting us with more and more ads that take over your entire browser. Will somehow put everyone at ease. The advertising industry is the next big reboot on the web as far as I'm concerned.

The advertising industry's policy seems to be that the well is infinitely deep, and therefore no amount of shitting into it is too much.

I'm not sure what you expect them to learn.

Only use "cleaner" ads ? It will pay less, ads don't pay much any more, you need the big, splashy, if-possible-exclusive-and-targeted ads to get money now.

Offer subscriptions ? They already do that, and they publish quality original content, so it's not the case of journal-X publishing the same press release as everyone and complaining that people don't subscribe.

At this point, they can only do two things with people who don't subscribe: block them from accessing content, thus losing lots of traffic and conversion possibilities, or show them intrusive ads, make a little money off of them, and hope a few subscribe.

One argument could be that "those ads are turning people off of subscribing and ultimately makes them lose money", but in every debate on this matter I have never seen it substantiated with actual numbers, and especially in the case of a household name like National Geographic I sincerely doubt it, at least not in any meaningful way.

People didn't start using ad blockers, because sites had a couple well placed ads. If everyone is blocking your ads, maybe it's time to change all those reasons you gave me for "how they work".

I think you misattributed or misundertood my intention here.

I am in now way arguing that those more and more terrible ads did not cause the surge in ad blocker usage, and what I said is not affected in any way by how many people are using ad blockers on NG.

Fact is, revenue per ad viewed has been crashing down for all type of ad.

A site like NG can either block their free access and force a subscribe (lose attention and name recognition), give it for free fully but remove incentive to subscribe (lose revenue), or change their ad type to more intrusive ad that pay more to compensate.

I'm sincerely open to discussion if you disagree, about what they could potentially do that isn't one of those three, but the revenue per ad viewed falling is not in their control, it's a global market trend since several years.

How about, beautiful, site specific, non-intrusive, relevant ads? Charge less if you have to. Enough with the Tabula bullshit, and Amazon selling me something I already purchased(why is this even a thing). You'd be surprised how many loyal people to a site would be willing to white list, knowing the advertising isn't going to shit on their experience.

If they continue down the current path, they are going to die one way or another. At some point the people working there are going to stop being proud of their work when it's presented in such a shit fashion and they will stop writing for NG.

I understand that business needs may require a publication to lower their standards but it seems like they have dropped below where the floor should be. When I load the page, there's a giant Microsoft video at the top of the screen. Microsoft should be ashamed of that as well.

Wow yeah I instantly hit "Back" and have now blacklisted national geographic. Seriously, national geographic? Thing's have gotten that bad I am now blocking NG? Sigh.

I liked grubbers dubbing of a "dickbar" but this kind of ad deserves its own moniker. PrickPage?

NatGeo was purchased by FOX recently, if that insight helps...

I don't know, I distinctly remember in the late 2000s there being all these insane "take over the entire page" flash ads for cars on sites like New York Times.

They are aggressive with ads because everyone is using ad blocker and no one clicks on ads. Content and infrastructure are not free. What do people expect to happen??

Maybe ads are getting more aggressive because we are all using ad blocker?

The inverse is also possible.

Co-evolution.