Oh yeah? Where do you get your research from?
I guarantee people are blocking ads because they hate ads and everything else is secondary.
You want some proof? TIVO sold millions of devices because of the ability to skip ads. People hate ads.
I know some sites have taken to showing full screen overlays and that's a lot more like a tv commercial, which I agree people hate. but for the most part we're talking about banners and their corresponding infrastructure for tracking and targeting (which is more intrusive than the actual ad mist of the time).
I disagree. Most banner ads are through some sort of service like AdSense. They don't fit the theme of the page they're on most of the time which harms the immersive experience for the end user.
People care about these details. AdBlockers are increasing in popularity every year and there are reasons for that, you can't simply disregard this fact.
There are rare sites where ads are less hated, a good example might be Penny Arcade where the ads are hand-picked by the site owners for their specific appeal to their targeted audience. Those kinds of ads are probably the least hated.
I've had this conversation dozens of times, and people are constantly insisting that advertising is going to live forever! But that's nonsense. People hate ads. Even the least intrusive ads, they hate them on principal because their lives have been ruled by ads for decades. And films like Minority Report have painted horrifying visions of the future where advertising has taken over everything. The savvy among us can see that "big data" trends are heading in that direction, and that isn't a future anyone wants. Except people who work in advertising.
What I am curious about is why people cling so desperately to this revenue model. Obviously those who rely on it for their bread and butter are going to wish it would live forever, but the other 90% of the population would realize a much better quality of life if advertisements were to die forever. Just imagine it.
The internet and digital technology is changing the world. Advertising is going to die. It's an exciting thing to bear witness to.
That's cute :-)
Edit: Ah, I just checked, uBlock apparently blocks GA whereas AdBlock doesn't.
Which is largely impossible for smaller sites. If you contact companies directly and ask if they'd like to advertise (or just have a contact page) they expect you to have millions of daily users. Not to mention that you have to build systems to track how many times the banner is shown to the users and have some way to verify this (e.g. that they are not bots/crawlers).
Saying; "just host your own ads" is a lot similar to "if you don't like the software, just make your own from scratch". It's not that easy for most people.