> There must be enough users of ad-blockers now to start to significantly affect their bottom line.

I host a bunch of websites, and about five years ago I stuck adsense adverts on them. Due to the decent traffic I was earning about £80/month and that was stable for 3-4 years.

This year, and last year, I instead earned about £100/year, despite having much more traffic/visitors, and more "aged content". When I get a chance I'll rebuild all the sites and drop the adverts. Adblockers - which I use myself - have rendered them almost pointless.

You can always do a direct ad deal if it's the right niche. Better privacy for your users and it's impossible to block.

> [...] and it's impossible to block.

That's not entirely true. Troy Hunt had (and still has) that[1], and his banner got added to EasyList none the less.

[1]: https://www.troyhunt.com/ad-blockers-are-part-of-the-problem...

He keeps calling this a false positive. It's not. Easylist is a list of ads. That is an ad. The ad is listed on the list of ads. He seems baffled by the idea that someone could be against the concept of advertising in general.

Hunt is under the impression that he has a right to force Web clients to consume content like he wants to after it has left his server. This is, of course, not how the Web works, and he should know better. There is no point in getting upset about it and then writing a blog entry. Content blocking is a direct consequence of past abuse. He must understand even though he thinks he does nothing wrong, the bar of acceptability for people who subscribe to content blocker update lists – after past abuse – is: no distraction at all. Having a peace of mind without advertisement intruding into it is a human right. I would be glad if someone could find for me that article making that legal argument.

> He must understand even though he thinks he does nothing wrong, the bar of acceptability for people who subscribe to content blocker update lists – after past abuse – is: no distraction at all.

Simple solution for you then: Don't visit sites with advertising. By repeatedly visiting sites with advertising, you're basically saying, "I want all this content but I'm not willing to support them financially."

A much simpler solution is to keep visiting them.

That's a false dichotomy if I've ever seen one. Operators should choose a way to support themselves financially without the advertisements plague.

So he added an ad to his site and it got added to a list of ads. What's noteworthy here, besides the fact that he doesn't understand what ad blockers are for?

This is the whole point of those filter lists. Otherwise I would have to remove his ad manually, which is undesirable.

I can only speak for myself: but it seems to me that most people aren't against advertising, only the magnitude of advertising and the tracking that goes with it.

AdBlock should be about making the internet tolerable again instead of the cesspit it's slowly becoming, but it's exasterbating the problem.

Troy made a step in the right direction.

Very interesting. I wonder if it's possible to get around by randomizing the element class after each reload - sounds like renaming it worked temporarily.

Similar for my blog/site (>20 years old). But, it used to pay me my hosting costs + a computer component upgrade. Now I get a few pence here and there, an order of magnitude less.

So now it costs me to run it (excluding time considerations of course) whilst before it paid for itself.

Also with sites like Stack Exchange I tend to use them for what I blogged before (computer fixes mainly), so most of my new content nowadays is UGC on other people's sites too. Personal stuff goes on Facebook, on the whole.

Is it definitely ad blockers or have rates also dropped?

I would think it's more likely they legislate against us, i.e. making it a crime to circumvent advertising (see: circumventing DRM).

DMCA was hard to get people upset about. It was all new stuff that most people didn't understand or care about. This was before Napster, even.

People clearly care about net neutrality, and they would/do also care about browser ad blocking. At this point it's clear to people what the issue is and how it affects them. Taking something away from people is much more painful than preventing them from getting it in the first place.

Even if there could be enough lobbying pressure to seriously propose such a law, it would be deeply unpopular and have difficulty passing.

You wouldn't download a car, you wouldn't block an ad! :)

As always: I would download a car if I could :).

Fun fact: the line of the ad was twisted by internet people for meming purposes. The actual line is "You wouldn't steal a car".

I always thought a good answer to this was "well I'd think about copying a car if I could..."

How sweet would that be? Friend gets a car, I make a copy of it at zero cost!

I guess the standard answer to that would be "but you're depriving the manufacturer of money to cover the costs of providing the car in the first place"

Which is reasonable, but I'd have to question their business model if their manufacturing costs are so high and yet I can copy it for free ...

Nah, the standard answer isn't reasonable. They're depriving themselves of that money by choosing a business model that matches neither the customer needs nor physical reality.

In hopes it'll one day turn into a catchphrase: no one is entitled to have a particular business model working for them forever.

In fairness I'd give them that much. There is a quid pro quo between me having a need, and a business providing that need. If it's not commercially viable for a business to then perhaps my need may go unfulfilled.

What irks me is that such a gracious outlook leaves me open to being gouged by profiteers.

So copying it is!

I believe they tried, but it basically never made it out of committee as it's basically the same as banning people from using a highlighter on a book. It became very very clear that not only was it not enforceable but trying to go after the people supplying the adblocker would run into serious human rights issues.

Yep, this is what greedy corporations are willing to do to protect their profit margins.

It's already copyright infringement. In USA Fair Use probably does the necessary; but in UK I'm pretty sure it's infringing (you've modified the work without permission).

I wish them good luck with that.

They're more likely to outlaw adblocking than they are outlaw advertising. Frankly I fear we're nearing the end of a golden age, where those in the know have an incredibly easy time blocking ads with a simple extension while our content providers are funded by the ignorant tech commoners watching ads. I don't want a future where ads are baked right into the YouTube video stream and articles refuse to load until they get confirmation the ads have been downloaded from an ad server.

The funding to produce the media people want to consume has to come from somewhere. If it’s not baked into the video stream, it will be baked into the video itself, aka product placement.

Watch any new movie or TV show, and it’s unbearable to see the videography just to catch a car logo or drink logo. Shame. There’s even been full on descriptions by the actors of a car’s features, basically a commercial within the dialogue of the media.

My solution is to stop consuming it, not that I consumed a lot to begin with, but there’s no other option.

banners and logos obscuring the view, and often mantling plot critical visual details are what turned me off cable and satellite feeds. i just wait until the disc is being sold and enjoy it sans banners. thats not available with the net.

here the state law defines ANY unauthorized access to any computer system as felony, that includes snooping unsecured systems or MANIPULATING FUNCTIONALITY.

You know it's funny, I was watching horrible bosses last night, and was thinking just this. Some fairly blatant product placement for a major car manufacturer.

It didn't spoil the movie though, and in fact the bare-facedness of it even added some humour (-:

I don't think product placement is soooo bad. It's up to you if you're making a movie to make it fit. If you don't it detracts from the quality of your movie which to me seems a good enough motivator to get it right.

We are not helpless in this and we should not just lie down and accept our fate.

On what grounds and by what rationale could adblockers be possibly outlawed? If you cannot answer this question reasonably, then please don't even mention this as a reasonable possibility.

Lobbying from the advertisers?

I personally don’t think it’s very likely, for one thing I expect most of the staff at the likes of Google run an adblocker.

Put the ads in the browser -- not the content. Change chrome to show the ads in the client like an ad supported software, then make it speak a new dmca:// protocol.

This is a problem for the advertisers, they don’t want their most valuable prospects walled off by adblockers.

My guess is we will see much more sponsored content as a response to this.

> The bright side of Google's anti-ad-blocking efforts is that ad-blocking is clearly no longer just an insignificant blip on their radar. There must be enough users of ad-blockers now to start to significantly affect their bottom line.

I think the issue is that shareholders want to see significant year-over-year growth, something that isn't sustainable in the long-term. We're merely being seen as an untapped market than can keep the needle moving for a few more years.

I like capitalism, but I think it's entirely unreasonable for shareholders to expect such gains in perpetuity. After all, there's a finite amount of money that can be extracted from any user. The trendline will inevitably start to level off after a period of time, and I'm frustrated by the fact that this eventuality has negative connotations associated with it.

Here's a thing: the shareholders may very well know not to expect gains in perpetuity, but surely something could be done to boost growth just this last time? Given how much money is at stake, plenty of extreme things can be done before the particular growth source is exhausted. And we all have to suffer the collateral damage.