Ad Blockers

[plonq]

I run ad blockers for most sites that I visit, but not because I'm a free-loader who wants free content. Well, not entirely for that reason anyway. There are sites for which I explicitly disable the ad blockers as part of an implicit pact with the site owners; they provide superior content without employing annoying ads, and I let the ads through at my end to ensure that they get a trickle of revenue each time I visit the page.

When I say that an ad is annoying there are a few specific things that I find annoying in an ad:

• Ads that flash and/or bounce around to the point where they distract from the page content. Online casinos are some of the most egregious offenders.


• Ads that have sound. Ads inserted at the start (or, worse, end) of videos are an annoying subset of this group. When the original video has very low sound levels, followed by an ad with very high volumes... no pretty.


• Ads that pop over, or pop under, or open any kind of new window.


• Ads that overlay the page contents, and especially that appear with each page flip, or just randomly over time.

Even when ads don't do these annoying things, I am reminded almost daily of why I block them when I visit a site on which I am not. When I am blocking the ads, the page loads almost instantly. When I am not, the page will usually take several seconds and (depending on the time of day) upwards of a minute to load while it waits for the ads from slow, overloaded ad sites like Doubleclick to push their content down.

Blocking ads is like putting a turbocharger on my connection. I try to be a good citizen, but they make it hard sometimes.