There was a Firefox extension long ago that did NOT block ads but hid them. Basically it loaded them and for all the site knew, the add was showing, so it was transparent.
But, the ad wasn't rendering in the page. So the user didnt need to suffer them, but the website owners still profited.
The only losers where ad buyers, who IMHO are exactly the ones that should be affected.until they realize that ads are not effective.
Someone should bring something like that for current platforms. Even for video like, a placeholder video with a tip, interesting fact or whatever, playing while the page load the real video.
Yes! That one. But we need it for video ads as well now.
Ads are an evil that must be removed from the internet, and draining the wallets of companies using ads, without upside, would make them place less value on them.
>The only losers where ad buyers, who IMHO are exactly the ones that should be affected.until they realize that ads are not effective.
Honest question, what do you envision will keep the free-internet free in lou of ads? Do you think a pay-walled internet, $3 for this site, $5 for this....would ever take off?
I too block ads, but feel like i'm slowly contributing to the death spiral of the internet
Perhaps in recent years informational blog articles are mostly ads for the writer's products, services, and the chance to employ them? Informational stuff will remain public and free because eager seekers of monetization will easily convert to creators of marketplace-protected products and sell something on Steam or Gumroad. As long as one's primary purpose is to be informed, there will always be some writer not monetizing that particular piece of information. Maintaining the infrastructure (data centers and cables) eventually costs a lot of money and it must be paid by somebody eventually. Serving text pieces from a CDN is cheap enough for any blogger to personally afford, but no sane video hosting website will stop putting ads around.
It's so sad to read that there is people who is completely oblivious to the time when we had amazing free Gopher sites, or the WWW started and was fully Free (with L as in Libre).
But, the ad wasn't rendering in the page. So the user didnt need to suffer them, but the website owners still profited.
The only losers where ad buyers, who IMHO are exactly the ones that should be affected.until they realize that ads are not effective.
Someone should bring something like that for current platforms. Even for video like, a placeholder video with a tip, interesting fact or whatever, playing while the page load the real video.