Hey, you there, reading this column. Yeah, punk, I mean you.
Have you looked at every advertisement in this paper?
You haven’t? You thief! How dare you steal my work! This publication exists to provide quality content in exchange for displaying ads. Reading our content without looking at the advertising, therefore, is no less than stealing.
And if you’ve been fast-forwarding TV commercials, you’re just as guilty. Heck, if you’ve been getting a beer during commercials, it’s no different. You’re still a crook. I’ll bet you sometimes even toss the flyers that come with your newspaper into the recycling bin without looking at them.
Oh, and you sent your Aunt Edith a postcard last week, yet you didn’t read the junk mail you found in your mailbox? Don’t you realize that without its revenues from delivering that junk mail, Canada Post couldn’t possibly deliver your postcard for only 51 cents?
Okay, relax. I’m not serious. Yes, the publisher of CDN makes its money from the advertising, but that does not obligate you to look at the ads. The model works because enough readers do look at enough ads that advertisers get their money’s worth. The same is true of television.
And the same is true of the web. Somebody needs to explain that to Danny Carlton.
Carlton is a blogger. You can’t read his blog using the Firefox web browser. If you try, you get redirected to a page titled “Why Firefox is Blocked,” which explains that because a popular Firefox add-on called Ad Block Plus makes it possible to block online advertising, Carlton has blocked Firefox access to his site to prevent what he calls theft.
“Numerous websites exist in order to provide quality content in exchange for displaying ads,” the page says. “Accessing the content while blocking the ads, therefore would be no less than stealing.”
Let’s see if I understand this. You make an assortment of content publicly accessible. I look at the part of it that interests me, and ignore the part that doesn’t. That makes me a thief – in spite of the fact that people have been ignoring advertising for as long as it has existed.
Yes, if nobody looks at ads, ad-supported websites won’t be viable. Judging from the success of Google – a company that derives 99 per cent of its revenue from online advertising – this isn’t a clear and present danger.
And if the online advertising business is really worried about ad-blocking, it should look in the mirror. When an online ad jumps out of its place and blocks my view of what I’m reading, or when the casual movement of my cursor across an ad causes my computer to start blaring noise at me, I start thinking ad-blocking software might be a good idea.
And thanks to Danny Carlton, I’ve now got some. I hadn’t really heard about AdBlock Plus before, but when I read about his tirade, I had to check it out. It works quite nicely, and you can find it at www.adblock.com.
Oh by the way, I also pointed Internet Explorer at Carlton’s blog to see what other opinions he has. Among the posts there: rants against “socialized medicine,” the American Civil Liberties Union and the theory of evolution. Now I’m looking for software to block the content and leave the ads.
