Submission + - Editor-in-Chief of The Next Web: Adblockers are Immoral (thenextweb.com) 1
lemur3 writes: Hot on the heels of the recent implementation of Canvas Ads (allowing advertisers to use the full page) Martin Bryant, the Editor-in-Chief of The Next Web, wrote a piece that, ostensibly, calls out mobile carriers in Europe for offering ad blocking as a service.
"Display ads are still an important bread-and-butter income stream. Taking delight in denying publishers that revenue shows either sociopathic tendencies or ignorance of economic realities."
While referring to those using ad blocking as sociopathic is likely not to win many fans, this mindset seems to be prevalent in certain circles, as discussed previously on Slashdot.
Martin closes his piece with a warning.
"For all their sins, ads fuel much of the Web. Cut them out and you’re strangling the diversity of online voices and publishers – and I don’t think consumers really want that."
A code of practice is missing (Score:1)
It is true that the exemplified ads are not bad, but will they all be soundless?
With NoScript [noscript.net] enabled, no ad shows up. What I find disturbing is that one has to "Temporarily allow all this page" multiple times, in order to allow full functionality to both the content and the ad. Of course, readers can only guess at what is the role and the commission of each involved domain.
This sounds like a false-belief:
Regular banners don’t generate enough revenue to run a business any more so we went looking for a format that would be able to show beautiful ads and be visible but easy to skip for readers.
If they think click-through is proportional to the display area percentage, they must assume readers