Down with ads!

by Gimpei | 08:46 in |

It probably comes as a great surprise to you dear reader, but I hate advertisements of all kinds. They're distracting, they slow down my computer, and they fill my head with insufferable jingles.

So I found myself agreeing with Farhad Manjoo of slate:

Google's success seems to bear out Palant's idea that users will tolerate and even click on ads that don't bug them, lending credence to his theory that the way to reverse the mass adoption of ad blocking is for publishers to run ads that people don't want to block. That's why his new proposal makes sense. Ad blocking may not be ethical, but there's nothing illegal about it, and there are few technical ways for publishers to limit its effects. Ad blocking is here to stay. But that doesn't have to be the end of the Web—just the end of terrible ads.

Indeed, if all adds were like google's adwords, I wouldn't block a thing: adwords are useful and unobtrusive.

It always seemed to me that internet ads were engaged in an arms race, where companies produced ever more intrusive ads in order to gain an advantage over their competitors. If we leveled, the playing field by forcing all companies to comply to an intrusion threshhold, this incentive would be eliminated.

Granted, this would effectively kill the advertisement production business, but who needs them? Thanks to admen we pay $1 for 5 cent sugar water.Thanks to admen we drink beer that bears a family resemblance to urine. Thanks to admen I feel like chicken every night!

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous on 15 May 2009 at 10:48

    Now, now. You know that standard economic theory proves beyond all doubt that advertising is simply a money-burning exercise to signal high quality, and not a filthy macro assumption in sight. :)

     
  2. Gimpei on 17 May 2009 at 10:14

    Yeah just a lot of filthy micro-assumptions instead.