The effect of ad blockers on online advertising

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    If advertising works as an online currency, are ad blockers nothing more than a money laundering scheme? Or do they embody simply the right of any consumer to choose what he wants to buy without being nagged by incessant ads?

    Ad blockers are used not only because internet users tried to avoid constant interruptions by noisy commercials, they are also a safety tool. Many famous online pages such as the Economist have dealt in the past with unpleasant incidents like viruses and malware that have spammed the computers of their users. These can all be evaded through ad blockers, but are the ad-avoiders actually endangering the long-term survival of free internet?

    Yes and no. Even though to the vast majority of web pages, advertising is the vital force that keeps them afloat, the fair approach would be to request the users to either disable it (“whitelist” the site), pay for access to the website or leave. This way, consumers could be sheltered by the unwanted pop-up ads in general but they would have the option of giving up this privilege if they wanted to have access to the content of a specific page.

    Another way to persuade consumers to disable their ad blockers would be to resort to ads with no auto play video or auto play sound, making sure that commercials don’t block the user’s access to the content of the page and don’t slow it down.

    The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) has come up with a series of proposed principles for websites to follow when it comes to online advertising. They are called “LEAN,” and advise website owners to only use lightweight, encrypted and non-invasive ads on their properties.

    Consumers are not the only ones to blame for this issue. Advertisers have a long history of popping loud and irrelevant material on our desktop, irrelevant in the sense that it was not at all customer-targeted.

    Facebook has been one of the social networks determined to annihilate ad blockers, working incessantly to evade their software and guarantee Facebook ads are seen by the billions of users worldwide.

    Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defends the social media colossus’ stance by claiming that their ads are customer targeted, as they benefit not only the advertiser but also the consumer who is partly in control of the ads he or she sees in the news feed. Zuckerberg also warns that digital content cannot survive without advertising, especially since Facebook users enjoy the benefits of the network for free. Facebook has benefited a lot from advertising, its ad revenue has grown from $4.3. billion in 2012 to $22. 4 billion in 2016. However, the right path for Facebook to follow remains that of Forbes or Washington Post, who request their potential readers to either turn off ad blockers or pay for content.

    Roxana Maria Săbău