Last week Ars Technica, the technology news and analysis site, conducted a research to show that the impact of blocking online ads on the websites revenue is significant. Nowadays it is very popular among Internet subscribers to use a number of plug-ins in their web browsers in order to prevent unwanted advertisement in Flash format from appearing when they surf their favorite websites.
Those people who use such technique argue that it allows them to save time and makes their online experience better. Besides, they assert that since they were people who would never click on adverts anyway, it doesn't make any financial difference to the site they visit.
But in a yesterday article Ars expressed quite opposite view. It said: “There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won't hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis. If you have an ad blocker running, and you load 10 pages on the site, you consume resources from us (bandwidth being only one of them), but provide us with no revenue.”
Ken Fisher, an author of the piece on the Ars ebsite, says: “If you read a site and care about its well being, then you should not block ads (or you subscribe to sites like Ars that offer ads-free versions of the site). If a site has advertising you don't agree with, don't go there. I think it is far better to vote with page views than to show up and consume resources without giving anything in return. I think in some ways the Internet and its vast anonymity feeds into a culture where many people do not think about the people, the families, the careers that go into producing a website. People talk about how annoying advertisements are, but I'll tell you what: it's a lot more annoying and frustrating to have to cut staff and cut benefits because a huge portion of readers block ads. Yet I've seen that happen at dozens of great sites over the last few years, Ars included.”
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