This is all my personal point of view. > you're possibly saving them money by not downloading their assets, saving them a (fractional) amount of transit costs.
Ad serving costs are usually bore by the advertiser or an agency. Anyhow - this cost is "cost of revenue" so the higher it is the better it is, assuming your business model is viable! > I've just skipped some ads on my PVR. Is that unethical? > I turned over the centre-ad-spread in a glossy mag - ditto? PVR - yes. Mag - not so much. The magazine has a multiple revenue streams. Blocking ads on websites is particularly nasty because of the cost-per-user. If 1 person watches a TV programme the cost of transmission is the same as if 1000 people watch it. On a website this isn't the case - there is a relatively high cost per user. Just ask anyone that has been on the front page of Slashdot or the like. > What I look at on my own computer is surely up to me. Yes, however if you are using other people's server juice and bandwidth then you should pay for it on their terms. Not a big ask. If the banner or whatever payment terms they have annoys you, then don't go back. > If banner-ad doesn't make companies enough money to survive, isn't that up to them - and whether I block the ads or not, isn't that up to me? The problem here is that you are seemingly disconnected from the effects of ad blocking. I run a fair-sized website that employs people. If everyone blocks the ads the website wouldn't exist, the people running it wouldn't have jobs, and the users wouldn't get their content. In the shorter term - advertising will always get to you as there is too much money involved. Banners are one of the least evil ways of doing this. Block them and you'll get crap spammy websites, "flogs" [1], and advertorials. Nobody can stop you blocking ads, but by doing so you are taking food from people's tables. J [1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=flog&defid=1084732#108473 2 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
