Eric Meyer on Content/Ad Blocking
September 22, 2015Eric Meyer’s primer on Content Blocking is spot-on.
The ads that are at risk now are the ones delivered via bloated, badly managed, security-risk mechanisms. In other words: what’s at risk here is terrible web development.
Granted, the development of these ads was so terrible that it made the entire mobile web ecosystem appear far more broken that it actually is, and prompted multiple attempts to rein it in. Now we have content blockers, which are basically the nuclear option: if you aren’t going to even attempt to respect your customers, they’re happy to torch your entire infrastructure.
I used an Ad Blocker on desktop for a long time now, but i also have many sites set to “do not block”. These are basically all sites that respect me and treat me as a human being. And if you are a publisher, ad-provider or anyone else working in this industry and don’t respect your customers, i couldn’t care less if you’re going downhill from here and i would suggest you to go back to the drawing board as fast as you can.
Or, as Kontra eloquently phrased it on Twitter:
Then Users: Please DoNotTrack me AdTech+Publishers: Screw you Now AdTech+Publishers: Please DoNotAdBlock me Users: Screw you
— Kontra (@counternotions) September 20, 2015