They call it “dark traffic” - ads that are not seen by tech-savvy users who have excellent ad blockers.
Not surprised that its growing. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and its only getting worse, and will continue to get worse every month.
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
– Banksy
Ads on websites are deals the sitemaker made with themselves. The internet is free.
[rant] The Internet is not FREE. Its just free at the point of use!
Just like ad funded websites aren’t free to use, they are also just free at the point of use!
People seem to forget where the all this ‘ad money’ comes from. It’s not growing on magic money trees, it’s coming from every product you buy and it’ll be interesting to see how much products have gone up against the sheer amount of ads that are shovelled everywhere now.
The reason the internet used to be great was because people shared information with no expectation of monetary gain. Just the love of what they knew and the joy of sharing information.
So the sooner everyone realises you’re all paying for the ads on every product/service to be shown already, and blocking them actually saves you money because the more ads that are shown, the more websites get paid, the more ad/tracking companies charge companies and yes, the more expensive you’re product and services get! [/rant]
I don’t mean free from operating costs. I mean free for the person using it to experience it how they choose.
