I have gone to websites that I have to click off of because the ads are so omnipresent and obnoxious. Constantly bringing the page up to them or graying out the screen so you can't see anything else unless of course you are forced to close them by trying to click on the little bity x they've placed (many times so small that you end up launching their ad instead). I don't want to experience any of that. If you want to run a website and provide me with that experience, I simply will check the website source before I click on an article and just not go there. To me it's the website owner who has the responsibility to allow or not allow disruptive advertising on their site. And if they don't get my eyes on their pages, well I look at it as their fault.
I'm also finding websites that seem to think I can no longer read and want to run video as soon as I log on without my permission to do so. I don't want unknown sources of videos playing on my devices. Don't like the idea of my device being commanded to auto play. Most of the time I'm in a quiet mode reading when suddenly their videos blast sound. I can read just fine and should be given the option of clicking play or not. I'm finding CNN and AOL's Huffington doing this forced auto play on their news stories a lot. You can always find similar stories carried on non-offending websites. So I intentionally don't go to these site any more if I can help it.
From what I understand Marco Arment who designed and then pulled one of the most popular ad blocking apps after getting 2 days of super exposure in the news, did so because the discrete ads he runs on his site or an associate's were being blocked as well. Imagine that wouldn't sit well with that ad company he had no intention of blocking. However in my mind that's not the problem. I'm ok with simple, non-intrusive ads being on a page. If a page doesn't load quickly and it's due to an ad, I give the page a certain amount of time and otherwise if I'm clicking off that site. Clicking off before reading has been happening more lately as advertisers and ad designers feel their purpose in life is to hold you hostage and throw all their bells and whistles at you. Personally I would never buy a product advertised in such a manner and would make a point of remembering who that advertising client is. I think the key is making the website owner responsible for the type of ads they allow, after all they are permitting them to be there in the first place to generate money from them for their own purposes. And Advertising clients should be ultimately responsible for what "kinds" of ads they are willing to run, beyond the content. Suppose someone could start a Review service of websites and client companies and rate their ad placements. If the user could then "blacklist" those sites during browsing, I bet we'd see the face of intrusive advertising on the internet change.
After the news came out about the large numbers of adopters of the ad blocking apps on Apple Apps, CNBC had an interview with a website publisher, can't recall his company or his name, but he basically said that he was considering this (popular ad blocking) all out war, and said there were already companies or products out there that could defeat ad blocking apps and they would use them. Guess he feels the right to degrade our internet experience at all costs. As one of the CNBC commentators said that day he feels this ad blocking has all come about because of the ways ads were being presented. And I agree.
It's still up to the user to stay on that site or not.
