Hello All!

I'd thought I'd chime in here with something that should be on your moral/ethical radar - at least I feel it should be.    I know some of you might be running ads blocking software.  Have you thought of the ramifications of this?

Facts -
- This site and many others like it have a single source of income to pay their writers, admins, site developers and managerial staff.  That single source of income is ad sales, just like many other media outlets, like radio, TV etc, only web sites are even more limited to ads revenue only.

- This web site and many other quality web sites, will only show you relevent, proper and "targeted" ads of products that you care about.  You will rarely, if ever see an ad on this site that isn't something relative to Computing Technology or a similar high tech product.

- Blocking ads on a site is preventing this site from showing an ad unit to the reader, thus effectively taking away our revenue for you as a reader.  If you then read our content and garner knowledge, are entertained or otherwise from it, you have then effectively taken something for free and not paid for it.

- If all readers took this "block ads" sort of attitude and as such blocked all ads on this site, HotHardware.com would cease to exist or at the very least be reduced to very limited content, only that which could be generated as a hobby and for free, with very limited time invested.

So there you have it.  Now, what are YOUR thoughts on this?  I know some of you understand the situation well, but still there are some readers out there that I KNOW are die-hard ad blockers.  I've even seen threads in this forum (though I can't find them at the moment) that talk about how to block our ads with third party ad software.  Everyone has to realize, that when this happens, you're killing our revenue stream and thus biting the hand that feeds you good, solid content, valuable information and even provides a good community - like this forum - which cost thousands of dollars to develop.

Another thing to think about before you chime in.... Sure, we'd like to have fewer ads on the page but that has to come with traffic growth, with more readership, thus we're able to charge more for an ad spot and then we'll be able to serve fewer ads.

So again, your thoughts?  :)

Well, here are my thoughts as a die-hard ad blocker, since you asked!

I do not know the technical details in this regard, so I need to ask - does me blocking your ads directly cause you to lose ad revenue, or is it just the fact that I am not clicking on any ads? If I were to see them but never click them, is this any different from blocking them entirely, from the perspective of revenue generated for the site?

Of course I do not wish to put this or similar sites out of business, and if me blocking your ads causes a direct loss of revenue I may be prepared to whitelist the site, as long as the ads are not especially distracting. By that I mean things like heavy flash ads with lots of animation and such - I never go out of my way to block text based ads.

There are a number of reasons I block ads - they can be very distracting if they are heavy on animation, they can slow down page loading, and they love to track your surfing with cookies and build up profile, which I consider an invasion of my privacy, even if they cannot identify me personally.

The main reason though is my general dislike of advertising - Advertisers routinely lie in their claims, and I never buy products on the basis of advertising. In fact, I will actively avoid certain companies on the sole basis of them having misleading or inappropriate advertising - I will never deal with the company Virgin for example. When I want to buy a product, I research it properly through sites like this, then use search engines to find an appropriate site to purchase from. I find out about new products that I might want to buy via previews or reviews.

In the rare circumstances when I am not actually blocking the ads, I still never click on them, or on sponsored links, since a sponsored link is not there on the basis of being an appropriate answer to what I am looking for, but rather because they have paid to be there. 

Well, that's my 2 cents!

Here's my 3 cents:

1) HH is the best site of it's kind barnone.

2) The ads on this site are by far more subtle and well placed than most any other sites(that rely strictly on ads for revenue).

3) 90% or more of the ads on this site are by the biggest names in PC hardware(in other words no snake oil salesmen).

taniniver:

Well, here are my thoughts as a die-hard ad blocker, since you asked!

I do not know the technical details in this regard, so I need to ask - does me blocking your ads directly cause you to lose ad revenue, or is it just the fact that I am not clicking on any ads? If I were to see them but never click them, is this any different from blocking them entirely, from the perspective of revenue generated for the site?

Of course I do not wish to put this or similar sites out of business, and if me blocking your ads causes a direct loss of revenue I may be prepared to whitelist the site, as long as the ads are not especially distracting. By that I mean things like heavy flash ads with lots of animation and such - I never go out of my way to block text based ads.

There are a number of reasons I block ads - they can be very distracting if they are heavy on animation, they can slow down page loading, and they love to track your surfing with cookies and build up profile, which I consider an invasion of my privacy, even if they cannot identify me personally.

The main reason though is my general dislike of advertising - Advertisers routinely lie in their claims, and I never buy products on the basis of advertising. In fact, I will actively avoid certain companies on the sole basis of them having misleading or inappropriate advertising - I will never deal with the company Virgin for example. When I want to buy a product, I research it properly through sites like this, then use search engines to find an appropriate site to purchase from. I find out about new products that I might want to buy via previews or reviews.

In the rare circumstances when I am not actually blocking the ads, I still never click on them, or on sponsored links, since a sponsored link is not there on the basis of being an appropriate answer to what I am looking for, but rather because they have paid to be there. 

Well, that's my 2 cents!

Hi Tan,

Thanks for your feedback first of all.  To answer your questions specifically, yes, when you block an ad, you are blocking a showing of an ad or an "impression" and advertisers pay us on how many "impressions" we can serve.  When you click on an ad, it definitely helps with incremental revenue to us but also shows the ad performs to our advertiser and ultimately makes it more valuable to them and we're able to show them better return.

And again, you'll never see ads from a company like Virgin etc here.  We specifically only work with advertisers that are relevant to our readership and also intentionally only work with reputable companies.

To Know-it-All's observation here as well, every ad you see is on HH from a manufacturer that is a major name and provides quality products. 

Thanks again for the feedback all, keep it coming in this thread!

Davo:

from a manufacturer

What I meant was that probably about 10% or less of the ads aren't hardware ads and/or by a hardware mfr.(i.e. newegg or the ad for the movie superbad/contest).

With how focused the ads on HH I don't see why you'd want to block them. They're all relevant ads. It isn't like HH is going to want to sell you tampons. The most useful ads on HH are the ones right after the review from Pricegrabber so if you liked the product you can actually buy there. And why not click on it there if you're going to buy it and support a little? The randomized ads are kind've annoying at times if they get too flashy but the store ads at the end are even useful, not just advertising.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, we really appreciate it.  If I may interject a bit as well, we've made a real effort to almost never disrupt our original content with a distracting ad placement.  With the exception of simple text ads (which look the same as a link anyway) and a single 468 ad in our news, we never place ads in the middle of our content like some other sites do.  We thought this was a big deal during the design phase of the current site and that it strikes a nice balance.  If you want to read our stuff, you don't have to click around interstitial ads, pop-ups, and don't even have to read around an ad becuse its stuck in the middle of a paragraph.  And FYI, those types of ads are potentially the most lucrative because they're so in your face.

I am one of those die hard ad blockers cause im on dialsuck and all the flash ads ad another 2 min for the page to load, and the ones with sound take even longer and are very distracting when you are trying to read and hear a whoosh.  Ever since HH moved to this new forum software i have visited this site less and less at home due to the fact that the pages take for ever, even when i do block all the ads.  HH's last forum software was at least dailup friendly when you ran firefox plus it had a quick reply box at the end of the last post. Till i get some uber fast connection i will continue to block ads. 

This crap about me taking something cause i read your content and block the ads is ridiculous.  I have put in more than my fair share of time and effort responding to peoples computer problems and offering my advice which has helped contribute to the growth of the HH community.  My post count proves that and that goes for so many more members here at HH.  If you are so strapped for cash that you are asking people to unblock ads for you then it might be time for another contest to get more people to come to the site and rack up money from more hits to this site.

Drago,

I'm not going to respond to each of your comments because I can see you have your own perspective here, which is fine of course.  I will say that I'm speaking not of this forum, so much as I am about the main site content that takes a ton of full-time work from many people.  Ads pay for time and writers, all of which cost money.  I was just looking for feedback on this topic because it's interesting to hear all the perspectives.

Ads here should load faster now as well.  We just made a programming change in the forum today that will allow them to render on their own while  the forum wraps around them as fast as it can load.  See if it helps you.  This change was just coincident with today, not as a result of this thread commentary.

Thanks

I can see all points of view on this one...(being a former 56k dial-up user),but I think that the advertising used in this site is very subtle and as relevent as possible. Seeing that it could be much worse, I can't complain. HH is the best and im pretty sure the people who work to keep this site running want the best for their regulars aka the purpose of this thread...So keep it up HH!!

Drago:

... and the ones with sound take even longer and are very distracting when you are trying to read and hear a whoosh. 

You also NEVER have had an ad on this site load ANY sort of sound clip whatsoever, I assure you. 

 Does this mean there is absolutely no chance of me getting the Jolie pop up?..... Dagnammit I was looking forwards to that one.

 I get tempted to Adblock the adverts as they are all US based and I am in the UK missing out on the offers :(

Meh...I don't use any kind of ad block software. They don't bother me or my viewing so i let them ride. No harm, no foul.

I still like it when people say they are very distracting...how in the world some people make it thru a day is beyond me. When driving in your car and tons of cars are passing, do you pull over and try to block them out? :)

 @Enter:  When you dont have an uber big monitor and run at a lowly 1024x768, then a banner that is vertical takes up a good 1/5th of the screen, and it flashes and makes movements, it can be very distracting.

 @Davo:  Yes HH has had ads that make noise in the past, i havent seen any recently however.  the one that made the whoosh was the corsair one with the old school ship with sails.
 

i'm on the same page, at work i have a 19" lcd running at a 1024x768 resolution due to our agency management system so i have viewed the page at that res. and i still do not have an issue with it. guess i'm just lucky like that.

BTW- where you been Drago, it's been awhile since we've seen you around! :)

Drago:

 @Davo:  Yes HH has had ads that make noise in the past, i havent seen any recently however.  the one that made the whoosh was the corsair one with the old school ship with sails.
 

Drago,

I'm not calling you a liar or anything but there has never been a Corsair ad on this site, to my knowledge, that makes noise.  Regardless, there certainly aren't any now.  

By the way, is the forum loading faster for you?  Ads should be loading asynchronously now from the rest of the forum, so it should at the same speed, regardless of whether there are ads here or not.

Elsparrow:

 I get tempted to Adblock the adverts as they are all US based and I am in the UK missing out on the offers :(

Got a Crucial ad that is UK geo-targeted only, starting 9/1 there Elsp.  ;)

^^double post, double post. Davo am I going to have to ban you? 

entermymatrix03:

^^double post, double post. Davo am I going to have to ban you? 

What are you talking about Ent?  Put down the pipe bro!