Since most modern browsers have adopted pop-up blockers, the last bastion of annoying advertisements for web surfers has been the in-page ad. Often screwing with the color scheme of the site, flashing, or being otherwise distracting, they end up serving no purpose. You don’t click them because you don’t want to give business to a company that wants to burn your retinas which leads to the advertiser giving less money to the company hosting the ads.
With Firefox, and now in the beta version of Chrome for Windows, there is an add-on that will block (for Firefox) or hide (for Chrome) ads that appear inside webpages. The adblocking programs work better on Firefox because of the restrictions Google puts on add-ons, but they both serve their purpose for the most part.
The moral dilemma comes from the idea of supporting companies whose products you enjoy. By blocking the ads you may be “robbing” these companies out of ad revenue that some of the companies may need to actually survive. A feature that I appreciate from AdThwart for Chrome is that with just the click of a button, you can deactivate the adblocker for a site, which will always allow ads to show up for that site.
I was sort of curious as to how much money people make with ads on the web. In 2007, they reached $5.2 Billion. While that sounds like a ton of money, consider how many websites exist on the internet. I feel that if a site survives solely off of ad revenue, they need a new business model.
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