Blocking Ad Blockers

Analogies almost always break at some point, but they are great at helping understand a topic.

There is a quiet war going on between ad blocking supporters and advertisers. The war is quiet to most non tech savvy users but not so to those involved in the fight. Advertisers are more than frustrated and angry that a significant number of people do not want to become a captured audience. They continue to look for ways to circumvent or fight ad blocking. This effort is more or less like herding cats.

My analogy is that a person can walk in front of but ignore a store-front window display. A person can look at the contents of the window display but does not have to look at everything. A person can walk into the store to investigate something in the window display but can ignore all other items and isles in the store.

A similar approach applies to advertisements.

People do not want to consume bandwidth with unsolicited ads. People do not want to risk malware because content delivery providers refuse to monitor advertisements. People do not want to waste time being distracted with unsolicited content. People do not want to be tracked and data mined.

More importantly, nobody really gives a rat’s backside about your product anyway. People find good, well designed products without advertising. Imagine that.

Posted: Category: Commentary, Usability Tagged: General

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