Actually no, it's worse. Ad companies take everything they can from you using any method they can including monitoring everything you browse or watch on TV or say near your phone or TV or in your car or what you look at in every shop or what you buy or who you chat to, compile massive secret databases and sell 'you' to anyone willing to pay, regardless of what the information is used for.
I mean, every other business I am aware of forces you to pay for something too?
I don't see what is confusing here. Consumers love the ad-model because they can get things "free". If the real cost of ad-supported products is too much for you, then its too expensive for you to use.
Like someone found the backdoor to the movie theater, and people just go in that way rather than pay for a ticket, and then these same people go on rants about how movie tickets are a rip-off and they make you watch 30 mins of ads before the movie, and candy is 5x overpriced, and proudly declaring "I will never pay for a movie ticket again!", as if they are some righteous moral champion standing against the greed of people wanting to get paid for their work.
Straighten out your head, then come back and make an argument.
Not paying for a movie ticket is a crime. Blocking ads is not. They're not equivalent.
Also, if the industry actually did something, anything to address the grievances of ad block users (a lot of whom I'm willing to bet aren't inherently against advertising and fully understand it funds the content they consume and enjoy), it might be less of, if not a complete non-issue. But no, ads are still distracting, still heavily affect page load speed, still track every little thing visitors do, and still infect millions of peoples' systems with malware every year, and the industry just collectively shrugs and ploughs on towards maximum profit at any cost.
You may or my not recall, but the OG ad-blocker, ad-block plus, struck a deal with the advertising industry where they would let through vetted ads that were deemed non-invasive. Basically a truce where users would get "lite" ads and advertisers would get more impressions.
There was a user revolt, people flocked to U-block, and ad-block plus died.
Advertisers are greedy, but don't be a fool and think users are not equally (if not eve more) so.
I completely agree. These discussions are so frustrating because the "ads are evil!" people never acknowledge that they're consuming ad-supported content. "If you don't like ads, stop watching YouTube, or pay for the ad-free version" just gets met with "well they show ads even on the paid version", totally sidestepping the point with BS.
Not disagreeing with you but I think people underestimate how many users would not watch Youtube if there were no Adblockers, I only say this because many in the content space and sometimes in the SAS/Webapp space are severely overestimating there products value and would not even with bother with Youtube specifically because of the unknown factor when they deliver adds. I think something like Tubi does it better and feels more like they actually respect the viewer while Youtube, like all Google, respect nothing which makes the breakup so so funny but I digress.
And you are not entitled to kill off your competitors by operating at a loss until they're dead and then raise your price (e.g. amount of time you demand from people for them to see ads, amount of personal data you collect, and all but hiding content that isn't up to the standards you present to advertisers) to ridiculous levels.
You don't like it? Go out of business and have companies that are able to operate at the price consumers are willing to pay rise up in your place.
I'm not concerned with the business' model or how they plan to make a revenue. That's the CEO decision and he's smarter than me.
I'd be happy to pay for no ads, and I have before for streaming services. But as time goes on it gets harder and harder. Often the only choice is ads, at which point I block or move on to a different service.
Ads use up my time and attention. Which, to me, is much more valuable than a small amount of money.
Ads might suck a lot, but you are also not entitled to free content.