I mean it sort of makes sense, in that if you don’t want to see ads then you can contribute to sites directly rather than seeing ads (cough) but then if you shake your head a bit then isn’t this actually an ‘Annoy people enough that they pay you to stop annoying them’ business model? I’m not sure how charitable I feel in terms of not seeing ads. Hmm.
So much of the web is powered by ad revenue, and in the age of ad blockers even on mobile now, then I guess some sort of change is coming. A lot of sites have veered into the ‘rubber knecking so bad I can’t stop reading’ school of journalism to increase those ad views, so I won’t be sorry to see that decline a bit…
It has happened a couple of times when my browser has been hijacked by a random Google ad. They can stand to and should find a better and safer way to deliver ads. And it shouldn’t cripple and increase the load time of the website or browser used.
If you can manage that, I think people don’t really care for ads, as long as it isn’t in your face or destroying your experience of the website.
I hate that Youtube ads are physically placed on top of, before, in the middle and after a video. That kinda hampers with the videos I put up. And I can’t really include them into the video either as I have no idea what kind of ads are going to be on display.
I’m also in a constant worry that what I do put, since I am monetizing my videos, will be taken down because I actually do not have the right to the IP of the games that I play.
And the little money that do trickle in from ads are not enough to justify the potential criminality of what I do, just to entertain friends and strangers on the net.
But it is going to be interesting to see what comes out of this debacle. But I doubt it will be a change for good.
I just really hate random ads…and I actually hate Google Ad-Sense ads that are tied to stuff I WAS looking at…I’m not sure how that works, but if I’m Googling for a product, like a weed-eater or something and later I’m on a totally different site and the sidebar starts getting filled up with weed-eater and blow up doll ads, that kind of weirds me out.
That said, I DO like advertising that is site related content. For instance, X-Plane.org has sponsor ads down the right side that are ads for planes and X-Plane specific products. AVSim as well. SimHQ used to be that way too - they used to have ads for flight sim hardware and even some products from third party developers like Aeyes and stuff that I’d occasionally be drawn to. Now their front page is a mess of advertising - as we speak, I’m getting: ReThink Church, Chrysler 2000, Clinical Strength Secret anti-perspirant, Travelocity Westin Jekyll Island, MOAA (no idea what that is), Weight Watchers. Six ads on the front page…and not a single one related to sims. Is what it is.
As to contributing money to reduce ads. I’m adamantly opposed to the idea. I’m already kind of pissed off that I pay $170 a month or whatever for cable TV, which is basically paying the cable company to provide me with 90% channels of crap with the additional in your face F-U of hundreds of channels of infomercials. I mean, way back in the day - wasn’t cable TV a sort of thing where you paid and didn’t get commercials and watched movies? Now they really just hammer you with advertising. And don’t get me started on all the network TV with their in-show pop up advertising of their own shows. Nothing beats a nice tense moment of TV interrupted by a mini Martin Short dancing a jig in the bottom right corner of the screen.
Dang…I get angry just thinking about cable TV. Actually…we have DirecTV (ditched TWC last year) and the only shows I really want to watch (triathlon and non-traditional sports type stuff) is in a tier that I absolutely won’t pay for. I wish I could just get rid of the TV (I can live on the internet…obviously) but my wife has her shows that she does enjoy.
We stream most things and have a growing collection of small black boxes beneath various TVs. I would recommend something like a Roku together with Plex (which is free). We have a Roku 3 and a ‘2+’ and the 2 is actually the nicer box (well, it’s more the size of a hockey puck).
We pay about $170/mo for cable and I’ve never figured out exactly why. Anecdotal evidence suggests things like ‘HGTV Tiny Houses’ and sports seem to be the anchors. Every time I try to cut the coax/dish for good it all seems to come back to ‘Is the Hocky Going To Be On?’ issue. I guess I should just do the NHL.com sub thing, but not sure of the blackouts.
I’m like that too as well. One thing I’ve never figured out is why I will sometimes watch an old film with adverts every (what seems like) 5 minutes even though I have the exact same movie available (but unwatched) on blueray, Plex and Netflix.
The passive nature of TV is a thing I guess. Tyranny of Choice and all that…
Basically Apple TV turns your TV into an iPad. It is a small device perhaps a bit bigger than your phone that can hook up to a modern TV directly or like I have it through my home network.
It is fantastic. We have a subscription to Netflix through it as well as HBO Now. Plus you can watch YouTube videos on your TV. I watch MudSpike video reviews etc. on my TV through Apple TV. Your wife will be able to download and use the app that has her shows and watch it all on your TV streaming. Watch when you want and watch what you want.