We often rationalize using ad blockers because ads can be intrusive or annoying. But let’s asking ourselves: Why do we feel entitled to get this for free?
This isn’t a moral judgment. I genuinely want to understand the reasoning.
On YouTube, we went from a banner on the video to a few seconds of a video before to multiple ads before the video to multiple ad pauses even on relatively short videos (under 10 minutes). Add to that the sponsored sections of the video itself, which are added by the content creator, and other ads (stores, tickets, etc) that sometimes YouTube adds under the video even if you pay for premium.
Google Search pages used to have one or two ads at the top, with a different background colour than search results. Now sometimes I have to scroll down to see organic content, because sponsored content fills my screen.
I don't think I'm entitled to have access to all this for free, but we went too far... and so I use an adblocker on all my devices.
Pretty much all article-based sites, recipes, news, blog posts, anything built with wordpress to blogspot. Their algorithm seems to ensure that there is always 1 ad visible on screen at all times. With font sizes as big as they are these days this means 1 ad every two paragraphs.
And the auto placement is enabled by default on new accounts, and all these new "features," get automatically enabled from time to time. I'm sure there is a mountain of webmasters that didn't even notice that their websites have gotten filled with ads.
The worst one is that interstital that appears whenever you click a link. I'm pretty sure Google had a rule against that type of popup, and then they literally made the popup themselves.
On the other hand, all of this can be disabled.
The question is how much money does a website need to make to stay online. If it could survive with fewer ads, I'm sure there would be fewer.