I’ve been mulling this one over for 3 years since we started working on online Ads.

Three points:

Firstly, to build on what Tom says, Ads are already fairly avoidable….and every time a new Ad tech emerges, usually within days a download appears

Secondly, I refer in my post to Jakob Nielsen’s post basically saying to sites “stop ramming ads at us” – try and make it blend in.

Thirdly though, there is an elephant in the room – all business models in Web 2 want Ads, but:

(i) there are not enough Ads to fill the inventory today and…
(ii) they are an annoyance to all, and the technology exists on the net to block them for anyone.

In other words, yes you are right, and its dreadfully unfair, but reality is that:

- any startup whose monetisation strategy is totally ad based is at high risk, and

- the trick will be to make users *want* to see your ads – a different mindset.

Hmmm…this needs a blog post

I’ve been mulling this one over for 3 years since we started working on online Ads.

Three points:

Firstly, to build on what Tom says, Ads are already fairly avoidable….and every time a new Ad tech emerges, usually within days a download appears

Secondly, I refer in my post to Jakob Nielsen’s post basically saying to sites “stop ramming ads at us” – try and make it blend in.

Thirdly though, there is an elephant in the room – all business models in Web 2 want Ads, but:

(i) there are not enough Ads to fill the inventory today and…
(ii) they are an annoyance to all, and the technology exists on the net to block them for anyone.

In other words, yes you are right, and its dreadfully unfair, but reality is that:

- any startup whose monetisation strategy is totally ad based is at high risk, and

- the trick will be to make users *want* to see your ads – a different mindset.

Hmmm…this needs a blog post

I read this site and most others through my rss reader. Very few sites are publishing ads through their rss feeds.

If people are serious about not wanting users viewing ad-free versions of their sites, they should stop publishing rss feeds.

Alternatively, they should publish ads in their rss feed, if they are determined to show ads to anyone/everyone who wants to view their content.

If they take that approach though, they better have pretty compelling content because it is very easy to unsubscribe from an rss feed if the quality of the content doesn’t mitigate the annoyance of the ads.

I read this site and most others through my rss reader. Very few sites are publishing ads through their rss feeds.

If people are serious about not wanting users viewing ad-free versions of their sites, they should stop publishing rss feeds.

Alternatively, they should publish ads in their rss feed, if they are determined to show ads to anyone/everyone who wants to view their content.

If they take that approach though, they better have pretty compelling content because it is very easy to unsubscribe from an rss feed if the quality of the content doesn’t mitigate the annoyance of the ads.