This came up recently in another thread, so I wanted to go over it.
For those who don't know, Adblock Plus is an extension for Firefox that very effectively removes all ads. It's awesome, and I love it. The number one reason I downloaded it is because ads on some sites slow my computer down to a crawl. Wired.com uses some CPU intensive ads, and I couldn't visit the site at all.
But if you use Adblock Plus, please add exceptions for sites that (1) you enjoy and (2) don't have annoying ads. There's a lot of worry among small-time site administrators because we really do not make much money, if any, off our sites. For YWS, some months are profitable, but those profits only help to cover the cost for the months that aren't profitable. Even in 2008, YWS is losing money.
Plus, most of the Web is free because of advertising. If more people block advertising, then that leads to more and more content having to go behind a wall; that is, you'll have to start paying. I remember this happening during and after the advertising bust in 2000 - 2002, and it was awful. It wasn't until Google introduced Adsense that this began to change (more than anything else, Adsense brought the concept of contextual advertising).
So please, if you enjoy a site and its ads aren't annoying, make an exception for it in ABP. Doing this is really easy. Just click on the ABP drop-down button in the upper right hand corner of Firefox then "disable on this site."
You may say, "but I don't click on ads anyway." However, advertising works in two ways: clicks and eyeballs. Clicks is obvious; every time you click an ad, money is made. But eyeballs are important too. Advertisers use it to see how many people will see the ad (even if they don't click it), and some even choose to pay per eyeball rather than per click.
ABP is quietly causing a revolution in the Web and leading to less obtrusive advertising. However, that revolution will only end up succeeding if you reward those sites with unobtrusive ads by making exceptions for them.
