Julien Lengrand-Lambert bio photo

Julien Lengrand-Lambert

French guy living in the Netherlands. IT Chapter Lead @ING during the day, CoFounder @Skyai at night.

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Why I don't use adBlocker and co

Like most of you I guess, I always got my browser opened on my desktop, the number of tabs depending on whether I am at home or at work.

Lots of people see my screen and say : OMG! What are all those ugly ads!? Install AdBlocker so you won’t have to see them any more.

No, I won’t use AdBlocker . . . and it’s a CHOICE. The reason? I don’t want my favorites websites to swith to paid contents!

Anyone having a website (and some traffic :) ) knows that hosting costs lots of money! Data hosting, Electricity, Domain name . . . without including the hours of work in writing, reviewing, translating and updating articles that are mandatory to keep quality of content. Advertisment is a simple (the simplest?) way for admins to reduce those costs.

If everybody blocks adverts on its browser, it is likely that brands finally tend to stop using this way of promotion.

So, several ways would be left for websites owners to get some cash back :

  • Keep paying for the service, without any help (Ouch!)
  • Ask for volontary support. LegTux has chosen this type of solution for some time. And as perfect as the idea might be, the last time I heard about him he was still losing money with his service.
  • Switch to paid contents. The worst solution in my opinion, as it closes the content to most of the web and lots of quality content would be lost. In addition, this solution might dramatically reduce the traffic of the website.
  • Using free hosting solutions and often loose flexibility, personal domain name, ergonomy that paid hosting offer. . .

The same idea could be applied to lost of smartphone games and applications. which display ads while you use them. There is however a major difference, most of those applications offer to remove ads in supporting them. I love this kind of solutions as people get the choice to pay for an app they love, or not. I wonder if this kind of solution could be used on websites. . .

Stays the problem of websites that completely abuse of ads. It happens to be attacked by 24 flashing pop ups and wins 3 golden ferraris whenever you connect yourself. The solution for them is quite simple, just avoid them. And don’t come back ! Hopefully, the admin will quickly see the drop in its stats and think about it…

And for the most generous one, don’t forget to click on some ads of your favorite website and enjoy supporting them this way :)

Would you personally be ready to pay some fees a month to get rid of ads on your favorite website? I would really enjoy you personal mind on that !