The Reason We Stopped Watching TV and Listening to Radio

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There was a time decades ago, when we had a choice of five channels. TSR, TF1, Antenne 2, SRF and RSI. Over time we got more channels offered to us, and with satellite TV and cable our choice mushroomed to the point where we could watch documentary channels for a morning, and move on to something else once the programs looped.

Watching More and More

The result of this TV watching is that we watched hours of programs but we also wasted huge amounts of time on ads. That’s okay for a half hour program. You would see ads at the start, ads at the middle, and then ads at the end.

Skipping Ads with PVRs

With the emergence of PVRs we could record the shows that we wanted to watch, and then fast forward through the ads. Sometimes we would let the ads play, for a bathroom break. We would also mute the TV during the ad breaks, to avoid hearing the crappy ad noises.

Years Without Ads as They Grew

In paralel YouTube and other sites had plenty of User Generated Crap as I love to call it, which we could watch, without ads. People often speak about how we shouldn’t use ad blockers, but for a decade or more the web was without ads, and especially without invasive ads. Services like Twitter, YouTube, Facebok, Instagram and more were built on services without any ads. My point is that the social contract between early adopters, and early web users was that content was free, and without ads.

En-ad-ification

Over time YouTube added ads, and Twitter added ads, and Facebook added ads, and eventually Instagram went from being a fantastic photo sharing ad to a crappy amalgam of Influencer spam and advers with a glimpse of what friends are doing every so often. The social contract was broken by Social media companies and their users.

Content Blocking Add Blockers

Now we see articles about how content creators are trying to prevent us from being able to use ad blockers instead of asking “Why do people block ads?”. YouTube is trying to disable ad blockers, and other sites refuse to serve content to people with ad blockers.

This is paradoxical. You work so hard to be visible, and when, finally, you are visible you say “sorry, we don’t want you to see our content until you disable ad blockers”. I don’t disable the ad blockers. I know not to visit the site again.

Degrader User Experience

If it wasn’t for ad blockers I would have stopped using YouTube years ago for two reasons. The first is that the recommended content is awful. Its rubbish that gets a lot of views, because the algorithms think that people like it. Discovery is no longer possible. The content, let alone the ads are awful.

The second reason is that the ads are unrelated crap. In some cases they play a music video for three minutes as pre-roll before the video you want to watch. In other cases you just want to browse for something to watch but you get an add for 25 seconds before the video starts to play, and within 5 seconds you stop the video and try to find something better. With pre-roll each change, means another ad. In this scenario it makes sense to block ads.

Always the Same Ads

The other paradox is that because 5-10 ads are shown at a very high frequency we will see the ad, whether we have ad blockers or not. In my experience you turn off an ad blocker, and you see the same video ad on iOS games 10 times in a row, if you don’t give up playing the Pay to Win game before then. Plenty of iOS games are designed to force you to see ads, to play. The game is actually designed to make you play ads, rather than to enjoy a game. The ads are for yet more “pay to win games”.

Slow Ad Servers

As I played with Pi-Hole I noticed that it would be very easy to defeat ad blockers. If you want to serve ads to customers embed the ad content directly on your site. If it is served from a remote location that is different than your URL then ad blocking is simple. If it is served from the same server as content, then ad blockers stop working. A small effort upstream, and ads can’t be blocked.

Sites Designed Around Ads Rather Than Content

Some sites, such as The Independent are built around ads, rather than content. They are designed with sensationalist headlines rather than content that is worth reading. I enjoyed reading three or four English newspapers daily, online, until the Independent was bought and turned into a tabloid rather than a worthwhile source for news. Ads should support content. Ads should not be the product.

Ads As Destination

It is important to highlight that when ads are well made they become the destination rather than the distraction. When ads are made the ads will be shared, and the products in that ad will be promoted. GoPro videos are one example, DJI ads are another. Redbull videos are a third.

Ads and Slow Computers

It’s worth noting that if you’re using a Pi5 or other low power machine ads can crash the computer as they sometimes require more ram and CPU power than old machines have available. By having a Pi-hole we save ourselves from web pages that crash the computer.

For years I have had Google Ads on my site. I have had three or four payouts in that time. It can often take years to get a payout. Part of it is due to my site being low traffic but another part of it is due to ad blockers. The point is not to be critical but rather to comment on the slowness of sites that have ads.

If I removed ads from my blog the site would load faster and users would have a better experience. More time should be taken to ensure that ads load as fast as the site they’re on. Sites should not be penalised for the ads they carry when being optimised for search engines.

The Issue With Podcasts

I am an avid listener of podcasts. When I find a series that I like I listen to the most recent episode, and then I go back and listen to the earliest ones, in chronological order, until I get to today. The problem I have found is that as I get back to the newest episodes the ads become toxic.

The best case example is the Twit Network Podcasts. In the 00s and 10s they were short half hour to hour long podcasts, but over time they ballooned to being an hour and a half to two hours long.

And Finally

In the 90s we turned off the speakers when browsing the web because people embedded MP3s to play music while we were on the page. In the 00s plenty of websites were either without ads or very few ads. It’s in the 2010s and the 2020s that we got innundated with ads. It’s that innundation that encourages us to block ads.

Recently I noticed that I was getting Google ads within the admin panel of my blog and I thought that this was a step too far. I haven’t noticed them recently but that’s because I have Pi-hole and ad blockers.

And Finally, I stopped using Instagram and Twitter because I had no way of not seeing ads. I stopped using YouTube for a while because I had no way of blocking ads. I avoid visiting sites like The Independent.co.uk because of its ads. There is a tiny bit of content thrown in to give an illusion of being worth my time.

The point is the following, by blocking ad blockers, or forcing people to see ads, you stop them from visiting your site at all. YouTube is unusable without ads. Remember, we switched from mainstream radio and television because we wanted to skip ads. If ads are in podcasts, and on YouTube, then we have no reason to use them.