Adblock discussion

I adblock regardless of the site so...It's staying as my add-on for chrome.

I think AdBlock made the internet a much more enjoyable experience for me. Getting constantly eye fucked with annoying ads makes me not give a fuck about the content behind it. That's why I barely turn on my 360 anymore and that's also the reason I won't buy its successor. You want to make money from your content, then provide the people an easy way to pay for it, or just have ads which are not annoying and more importantly do not obstruct the content.

I use Ad-Block and don't feel bad simply because there is way to much awful stuff on the internet and Ad-Block helps block potentially harmful scripts that live in ads on some sites. On top of making the internet less of an eyesore it also makes it a tad safer place to navigate.

I have just installed adblock and subscribed to GB. I Prefer to support websites through membership and not through ad based. That is why I wouldn't pay for hulu, continuing ad's after membership is appealing. And while GB has a yearly that takes ads off I prefer the monthly and feel justified using adblock. Using adblock without paying any sort of fees is in a way stealing as your changing the way the content is displayed to the detriment of the creators. If we all continue to adblock it removes the incentive to create most of the websites we know today. Ad's are the worlds best passive money generators remove that and most of the internet collapses. If youtube went ad free how would they earn money? Sell tee shirts and mugs?

I wish that there was an adblocker that let me allow ads by default, and block specific sites that either has particularly invasive adverts, or I don't want to support. Most internet adverts are completely ignorable and unintrusive. After years of browsing the internet, I barely notice adverts on the majority of sites. And I want to fund the content I consume. But I want to block adverts on sites that have intrusive ads, and on sites that I don't want to support. That is the way adblockers should work.

But they work the opposite way. They block ads on all sites, and allow you to whitelist sites you want to view ads on. Which is completely backwards.

can anyone tell me how to get adblock to work for twitch? it's driving me crazy.

I have a Mac...

Ads are terrible, I got a 15 second ad before a 45 second youtube clip yesterday. Fuck that.

Fuck ads, and fuck people who's only income is ad revenue. It's a horrible business practice and it's the 1# reason why most websites suck. Put great things behind pay-walls, and people will pay.

Adblock Plus all day everyday day.

And those tweets from Brad and Ben were pretty lame. They're falling in the same hole as publishers blaming piracy as the sole reasons for all their problems in that they are forgetting that a user not coming to their site at all is a lot more damaging to their business than someone using adblock. That adblock user is still exposed to the content and is still exposing that content to friends and family. It's not unlike pirating a game and convincing a friend its awesome and having that friend buy it and ending up buying the sequel yourself 2 years later.

Adblock may be a detriment to their business but it's not the biggest problem they have and telling people to go away is certainly not helping their cause. As is sites deliberately breaking their site to adblock users. Way to give a great first impression to newcomers who might not figure out that adblock is what's breaking the site.

Give me a compelling reason to make you money and i will. If you have pop-ups, auto start video ads with the sound on by default, so much ads that your site site takes 4-5 times longer to load, a site skin that gives me eye cancer and makes it almost impossible to click anywhere without clicking the ad by accident, or worst of them all, if i click a link only to have an ad load instead of the page i wanted and have to click again to continue to the right page you are instantly disqualified from me not using adblock on your site. With that last one you've actually lost a viewer entirely.

I wish that there was an adblocker that let me allow ads by default, and block specific sites that either has particularly invasive adverts, or I don't want to support. Most internet adverts are completely ignorable and unintrusive. After years of browsing the internet, I barely notice adverts on the majority of sites. And I want to fund the content I consume. But I want to block adverts on sites that have intrusive ads, and on sites that I don't want to support. That is the way adblockers should work.

But they work the opposite way. They block ads on all sites, and allow you to whitelist sites you want to view ads on. Which is completely backwards.

See the Euro Truck Sim video. That's why I use AdBlock.

I also have literally every element except articles blocked on Kotaku. That layout is just... ugh.

If your website is awesome, give me another way for me to give you money and I'll do it but there's no way in hell I'll disable AdBlock.

Let me get this straight, Brad is complaining about lost revenue due to AdBlock...while being bought by CBS that can finance them infinitely better than whiskey media or GiantBomb as an independant website? Hilarious. So before the buy-out, it was all about "supporting the duders" with premium subscriptions and having mandatory ads...after the buyout he's whining about revenue?

Unless Brad's payroll IS the ad-revenue...I find those comments pretty hostile.

I don't have adblocker but in generally ads don't bother me so have no reason to install it

@Gmanall said:

That is why I wouldn't pay for hulu, continuing ad's after membership is appealing.

what a goofy typo

@TrafalgarLaw said:

Let me get this straight, Brad is complaining about lost revenue due to AdBlock...while being bought by CBS that can finance them infinitely better than whiskey media or GiantBomb as an independant website? Hilarious. So before the buy-out, it was all about "supporting the duders" with premium subscriptions and having mandatory ads...after the buyout he's whining about revenue?

Unless Brad's payroll IS the ad-revenue...I find those comments pretty hostile.

And how do you think CBS gets its money to finance Giantbomb? I'm sure a large percentage of all Giantbomb staff member's payroll is through people who don't use adblockers

Let me get this straight, Brad is complaining about lost revenue due to AdBlock...while being bought by CBS that can finance them infinitely better than whiskey media or GiantBomb as an independant website? Hilarious. So before the buy-out, it was all about "supporting the duders" with premium subscriptions and having mandatory ads...after the buyout he's whining about revenue?

Unless Brad's payroll IS the ad-revenue...I find those comments pretty hostile.

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

Let me get this straight, Brad is complaining about lost revenue due to AdBlock...while being bought by CBS that can finance them infinitely better than whiskey media or GiantBomb as an independant website? Hilarious. So before the buy-out, it was all about "supporting the duders" with premium subscriptions and having mandatory ads...after the buyout he's whining about revenue?

Unless Brad's payroll IS the ad-revenue...I find those comments pretty hostile.

And how do you think CBS gets its money to finance Giantbomb? I'm sure a large percentage of all Giantbomb staff member's payroll is through people who don't use adblockers

That's none of my concern, they did not ask me my opinion on joining CBS. They, in this case only Brad actually, should not call my usage of adblock ethically immoral.

Of course I use Adblock. Porn sites are absolutely insane without it, let's be honest here. If a site is worthwhile and offers an option to support it directly, like this site does, that's what I do. I don't put it in the same category as piracy at all, I consider it a lot like DVR'ing a show and fast forwarding through all the commercials rather than watching it live. If I really dig the show I'll pick it up on Blu-Ray (or in the case of shit like Thrones and Boardwalk Empire, subscribe to a channel just for those shows alone.) If advertisers made their ads approximately 350% less obnoxious and intrusive maybe I wouldn't have to use Adblock. I just don't like strobe lights and animated graffiti blown up my ass for 3 minutes every time I visit a site. TV advertisers used to do the same thing by making the volume of their commercials absurdly loud relative to the standard volume of regular programming, until the CALM Act took effect.

I am not adverse to letting web sites get funding from advertising but the reason why AdBlock and other software exist is because of the obtrusive and obnoxious and frankly risky way(*) they wand to deliver ads to us. Make ads less obtrusive and safer and I think many people wouldn't care so much.

(*) A vector for hacks to happen on home PCs is that someone hacks an ad provider content stream and injects an ad, usually in script or flash, that does something bad. If nothing else, having add-ons that simply say "I want to only see content from the site and a specific list of external sites" is a security feature.

@TrafalgarLaw said:

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

Let me get this straight, Brad is complaining about lost revenue due to AdBlock...while being bought by CBS that can finance them infinitely better than whiskey media or GiantBomb as an independant website? Hilarious. So before the buy-out, it was all about "supporting the duders" with premium subscriptions and having mandatory ads...after the buyout he's whining about revenue?

Unless Brad's payroll IS the ad-revenue...I find those comments pretty hostile.

And how do you think CBS gets its money to finance Giantbomb? I'm sure a large percentage of all Giantbomb staff member's payroll is through people who don't use adblockers

That's none of my concern, they did not ask me my opinion on joining CBS. They, in this case only Brad actually, should not call my usage of adblock ethically immoral.

I will. People like you are freeloading off of our payed subscriptions. You should be thanking us for not canceling and letting Giantbomb die, which it would had it not been for us.

I love AdBlock and don't have any guilt about using it.

@CaptainThunderpants said:

The problem with YouTube specifically is that it is simply too big for a payment system to be effective. The amount of partners they pay is growing so your payment would be worth less and less to the point where you paying would be meaningless. Having an ad-based system, for the partners, is a far superior system where the amount of money they get from Google and advertisers varies directly with their performance. I understand that YOU can afford to go ala-carte with what you see and pay but the reality is that the majority of internet users cannot (hence the Mr. Moneybags joke). The internet is a tube for universal access, not a Sam's Club membership.

If you're really that concerned about invasion of privacy, there are many tools that block tracking. Ironically (as far as I know at least) AdBlock is not one of them. Advertisers still collect your information, it's just you don't see the end result.

Edit: Whoops, I confused evasive and invasive when reading your reply.

Google's entire early success, the owner now of Youtube was built on the fact that they looked at the overall cost of server storage was falling faster than Moore's law, and decided to offer that service for free to build a base of users. Now onto youtube. The users actions are unimportant on youtube. Whether you are watching the ad or blocking it, the cost to the user is free in both cases. The cost in both cases are on google and the content creator.

What I say to you is, don't take into account the people blocking the ads. We don't exist. This freemium economy was set up by google, and the revenue from distribution is set by google. If you want to be successful in it: Find ways to either increase your economies of scare or reduce your own cost. Expecting user actions to change, when it was google who set the expectation is dumb.

Sure it would be nice to get as many users as possible to pay, but google doesn't expect that. What they care more about is economies of scale. If you can't withstand the cost of doing business in this model then you have no business trying to make a living from it. It was google who set these standards not the user. Google knew there would be a rise of blocking of ads, and why haven't they cracked down on it yet?

I'll repeat my previous point just to make it clear. If you can't withstand the cost of doing business in this model, then you have no business trying to do so. End of story. I hope them all the best, but they aren't entitled to payment for the content they create when they distribute it in this model.

I never click on ads, so they're a nuisance to me.  I only started using it a year or so ago when ads got more and more obnoxious (full screen takeovers, videos playing an ad multiple times on accident, random loud noises playing, etc.).
 
I don't feel bad, in short.

why use adblock when you can just block the worst offenders with your hosts file or better yet, at your router.

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

Let me get this straight, Brad is complaining about lost revenue due to AdBlock...while being bought by CBS that can finance them infinitely better than whiskey media or GiantBomb as an independant website? Hilarious. So before the buy-out, it was all about "supporting the duders" with premium subscriptions and having mandatory ads...after the buyout he's whining about revenue?

Unless Brad's payroll IS the ad-revenue...I find those comments pretty hostile.

And how do you think CBS gets its money to finance Giantbomb? I'm sure a large percentage of all Giantbomb staff member's payroll is through people who don't use adblockers

That's none of my concern, they did not ask me my opinion on joining CBS. They, in this case only Brad actually, should not call my usage of adblock ethically immoral.

I will. People like you are freeloading off of our payed subscriptions. You should be thanking us for not canceling and letting Giantbomb die, which it would had it not been for us.

Judging by your quests you created your account today. What the fuck are you even talking about with this "us" bullshit?

EDIT: I'm an idiot. I'll be quietly stepping out now.

I only turn off adblock for streams I want to support. And I would for GB, but fuck it. I'm a subscriber.

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

Let me get this straight, Brad is complaining about lost revenue due to AdBlock...while being bought by CBS that can finance them infinitely better than whiskey media or GiantBomb as an independant website? Hilarious. So before the buy-out, it was all about "supporting the duders" with premium subscriptions and having mandatory ads...after the buyout he's whining about revenue?

Unless Brad's payroll IS the ad-revenue...I find those comments pretty hostile.

And how do you think CBS gets its money to finance Giantbomb? I'm sure a large percentage of all Giantbomb staff member's payroll is through people who don't use adblockers

That's none of my concern, they did not ask me my opinion on joining CBS. They, in this case only Brad actually, should not call my usage of adblock ethically immoral.

I will. People like you are freeloading off of our payed subscriptions. You should be thanking us for not canceling and letting Giantbomb die, which it would had it not been for us.

People actually believe this shit. Amazing.

I really don't absorb ads at all these days. TV shows and Movies I record on to DVR, if I'm actually watching TV live I check stuff on the iPad during the ads or go for a smoke. I have never in my life clicked on a Ad on a website that wasn't by mistake.

@MariachiMacabre said:

@gladspooky

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

Let me get this straight, Brad is complaining about lost revenue due to AdBlock...while being bought by CBS that can finance them infinitely better than whiskey media or GiantBomb as an independant website? Hilarious. So before the buy-out, it was all about "supporting the duders" with premium subscriptions and having mandatory ads...after the buyout he's whining about revenue?

Unless Brad's payroll IS the ad-revenue...I find those comments pretty hostile.

And how do you think CBS gets its money to finance Giantbomb? I'm sure a large percentage of all Giantbomb staff member's payroll is through people who don't use adblockers

That's none of my concern, they did not ask me my opinion on joining CBS. They, in this case only Brad actually, should not call my usage of adblock ethically immoral.

I will. People like you are freeloading off of our payed subscriptions. You should be thanking us for not canceling and letting Giantbomb die, which it would had it not been for us.

People actually believe this shit. Amazing.

If he was being serious then it is amazing but his words are so ridiculous, they must be disingenuous.

OK the thanking me bit was over the top, but the overall feeling is serious.

@Ares42 said:

@zels said:

@Petiew said:

I use Adblock, but turn it off on certain sites or streams that I use frequently and want to give a little extra revenue to.
Adblock is on for Giantbomb, the ads can often get bad and there was (Possibly still is) a bug were videos were unwatchable without it.

@alternate said:

I guess you missed Brad on twitter a couple of days back going off on someone for using ad blockers and calling ti "morally indefensible" or some such.

I hope this was taken entirely out of context. Anyone got a link?

https://twitter.com/bradshoemaker/status/285463904266641409

I guess that makes my dad (who without hesitation always changes channel when ads are shown on TV) ethically bankrupt. I mean, there's an entire business devoted to letting you skip ads on TV, where's the outrage about that ?

I bet TV stations are pretty outraged about it. Didn't they try to outlaw Tivo in the early days or lobby to make ads unskipable.

To be fair to Brad, his livelihood is partially dependent on web ads so you can see why he might not be best pleased about widespread ad blocking.

Installing Add Block was the best decision I have ever made and Im never going back. Places like Giant Bomb are not as bad as let say kotaku but ads have always annoyed me, so in this case is not that they make bad use of their adds is just that I hate adds in general never liked them never will. Oh if you are wondering I do have Giant Bomb on the white list.

Hey, whatever you want to use to justify the way you live.

I asked Jeff on his Tumblr for his opinion. There's just a lot of misinformation about how this stuff effects websites.

@MariachiMacabre said:

@gladspooky

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

Let me get this straight, Brad is complaining about lost revenue due to AdBlock...while being bought by CBS that can finance them infinitely better than whiskey media or GiantBomb as an independant website? Hilarious. So before the buy-out, it was all about "supporting the duders" with premium subscriptions and having mandatory ads...after the buyout he's whining about revenue?

Unless Brad's payroll IS the ad-revenue...I find those comments pretty hostile.

And how do you think CBS gets its money to finance Giantbomb? I'm sure a large percentage of all Giantbomb staff member's payroll is through people who don't use adblockers

That's none of my concern, they did not ask me my opinion on joining CBS. They, in this case only Brad actually, should not call my usage of adblock ethically immoral.

I will. People like you are freeloading off of our payed subscriptions. You should be thanking us for not canceling and letting Giantbomb die, which it would had it not been for us.

People actually believe this shit. Amazing.

If he was being serious then it is amazing but his words are so ridiculous, they must be disingenuous.

OK the thanking me bit was over the top, but the overall feeling is serious.

I use Ad-Block for every site. Like others have stated, I just don't like looking at these flashy, obnoxious ads. If you don't use it, good on you, but please stop being so self-righteous about it.

Ad blockers are an interesting thing, really. They are such a direct analogue to VCR first and DVR later and yet a bunch of the new Internet entrepreneurs seem to look at them with a mix of anger and self-righteousness that they generationally have never felt for those other things.

I don't think we've mastered online content monetization entirely yet, but we've gotten way better than when we started. The mix of paid services, merchandising, crowdsourcing and ad revenue is getting to the point where you can get revenue streams for your content with a whole array of options. For better or for worse, the market is so atomized and the balancing act of those revenue streams is so fluid that the profits are... not great, when compared to other mass media, but hey, that's the downside of media democratization, right?

I personally use ad blockers on my home PC while also paying for a bunch of content and not caring enough to go out of my way to block ads on my mobile devices or in other PCs I use. The tech is too ubiquitous and too legal and legitimate to try to oppose it based on moral grounds only. "Hey, you could make this faster, better and more convenient for you at no cost, but please don't because I like money" is rarely a good pitch. Ad revenue online is what it is, for better or for worse, and if anybody's business model can't deal with it alone, that's what online stores, Kickstarter, premium subscriptions and... well, failure are for. The Penny Arcade guys just replaced ads for a Kickstarter drive for a year. Seems to work for them. GB does premium subs and somehow make them work. Good for them. Wikipedia asks for money when they need it. They survive as one of the biggest sites online. Youtube does ads for some degree of remuneration of Vloggers, which is cool, and so do a bunch of other services. Why not? Considering how ultimately irrelevant online entertainment is, I'm really more than happy letting free market run its course, ad blockers or not.

Have you seen Vinny try to get a mod for Euro Truck Simulator? If anything AdBlock is like using protection just in case. Yeah sure it doesn't look like she has herpes but you never know. Once you know, then you can take off AdBlock and support the sites you trust and enjoy.

@alternate said:

@Ares42 said:

@zels said:

@Petiew said:

I use Adblock, but turn it off on certain sites or streams that I use frequently and want to give a little extra revenue to.
Adblock is on for Giantbomb, the ads can often get bad and there was (Possibly still is) a bug were videos were unwatchable without it.

@alternate said:

I guess you missed Brad on twitter a couple of days back going off on someone for using ad blockers and calling ti "morally indefensible" or some such.

I hope this was taken entirely out of context. Anyone got a link?

https://twitter.com/bradshoemaker/status/285463904266641409

I guess that makes my dad (who without hesitation always changes channel when ads are shown on TV) ethically bankrupt. I mean, there's an entire business devoted to letting you skip ads on TV, where's the outrage about that ?

I bet TV stations are pretty outraged about it. Didn't they try to outlaw Tivo in the early days or lobby to make ads unskipable.

To be fair to Brad, his livelihood is partially dependent on web ads so you can see why he might not be best pleased about widespread ad blocking.

Oh ye, I completely understand why Brad would be upset about it, but it seems to be a classic case of "this is bad because it affects me". My point was that it's generally agreed that avoiding advertisements in other meda is ok, so why is internet any different ?

And to the point @joshwent made, TV makes money off their ad-views just as much as websites does, it's just organized differently. There's a reason why ad-space during Super Bowl costs a bagillion bucks.

I guess I have a high tolerance or don't go to shitty websites, because ads never bother me.

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

Let me get this straight, Brad is complaining about lost revenue due to AdBlock...while being bought by CBS that can finance them infinitely better than whiskey media or GiantBomb as an independant website? Hilarious. So before the buy-out, it was all about "supporting the duders" with premium subscriptions and having mandatory ads...after the buyout he's whining about revenue?

Unless Brad's payroll IS the ad-revenue...I find those comments pretty hostile.

And how do you think CBS gets its money to finance Giantbomb? I'm sure a large percentage of all Giantbomb staff member's payroll is through people who don't use adblockers

That's none of my concern, they did not ask me my opinion on joining CBS. They, in this case only Brad actually, should not call my usage of adblock ethically immoral.

I will. People like you are freeloading off of our payed subscriptions. You should be thanking us for not canceling and letting Giantbomb die, which it would had it not been for us.

Did the subscription come with a supplementary elitism-complex? If they really were dependant on a subscription model to keep the site afloat, subscribing ould be mandatory or 90% of the content premium would be premium.

To be honest, if they'd include paypal as a payment option (fuck creditcards), I'd try out for a couple of months.

The only reason I sub was for the Premium Content, I use adblocker all the time and wont change that: the problem is it is easy to get the Premium Content on the site for free after the archive is up thanks to other sites embedding it in there sites, thus no need for Premium which is what I used to do all the time: but no I subscribe because I always watch the stuff live.

@MariachiMacabre said:

@CaptainThunderpants

@MariachiMacabre said:

@gladspooky

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

Let me get this straight, Brad is complaining about lost revenue due to AdBlock...while being bought by CBS that can finance them infinitely better than whiskey media or GiantBomb as an independant website? Hilarious. So before the buy-out, it was all about "supporting the duders" with premium subscriptions and having mandatory ads...after the buyout he's whining about revenue?

Unless Brad's payroll IS the ad-revenue...I find those comments pretty hostile.

And how do you think CBS gets its money to finance Giantbomb? I'm sure a large percentage of all Giantbomb staff member's payroll is through people who don't use adblockers

That's none of my concern, they did not ask me my opinion on joining CBS. They, in this case only Brad actually, should not call my usage of adblock ethically immoral.

I will. People like you are freeloading off of our payed subscriptions. You should be thanking us for not canceling and letting Giantbomb die, which it would had it not been for us.

People actually believe this shit. Amazing.

If he was being serious then it is amazing but his words are so ridiculous, they must be disingenuous.

OK the thanking me bit was over the top, but the overall feeling is serious.

You have a superiority complex over your giving $5 a month to a video game website? That's completely ridiculous. And insulting non-paying members by insinuating that they're not as important to the site is moronic. I'm a paying member because I want more content like a European Truck Simulator quick look, not so I could look down my nose at other members, pretending that I'd accomplished anything by donating.

Well in simple financial terms, those users who use adblock don't exist when making a P&L statement. It doesn't matter how big your community is or how much they like the content or even how good the content is. If the money isn't there, it's not there.

Ultimately this forum is just a fight of morals and I find that not contributing to stuff you like, either financially or with your eyes, to be morally wrong. I'd prefer the tiered system that GB has where ads can be removed and not a part of the video itself.

@TrafalgarLaw said:

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

Let me get this straight, Brad is complaining about lost revenue due to AdBlock...while being bought by CBS that can finance them infinitely better than whiskey media or GiantBomb as an independant website? Hilarious. So before the buy-out, it was all about "supporting the duders" with premium subscriptions and having mandatory ads...after the buyout he's whining about revenue?

Unless Brad's payroll IS the ad-revenue...I find those comments pretty hostile.

And how do you think CBS gets its money to finance Giantbomb? I'm sure a large percentage of all Giantbomb staff member's payroll is through people who don't use adblockers

That's none of my concern, they did not ask me my opinion on joining CBS. They, in this case only Brad actually, should not call my usage of adblock ethically immoral.

I will. People like you are freeloading off of our payed subscriptions. You should be thanking us for not canceling and letting Giantbomb die, which it would had it not been for us.

Did the subscription come with a supplementary elitism-complex? If they really were dependant on a subscription model to keep the site afloat, subscribing ould be mandatory or 90% of the content premium would be premium.

To be honest, if they'd include paypal as a payment option (fuck creditcards), I'd try out for a couple of months.

Don't they accept paypal? I thought they added that shortly after the subscriptions launched.

I started using AdBlock after I got tired of seeing the same Obama campaign ads over and over. Most of the time I forget I'm using it. This thread just reminded me and now I have removed it since I don't have to worry as much about irritating political ads. Thanks internet!

I don't think so

@Rainbowkisses said:

I started using AdBlock after I got tired of seeing the same Obama campaign ads over and over. Most of the time I forget I'm using it. This thread just reminded me and now I have removed it since I don't have to worry as much about irritating political ads. Thanks internet!

Completely unrelated: Is your avatar a fat Nathan Drake? It's beautiful

@CaptainThunderpants: Yes it is. On another note, do you have any specific articles to relate to how ad revenue on websites work?

The only reason I use it is because of audio ads that play automatically. These ads pop up the most for me on YouTube when I'm watching a video. I'm about talking about ads on the right side of the page, not the video itself. I'll be watching a video and start wondering why the audio suddenly sounds weird, only to minimize it and discover that there's some commercial playing on the side.  I don't understand why Google allows that shit.  
 
If it weren't for those, I wouldn't use it.

@Beforet said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

@CaptainThunderpants said:

@TrafalgarLaw said:

Let me get this straight, Brad is complaining about lost revenue due to AdBlock...while being bought by CBS that can finance them infinitely better than whiskey media or GiantBomb as an independant website? Hilarious. So before the buy-out, it was all about "supporting the duders" with premium subscriptions and having mandatory ads...after the buyout he's whining about revenue?

Unless Brad's payroll IS the ad-revenue...I find those comments pretty hostile.

And how do you think CBS gets its money to finance Giantbomb? I'm sure a large percentage of all Giantbomb staff member's payroll is through people who don't use adblockers

That's none of my concern, they did not ask me my opinion on joining CBS. They, in this case only Brad actually, should not call my usage of adblock ethically immoral.

I will. People like you are freeloading off of our payed subscriptions. You should be thanking us for not canceling and letting Giantbomb die, which it would had it not been for us.

Did the subscription come with a supplementary elitism-complex? If they really were dependant on a subscription model to keep the site afloat, subscribing ould be mandatory or 90% of the content premium would be premium.

To be honest, if they'd include paypal as a payment option (fuck creditcards), I'd try out for a couple of months.

Don't they accept paypal? I thought they added that shortly after the subscriptions launched.

They do accept paypal, yes. However the only way to get a membership through paypal is by signing up for an entire year at $50. Well, closer to $70 if you're including shipping and handling of the t-shirt internationally.

That said, I don't see them implementing a monthly paypal sub any time soon. Or ever. Paypal isn't a great service especially when compared to credit cards, but if you don't use credit cards it's really the only game in town.