Ads were fine - once
Ads used to be just that, something to display information about a service or product. They were boxes with basic information. You clicked if you were interested. That was it. Then they became horrendous 'suck the life out of every page' monsters, where on some sites you have to fight to know where the actual original web site's content is being displayed at all. Refresh, refresh, pop under, pop over, track, auto-video-play, spy, send data, follow to other sites... how does any of that translate to something any casual visitor of a web site really wants?
I get it, you want to fund the content, because content isn't free. But you made the experience so damned impossible to bear, and that's why we use ad blockers. Now Google, you want to take that away? Well let's see... can you just leave us with a popup which says 'this site is so plastered with ads you really don't want to go here'? We'll all be happy with that. We already get it - the anti-ad-blockers which tell you you can't come in unless you view the ads. If I see a site which says 'you absolutely cannot view this site without ads', I give it one try. If I can read the page and still ignore the ads (if they don't take over the whole experience), then I'll stay. If they crawl over my screen like a bad infection, I just won't go there again.
Come for the content, stay for the experience, leave because the ads take over and spoil everything..
We don't really need ad blockers, we just need something which tells us 'this site is impossible to use because the ads have taken over like a virus'. Either way, Google seems to be saying 'no chance' to that.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
