I am sure that most of you have heard of TiVo. Well, ReplayTV was threatening television advertising by allowing you to completely skip advertisements even before TiVo. What happened to them? The media and advertising companies sued them out of existence. TiVo has faired much better; however, there are still television networks that believe TiVo is the end of television itself.

How does the media and advertising industries combat this? They have product placement, advertisement overlays (like the lower-thirds), side-by-side (mainly for sports content), and much more. There simply has to be a way to generate revenue for all these television shows. The more technology that allows us to avoid commercials, the more obtrusive the advertisements will get. That is logical thinking and common sense; it is already happening, and things are destined to get complicated with time.

AdBlock Plus

On the web, there is a new war brewing. AdBlock Plus is a crucial part of this. This is an application created by Michael McDonald that was designed as a way to block large and obtrusive advertisements on the internet. Now it appears to simply block all advertisements on a majority of websites.

Considering that advertising is the only source of revenue for many, it is likely to spur on new methods of advertisement and change the ways they are delivered to us. The flip-side of things, it will harm many of the smaller sites, but the bigger sites will likely be able to afford new methods of advertising.

There is a possibility of technology improving to the point where you are forced to view an advertisement before even viewing a site, perhaps a ten second advertisement when you view main page. This would not be common on your typical blog or smaller sites, but as time goes on it is likely that this is the way we will progress for bigger sites.

The same product used to reduce advertisements will have an opposite effect in the long-term. It will bring more advertisements that will interfere with your interaction of content. Quite ironic to say the least.

Do You Care?

Many of you will not and will continue using AdBlock Plus without giving this a second thought. Some will give it some thought and continue using it. Maybe a very few will give it up completely.

It must be said, that I use the extension on a daily basis. I even gave AdBlock Plus high praise in my Firefox Is Great, But These Extensions Will Make It Extraordinary article. So I will continue to use it, even though I know of the long-term impacts it will likely have.

My Take

I have been keeping my opinions out of this article as I am not going to be the one writing and suggesting that using AdBlock Plus is right or wrong; in my past I've reverse engineered software, downloaded copyrighted music, and done many other things that would have pissed off the likes of Microsoft and Sony. All these things I no longer do. That beings said, I will give my opinions on internet advertising on the new web.

If you visit "web 2.0" services, or any site that you benefit from without paying, then advertising is likely a main component in the revenue stream. Without advertising, many of these sites have no backup plans for revenue. One theory of a "web 2.0" collapse is a failure in advertising.

AdBlock Plus could spur on development of other ad blocking applications and make the situation more critical. I've seen far too many sites that do not have a business plan, and many are destined to failure. If you take away advertising from these sites, it is just making things worse. Where does the blame go? It does not really matter, because everyone loses in the end.

Wrapping It Up

At the end of the day, all this doesn't hurt the big sites, but instead it hurts the little guys who will not be able to implement various ways to make revenue. I urge all of you who are big on the new wave of web services to click on advertisements to support developers. I enable sites to display advertisements and do click on advertisements for sites which interest me and provide a service I enjoy. I believe that at least 80% of internet users would not concern themselves with any of this, but to the rest, maybe you can help developers who are struggling to make a buck.

If you enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing to Tech In Demand's RSS Feed to get this and more great content in the future.