seanmonstar

As Ben Brooks points out, many mediums are free, and show ads instead. He suggests mediums (specifically, writing) should ditch ads and ask viewers to pay directly. My feeling on the matter is that the best option is a mixed one.

Mediums should provide their content, free of charge, but showing tasteful ads. Mediums should probably also offer a way for users to directly pay for the content they enjoy. If they pay, it’s imperative that the ads be removed. Paying and having to view ads is just dirty¹.

Dmitry Fadeyev:

The clutter bombards the visitor with links to click on, confusing and pulling them in different directions. Ads are placed right inside the content, just below the headline, trying to grab your attention by force. Related article links are presented to you right when you’ve finished reading something, pushing you to read something else. All around the page are even more links and ads, asking you to click them, as if the article you’re on isn’t worth your time (and it probably isn’t).

Sometimes, when seeing a particularly advert-filled blog, or seeing youtube’s ads scroll up and cover part of the movie, I ask myself: “How would these people feel if they visited content like their own? Disgusted? Turn on an adblocker?”

Clearly, they don’t care about their own content. They care about selling your eyeballs to an advertiser.