I find it a bit of a difficult one.
On the one hand, I enjoy the internet and all the varied sites available on it. I'm not in a wonderful state financially, so I appreciate all the stuff available "free."
Yet, I block ads.
There are various reasons for this.
1. I loathe them. They annoy me. I resent the assumption that I will fall for their rubbish as much as the fact that I might in fact do so. They're cleverer than me, after all.
2. When I discovered computers, advertisements annoyed me. They were unattractive and intrusive. They took up space. Those that flickered or expanded on mouse-over or which did all sorts of other annoying things spoiled my browsing, and tempted me to abandon the activity altogether.
3. I soon discovered that the wretched things were probably being used to allow advertisers and "their trusted partners" to track my internet activity and to build a "profile" about me to be shared among them. Yech.
4. It didn't take too long to find out about prohibiting third party cookies. It took a lot longer for me to find out about flash cookies and even worse horrors (just look up "evercookie.")
The advertisers lost my respect with their intrusive and irritating offerings.
They lost my trust when I found out about their privacy-threatening behaviour (tracking and profiling. I couldn't care less if it's harmless. I find it seriously creepy.)
The icing on the cake came with the discovery that advertisements can be subverted to deliver malware (just look up "malvertising.") Ad-blocking is now, arguably, an essential element of one's online security.
I wish I knew the answer. I (reluctantly) put up with static ads on sites I like. I want the sites to survive and thrive. As long as the ads involve no interactive elements beyond taking me to their masters if I click on them (as if...), I think I would endure them down the side of the page, in order to support a worthwhile site.
Distrowatch is thus allowed its ads. Until one flickers, or something. Likewise, the local online rag. The first sign of a flicker or tendency to expand or flip between pages, and an ad is toast.
Whether the things repay what they cost, I've no idea - but ads have been around for a long time. I sometimes wonder whether the true suckers aren't the marketing types. They spend a fortune on shoving rubbish at people, but it would be interesting to know whether the returns justify this.
Not that they would ever tell, of course.
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