Internet ads you can't turn off

[Lemurion]

Autoplay with sound is the single thing I hate most on the internet.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I don't block ads, yet I almost never encounter any (or remember any, anyway). Of course, I only frequent about three places on the entire internet, so maybe that has something to with it?

Same for me, and I look at plenty of websites. I haven't been to all the corners of the internet, but the ones I visit are nice enough not to be annoying.

[teh603]

Hate to be Negative Nancy, but wasn't there a court case a while ago which established that using any sort of an ad blocker is theft from the website operator?

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by teh603

Hate to be Negative Nancy, but wasn't there a court case a while ago which established that using any sort of an ad blocker is theft from the website operator?

They'll have to take my Adblock from my cold, dead hands.

[DiapDealer]

"Established" is strong word.

[Blossom]

Host file with Ad Blocker and no flash installed. I never have to see another ad. I do keep one browser with flash in case I need it.

These days you have to block ads or get infected. I just can't take chances anymore like in the old banner ad days where they actually paid me to look at them. Made some nice money back then but now it's too dangerous to let ads have free reign.

Originally Posted by teh603

Hate to be Negative Nancy, but wasn't there a court case a while ago which established that using any sort of an ad blocker is theft from the website operator?

I don't use an ad blocker. It's just an amazing coincidence that obnoxious-ad-server.com is registered to 127.0.0.1 on my computer, tablet, ereader, and phone. Similarly, it is possible to configure some web browsers to not load media or to only load media from the host that you are visiting. None of this are ad blockers. It is simply refusing to retrieve an undesired resource.

More seriously though: advertisers brought ad blockers upon themselves. If they settled for less obnoxious ads, they would find that far fewer people block them. Sure, they are less noticeable. But the chance of being overlooked is better than not being seen at all (i.e. blocked).

[CyGuy]

Originally Posted by teh603

Hate to be Negative Nancy, but wasn't there a court case a while ago which established that using any sort of an ad blocker is theft from the website operator?

I am not sure about any court cases but really it is the opposite. If they somehow manage to make your browser not function correctly by removing buttons or disabling right-click etc it is the site who is in the wrong. ALL control lies with the end user and attempting to use technology to sidestep that should clearly be illegal.

P.S. Flash is one of the worst things ever to happen to the Internet. It is a really really bad application.

[Giggleton]

The creators must be compensated, It seems that most people dislike advertising in its current form. Advertising can be changed though, I mean google made zillions by altering ad distribution...

[RainingLemur]

I have used adblock (and more recently catblock since it's so amusing). I get blown away when I have to hop on another machine and see how much gaudy crap assaults the internet.

[Ekaros]

I hate those full site poping in front of me or small windows at bottom. But volume is the biggest problem, I hate when it's set so high...

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Angst

Do you hate them as much as I do?

I answered yes, but the caveat is I don't know if I hate them as much as you do as it’s pretty hard to judge how much you do based on a one paragraph post.

My usual response is to refresh the page, and if the ad comes up again, I just skip the whole thing and move on the something else.

[JD Gumby]

Originally Posted by cjr72

+1

Flashblock plus AdBlock. I never surf the web without them.

And learning how to properly edit your c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file is also a damned good thing to do (once you know the addresses of some of the more obnoxious ones, you can prevent your computer from ever even contacting them).

EDITS: Oh, and don't be a prick and just popping every ad server into your hosts file or adblock, just the bad ones - the ones that are animated, make noise, and/or attempt install software or put a tracking cookie on your computer. With AdBlock, don't choose any subscriptions. Manually add the rules you need to block only the worst offenders.

As for FlashBlock, no worries on YouTube - you can whitelist specific sites so you don't need to keep clicking to enable them if you don't want to.

[Joykins]

I usually keep my sound muted so those ads are easy to ignore.

Once I left my computer unmuted, one of those things started playing automatically and woke up my husband who was sleeping next to me. He threw the remote that was in his hand (I'm kindly assuming this was some sort of uncontrollable muscle spasm than the temper it possibly was) and broke the LCD screen on my laptop. As the damage is limited to one corner of my screen I still use the laptop but it can get annoying. And this is why I HATE those things!

[Serpentine]

I have no problems with ads, so long as they are images and not interactive content. From time to time I'll click on relevant ads and hope that in some way I encourage good sites to stick around.

I have Opera configured to load Flash only on demand, I don't have any other plugins for media players etc. It also defaults to throwing away all cookies on close (besides for sites that are allowed, which is very easy to do). So I get very generic ads which are quite nice and faaar less annoying (I've seen what other people get, companies don't waste cash on interactive/video ads on untargetted people).

Unskippable ads on video sites are also not something I care about, most of the time I'll just download a vid directly rather than watching it in a browser (better decoding, post-processing and a good render make low res stuff look so much better than flash).