I know almost anything happening in the world right now is more important than this, but...
I do realise that advertising revenue enables me to read Mumsnet and other online forums for free, and theoretically I don't have a problem with that. I do, however, pay for AdBlock so that I mostly don't have to look at the ads, which I find distracting and annoying. It's my understanding, which may be incorrect, that ad impressions are measured in page views, not in views of the ad itself (because how could the algorithm tell where on the page you're looking? Or does it use anchors??)...? so I haven't imagined I'm depriving a site of revenue by blocking the ads, as I'm still loading the page.
I'm probably wrong about this though, because unfortunately for me and my crankiness level, recently a spate of sites I regularly visit has begun asking, with various degrees of insistence, that I turn off my adblocker. Some ask once politely and then let it go; some ask repeatedly until it becomes annoying enough that you just do it, and some - like Mumsnet, I think - ask a few times and then block your access until you give in and welcome the slopflood into your brain. Mumsnet is one of the most annoying sites as it's started using moving ads, so there's always some movement flickering in one corner of your vision as you're trying to read a block of text, and it uses the 'slide in from the corner' method to initially grab your attention, which can't help but feel like an interruption. I hope they get the click counts when I stop what I'm doing to curse them while shutting the !*&£(!! ad window. I don't have ADD but I do have trouble focusing, and the last thing I need is bloody stupid ads waving frantically in my face when I'm trying to read.
I do a lot of online shopping, but I don't think I've ever clicked on an ad on a page where I went to do something else, and surely this can't be just me. Where is the user experience team when we need them? and why insist that your page has to be loaded down with moving crap when (a) most people probably don't click on it and (b) as far as I know, there isn't a way to count impressions except through actual clicks. Someone in marketing, please tell me why annoying the viewer to the point where - as I have - they may decide to simply stop visiting a given site is a good idea? AIBU: Are moving ads, videos you have to stop what you're doing to pause and attempt to dismiss with a tiny little 'x' tab that's designed to make you fumble-finger your way into clicking on the damn ad, and whatever will undoubtedly come next in the advertising arms race not really that annoying, and worth it to keep sites free? Or AINBU: This is all getting a bit ridiculous and doesn't produce the desired effect (if not getting people to actually make purchases, then generating goodwill for future encounters)?