Over the last few weeks and months, there has been a growing noise around the disabling of third party cookies that allow advertisers to track and deliver ads to consumers. In fact, Mozilla just postponed the default blocking of third-party cookies in Firefox. On the back of that debate, I’ve been hearing more about the advocacy of “Acceptable Ads”.
This concept comes via the latest version of Adblock Plus, which is currently the leading open source ad control program and number one browser Firefox add-on. Details can be found here and definition of “Acceptable Ads” can be found here.
This is BS. Really, acceptable ads? Two of the criteria are that the ads should not include any animation or attention grabbing images and that they should preferably be text only. Welcome to a world of bland. Imagine if TV ad spots, which we are similarly forced to consume, indeed ones that break the content flow entirely, were only allowed to be text based.
Why does the web have to be policed in this way or ad creativity stifled?
Digital ad industry is evil. This is the premise of these anti ad tracking products and voices. Really? Let’s think about this for a moment. Advertisers simply are trying to stop wasting money by using technology to show ads only to people who might actually be interested in them. They are motivated to actually avoid spamming users who will not respond. Remove tracking and analytics and we all get spammed….thanks – but personally I prefer to see ads for things I actually might want.
Like that free content? The simple fact is all that free content you love comes thanks to advertiser dollars. Take that away and you either loose the content or you will have to pay for it. Personally I like it when someone else is paying. I hate the fact I pay for cable TV and yet still get ads….where are the dissenting voices there?
So listen…please get off your pedestal. Online advertisers drive the growth of the web, have enabled millions to have access to amazing tools and are simply trying to develop techniques that bring more efficiency to what they do. I’m all for keeping tabs and being smart but let’s stop with the nonsense.
Dick Reed
Just Media, Inc.
