A bit of a conversation started up the other day, for the first time on my blog!

Basically it was between myself and a buddy who occasionally shows up at the AWDNUG meetings, over advertising on the web.

It started when a link came up on Reddit for people who were blocking the Firefox browser wholesale from accessing their websites, and linking to a message explaining why. What it boils down to is, there is a plugin for Firefox called Ad Block Plus that allows people to block advertisements from loading into the Firefox browsers, and because there is no way to for the website to tell if someone is running this plugin then the alternative is to block Firefox users altogether.

The site in question is called: http://whyfirefoxisblocked.com/

I get why people block ads, I really do.  A lot of ads on the internet are offensive, a lot are just plain annoying, pop-up over content, make sounds and other distractions, anything to gain some attention.  Even worse, some pages present ads that take control of a new page that takes me entirely away from someones content, or screw up the page so it wont even render.

I hate internet advertising, I really do.

Bill Hicks had this to say about advertisers: "By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. No, this is not a joke: kill yourself ... There is no justification for what you do."

Now I wouldn't take it to that extent, because some advertising is quite clever and can be okay, but internet advertisers? For the most part they're hit and miss, "Press this button for a fart sound", snake oil salesmen, who are out trolling for all the clicks they can get.

But then there is the other side of the coin.  Online magazines who pay their writers out of ad revenue, bloggers who pay for the bandwidth they use providing valuable information by hosting a few ads.

I'm not going to go wild saying people are thieving this knowledge because they block some ads, because they're also downloading the content and paying for that out of their bandwidth quotas.  But there has to be some middle ground.

Roy Osherove at his brand new Community Hacker site posted an article about why Firefox is better than IE and mentioned in one of his main points was Ad Block Plus which makes it a tad ironic that Roy himself has a Google ad bar on that site.

The question is, if making money via ads is out, then what is left?

Television gets around this somewhat these days, since the introduction of the PVR, digital recording and Tivo - where people can fast forward ads, by the ads appearing in the content itself.  Who can forget the Heroes Nissan Versa appearing throughout.  Product Placement is showing up all over your favorite tv shows, and it's a almost horrible trend sometimes, that we kind of need, because who else is going to pay for the production of TV that goes out free?

The only place where that money can be made up in this scenario is DVD, and the DVD sales are an unknown quantity until it happens, so the only way to see if a show is working or not is live viewing and that needs to be paid for then and there.

What's the alternative for bloggers? Pay for Post? The Scobles of the blogosphere have already had huge arguments over transparency and the evils of this sort of blogging.

The only other point I can really make is the argument was made that Firefox is the only browser blocked and Firefox users are still in the minority of web users.  But at the same time I'd argue that the majority of Firefox users are more web savvy, more likely to browse more sites each week than any other users, and more likely to participate in memes, post links along to sites like Digg, and if Firefox users cannot view your page then you are missing out on the follow on effect that the net savvy users can generate.

So maybe Advertising is the evil we pay for having some pretty great content and for helping pay back the guys that provide it for us.

No, this still means I'd rather you link to the live article rather than your ad filled blog on Digg. Thanks.