The author's very own essay is a counter-example to the argument that ad blocking starves the web to death.
What ad blocking does is eliminate lowest common denominator [ that denominator being inversely proportional to the amount of money an advertizer is willing to pay ] from pages that are willing to accept the risks of placing crappy advertizing alongside their content.
Good advertizing extends content. The author's pitch for his book and fonts is a case in point. If the essay's page had been covered with advertisements for "local women who want to meet six-pack abs making $5000 a week surfing the internet" or used <blink>, I would not have been pitched the book and fonts because crude forms of advertizing correlate with crude forms of content.
This HN page is another example of big money to be made with a subtle pitch [ the article talks about a business model in the same branch of the spiral galaxy as Ycombinator's ]. The monetization of exhaust fumes is just extremely long tail.
In the end, successful advertizing depends on segmentation. Ad-block serves advertizers needs by not putting ads in front of people who might be inclined to form a negative impression of their business when shown ads on a webpage. I still hold HP creepy based on their targeting me in the early days of this capability [ and before I used ad blocking and noscript ].
What ad blocking does is eliminate lowest common denominator [ that denominator being inversely proportional to the amount of money an advertizer is willing to pay ] from pages that are willing to accept the risks of placing crappy advertizing alongside their content.
Good advertizing extends content. The author's pitch for his book and fonts is a case in point. If the essay's page had been covered with advertisements for "local women who want to meet six-pack abs making $5000 a week surfing the internet" or used <blink>, I would not have been pitched the book and fonts because crude forms of advertizing correlate with crude forms of content.
This HN page is another example of big money to be made with a subtle pitch [ the article talks about a business model in the same branch of the spiral galaxy as Ycombinator's ]. The monetization of exhaust fumes is just extremely long tail.
In the end, successful advertizing depends on segmentation. Ad-block serves advertizers needs by not putting ads in front of people who might be inclined to form a negative impression of their business when shown ads on a webpage. I still hold HP creepy based on their targeting me in the early days of this capability [ and before I used ad blocking and noscript ].