Once you’re connected to the internet, you have access across the network; one of the principles it was built on is that traffic can travel freely through any one of myriad pathways. The World Wide Web has been free since CERN made it freely available to all in 1993.
Historically, web browsers have been given away for free; Netscape’s browser was freely available for noncommercial use, while Netscape made their money from selling server-side software. Internet Explorer was given away for free with the Windows operating system, it’s development being funded by other parts of Microsoft’s business. Firefox is a free, open source web browser that is steadily increasing it’s market share (“Open-source” means that the source code is also freely available; so that anyone with sufficient programming knowledge can modify the browser to work the way they want it to, or offer improvements to be included in future releases.)
It’s not a surprise then, that there is something of an expectation that content on the internet will be free; you don’t expect to have to pay to visit a website, or to read an article. The news is free, weather forecasts are free, and reading about other people’s thoughts is free. Where websites do charge money for access, it’s usually for some sort of premium service with a free alternative, such as a free trial for 30 days, or a free but restricted membership with a paid-for but unrestricted or advert-free alternative.
However, websites aren’t free to run; apart from the time taken to put a website together, the site also needs a computer to act as a server (which needs to be kept running and it’s software up to date), a connection to the internet (which needs to be paid for), and of course power to keep the whole thing going. The way website owners cover their costs depends on the nature of the site; perhaps the site is an integral part of an online business, such as an online shopping company where the website would be a part of the operational costs, or possibly a part of a branding or advertising project funded by a marketing budget. Where there is no obvious revenue source, website owners often cover their costs (and sometimes make a profit) by selling advertising space.
There has been some fuss recently about a website that’s appeared, encouraging website owners to block users of the Firefox browser; http://whyfirefoxisblocked.com. The site includes an explanation as to why users have been redirected to their site, along with instructions for website owners explaining how to block visitors using the Firefox browser and redirect them to the WhyFirefoxIsBlocked.com site.
The issue revolves around the AdBlock Firefox extension which, if installed, allows users to block certain adverts from websites they visit. Using the Adblock extension, pages which were previously littered with adverts (which might be distracting, irritating or even completely obscuring the actual page content) are stripped down to the actual site’s content. WhyFirefoxIsBlocked.com argues that, because the advertising is of value, being paid for by the advertisers, “Accessing the content while blocking the ads, therefore would be no less than stealing. Millions of hard working people are being robbed of their time and effort by this type of software.”
It’s easy to think of the internet as something like a room with a one-way mirror that you can look into but that nobody can look back and see you (unless of course you want to be seen- perhaps by posting comments or interacting with a site.) Well, that’s not really the case; when you want to look at a website, the server that it’s on needs to know what information to send out, and where to send it. Your browser sends some information to the server about what you want to see, how you got there and what you’re using to see it, and the server sends back the web page as a response.
So, for example for your current visit to this site, the server can see the following information;
Your user agent (that is, the is type of operating system and web browser that you’re using to see the page) can be identified as CCBot/1.0 (+http://www.commoncrawl.org/bot.html) (where Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 running in Windows XP would identify itself with ‘Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1′), the page you clicked through to get here from was , and your IP address (the unique address that identifies your computer on the internet) is 38.107.191.115
Users of the Opera web browser may also be familiar with the sort of problems that can arise from the identification string— particularly if they were aware of the controversy when Microsoft’s MSN web portal page started serving different styling information to Opera users, which resulted in their web page appearing broken. (Opera responded with a ‘special edition’ of their browser which in turn transformed the MSN page into the language of the Swedich chef from the Muppet Show. “Bork bork.”)
Martin Matusiak argues in his Adorable Muppets blog that since Firefox users are a small percentage of online traffic, and AdBlock users are a percentage of that small percentage, that there isn’t actually a problem with a volume of people “stealing” content in the first place. On the O’Reilly blog is the point that that of the +/-2.5% of web users who actually click on adverts, it’s very unlikely that many of them are amongst those who have installed AdBlock.
Also, Firefox users who have installed the AdBlock plugin may also be aware of the flexibility of the Firefox browser, and it’s ability to mask the browser identification string using another plugin, making it appear to the server that a different browser is being used. In other words, of the visitors being blocked, the fraction who they are trying to block are probably technically savvy enough to get around it!
Of course, just because there isn’t a significant problem today, doesn’t mean that there won’t be a genuine problem at some point in the future. While many websites either cover their costs, or exist to create a revenue from advertising, the fact that it’s a fairly straightforward task for a user to install Firefox and AdBlock and enjoy an advert-free surfing experience means that anyone relying on this business model is unlikely to have a long-term successful project. If web owners continue to reply on selling advertising space, advertisers continue to make their adverts more and more obtrusive and distracting, and web users are faced with more and more increasingly obtrusive adverts, there is clearly a conflict between advertisers and consumers.
It’s worth noting that Google, one of the biggest advertising agencies on the internet (with over $10 billion in revenue from advertising in 2006 alone), have partnered with Firefox on a number of occasions; from releasing a Google toolbar for Firefox, to providing the default search engine for the browser, to cooperating with anti-phishing protection in Firefox 2. (On the other hand, Google’s adverts are unobtrusive, served in plain text rather than as animations, and designed to be as relevant to the site as possible.)
It seems to me that if the only reason for a website to exist is to sell advertising, it’s unlikely to be a great loss if advertising doesn’t generate enough revenue for it to be worthwhile writing. If a business is built around a flawed or obsolete business model, then it must either adapt or fail.
So, given that blocking adverts is unsurprisingly more effective than blocking the visitors who are blocking adverts, how should advertisers be reacting?
It seems to me that the problem ultimately stems from the fact that online content is traditionally viewed in much the same way as existing, traditional media, where adverts are designed to be as eye-catching as possible. As I’ve already talked about, website owners and designers are increasingly breaking free from the “online newspaper” model and exploiting the potential of the Web as new media. But there’s a significant difference in an advertisement on a page that a reader can simply choose to ignore, and an advertisement that can distract you with it’s animation alongside the text you want to read, or react when your mouse happens to wander over it (such as by triggering animations and sounds which can irritate the user.) Some adverts will literally obscure the content of a web page, demanding that users read the advert if only to figure out how to make them go away.
So long as advertisers continue to make online adverts increasingly intrusive, users will continue to seek ways to avoid them, in much the same way that 78% of owners of Digital Video Recorders will always or almost always skip through the commercials when watching a programme they have recorded. (It’s also worth noting the distinction that while online adverts will often encourage web users to visit a different website, television commercials won’t suggest that the viewer turn over to watch a competing channel, and newspaper adverts don’t encourage readers to pick up a different newspaper.)
So if the way online adverts work is flawed, what could replace them?
Just as the interaction between users and websites has evolved from the one-way “online catalogue/magazine” of the late 1990s into a more interactive “Web 2.0″ model (where user generated content is of increasing importance), the interaction between websites is becoming more predominant. Many websites will publish their API (Application Programming Interface), allowing developers to integrate other websites into their own website; for example, an estate agents might integrate their website with Google Maps to show the location of their properties, or a blogger might recommend books from Amazon with an affiliate link, earning them money from readers who click through and buy the books. Instead of visiting a number of websites regularly to check for updates, users might use an RSS feed to notify them of updates, sending the content directly to their regular users instead of waiting for the user to visit their website.
It seems to me that the future of online advertising lies in making the most of these new ways that technologies are being used. Instead of using increasingly obtrusive advertising to try to “hijack” a website by luring their visitors away, advertisers need to make their own content into something that will appeal to those who see them. Instead of building Flash games and putting them onto their own website to entertain visitors (then trying to entice visitors to visit their website), they could be making games for other websites; perhaps a branded Blog plugin which would allow bloggers to challenge their readers to a competition, or a branded Facebook Application which would let Facebook users challenge their friends. People are far more likely to look at something because a friend has asked them to than if a nameless advert has suggested it, and people are increasingly less likely to even look at the online adverts that are trying to get them to look at something else in the first place. (There is even a symptom being referred to as “right column blindness“, where users don’t even consciously register the right hand column of a website, because it’s so often used soley for displaying adverts.)
The simple problem is that if people don’t want to see something, they won’t look at it. So the simple solution is to make sure that adverts are something that people want to look at.
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