Should sites block visitors who use ad blockers?

I saw a thread where some guy said he was getting spyware warnings while on Yahoo. It was a problem with the anti-spyware app not Yahoo.

So that made me think, why should Yahoo provide ad supported content to users who block the ads? Maybe they should sense the ad blocker and redirect users to a page to log into a paid account with the option to get in free if they unblock the ads. I am against freeloaders, those who work (genereating content, supporting infrastructure, etc) are worthy of their revenue streams.

 

I'm blocking proxy users who use AdBlockPlus from visiting my proxy It's something I could do on the other sites too but ofcourse at schools some filters block the ads and the students can't turn it off so that would be a problem..

 

I agree tbarr6. If the ads aren't too intrusive there is no reason to block them. What we need to ask ourselves is if the ads are being blocked because they are getting in the way of our content or just because the visitor wants to get rid of them regardless.

 

If it's a quality site, then you still want AdBlock users because they will tell their friends about it, social bookmark it, etc. A user who evangelises your site is worth a lot more than a user who just looks at an ad or two, and you don't want to risk missing even one of them.

If it's just a crap MFA site, sure, keep them out, you're doing yourself and them a favour.

 

While offering something for free in return for advertising to them is a fair deal and ads really should not be blocked, blocking the smaller percentage of users who do this really would not seem all that worthwhile.
Mainly because of this reason(this is just my opinion)

Those that blocks ads are the same people who are not going to click them anyway.

 

Same do me.
If the surfer want to read the content of the site,they must more or less paid the price for it example see the ads but its too unacceptable if the site using CPA ads.

 

Everyone has the right to block adds whils browsing the web. Some of them are really too intrusive.

 

Well i don't think it would be fair to block those users as many sites have lots of pop-up so you do have to use it and we cannot turn it off everytime we visit such sites , so i don't think that would be good.

 

In the end I seriously doubt that people can afford to block people who are using that kind of software. It's only going to become more widespread, and I think marketers are going to have to evolve with the times. Make their adds less intrusive or something.

 

If you block users that use ad-blockers, you're basically admitting that you've got a Made for Adsense (or Yahoo ads etc) site - which is against the ToS of the ads providers in most cases.

 

Some ads are meant to be seen, not clicked. They exist primarily for brand awareness.

I am not talking about intrusive ads, just the ads that come with high quality content or services like the ones Yahoo provides.

Read the original post of this thread, I am talking about high quality sites.

 

That's entirely subjective - if you don't want people on the site that aren't clicking/ looking at the ads, then it IS a Made For Ads site. It may be a very good Made For Ads site, but that's what it is.
I'm an advertiser, it's not in my interest either, but I wouldn't expect the ad network to penalise users for adblocking. Users don't like ads, but they also don't like paying for content and the internet has come up with very few alternative ways of monetitizing. It's a paradox that has no conclusive resolution. It'll be interesting to see how Twitter copes with this paradox as it goes forward, as it's become popular precisely because it's free to use and so far, free of ads.