Like most things, I was highly skeptical. What kind of socially devoid person Facebook-likes Nike or Coca Cola just to get some marketing spiel pseudo-status messages fill up their Facebook homepage? Surely this new social marketing fad is just a bunch of stale baloney? Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is some merit to it after all, so I present to you 3 social media campaigns that got me, hook, line and sinker.

2 of these are UK-centric I should warn, but the principles apply worldwide. If you have a business presence on a social media outlet, read through to see just how you can reach even the cynical misanthropists like me. I have seen the light!

Old Spice Man

I’m sure you’ve all heard of this one, so I thought we’d start with something we can all relate to.

A failing brand with the image of being only for grandads.. what to do? Push it to a new generation of men by associating it with the manliest of me – Isaiah Mustafah – a man who men could aspire to be like, and women could aspire to be with. After hitting it off with the masses, a second TV spot was made and social media accounts created. The now notorious internet meme began.

Through a twitter account, fans could get direct contact with the man, who would them create a personalised video answering questions they posed. It was an expensive campaign perhaps, but it went viral. The Old Spice man became a legend to go down in meme history:

The Result?

I fell for the marketing, and they got a sale or two out of me. I didn’t go so far as to actually interact on Twitter, but still – the image of the Old Spice brand was forever altered for me.

Sadly, some regard the campaign as a failure because it basically stopped dead. July 14th was the last video produced, and there’s been no real human interaction since then. I’m still of the opinion it had to have been a success to have reached even me, but I think we can all agree the potential to carry it on was wasted.

Appliance Online UK

The is probably the smallest campaign of the three, and it took a quite different approach. Appliances Online is an online-only appliances retailer in the UK (congratulations if you guessed that from the name). I bought a freezer from them a year or so ago, based purely on price comparison.

I recently got an email about a competition they were running on Facebook. The premise was simple – like their page, choose your dream appliance from their site, and submit your entry. The competition would occur on Friday, and there was a live stream to announce the winner. They would call you if you won, and you get your dream appliance. There was also a smaller competition for viewers of the live stream only to win a microwave by answering a simple question via email.

Why did it work for me?

Obviously, the promise of my dream appliance was a fantastic way to hook me in. A bonus prize for live stream viewers made sure I turned up to watch and participate. The host of the live stream, Yossi, is quite a character – really lively and able to whip up a storm of excitement despite the fact that they’re just phoning someone up and giving them a big fridge or dishwasher.

Yossi then took the time to personally email all of the competition entrants a few hours after the show – maybe it was a cut and paste email, but it certainly didn’t feel like it. This personal interaction is key.

The Result?

I’ll be tuning in next week too for another chance to win! And in all likelihood, I’ll be buying my next appliance from Appliances Online.

Aleksandr Orlov – Compare the Market.com

This campaign covers TV and social outlets. If you’re not familiar, Aleksandr and the meerkats are characters created to promote insurance quote comparison site Compare the Market. The creativity of the TV advertising itself was sheer genius – explaining the plight of poor Meerkovian school children whose website - comparethemeerkat.com – simply can’t cope with the number of people who mistakenly visit it after trying to access comparethemarket.com

This is backed up by the incredibly cute Aleksandr having his own Facebook profile, where he posts regular status updates about his whereabouts or what have you, as well as hilarious pictures and videos for sneak peeks of the next ad in the series. As silly as it sounds, reading fake status updates from a lovable meerkat is possibly the best marketing tool to hit the UK in ages (and the ads won awards too).

Don’t scoff at this – this guy is singlehandedly responsible for a huge surge in the popularity of meerkats as pets!

The Result?

My home insurance – up for renewal next month – will be going through CompareTheMarket.com, because not only do I get a competitive quote, but I also get rewarded with a cuddly meerkat character. Seriously:

What have we learnt?

We’ve seen a variety of tactics at play here, so hopefully you can take something from them. Some campaigns use personal engagement, some entice us with attractive giveaways, while some create a loveable character and fly with it. As someone who hates brands in general, I’m utterly shocked at how effective they have been against me. Do you have any examples of social media marketing that have really done it for you personally? Let us know in the comments!

The million dollar question for you, the user, is why should I care? By combining their privacy policies into one, it allows Google to take information you have shared with one service, and share it with another. Google says they will “treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.”

This is all well and good, but it also means that Google can share information about you across various platforms with advertisers. While this creates a more custom advertising experience for the users, it also means better targeted ads and more money for Google.

Of course, Google promises never to sell your information, as they always have, but that doesn’t mean they won’t use your information themselves.

The positive is that the documentation will be easier for users to read and understand. This way you will know exactly what Google is doing with your information across all Google platforms, instead of having to try to piece it together little by little.

Source: Google Blog

Facebook promises that any stories that appear in your news feed will be something you or a friend like. You will never see stories from random companies that are not in some way affiliated with your network. That’s all well and good, but my friends like some pretty dumb things, and I would certainly prefer to keep them out of my newsfeed (or maybe I should find better friends).

Facebook also promises to clearly label the sponsored stories and try to show users no more than one sponsored story per day. This doesn’t sound terribly intrusive, but I think we can agree that we would prefer to keep the ads relegated to the side of the screen.

Source: Cnet
Image Credit: Cnet

“Over the years one of the most frequent requests on WordPress.com has been to allow bloggers to earn money from their blog through ads. We’ve resisted advertising so far because most of it we had seen wasn’t terribly tasteful, and it seemed like Google’s AdSense was the state-of-the-art, which was sad. You pour a lot of time and effort into your blog and you deserve better than AdSense.”

Not all blogs will be eligible for the program. Blogs must be publicly visible and have a custom domain name to take part. If you would like to apply for the program, check out the sign up page on the official WordPress site. You must already have the custom domain name and blog set up to even apply for entry.

Source: TechCrunch

One area of Facebook that needs some explanation is marketing and advertising. Steve already explained how to create a Facebook Fan page, which is an excellent first start. That gives your readers and brand fans a place to congregate and discuss your blog articles or your product.

However, beyond having a brand page on Facebook, you also want to have a way to attract new customers to your webpage or to your Facebook brand page. If you’ve ever considered Facebook advertising, but assumed it was completely unaffordable except for the largest companies and corporations, you may want to think again. If you’ve ever advertised on Google, using the pay-per-click advertising model, then you are more than prepared to pay for advertising on Facebook.

The Facebook CPC & CPM Advertising Model

If you have even just a little bit of advertising money available for your website or product, you may want to consider a Facebook advertising campaign using either the pay per click (CPC) or pay per million impressions (CPM) models. The Facebook user base is so impressively huge and active on the site that the investment will be well worth it.

There are several different choices you have when it comes to Facebook advertising. The most common is setting up a CPC or CPM campaign in the Facebook Ad creation tool.

It is insanely easy to create an advert using the Facebook ad creation tool. Please note that there are two “types” of adverts – Sponsored Stories and Facebook Ads. I’ll cover Sponsored Stories below, but to post an Ad for your blog, choose “Facebook Ads“.

You can either publicize a particular story update on your Facebook brand page, or you can change the destination from your brand page to “External URL”. That will make the advert direct clicks to a landing page on your site. In my case, I want all traffic to go to the main page of my blog, so that’s the URL that I chose.

As you choose an image for your advert and complete the advert text, you’ll see a preview of your advert displayed in the “Preview” area at the bottom of the wizard window. When you’re done creating your advert, the next step is to decide how you want to target the advert. You’ll see the size of the target audience to the right. Keep in mind that your cost per click may go up for a larger audience.

You can fine tune your target by selecting a geographic location, a specific age group, gender,  and even interests. While this may reduce the size of your target audience, it significantly enhances the click-through rate for your advert because how your advert is displayed will be much more targeted.

The next step is deciding on the financial size of your Facebook advert campaign. Name the campaign, and then decide how much you want to pay for your advertising per day, or over the entire life of your campaign. You can devote as little as a dollar a day to your Facebook advertising campaign.

Preview your advert, and once you’re happy with how the advert looks and your investment details, click on “Place Order” and you’re done!

Your advert will show up on the right side of the Facebook window for your targeted audience, just like all of the other adverts that you’ve become accustomed to seeing there. The fact that you’ve targeted your advert will ensure that your advert will show up on the Facebook pages of people that will most likely be interested in what you have to offer.

Other Facebook Advertising Options

Beyond the standard CPC and CPM advertising options, you have a few other choices when it comes to getting exposure on Facebook.

A very popular campaign that is relatively new for advertisers on Facebook is the “Sponsored” advert. This is a highly effective form of advertising that utilizes how and when your fans “Like” your pages. This will cause your Sponsored advert to appear on the walls of all that person’s friends, providing an even more focused and highly effective advertising campaign. You’ve probably seen this appear on your own wall when your friends have liked certain brands.

Another form of Facebook advertising is the “Event” advert. You can create an Event for your brand – such as a fan gathering or a giveaway. This allows your fans that share or RSVP to the event to serve as your advertising platform, because that activity will appear on the wall of all of their friends as well.

Creating an Event advert is even faster and easier than the Facebook advert wizard. You can start the process by just clicking “Create Event” at the right side of your brand Facebook page. Just fill in the details for the event to start the process.

All three of these methods for advertising on Facebook offer you a highly-focused platform to spread the news about your brand.

No one can deny that the Facebook population is huge, and they are also a very active group that interacts with every aspect of their wall – be it likes, comments, events, shares and more.  By advertising on Facebook, you can harness the power of such a community.

So if you have some funds for advertising, consider giving a Facebook campaign a try. Let us know how it worked out for you, and which advert type worked best in your case. Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

A social advertisement works in a very straightforward way: if you, by a coincidence or whatever reason, have liked a Facebook page or ad, your friends will see your “like” next time they see the same advertisement. You might feel comfortable with that, however most people are not aware of the fact that by simply “liking” something (and thus expressing a passive form of appreciation), they also start recommending the same thing to their friends. LinkedIn launched a somewhat similar form of social advertising this summer.

Another disturbing thing is that in both systems, you find yourself automatically “opted-in” the social advertising system. Yes, you can opt out, but only if you know about the system and can spend a little effort and a few minutes of your time to do a quick research on how to disable it for your profile. So here’s a quick guide for those who feel they don’t want to participate in social advertising at LinkedIn and Facebook.

Opt out of Social Ads at Facebook

Facebook social ads show an advertiser’s message alongside actions you have taken, such as liking a Page. This means that if you have liked a page which is being advertised through Facebook, your friends will see that you have once liked that page (and may feel more likely to do the same):

We have mentioned how to stop appearing in social ads at Facebook in our extensive guide on safeguarding your Facebook privacy. However Facebook is in a good habit of constantly moving privacy settings all around and now the necessary option seems to be in a completely different section.

To find the way to opt out of Facebook social advertising, click a tiny arrow next to “Home” link in the upper-right corner of the screen and choose “Account Settings“. There click “Facebook Ads” in the left-hand panel.

Now, scroll down to the second option, read about the social ads and, if you are still not convinced that you want to participate in them, click “Edit social ads setting”.

There you can at last set whether you want your friends to see your name in an ad or whether you prefer to opt out:

Note: Independent of this setting, you may still see social actions in other contexts, like in Sponsored Stories or paired with messages from Facebook.

Opt out of Social Ads at LinkedIn

LinkedIn took a step further in social advertising: it shows your photo alongside an ad. Here’s an example of such an ad from the official LinkedIn blog. As far as you can see, people who have been following a company group, are now unwillingly advertising their services:

To opt out, you need to login to LinkedIn and click this link. There click “Manage Social Advertising” and un-check the option allowing LinkedIn to use your name and photo in social advertising:

Do you feel inclined of opting out of Facebook social ads? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

** Editor’s note : This is Ann’s last post with MakeUseOf after exactly three years writing for us.  She is leaving to pursue her own projects and will be greatly missed by everyone here.  Please join me in wishing her all the very best for the future. **

Rube Goldberg also drew cartoons of overtly complex contraptions, made using every day materials, designed to perform a simple task. He was never responsible for constructing his inventions, though the bold concept was enough to make the name stick.

These days the internet is full of complex-yet-pointless Rube Goldberg machines in action, and here are a selection of the best.

Honda – Cog

Maybe you’ve seen this one already – but did you take a second to think of the logistics, effort and financial requirements from such a beautiful 120 seconds of film? The advert, made from bits of the then-new Honda Accord, had a budget of £1 million for its production alone (that’s around £8300 for every second) not including the £6 million Honda set aside for campaign costs.

The result is 2 minutes of Rube Golberg machine goodness, made from two separate shots that were edited together in post-production. It took the team who shot the advert 4 days to acquire those 120 seconds worth of footage, though the effort paid off and the finished product won multiple awards and is considered an overwhelming success as far as advertising campaigns go.

Baynham Tyers – The Contraption II

This particular contraption just keeps on going and while there are a few jump-cuts in the video, I’m going to ignore them and focus on the pure awesomeness contained within. Featuring cricket balls, a magnetic chess set (yes, chess is played) and a self-returning golf ball putter, this is one sophisticated Rube Goldberg machine.

There’s no fancy location or setup – it’s just a bog-standard house with inventive use of general items. The guys behind this video released another shorter Rube Goldberg video entitled The Contraption I, and you can view it here.

Ford – Active Park Assist (French Advert)

So it turns out there are quite a few corporate efforts on this list, and the latest is from Ford’s French TV spot for Active Park Assist (yes, your car will probably not need you at all soon). This one is particularly special not necessarily for it’s technical merits but for the stars of the show – dogs.

Rube Goldberg machines (and adverts) are probably hard enough to set-up and control without the added unpredictability of a dog, so I’m guessing this was a tough commercial to shoot. You’ll have to pretend not to notice the few obvious cuts, but I’m happy to let it slide for a dog in goggles.

eMretsiM – A Garry’s Mod Rube Goldberg Machine

Garry’s Mod for Half-Life 2 provides a sandbox in which to do whatever you please using the Half-Life 2 engine and an assortment of props, maps, objects and so on from various Valve releases. Here, Garry’s Mod has been used to excellent effect to create a Rube Goldberg machine that lasts nearly 4 minutes.

YouTube member eMretsiM posted the video along with the comment “I’ve wasted a good portion of my life making this, so it better be worth it” – trust me, it was worth it.

Google Science Fair Experiment – Extended

Probably the geekiest of all the videos here is Google’s advert for its first-ever online science fair. It’s only a short 1 minute 29 seconds in length, but each part of this particular effort is designed with a particular aspect of science in mind, be it magnets, chemical reactions or simply gravity.

You can find out more about next the Google Science Fair here.

OK Go – This Too Shall Pass

How could this list exist without this video? It’s had more than 30 million views on YouTube and is undoubtedly one of the best videos of its kind on the net. If you’ve not seen it then you’re in for a treat – and if you have seen it then you’ll probably end up watching it again anyway.

What follows is a 4 minute tour-de-force of Rube Goldberg wizardry that involves bowling balls, massive props and the destruction of a television. Enjoy!

Conclusion

There’s not much that can be said about these contraptions other than the fact that they’re technically very impressive when done properly (by an individual) and make great advertising material otherwise. There are only 6 here on this list, so please feel free to add to the collection with suggestions in the comments below.

Did you enjoy these videos? Any favorites? Any other Rube Goldberg machines? Let us know by adding a comment.

Also present are techniques that are still being used today, special effects that do not rely on computers and a couple of familiar brands that have grown into multinational corporations. This collection features a good amount of 1940s, 50s and 60s advertising materials which provides a valuable snapshot of mass media and life in the USA at the time.

Lucky Strike “Square Dance” (1948)

Here’s something you don’t see any more (well, not in the US, Europe, Australia, and anywhere else that’s sensitive about tobacco advertising) – an all-singing, all-dancing cigarette advert. The film in question is from 1948 and employs stop-motion to create what can only be described as an animated masterpiece.

Maybe it’s the combination of the iconic Lucky Strike brand that makes this special, or maybe it’s the flawless animation that these days would be made using software instead of painstaking stop-motion. Either way, this is a classic that must be seen!

Note: Smoking is bad for you, so you probably shouldn’t do it.

Ford “A Wonderful New World of Fords” (1960)

Featuring some of the cheesiest marketing muzak you’ve ever heard, A Wonderful New World of Fords was a TV spot from 1960 that introduces three new models of car to the US consumer. The advert is presented in a typical American 1960s style, taking cues directly from the ongoing space race.

This advert helps remind us of two things: the 1960 Ford Thunderbird was a stunner and they simply don’t make adverts like this any more, especially where cars are concerned. You can be the judge on whether that’s a good thing or not.

Cheerios/V-8 (1960)

Unlike the above Ford advert, which is aimed at older audiences with disposable income, this joint effort from Cheerios and V-8 (the juice) is aimed directly at children. I’ve included it here as it’s another example of the impact made by the space race on popular culture at the time.

Beginning with a shot of a US rocket blasting off, the advert goes on to offer a free space-themed game with one coupon from each product. As we all know by now, this trend eventually turned out to be a favorable technique for selling to younger audiences in the future.

Gilbert Slot Racers (Year Unknown)

If anyone has ever had the chance to play with one of these sets then please comment below, but it strikes me as one of those products that never quite worked as advertised. Featuring a figure 8 circuit, a jump (which switches each car’s position too – really?) and a ton of “sold separately” extras it’s Gilbert’s finest Slot Racers.

The jump looks precarious, though the lap counter, flag guy and timer are all nice touches. Do kids still play with toys like this?

Reels

There are a ton of classic 40s, 50s and 60s adverts featured on the following reels. If you’ve found the article interesting up until now then you’ve just hit the jackpot with the following collections:

Television Commercials of the 1950s and 60s

Would you buy cereal from the two individuals featured in the first commercial? Would an advert convert you to Marlboro cigarettes? This film documents 25 minutes worth of glorious 1950s retro commercials!

Classic Television Commercials (1948 onwards)

Last but certainly not least is this mammoth collection of adverts, many of which predate 1950. There are in total eight parts to this collection, with separate links to each reel found below this section (the video featured here is the first in the series).

The commercials in these films are considered “significant to the history and development of TV as an advertising medium” by the Internet Archive – and they’re also pretty good fun to watch.

Watch: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8

Conclusion

Regardless of whether you love or hate television advertising, it’s impossible to ignore the large role it has played over the last 60 or so years. The films featured here tell a story of an emerging medium, major industrial growth and provide important social and economic commentary for those with their academic hats on.

Do you have any favorites here? Any classics you remember as a child? Share and discuss below.

The dark side of this is that a lot of Twitter users might feel exploited when Twitter adds ads. For years they have used a clean, advert-free Twitter, and the thought of adverts being slathered all over the place might turn some users off, and maybe even make them leave the site completely. Obviously, this could cause a catastrophic chain of events because Twitter is built around lots of users interacting with each other. If there are less users on the site, then it will be a lot less fun to use, which will in turn cause more users to leave, and the circle will continue.

I will not be one of those users who leaves and I hope my reasons will convince you all to stay as well.

Twitter Is Just Too Much Fun

Adverts can be a little annoying, but I do not think they are worth giving up on a product that is as fun as Twitter just because someone is trying to sell me a product. When I watch TV someone is trying to sell me a myriad of products during the commercials every 15 minutes, but watching TV is fun, so I put up with adverts because I enjoy whatever show I am watching.

The same can be said for Twitter; I enjoy using Twitter, in spite of some of the negative things I have said about it in the past, and a few adverts in my face are not enough to make me leave. I enjoy being able to quickly communicate with all of my friends in one place. I also am a giant attention whore, so a service like Twitter where I can share whatever I want when I want is tailor-made for me.

Twitter Adds Ads = More Money For Twitter = More Improvements

A website that generates the amount of traffic that Twitter does can charge an astronomical amount of money for advert space on their site, and with this money Twitter can re-invest and bring further improvements to the service.

Twitter has come a long way since it started. They have added features like their own photo sharing service, galleries on users pages, lists and trending topics. Honestly, the list of features that Twitter has added since the beginning is massive. All of these major additions were done with Twitter having almost no income other than investors, so just imagine the kind of improvements we could see if Twitter was supported with a steady income from advert revenue.

Twitter Basically Has Adverts Already

Twitter is such a great tool for self promotion that they basically have adverts all over the site already. Of course, these are not adverts from Twitter themselves but from the users on Twitter. So many people use Twitter to promote their blog, website or product that it sometimes seems like a giant advert fest.

Of course, you can choose if you want to follow people who use Twitter for self promotion or not, but I think almost everyone on Twitter follows at least one account that is a persistent self promoter. I think it only stands to reason that Twitter should profit from people who want to direct their promotion in a more directed and meaningful way.

Adverts Are Not Hard To Ignore

Depending on the type of adverts Twitter decides to add there are plenty of easy ways to ignore them. If the adverts are on the Twitter site then the super simple solution is to use an ad-blocker. I refuse to use an ad-blocker, but if the adverts are that annoying, you can choose to block them.

Now the issue will come if Twitter decides to plug adverts in your timeline as if they were a tweet. I don’t think ad blockers would be able to handle this. So the question is this – is it really that hard to just ignore an advert when it comes across the screen? I don’t think so. As I said before, I refuse to use an ad-blocker, but I also never read or click on the adverts I do come across. This is because they are easy to ignore, and Twitter will be no different. Your mind will look for the content it wants to see and block out the rest.

Conclusion

In a perfect world nothing would have adverts and everything would be free. However, we live in the real world. The fact is, you either have to pay for things, or you have to be advertised to. We have been spoiled by a free advert-less Twitter all along, but I think we all need to realize that can’t last forever, and we have to think of all the good things Twitter offers and will continue to offer long after a few adverts come on the site.

Let us know your opinion in the comments below.  Will you stop using Twitter if they decide to introduce adverts?  Or do you not care about it one bit?  In what form do you think these adverts would take?

Yet some try to side-step advertisements by using browser extensions or features that block them. There’s no doubt that ads can be annoying, but without ad revenues, there’d be nothing to read. What does this mean for the Internet? Could a downward spiral result?

Looking For The Free Lunch

Personally, I am not a fan of using the world “entitlement” as an insult. Yet it does seem to apply to many who choose to use an ad blocking extension to remove ads from their favorite sites. Ars Technica’s experiment, in which the site prevented visitors using ad blockers from viewing the site’s content, was an excellent example. While some fans were supportive, others acted as if Ars was withholding what was rightfully theirs.

This is the definition of obtaining something for nothing. Anyone who is choosing not to view the ads on a site is making a deliberate choice not to support the site in question, with a few exceptions aside (a handful of sites offer premium subscriptions which remove some or all advertisements).

Yes, advertisements can be an annoyance, but they’re the only way sites can provide content without charging for it. Some argue that advertising is an outdated business model, but so far, the replacement for it remains a unicorn – a creature that’s kinda cool to think about, but ultimately mythical.

Suffer The Consequences

Suggestions that ad blockers are ethically sound remain dubious. It’s obvious that without revenue to support quality content, that content will disappear, and the world will be worse off because of it.

Modern American media serves as an excellent example of what happens when revenues dry up. Consolidation has put most American print and television media in the hands of just a few companies, which wield considerable cultural power and have little incentive to care about factual reporting.

The race for the bottom’s most putrid result yet is the creation of citizen journalism programs such as CNN’s “iReport” in which unqualified amateurs upload their own videos, photos and commentary.  As one would expect, the quality of iReport is abysmal. CNN is quick to highlight any decent clip, but dig deeper into iReport and you’ll find a hoard of terrible photos and barely explained videos, many of which are lined with descriptions that contain misspelled words and unfinished sentences.

If advertisements disappeared from all sites today, this is what would become of the web. Most sites would have to rely on subscriptions, a revenue model that would only encourage consolidation. The rest of the web would devolve into iReports – an incoherent, amateur, and uninspired sprawl.

Unlikely Champions

All of this seems very doom-and-gloom. Ad blocker extensions aren’t hard to use, and some web browsers (Opera, I’m looking at you) are starting to include the functionality by default.  While I’ve already argued why blocking advertisements is a bad idea, there are plenty of people who simply don’t care, and are happy to devour content without ever supporting it. So what’s going to keep us slip-sliding down this slope?

Microsoft and Google.

Yes, these two corporate giants hardly seem like the best choice for stewards of online quality. Microsoft has been involved in numerous past anti-trust disputes, and Google is the new target for them. Yet for now, the interests of these two companies are in line with the interests of people who want to see quality content on the web at no charge.

The connection is obvious. Google derives much of its revenue from advertisements. Microsoft would quite like to have a piece of that action as well. In addition, both companies distribute web browsers. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Google’s Chrome together represent about 65% of all web users. Google also owns the most popular mobile operating system.

So long as Google and Microsoft remain powerful companies with great influence over how people view the Internet, advertising will remain the primary means of generating revenue. Some portion of users may block ads, but these companies would never let them threaten their business models, which by extension protects the sites that rely on advertising to generate revenue.

Conclusion 

If you care about the sites you visit, and you want them to be successful, you should not be using an ad blocker. It’s that simple. Just say no to blocking ads!

With that said, ad blocking extensions are not killing the Internet, and have no hope of doing so in the near future. Despite what some supporters of ad blocking believe, the use of advertisements to generate revenue is the dominant paradigm and will likely remain dominant for decades. If it is interrupted, it won’t be because some geeks were blocking ads, but rather because of the elimination of net neutrality.

Let us know what you think in the comments.  Do you block ads or not?