FireFox Ad Blocker

There has been a fair amount of controversy over the FireFox Ad Blocker add-on, and for good reason. Of course consumers enjoy blocking ads and it is a popular add-on with users who find it and install it. At the same time, it is cutting into website publisher's ad revenue, which will always get the publishers of the world fire up.

There is a blurb about Ad Blocker on Slashdot that has some interesting comments. Many of the top comments side with the consumer and condemn blocking FireFox users, which a few radical publishers have apparently decided to do.

However, the comments are a little short-sighted. Consumers want everything cheap or free, and ads have helped give them great sites at a low cost or no cost at all. It is a bit contradictory for consumers to demand great free websites, have publishers respond with an advertising based revenue model, followed by users blocking the ads.

Sites like W303 have a single revenue stream and do not generate a lot of profit, but we enjoy putting this site out there where users can collaborate online for free and hopefully learn a lot from the content on this site. However, we would not have been able to make W303 what it is without advertising revenue and will not be able to continue improving it, nor perhaps maintain it, if ad revenue decreases significantly due to Ad Blockers.

To give everyone a head's up and be completely forthright, we at W303 are looking into a way to block FireFox users who have the Ad Blocker installed, though we would not go as far as blocking all FireFox users. We have just begun to dig into this issue and if we can identify only users who have the ad blocker running, we do intend to direct them to a very polite page explaining that ad revenue is the only way we are able to deliver the great content and functionality found on W303 at no cost to users. If they switch off the ad blocker, they will be able to proceed to W303's content.

We will provide an update once we have figured out how to do this, but rest assured that we will not create a block on any one browser due to this controversial issue. We hope users will put themselves in the shoes of web publishers that work very hard to provide great free sites and be understanding of our position on the issue.

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