拦截广告会让你喜欢的网站消失?

网络上的信息包罗万象。有新闻、书籍、视频和社区等等，当然还包括广告。可能大多数人习惯对网站弹跳出来的广告进行拦截。可是你是否曾想过阻断这些广告有可能是毁灭性的。它可以间接地导致人们失业，失去共享的空间和网站。也许当中就有你所钟爱的某个版块。在进行这一动作时，你是不是想想那些你所喜欢的网站呢？

No one likes popup ads online and many of us actually block them. But Ken Fisher, who is editor-in-chief of Ars Technica, says doing so may have unintended consequences for your favorite Web sites.

Mr. KEN FISHER (Editor-in-Chief, Ars Technica): Everyone knows that the Internet is chock-full of great information, opinion and community. What everyone doesn't know is that blocking Internet ads can truly hurt the Web sites you love. If everyone did it, a big part of the Internet would soon be gone.

Many people believe that if they never click on ads, then blocking them won't hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most ad-supported Web sites are primarily paid when an ad is viewed.

If you have an ad blocker running and you load 10 pages today, you've consumed resources. Sure, bandwidth is a pittance for one user, but multiply that by a few million and it gets expensive. Imagine a business where one out of every three people you served costs you money but doesn't generating anything in return. Now imagine how much better service you could provide were this not the case.

That's why you have to think about the sites you love. Blocking ads on those sites can be devastating . I'm not arguing that blocking ads is stealing. Yet it can indirectly result in people losing their jobs. It can result in fewer articles, videos and chats for you to enjoy. And it can definitely affect the quality of content.

It can also put sites into an advertising death spin . As revenues go down, many sites are lured into running horrible advertising like pop-up ads. Or their pages explode with ad units all over the place. If a site has advertising you don't agree with, just don't go there. Vote with your page views and tell the site operators why it is you're leaving.

Online, everything is 100 percent trackable and it's billed and sold as such. On TV, advertisers don't know if you're muting the ads or grabbing a snack. That's why they try to make catchy ads and they only pay for potential results. Online, every single ad loaded matters.

Now, obviously this isn't all the user's responsibility. Advertisers and publishers have to get serious about creating a better experience. They need to recognize that if they offend, they are fueling future ad blocking.

SIEGEL: Ken Fisher is editor-in-chief of Ars Technica and author of the forthcoming book on building online communities.