Ad tu, Brute?

So earlier on this week the infamous smashing ‘magazine’ posted an article about ad blockers. It implores the reader to switch off ad blockers while browsing the site. It states that we are robbing the community of much needed cash. And goes on to describe various analogies to back up the claim.

Smashing magazine has come out and said this was the opinion of one of their writers and perhaps doesn’t echo the voice of the site. Which is cool. I guess. Does the Sunday Times do that? What about the Sun or the Daily Mail? I don’t think they do.

Which raises an interesting point in it’s self. Smashing magazine and the author gave a take on the whole thing like they were a magazine. Let’s be honest to me it’s always going to be a blog. It looks like a blog. It reads like a blog. It’s a blog. And my blog isn’t a money making idea (although more on this later) its a way to communicate. A blog can be monetized I know. There are millions of millionaires that have wrote about how they made their millions from blogging. Well done them. It’s not how 95% of the population see their blog.

Anyway yet again I have digressed. So do I think they are right in saying this? Damn no. However I think they are missing the point.

Many web savvy people have become ad blind. I have. I visit smashing magazine all the time. I look at so many other sites. I don’t know who is advertising where. I think my brain can process ads and moves past them. I do know of some sites that just look f-ugly cos of the amount of ads. I know people have complained about certain sites. I just don’t see the ads. And I don’t care.

That is because I know they aren’t targeted at me. I’m not great at web design and I’m an average coder. The fact is I can take my limited psd’s in to html. I don’t need stock images. I have an email marketing plan and I use Mail chimp. You’re ads aren’t targeted at me. The relationship was never going to work. It’s not you. It’s me.

The person new to the industry should be your bread and butter. They don’t know about any of these things. Probably. It’s ok. I honestly think that smashing magazine is a great place for these people. When learning get as much info as possible. Smashing like lists are great. Yes I said it. A lot of the articles are first class for those dripping their toes in the water. And these people probably don’t know what an ad blocker is. They are interested in psd to xhtml. Don’t worry if power users have an ad blocker guys, they ain’t going to click your ads anyway.

So this is going on for a while and I promise to only go on for another couple of paragraphs. Here’s what I said I’d come on to later. I’m going to be putting some ads on this site. I know what your thinking. A blog with about 10 articles. And ads? Why? Well to be honest I have a couple of articles half wrote that will work well with adsense. I hope. they won’t be big and bold or colourful. Just some text links at the bottom of the article. Don’t click them if you don’t want. It’s more of an experiment than anything.

And finally smashing I do like you. However if you want to complain have a look at this site – http://www.thewebdesignresource.com. A site that blatantly copies your content and then doesn’t even provide a link to your original article.