This is just a short post about if anyone knows how to turn off ads so they (and the same ones at that) keep showing up at the side of the screen, they are very annoying and some of them are just very odd ads about nothing even related to witchcraft. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Re: Too many ads on the side By: Spirit76 / Novice
Post # 4 Nov 14, 2023
One thing to bear in mind (and to play a little 'devil's advocate') is that owning and operating a website costs money. And the larger it is/more storage space it uses, the higher that price becomes. That means there is a point where the owner inevitably needs to choose how the site can be made to support itself... or halt its growth, or shut it down.
That means some sort of monetization, to which there are three general options; Subscription/pay for use, Donation and hope you get enough funds year by year/month by month, or carrying advertising and bringing ad revenue.
Some would also posit merchandise, but online stores actually earn very little per unit sold, as overhead like production, shipping, packaging, shrinkage due to lost or stolen/frauded items, licensing, etc etc all cut in and take away from earnings. Unless the store does a steady, large volume of sales very little is gained. And, making it even harder this is very much a niche market so there is a small consumer-base, and most only buy things they need once. Other than herbs and candles, most tools of the proverbial trade last for many years. Some even get passed down for a generation or two.
While I agree there is a fine balance to be found between the presence/invasiveness of advertising, and the need to get people to click (as most ads pay per click only) I tend to find it the lesser of the possible evils.
I absolutely understand, and I did not intend for this message to come across as negative, its just some ads are very distracting from say a forum post about something magick related , at least for me due to my disability that makes it more difficult to focus but as another user said I will look into using an ad blocker.
Unfortunately, I block ads on principle due to multiple reasons.
The most important reason is the very real threat of malvertising. You just don't know what kinds of ads a site may have on it, and some can be quite dangerous these days.
The second is due to the fact that most sites are so bloated with ads that it can negatively impact a machine's performance depending on what sort of ads they are.
Third, I use a screen reader, and the more ads a site has, the more irrelevant content I have to navigate around, and then I get annoyed and will want to avoid that site in the future.
So, if a site's ads are proven to be safe and they won't make me want to smash something out of frustration, I'll whitelist the site. Sadly though, ads can become unsafe at any moment. Ad companies just don't seem to understand these things or don't care, and then sites that depend on ads suffer for it.
Everything said above was correct. I would like to also point out that some websites have ads to keep the website running. Companies pay a small amount to have advertisements ran on social media and websites.
