I suppose I work outside the capitalist infrastructure/mentality on some level– if I lose “potential future revenue” which is completely obtuse, it is of little concern to me. If I am splitting a pie with someone– I don’t think ” I am losing HALF of my pie”, I think” Half that pie is mine, cool”. Naive, perhaps. So be it, I suppose.

Thanks for the great debate. Remember, at the end of the day, DoGood Headquarters is about allowing anyone to donate money to charity without spending a dime, nothing more, nothing less.

Simply,

Faisal

You: 1) Publishers still get paid (no ads blocked)– majority of their end users still see intended ads

Me: Many ad programs only pay for — or at least pay substantially more for — click throughs. Unseen ads don’t get clicked. It’s still, in the eyes of a site owner, a loss of “potential revenue”.

You: 4) Other brands/advertisers maximize impressions by eliminating eyeballs that don’t care about their products and services– still get their millions of eyeballs regardless

Me: I guarantee you that most advertisers won’t see it that way. They’ll see it as paying for ads that didn’t get *any* eyeballs. (the ones under your ads). And on some high traffic sites, those impressions can be surprisingly expensive.
Advertising isn’t about preaching to the converted. It’s about attracting new business. Advertisers *WANT* as many eyeballs as possible seeing their ads, “interested” or not. Yes they may be targeting to specific sites, but that doesn’t mean they want you (and it will be seen as you) indiscriminately deciding who in that target audience gets to see their ads. Ads they just paid to be shown to that user. Ad blockers are, for the most part, tolerated because they don’t incure cost on unseen ads, they just don’t load them. You do incure those costs. you are, in their eyes, depriving them od “potential revenue”.

And as far as the ad distribution networks: I’m sure they’ll see it as you screwing them too. they now cannot properly calculate thte true impression/click-through metric as you are downloading content that doesn’t get displayed to the client. And what if other, similar, projects like this come up. If every, or even some, users out there are just covering up a site’s ads with their own, then devalues the market for in-site advertising.

You may not think you’re affecting their bottom line, and most likely you really aren;t. But what you are doing is affecting their “potential earnings”. now and in the future. And “potential earnings” have a way of being FAR FAR more expensive than actual ones.

You may think its “they won’t care. It’s just a few ads”, but ask anyone that’s been sued by the RIAA for downloading “just a few songs” how well that argument went over.

Patrick,

I do agree that there will be people out there that have very similar reactions to you initially. To paraphrase the great Hugh Prather, I’d rather be hated than ignored. If am hated, then I know I am making a difference.

To reiterate, we do not alter web pages at all (unbelievable eh?). On a surface level, to an end user, the site “appears to be different”. Perhaps we are just debating semantics here.

Agreed, most advertisers and publishers make their money from click-throughs, not impressions, but generally speaking, DoGooders would never click on the ad to begin with. As I mentioned previously, this could be a GOOD thing for advertisers (pun intended)– eliminate the eyeballs that never cared to begin with, and focus on your primary target. In addition, there are 400… 500 million odd internet users on the planet? DoGooder will inevitably represent a very small portion of these users, ultimately resulting in little or no effect on most of brands/advertisers/publishers bottom lines. But, the impact on charity / green causes? Grand indeed. Seems like a pretty good trade off, no?

The Superbowl analogy, interesting. My guess is though, if 30,000,000 people went the The New York Times, and 100,000 had the DoGooder plug-in installed, not sure the NY Times would care, but whom am I to say for sure?

Thanks Patrick. Great insight. Dialogue, all about dialogue. It’s how we can improve, progress and work things out. Soooo good.

Good on you,

Faisal

Very thoughtful and insightful comments. Perhaps the complexities of an end users likes and dislikes are also more complicated than either of us know as well. Sure, the general demographic of people that watch Grays Anatomy might find a tampon commercial useful, unfortunately, I do not. But, I can concede that the general demographic of Grays Anatomy might USE tampons, so the television show has in effect aggregated a general audience, and advertisers might be able to introduce a new peripheral product to them.

Yes, end users have choices (what’s wrong with one more?), but how many people do you know still complain about TV commercials and banner ads? Television is interesting– seems everytime you turn the channel during a commercial break, every OTHER show is also on commercial break. :)

The VCR debate is a loose parallel, agreed. This is how I perceive the players involved in the DoGooder are effected (at a high level):

1) Publishers still get paid (no ads blocked)– majority of their end users still see intended ads

2) End users control what, when, and where they see campaign content, generate revenue for charities, learn about green living tips and gain a level of awareness about important social causes that they would have had to go looking for previously

3) LOHAS advertisers gain a large and growing demo of users interested “good stuff”– not just the small group that go to LOHAS oriented sites

4) Other brands/advertisers maximize impressions by eliminating eyeballs that don’t care about their products and services– still get their millions of eyeballs regardless

Is the above a fair assessment?

We will be very vigilant in the types of ads we are serving– listening to our end users and implementing their feedback. If content generators attempt to use the tech for a different purpose, the end user would simply not install “their version”, or simply install ours. Choice is theirs and theirs alone, and that is a wonderful concept.

As always, thanks for the intriguing dialogue. The debate can, and will, rage on I am sure, but in the end, perhaps we are missing the focal point: charitable organizations, people in need, perhaps a planet in peril, are all going to benefit greatly from the DoGooder, and in my humble opinion, that is good for EVERYONE.

Take care Patrick.

Good on you,

Faisal