Ad Blockers and Chrome

Today is Groundhog Day, a day when we drag these cute and evil rodents out of deep hibernation to tell us what we already know: "It's damned cold out and it's going to stay that way so leave me only so I can get a couple more months sleep!" That's about as far as I can get worked up about groundhogs this time of year, other than to clarify what I mean by "cute and evil": they're cute at a distance but evil when they're up close and on your property.

Instead let's talk about a different evil -- web ads -- and the company whose motto is "do no evil". This way I can hammer on Google for two days running. No offense intended of course. Really.

Ever since Google released the Chrome browser it was remarked by many that despite coming with a large stable of add-ons (which have grown substantially in number since then), they did not provide the most common of add-ons favoured by those of us with Firefox: the ad blocker. To my knowledge, Google has maintained some laudable neutrality on the topic despite having an understandable interest in the subject. They do after all get the bulk of their revenue from web advertising; this business strategy is not likely to change any time soon.

While Google did not publish their own ad blocker, neither did they discourage others either before or after the fact. There are ad blocking add-ons for Chrome and Google continues to do nothing. So far, so good. The thing is, does Google benefit from the goodwill engendered by this hands-off approach or should they be concerned that their business interests are potentially threatened?

It has been speculated by some that their neutral stance is driven by a realization that those who use ad blockers, on any platform, are those who are least likely to click on ads. The truth of this is unproven. There is also the fact that ad blockers still have only a moderately-low penetration among browsers, and this is despite the majority of people claiming to either hate or to mildly dislike web ads, and especially ads that are garishly visible or obnoxious (i.e. GIF and Flash).

Outside the web, people hate a couple of other types of advertising even more: unsolicited commercial email (spam) and telemarketers. It's the rare internet user who does not use a spam filter (or rely on one provided by their ISP), or telephone users who will view with suspicion any Caller Id that is unfamiliar or missing entirely, or has not registered their numbers on a do-not-call list. Yet like web ads, spam and telemarketing continue apace.

The reason for the continuance of these practices -- irrespective of almost everyone claiming to hate them and not responding favourably when they are confronted by these types of ads -- is that they work. By "work" I mean that the revenue they garner is greater than the cost expended to flood us with all this unwanted communications. Indeed, the same profitability motive applies to postal advertising and even the mass of flyers that get dumped into my home mailbox every week.

I suspect Google knows all this and will therefore maintain their silence and tight little smiles when the subject is raised. As the LA Times article linked to above notes, people will often disable ad blockers when they're shopping online because they want the ads and will click on them. I have myself done this very thing.

Google is neither evil nor stupid. Ad blockers are fine and so are web ads. People will shop and they will click, and Google will continue to earn a living. The noisy debate may continue as well, but it will remain irrelevant.