Why I don't adblock (but reserve the right to get pissed about ads)

The advertisement model for monetising websites is age-old. Since people started looking at websites, they have been looking at ads. Google ads, Myspace ads, then later, the little squishy spider ad where you could win an XBOX (you never won an XBOX). It's an easy way to make money from your site without having to develop a business model. Hell, sometimes your content isn't able to earn its keep and ads or subscriptions are really the only way to make a bit of cash. All fine.

I don't use ad-blocking software on my web browsers for a few reasons:

• They can be greedy and block things that I actually might want to see
• When developing websites which might have ads on, I always forget to disable them and spend an hour trying to figure out why ads are invisible
• I care that companies rely on ad income to perpetuate their content (on sites I regularly visit)

The first two reasons aside, I want to focus on the abuse of my care of a company's income. Considering how easy it would be for me to just install some ad-blocking software in my browser, I don't understand why companies insist on making me mad at their adverts. Take this, for example.

This is an ad in my face - it opened when the page loaded. I don't block ads and I do actively click on things I might find interesting so that content creators get paid and keep on creating that content, so I'm insulted when these ads are thrust in my face. What's more, I clicked the close link and the ad opened anyway. That is just shitty advertising.

So please, cool website owners (I'm looking at you, Kotaku), stop putting these horrible ads on your site. It cheapens your product and insults your users and I don't want to have to stop reading your site like I did with Wired (in my defense, Wired is pretty terrible anyway).