The Adsense Dilemma

Studying the stats for this blog lately, I have noticed a very interesting statistic.

97% of my readers use Firefox.

Now, to me, that makes perfect sense. I’m a die-hard Firefox fan. I fell in love with it the first time I discovered add-ons for it. The add-ons turn Firefox from a rather slow, memory hogging browser (yes, I’m aware of it’s drawbacks) into a system that can do everything I could want and then some. Plus, I first found StumbleUpon while looking through the Firefox add-ons.

One of my very favorite add-ons (and I’m sure it’s a favorite of many of you) is Adblock Plus. What it does is block all the ads that drive you crazy when you’re web surfing.

I’ve been using Adblock for so long that I don’t even think about it anymore. In fact, the only reason I’m talking about it now is that I’ve been studying the various types of web ads for a project I’m working on. So, I started talking to some friends who use Adsense and various other types of insta-ads on their sites.

While I was talking to them, I discovered something. Several were getting StumbleUpon traffic, but very little of the traffic was turning into sales. It wasn’t until one friend asked me to look at his site and tell me what I thought, that I started to realize what the problem was. I couldn’t see an ad on the whole site. Not one. Checking back over the other sites, I noticed the same “problem.” No ads.

Now, I don’t know if you’re like me. I can’t stand insta-ads. I love having the ability not to see them. On the other hand, I understand that there are people out there who work as hard at blogging or harder at blogging as many of us do at other jobs. They try to give their readers interesting and informative content, and hope that some enjoy their blog enough to click on an ad or perhaps buy a product. Understand, I’m not talking about spam blogs, I’m talking about many of the blogs we love, such as Coffee with Allan Cockerill or Ooh! Shiny!

I know my own opinion is that I will read a hand-written ad. I don’t even mind the sponsor ads in their little square boxes. And an interesting banner ad has the possibility of grabbing my attention, as long as it doesn’t use flash, since it’s unlikely I’ll turn flash on to view it. I just can’t stand pop-ups or insta-ads. But that’s just me, and after studying this some, I’m really curious. What do you think? Do you use Adblock or a similiar program? Do you mind the insta-ads? What ads are your particular pet peeves? What ads will you actually pay attention to? And why do people use space for insta-ads if so many people hate them?