The Ethics Of Ad Blocking

It’s fair to say that we’re living in the era of the ad blocker.
With more and more of our eyeballs fixated on internet pages, there are increasing numbers of people who only want to see the content they actively seek out, not whatever an advertiser is selling them. Enter the ad blocker. Usually in the form of a  browser extension—the most popular being Adblock Plus—ad blockers prevent an internet user from seeing banner ads, pop-ups, videos and any other paid content that they’d rather not see. The result is a reading and viewing experience that is far more seamless and pleasing to the eye.
Currently, according to a report from Adobe and PageFair, there are nearly 200 million active users of ad blockers worldwide. This represents a 40% increase over the year before. That number is constantly on the rise, especially with prominent internet activists like NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden urging people to install ad blockers as both a moral and practical imperative. In addition to not having to see annoying ads, ad-blocking also has the added benefit of protecting users for harmful malware that is sometimes used to infect ad networks. A prominent case of this happened in August of this year at Yahoo, where hackers hit the prominent website with a huge malware campaign that lasted the course of a week. Yahoo managed to shut it down, but not without some major embarrassment first.  
So, what’s the problem with ad blockers? If the internet user is happy and they make browsing websites safer, isn’t that a win all around? No. While it may be a win for internet users, it has the opposite effect on publishers.  
Publishers rely on advertisers for revenue in order to run their sites, and to create and publish new and innovative content. But in order for publishers of websites to entice advertisers, they have to promise impressions or views of online ads. If half a website’s users are installing ad blockers, then that’s a huge dip in the number of views and impressions a website can use to court advertisers. In an era where ad revenue has already declined dramatically with the slow death of the print era—advertisers won’t pay as much for web advertising as they will for print advertising—many publishers say that ad blockers are making it considerably more difficult for them to deliver the content that readers and users want while still being able to cover their costs.
Beyond the financial difficulties this creates for publishers, there are also those who say it is unethical for internet users to set up ad blockers. This is due to the so-called “implied contract” that a publisher makes with their users: we give you contact, you give us your ad impressions. Though no one signs a piece of paper stating it, it’s seen in many circles as the cost of doing business and the expectations on both. Publishers seem to be saying that users can’t want quality content at no cost, and viewing ads is the cost.
So what’s a publisher to do? There are various way to get around the lost revenue from ad blocking. Sponsored content is a big one, in which advertisers pay publications to publish high quality articles that are not-quite-ads but not-quite-editorial and are not blocked by ad blockers. In addition, more and more publications are turning to subscription models to offset revenue loss, wherein free content is limited and viewers have to pay extra to see premium content. Lastly, and possibly more simplistically, publishers are simply asking their viewers: please disable your ad blocker, because it hurts how we do business.
The future is unknown for now, but it looks like ad blockers, in some form, are likely to be here to stay.