I don't see adblocks at being the problem; adblock is /mandatory/ these days on the web; for the 0.01% website that deserve the revenue, the rest is there to abuse it, put autoplay flash, full screen popups, tracking cookies and all they can possibly /can/ on you.
The other problem is the 'monetisation'; it seems everyone around wants £10 a month. Sorry, I might pay £10/m for netflix that I use often, but do I want to pay that to everyone that I use twice a month, or even sometime a lot less? Well, nope.
Not only that, but registering and paying makes you even more marketable, where your viewing habits and so on can get sold on to 'partners'.
I don't /mind/ paying for content, and I don't /mind/ ads, it's just the abusive nature of how it's done these days that I mind.
No, it really is not. Ad-blockers are run by a minority of users, and the vast majority simply use whatever browser camne with their PC, or maybe download Chrome. But installing ad-blockers, GreaseMonkey scripts, Firefox extensions and the like basically never crosses the mind of your average web content viewing public. [1]
I'm not sure I'd count the adverts I see as 'abusive' either. Many times I have found ads useful, interesting, curious or (on YouTube videos) worth watching without skipping. Just as with TV and newspapers, yes, there is much crass, unsubtle, and badly created advertising. However, it's all ignorable, and even if a site pops up an inter-stitial advert, I've yet to come across one that I cannot close and move on to the content. Of course, pop-ups that tell me I have read all the free content I am allowed are different, and in those cases I make a choice - do I want to read the article enough to pay for it?
As for wanting GBP 10 per month, I would spend much more than that on physical newspapers (at 50p per issue, the 'i' is one of the cheapest, so that's about GBP 15 per month) so it seems pretty reasonable. And I don't expect my copy of the Guardian to have no adverts because I paid for it, as opposed to reading it in the library. In fact, again, I find the adverts can often be useful and informative, even in such a widely targeted medium as a single newspaper.
[1] full disclosure - I have never used or installed an ad-blocker, nor wanted to in my 20+ years of web usage
How do you know that it's only a minority of users that are deploying some way of blocking advertisement in their browsers?
I'm genuinely interested and I'm raising the question as you stated it as a matter of fact.
Even if you never installed an adblocker, "Adblock Plus" has been downloaded over 19.5 million times for Firefox, "NoScript" has been downloaded over 2 million times for Firefox.
Sufficient to say, there's an increasing amount of web sites and newspapers that have "adblocking detection" and suggest/beg that you disable it these days.
[1] Full disclosure, I block ads because a lot of site owners go too far. I have no hard feelings about it. Sucks to be them, but what can I do. I whitelist sites that behave and have decent/good content.
I mostly wanted to indicate that it's a bit unreasonable to assume that because one person (grkvlt) does not install an adblocker - it's safe to assume almost no one does, as insinuated
grkvlt's comment (at least by how I interpreted it).
That said, of course the usage numbers I quickly retrieved from Mozillas Add-ons for Firefox page - are not conclusive of total adblocker installment. I took two sample add-ons. There are at least a dozen add-ons just for Firefox. Even Firefox itself has adblocking capabilities by the way.
The other problem is the 'monetisation'; it seems everyone around wants £10 a month. Sorry, I might pay £10/m for netflix that I use often, but do I want to pay that to everyone that I use twice a month, or even sometime a lot less? Well, nope. Not only that, but registering and paying makes you even more marketable, where your viewing habits and so on can get sold on to 'partners'.
I don't /mind/ paying for content, and I don't /mind/ ads, it's just the abusive nature of how it's done these days that I mind.