## Online Ads & Blockers
### November 15th

Online advertising is becoming increasingly pertinent in our lives. Nearly every time I watch a youtube video I have to skip through multiple ads before the video starts and throughout the video, ads often interrupt the flow of it. Advertisements are not solely on youtube videos, they block the content that I am trying to view, frequently when I use the internet. The amount of advertisements online seem to be rising. With the rise of online ads comes the rise of targeted ads. These advertisements are personalized as a result of the web page collecting data of an individual's interests. For example, I have played soccer my whole life and a lot of my google searches relate to soccer, so my targeted ads are for adidas cleats. According to *Targeted Advertising Considered Harmful*: more and more users are choosing ad blockers and tracking protection tools. A survey concluded that most United States users are not ok with targeted advertising. One way to combat targeted advertising is by ad blocking. It is scary to know that I am being tracked and every site that I visit is being recorded and used somewhere. Additionally, some ads are scams such as GIMP, which led users to a seperate, fake website according to an article written by author AX Sharma. With targeting being dangerous and some ads being fake scams, users have every right to block ads. There are multiple easy-to-use ad blocking methods that prevent uncomfortable targeted ads. Ad blocking makes it harder to track people and also blocks annoying, repetitive ads. This is a positive for information safety for individuals since there activity on the web is slightly more difficult to monitor. It is up to the user for there choices around taking in content and they should be free to block ads that they want to block.

There is a correlation between understanding targeting and increased ad blocking in society. Ad blocking tools block targeted ads making them less accurate but they do not eliminate all advertisements. Companies have been paying blockers to show acceptable ads which has created confusion since users have the pretense that ad blockers will block all ads, which is not the case. "Based on recent estimates, ads from a select group of advertisers are appearing on the screens of up to 200 million ad block users worldwide" (Advertisers Are Paying Off Ad Blockers to Show 200 Million Users "Acceptable Ads"). This is due to companies such as Acceptable Ads who have incentive to gain money from the ads. These types of companies help pay for the internet, along with ISPs (Internet Service Providers). These companies make money by creating and selling advertisements. If users can block ads, the question remains is it fair for users to pay for the content and services they consume? It is fair that they contribute since it is ideal to pay for the internet to gain its many different services. However, these ad companies should be paying the bulk of it in exchange for them to be able to block ads that are tracking users while also running ads that are acceptable for the general public.