Malware in Advertising: Why Ad blockers are necessary

"No wonder they don't understand out consumer culture. They've developed an effective ad blocker."

It is increasingly common for malware to infect Advertising. Ad blockers are now a necessity for security.

A few weeks ago Spotify had bad advertising that infected their users with malware. So now running advertising is a risk to a business. How sad. This is a bad sign for ad-supported software and erodes the trust in advertising further.

"No wonder they don't understand out consumer culture. They've developed an effective ad blocker."
“No wonder they don’t understand out consumer culture. They’ve developed an effective ad blocker.”

If you are a typical US citizen you have been marketed hundreds of thousands of times in your life. So the chance to be marketed further is not only not appealing, it is actively fought against. Companies believe that people have an unlimited desire to be marked, but this is not the case. In the past this was unavoidable, but now people have options and they use those options. I for one have no marketing on this website, and it is because there is no need to market to people. People will find the best products eventually through word of mouth.

The problem of course is that word of mouth takes time. However, the “popular wisdom” of people is not what I am talking about. For example, popular wisdom says that certain cars are desirable: Toyota, Ford, and Honda. The facts show that these cars have tons of reliability and safety issues and are clearly not the best choices for people.

The word of mouth I am talking about is that there are a few highly educated consumers who have experience with things and you can find them. If you go to web forums, read blogs, and other web information you will find them. They don’t seek to make themselves known, but they quietly, humbly share their experiences. Yes, a few experiences don’t say a trend but when you have someone who is vocal about a problem, there usually is a big problem that caused it.

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So blocking ads is not just a time-saver in using the web, a safety precaution for malware, but also keeps you the most informed. Advertising is lies by omission. They always state what is great, and leave out the very important problems and details.

The only way people want to see ads is if they get paid to do so. Even then, the money isn’t going to be enough. We are burnt out on ads people.