Tuesday, November 13, 2012

How Much Would You Pay to Never See an Online Ad Again?

Source: http://mashable.com/2012/11/10/online-ad-blocker/

A company that is looking for funding on Kickstarter has designed a device that would block all internet ads.  The device is called "AdTrap" and would sell for $120.  The way it works is you would put it between your cable and modem and your wireless router, and it would block all ads on any internet enabled device you use.  If you wanted to allow ads on certain sites, you can ad the site to a list so that the ads are not blocked on your computer.

Needless to say, if a device like this were widely adopted it would disrupt the way the internet works today.  Many sites provide free content and make revenue off of their ads, so if this device were to take off these companies would suffer immensely.  I'd imagine we would see widespread charging for online content (i.e. paywalls) or see content providers only deliver content to computers that are not blocking their ads.

It will be interesting to see if this device ever takes off.  $120 is a decent amount of money, but it is also only a one-time fee, and in the grand scheme of things it's not much when your figure the device would last many years.  However, if it forces sites to start charging for their content, it will end up being a much larger total expense to consumers.  

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