Christian Heilmann's blog provides insights into web development, JavaScript programming, and technology advocacy. Readers can find articles covering topics such as web standards, accessibility, and developer tools. Additionally, they can learn about JavaScript frameworks, front-end development techniques, and the future of web technologies.

Christian Heilmann

Ad blockers created a vicious cycle where blocking ads led to more aggressive advertising, making the web increasingly unusable. While privacy concerns are valid, dedicated ad blocking differs from tracking prevention and undermines content monetization. The web's fundamental mistake was treating it like traditional media with ads as the primary revenue model, without innovating payment distribution systems. As ad blocking grew, publishers compensated with more ads, search results became dominated by sponsored content, and the open web is now being replaced by closed AI-driven platforms. The lack of scalable micropayment solutions means subscriptions don't work for casual reading, leaving the web ecosystem broken.

Ad Blockers helped kill the open web

“I use an ad blocker as I don’t want to be tracked”

The web isn’t free – it is open, and there’s a difference

We created an open platform but failed to innovate monetisation

Showing ads was too easy and became predatory

The argument that the web became worse because of ad blockers is simply wrong.
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The rules of how money works strictly dictate that as much money as possible needs to exploited out of the people, that is how capitalism works. That is why everything enshittifies all the time. TV also had in the beginning less ads, prime video had no ads and so on, but these companies need to make more money than last year even if there is no new market to be had. Its like trying to get more ketchup out of an empty bottle.
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If all ad blockerd would be disallowed from today onwards, the ads would not get better i am 100% sure. There are not people behind the ad ridden websites, there are monetary interests.
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Ads came before the adblockers, not the other way around.
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I still agree we have a problem and the current situation is broken

I’m still baffled about the flame in the direction of cryptocurrency reward systems, where browsers specifically even implemented functionalities to block sites from mining a bit. I was always a proponent of that, as it is a simple drop-in replacement for advertisements, while traditional advertisements are actually very unbearable and mostly evil, as they use every psycho trick in the book to manipulate consumers into consuming something, they don’t need, to impress people, they don’t like.

The internet would be unusable without ad blockers. Youtube is a prime example. Youtube was once a fantastic platform for tutorials and product reviews, now it’s ads every 15 seconds. Completely unusable.

It is not lack if micropayment options, it is fundamental lack of users and readers understanding, that some kind of monetisation is sinply needed. Either ads, or sponsoring directly. But to expect everything is free (while someone else is paying for that) is simply not the right way. Same with open source, providing tools that others are monetising upon … Many webs are providing knowledge, information or, lets admit it, fun, for users to consume, but there are always, i mean ALWAYS, some costs associated with it. To block ads and at the same time consume the content is simply stealing.

Strange article in that it touches on the reason I block ads… but as if it is a side effect. The entire reason I block ads is because the web is neigh unusable if I don’t, especially on mobile. Pages use up all available CPU and RAM on what should be a simple page because the ads are loading so much javascript as to make the page unusable.
I pay for youtube premium, I’m not averse to monitization, and back when I didn’t block ads, I was even willing to click on an ad if it was unobtrusive and led to something of interest to me, but the vast majority of ads these days are very obtrusive. They block parts of content, cause pages to jump around, auto-play noisy videos, use up all the CPU on something that should be unobtrusive. Worst is when ads prevent the content from being viewed until the timed ad is done.
That’s why I block ads, if ads were unobtrusive, I’d just allow them, but they get in the way and cause frustration, so they have got to go.