I block ads
You should, too. (but whitelist sites that respect you)
January 20, 2014I block ads because they abuse my trust and privacy and generally assault my senses. Hyperbolic? Not really.
If you can slot without offending visitors to your site, do it. Respect trust, respect privacy, and serve clean ads. Here's a few examples of how to do it right:
Sponsorship Forecast.io does it on a weekly basis. No pay-per-click or conversion to 'game' (read: cheat), just a single image and some text.
RSS Daring Fireball does the same thing, except with RSS feeds. These generally can't be targeted and are a good way to go site-specific.
Networks Gruber also uses the designer-centric The DECK to handle his (single) ad per page view. Networks specific to a field seem to do a better job here, but I'm not sure how they do for the average blog. (Whether blogs should have ads is up for debate)
Self-serve Reddit uses Adzerk to handle their sidebar ads. This allows them to have ads targeted and fulfilled directly, quickly, and specifically tailored to their site. Most Reddit ads are for subreddits, and they self-serve content for the top spot on every page.
Less ads Most of these sites have one ad per page view. This seems far more effective and easy to manage than impresion-centric clusters of ads. You don't need 5 poor ads on a page to make money; you need one or at most two excellent ones.
So if you're going to use ads for revenue do it right. Do it tastefully, inoffensively, and quickly.