There are a great many number of websites which offer us free services to us like YouTube, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Facebook and many more. The operational cost of these websites is provided by the advertisements which are displayed on these websites. Whenever you visit such a website, these ads just pop up and sometimes these are inevitable. Viewing these ads for 20 to 30 seconds can be very frustrating especially if you are searching something on a particular website. This also causes waste of your time. Take YouTube as an example, everyone likes it and uses it as a part of daily routine in life, it provides free services for a great many people but a lot of time is wasted when advertisements start to play before videos. To save time, these advertisements should be skipped.
Types of Advertisements on YouTube:
· There are many different types of advertisements which play on the websites when you visit them. These advertisements can be “Wait for 20 (or 30) seconds” or advertisements played by sponsors of the websites.
· If you have to play a video on a website (say YouTube), there can be “click here” highlighted words embedded in it.
· There can be some banner ads or contextual advertisements (on right hand side of the webpage- as in Facebook, YouTube etc.)
· There can be videos of other websites which provide online TV channels and news. For example, in US, such service is provided by sky contact such advertisement and webpage will open.
Skipping Advertisement:
As these great number of advertisements popping up on webpages are quite frustrating, in 2010, some websites published ways of skipping these awful advertisements. Some of these are:
· To skip bump style advertisements, you would have to wait for three seconds in the bump and then press F5 key. This would shortcut that particular advertisement and would take you to the content you want.
· Some websites also suggested that refreshing webpage also skipped the ad, but that did not work. When using YouTube, one method is to play the video, when it starts playing, right click and select “Copy video URL at its current time”, so far that URL will be used, and advertisements will not be displayed.
· Several software were also launched which blocked the advertisements. “Ad Muncher” and “Ad Block” are the software which is used for the purpose. Antivirus software like “Avast” also has Advertisement blocking services. This software scans the URL, and block unwanted material from the website.
· Also, Google Chrome has launched the extension which blocks the advertisements on the webpage. “Screw Ads” and “Skip Ads on YouTube-No Illegal Block” are the extensions available in chrome store for the purpose. All one has to do is to install these extensions and get rid of the advertisements.
Skipping Ads: Cost-Benefit Analysis:
Although blocking unwanted advertisements seems good and saves time, but it also has some disadvantages. The content which is available to us freely on these all websites, from which we get benefitted, is funded by these advertisements. The companies which put the Ads on the websites pay them to do so in hope that people will see the Ads and contact them when required. Thanks to these companies, we do not have to pay for the content on these websites.