Shape of things to come ...

[TheOstrich]

We notice you've got an ad-blocker switched on. Perhaps you'd like to support the Guardian another way? Become a supporter today .....

No thanks. How long before I'm blocked from the site, do you think?

[victor]

we sometimes get this popping up on ITV i-player -no idea why

[Kaz]

Grrr!!

[Workingman]

Ossie, it is a bit of a tricky one for websites.

Many of them offer their information free of charge.

Take newspapers. A lot of their websites offer abridged versions from a selection of articles as a loss leader - they do not offer the whole newspaper. The two main ways of doing this are: Subscription (The FT); or ad-supported (Guardian); the choice is theirs. Our choice is to pay up, accept the ads or block them. I do not see the ads as much of a problem because even if I buy the hard-copy it has ads inside - loads of them.

However, to answer your question, I thnk the answer is "Yes" there will come a time when not accepting ads gets you blocked. This, I believe, will be as a result of potential loss of revenue and also the activities of AdBlock.org, which has been the subject of court cases.