I won't keep you in suspense if you bothered to click: it's AdBlock for Safari. It's right alongside Click to Flash, for my money. And the Extensions Gallery just launched with Safari 5 made it so much easier to obtain and install. Given that I'm a big proponent of the web, why?
I only have a few moments so I'll state it clearly and concisely: from my perspective the web is rapidly turning into a cesspool of banner, poster, inlay, popover, popunder, moving, talking, and interstitial advertising. I don't even care if the product might be slightly relevant at this point. This interruptive experience is the stuff that sent AltaVista and others down the tubes and opened the door for Google, who are still highly sensitive to how they display adverts today. And well they should be; the 2010 web experience is as glaring and jarring as a drug-fueled Vegas nightmare. To concentrate an example (and in fact, pick on Google where they do not yet have a revenue engine at all like search), just look at the experience of YouTube videos on Boxee. By and large, an overlay advert appears when you're watching a video, most videos it seems, and it CANNOT be removed. That does not encourage my 'leanback' experience in the slightest, and I've found myself seeking out documentaries from places like VBS.tv instead. Interstitials or 'welcome screens' are no better, as evidenced by a plethora of "old media" (this is not my term) sites struggling with monetizing content during the transition from print to web.
Let me be clear. I have no beef with producers being paid for their content. Nor providers being paid for their service, especially if it's good. Nor with good products costing an appropriate amount of money. But if you place my screen in a setting that looks as attractive as a NASCAR, I'm not going to like it and I'm going to do away with it. Either I'll just stop using your site or I'll figure out how to elide the ugly distracting interruptive stuff.
Learn how to build great, attractive products that people will pay for, or find other models to monetize beyond selling a million pixels to brand names. In many other countries branding works without my eyeballs being assaulted every 3 minutes, so we can do it too. And then, I believe you'll go a long way.
