The venue for probably the best and most mindfully-written article about online ads and AdBlock (Slate.com, an online magazine) has, after all, driven me to switch to Firefox.
No-one and nothing for close to... six years? could make me turn away from IE. There were taunts, ingenious attempts at persuasion, eight point plans - all sorts of crap.
All it took was a Chevron (Texaco? or Mobil? I don't know) ad that kept rolling back out as soon as you pressed "close X".
I think it was imploring me to "look for a gas station near you". What the hell for? I don't drive, nor do I ever plan to (traffic and parking situation are the only drawbacks to living where I live - I have no plans for introducing more stress into my life).
But there it was - unflinching index finger of a fool, as my Father would say.

Firefox is slow. It's just as bloated as the next guy, the Java apps screw up ceaselessly, but there are no ads!
There's a big fat banner just overhead, it wants to buy a finance company, sell a laptop and make me lose weight.
As soon as I'm done typing this, I will AdBlock it, and that will be nice.