If I buy an iPhone, does some fraction of the price contribute to Apple's ad budget? If so, where does that money end up? What would change if I did not block Apple ads?

It’s up to them how they spend their money, not you. You can complain if they somehow damaged your product, they got your money unfairly, or were somehow doing something bad with your data, but at some point it is their money to spend how they see fit. They earned it, and they might spend it on advertising.

If I buy stuff at a grocery store, I can’t get a random bagger fired just because I feel like it. At some point the transaction ends and they ultimately continue to operate with or without your input.

I am neither complaining nor trying them what to do with their money, that looks like a complete deflection to me.

If I am buying Apple products, am I contributing to their ad budget? If so, where does that money end up? Is it likely that some of it will end up as ad revenue on some website? What difference does it make whether or not I block ads? Or the other way around, if I am visiting websites and look at Apple ads but do not buy Apple products, am I contributing to the ad revenue of the websites?

Maybe in the cosmic sense you are, in that they have a giant pile of money, and you contributed a few pennies to it, but this is not how accounting works. Your transaction and their ad budget are separate things.

Also, advertising does other things than tell you to buy something, and it doesn’t always take the form of banner ads. Apple, for example, does a ton of brand awareness advertising. Affiliate marketing often targets direct transactions. Maybe your goal is to simply start a relationship that might someday lead to a really big purchase.

Often, in the era of SaaS, people advertise to existing customers. Apple does this—they have a TV service and a music service and a cloud service.

There are plenty of reasons for them to advertise after you bought the original product.

But your original point was that customers bought the ads. Maybe they didn’t! Maybe they were given funding by a VC firm and the company decided it wanted to build an audience. Maybe they want to advocate for a political issue.

I think the biggest problem with your argument is that it has tunnel vision and sees advertising as this one dimensional thing, when in reality it takes many forms. Plenty of those forms are bad, but it is not as simple as “I bought a product, now I never want to see an Apple ad ever again.” Many businesses (Amazon, eBay) make most of their money off of customers they’ve already advertised to that they advertise to again and again.

Well, I don't give a shit about the advertising goals of Apple or anyone else, that is why I block ads. And that is also completely irrelevant, the question was whether I am screwing over websites when I am using an ad blocker. I argue not, because as a consumer I still contribute to the ad budgets that become the ad revenue of the websites. What I am not doing when I block ads is influencing how the money gets distributed among all the websites, I can live with that. And if the money is not consumer money, so what? What do I have to do with companies distributing VC money among websites?

LOL, you don’t. You really don’t. As I told you like four hours ago, ads are impression-based. Just because you bought something that helped them buy an ad doesn’t mean you did shit for my website.

In fact, you did the opposite.

I know that ads are based on impressions as I told you before, but my money still has to end up somewhere even if I am using an ad blocker. So where does it end up if not as ad revenue on some websites? You must not confuse the people paying for the ads and in turn for the ad revenue of websites by buying stuff with the people deciding how that money gets distributed among all the websites by looking at ads.

We can even go one step further, if anyone is screwing over websites, then that is the ad industry by not paying for blocked ads. I buy an iPhone and Apple takes some additional money from me to spend on advertising. I did not ask for that but I am fine with it. Now I expect Apple to spend the money they took from me on ads in order to support websites. But if the guy that Apple wants to show the ad that I paid for does not want to see it and blocks it, then I want Apple to respect that and still pay the website. I know, not going to happen, but do not put the blame on people blocking ads.

You’re describing socialism (wealth redistribution to be exact). At this point, just make that money a tax and give it to the publishers directly. Cut out the middlemen.

Well, what is the difference, the ad budget fraction of the price is like a tax. I think given a choice most people would prefer to get their stuff a bit cheaper and not contribute to the ad budget. But we pay it and then the companies hand the money out to various parties to display ads creating the possibility of running a business on ad revenue. And in many cases I can ignore ads, I can not look at billboards, I can switch to a different channel during the commercial break, I can flip over the ad pages in newspapers and magazines but they still get paid. Only on the internet have we decided to only pay for ads when somebody actually looks at them. I just asked for the same thing on the internet, pay for the inclusion on the website, whether someone actually sees it or not. Not sure how that is socialism and wealth redistribute.