Oh, the irony. https://i.imgur.com/uplpnxv.png
Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures
31–40 of 377 posts
Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
> “oh, how can we change our ads so people will accept them?” If a single website -- say, your local or regional news site -- overhauled its ad experience to become more user-friendly, how would you even notice, if their ad server was added to your ad blocker's blacklist?
Host ads as first-party content?
This is obviously the right solution. It's what print newspapers and magazines do. Why isn't there a quality first-party ad platform? Is there a business opportunity here?
Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures
#33I wish I could view a version of Hacker News in which ALL links to articles that are behind a paywall are just hidden from me. I would just rather not see them at all.
Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures
#34Oh, the irony. https://i.imgur.com/uplpnxv.png
Actually, I don't mind these. You can click them away if you want and it wont reappear (at least on TC, on spiegel.de the nagscreen reappears after 20s or so of reading time).
Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures
#35Disabling javascript is the best anti-anti-adblock solution. I wish chrome added an option for tampermonkey scripts to be run with disabled js, that would make this solution perfect.
Maybe you can test this extension [1] in Chrome? Works great in Firefox, where bookmarklets are tricky sometimes due to some CSP voodoo. [1] https://github.com/mems/bookmarklets-context-menu
Yup. It's a long-standing issue. Join in the fun: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=866522
Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures
#36If you're in a niche with decent prospects for contextual advertising, there's an easy way around most ad-blockers. Set up a small piece of editorial content and embed some affiliate links into it.
Even better - just have a text message "Sponsored by XYZ". This has worked for hundreds of years. I don't see why it can't work now.
Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures
#37In the beginning, I tried to avoid ad-blockers in the beginning out of consideration for the sustainability of the content providers.
It took one site for me to start using ad-blockers.
Facebook: they persistently were showing me ads for online MBA programs when I already had completed a better brick-and-mortar one.
I recall that I tried complaining and got no response. For some psychological reason, that did it. I installed an ad-blocker on my and my wife's laptops and never looked back.
If the big sites had been more conscientious about their ad strategy (and specifically allowing people more control over what shows up on their screens) we might not be in an escalating technological war over ads.
Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures
#38Interesting how the response of sites with terrible user experiences caused by ad tech is not to say “oh, how can we change our ads so people will accept them?” but rather to find ways to make their user experiences even more horrible, e.g. popping up new unwanted interruptions accusing you of having an ad-blocker. Hey big web sites, here is the solution, and I won’t even charge you for it: stop making terrible user…
Although I agree with your first point, I think this is a symptom of a much larger problem that we are ignoring:
We have a serious economic problem in which we can't fund things that we want and need. Instead of making advertising "less bad", we should be looking into alternative ways to fund sites and services. Advertising in it's current form simply needs to go.
Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures
#39Okay, here's a crazy idea for advertisers.
Tie the advertisement to the type of content that the user is already there to read about. Then you can serve ads from the content web server and make it indistinguishable from content, completely unobtrusive, completely noninvasive, and maybe even welcome.
Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures
#40And I will continue to deploy anti-anti-adblock measures.