Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How We Detect Adblock

blog.pagefair.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 81 posts

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#61

Post by tomjen3 »

Killswitch wrote: post #41
wingspan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This brings up another case for detecting AdBlock: if you think your users are receptive to whitelisting non-annoying ads, you could detect the plugin and let them know that you strive to incorporate ads in a non-intrusive way and kindly ask them to disable AdBlock. Edit: sounds like this is what reddit does. Props to them!

Many sites do this, but the problem with Adblock that most people are not happy about is that it AUTOMATICALLY blocks everything. You have to whitelist, and most people just turn adblock on and leave it be... If it was required to blacklist instead of whitelist it'd be better. Many sites with non-intrusive ads are being blocked because of this and that's detrimental. It's already hurting many businesses to the point…

There are two problems with your claims:

I, as a user, wouldn't be happy having to blacklist all sites.

I won't pay a monthly fee for most sites, because I read a little on a lot of sites - I don't mind paying a 1 penny per article fee if it is convinient.

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#62

Post by tomjen3 »

alayne wrote: post #47
r00fus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't that Google's big schtick 8 years ago? That their text ads were as effective but not annoying as hell? Then they bought doubleclick and the animated display ads came right back...

And now Google has released a new IDE for making annoying animated ads.

What have I missed? Do you have a link?

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#63

Post by eli »

kamjam wrote: post #58
blumkvist wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can pay ABP and have all my ads whitelisted. It's funny to me that so much people are on their nuts, when they just make money like everyone else.

Please note that AdBlock is different to AdBlock Plus, despite the almost same names (I assume this was on purpose) https://getadblock.com/ But yes, agree with your point if you are a ABP user.

Actually AdBlock Plus had the name first!

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#64

Post by JacobJans »

nfoz wrote: post #51
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #14

So has anybody ever tried to address the root cause of adblocker use, i.e. ads are really fucking annoying? I don't like ads in general, nobody does, but that alone wouldn't be enough to make me bother to install and maintain AdBlock. What does it is strobing "YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY WON" and animated "one weird trick" scams and softcore porn. This shit is everywhere , even on allegedly respectable news sites. If you wa…

I'll continue to ad-block even if ads are non-intrusive or annoying. I prefer no ads to any ads. If your website requires a monetization scheme to exist, and you can't find a monetization scheme that doesn't pollute your product with (even nice simple) ads, that's not really my problem. I didn't force you to publish. If I want your content, then I'd be happy to help pay for its generation. If it satisfies my terms, o…

I'm curious. What websites do you currently pay for access to? Any?

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#65

Post by tomjen3 »

pagefair wrote: post #20
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #8

What does PageFair do, exactly? I mean, they're very proud of themselves for detecting Adblock, but it's not clear what they do with that information.

PageFair lets publishers reach out to adblock users: to explain why ad revenue is necessary to keep the site running, and ask them to support the site by whitelisting it so ads appear or by making a donation towards the running costs.

Do they think we are stupid? I mean I know it costs them money, I just don't give a shit.

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#66

Post by generj »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #31
wingspan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This brings up another case for detecting AdBlock: if you think your users are receptive to whitelisting non-annoying ads, you could detect the plugin and let them know that you strive to incorporate ads in a non-intrusive way and kindly ask them to disable AdBlock. Edit: sounds like this is what reddit does. Props to them!

Agreed. I was the original complainer in this thread, and I've whitelisted several sites that asked nicely and promised non-intrusive ads. I believe they all used https://www.projectwonderful.com/ as their ad provider, by the way. I haven't really inspected them, but if you want inoffensive ads on your page, that might be a good place to start looking.

I quite like the idea of projectwonderful.

It seems to be very heavily used on webcomic sites I frequent, and I haven't seen a bad ad yet.

I also like the idea of purchasing time on a site, rather than using targeted ads. Meanwhile, the hosting site can discontinue the ad if they feel it doesn't match their culture.

It's more analogous to renting a billboard from a friendly business you like, rather than hiring a bunch of people to follow your customers around with posters.

It just seems like a stand-up way to do ads.

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#68

Post by generj »

kamjam wrote: post #56
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I was the original complainer in this thread, and I've whitelisted several sites that asked nicely and promised non-intrusive ads. I believe they all used https://www.projectwonderful.com/ as their ad provider, by the way. I haven't really inspected them, but if you want inoffensive ads on your page, that might be a good place to start looking.

Sometimes it is not the positioning or the non-intrusiveness which bothers me, it's the following me around and tracking. I find it a little creepy.

As do a lot of other people.

The HTTP DNT process at the W3C was supposed to fix this, but it got derailed by the DAA (the Digital Advertising Alliance).

You can manually stop this tracking with AdChoices. Click on that weird little blue icon that's in most ads, and you'll be able to disable tracking by DAA members.

Notably, AdChoices doesn't entirely prohibit tracking - I think you just need to be "minimized" to a certain extent. AdChoices is stupid, but it looks like we won't get a real solution in DNT unless something changes within the next month or so.

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#70

Post by PhasmaFelis »

nfoz wrote: post #51
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #14

So has anybody ever tried to address the root cause of adblocker use, i.e. ads are really fucking annoying? I don't like ads in general, nobody does, but that alone wouldn't be enough to make me bother to install and maintain AdBlock. What does it is strobing "YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY WON" and animated "one weird trick" scams and softcore porn. This shit is everywhere , even on allegedly respectable news sites. If you wa…

I'll continue to ad-block even if ads are non-intrusive or annoying. I prefer no ads to any ads. If your website requires a monetization scheme to exist, and you can't find a monetization scheme that doesn't pollute your product with (even nice simple) ads, that's not really my problem. I didn't force you to publish. If I want your content, then I'd be happy to help pay for its generation. If it satisfies my terms, o…

You are, fortunately for the rest of us, not a representative sample. If nothing else, most people prefer to take the path of least resistance, and won't bother learning about, installing, and maintaining an ad blocker until they get really irritated; and even then, as I said, many will happily whitelist sites that reach out to AdBlock users and say "We promise our ads aren't annoying, please help us out!"

(This does not require PageFair's services, BTW. Every site I've seen that does it has a text message under their ad panel, so if the ad doesn't load you see the message. Simple.)

The problem now is that advertisers have poisoned the well. It's hard to get people to change--that means it's hard to get them to install AdBlock in the first place, but it's also hard to get them to use their whitelist after installing it. Inoffensive ad vendors and users have an uphill battle to regain the trust of their users.

Post reply on HN