How We Detect Adblock • Hacker News Board

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#41

Post by Killswitch » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 5:44 PM UTC

wingspan wrote: post #21

ToastyMallows wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Webdevs reading this: it does work. I whitelist all sites that have responsible ads on their pages, reddit being a prime example. They have ads in a couple predetermined spots on their pages, and they're never intrusive. I've actually clicked on a couple (something I never do). Be responsible and open about your ad policy and I'll listen.

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 that soon content online is gonna be behind a paywall and you're gonna end up having to pay $5/mo for every site you want to view.

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#42

Post by eli » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 5:45 PM UTC

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…

Sites don't run crappy ads because they hate you. Those bottom-of-the-barrel network ads don't even pay well.

They run those ads because they can't figure out how to more effectively monetize their traffic.

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#43

Post by DanBC » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 5:46 PM UTC

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…

Suicidegirls (nsfw) (this is 2004) had subscribers, and they could turn on ads if they wanted to. The ads were carefully selected, and had rules about not flashing or having noises. The ads appeared on on place on the page and were a fixed size.

This was great for everyone. People who hate ads turned them off. People who don't care left them on, and they were unobtrusive. Some people liked the ads. (Yes, they clicked relevant ads, and bought stuff from the vendors.)

I have no idea how that can be expanded.

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#44

Post by jccalhoun » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 5:48 PM UTC

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…

The problem is that just because a site uses non-annoying ads today doesn't mean it will not use annoying ads tomorrow.

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#45

Post by viraptor » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 5:49 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #23

kamjam wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We won’t bore you with complaints here though; hopefully you’ve now got enough information to understand what’s going on in the background when you sign up to use our free adblock measurement service. From the homepage: Measure: How many of your visitors are blocking ads and how much does it cost you in advertising revenue? etc etc. They are selling a service.

While I get the point, you can't claim revenues you never received are a "cost."

It does cost you if the ad revenue is supposed to cover your bandwidth costs. If you're hosting something heavy and users don't offset it by clicking the ads every once in a while, it's a problem. Also there are plugins out there which will load the ad content, but never display it - that means if you pay to advertise somewhere, you just paid for nothing (service was provided, but noone saw the ad).

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#46

Post by eli » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 5:50 PM UTC

donohoe wrote: post #16

Destructoid reported an ad-block rate of 30-45%. In general the wider estimate is 30% of ALL ads across the web are getting blocked. http://www.destructoid.com/half-of-destructoid-s-readers-blo... At Quartz we're lucky - it appears to be 13%. I've used Ad-Blocker for years in the past. Not sure why I stopped (new computer, never installed?) but its been a few years at least. However now that I work more on the ad sid…

I don't have much data yet, but on our B2B news sites it appears to be in the 4% to 9% range depending on the industry.

I don't think ad blocking specifically is behind the trend away from leaderboards and towards "native content" advertising, but it's only going to accelerate it.

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#47

Post by alayne » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 5:51 PM UTC

r00fus wrote: post #40

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…

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.

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#48

Post by ktsmith » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 5:51 PM UTC

r00fus wrote: post #40

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…

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...

Blame the websites for that, when you create an ad unit you have the option of selecting text only or text and image ad units.

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#49

Post by rschmitty » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 5:51 PM UTC

wingspan wrote: post #10

anon1385 wrote: post #6

>We then carefully observe what happens when a page loads. onLoad and onError events tell us if they’re successfully retrieved or if requests have been blocked Unfortunately for them many Adblock users also use Noscript or Javascript Blocker. Circumventing Adblock this way will just drive more people to prevent untrusted websites running code on their machines. A net win for web security but probably not the intended…

Can anyone else confirm this? Personally, I've always used AdBlock, but never used a Javascript blocker because it is substantially more effort and I am lazy. I do use Disconnect, though, to block that certain flavor of JS.

You want to confirm other people disable javascript?

https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/noscript/

Re: How We Detect Adblock

#50

Post by icambron » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 5:52 PM UTC

fleitz wrote: post #12

toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

You guys should take a look at piracy and how well that worked out for content creators. They still get paid, but it'll always be whack-a-mole. I have a comfy six figure IT job, and I'd still spend a few hours for fun just to figure out how to work around your javascript. Now think about how much time someone determined will spend on it. Pivot and go do something with a higher possible success rate.

The question is not whether this will be 100% effective, the question is whether people will pay for it. I'm not arguing that content distributors are killing their own biz with these techniques, however, the companies selling the tech are doing quite fine. The more people hacking their products the better, if they have a client and the ad rate goes down, who do you think the client is going to call? And of course th…

I'm not so sure. There are only a handful of popular ad-blockers, and on most people's browsers, they update automatically. If PageFair's techniques can be defeated, they'll be defeated systematically and simultaneously for every ad-blocking user as soon as the workaround is implemented. So it's basically binary. If PageFair just doesn't work at all (or can't be expected to for a meaningful amount of time), then it's not going to sell well.

Contrast that to McAfee. They're fighting a long, generally losing arms race with virus writers, but note that in practice they still protect your computer from a lot of viruses. So users need them. If all the viruses in the wild could all be simultaneously upgraded to circumvent the scanner, it would be a different story and everyone would just think of virus scanners as a thing that doesn't work.