I noticed today that about 50% of my friends are now using firefox with the adsense blocking plugin http://adblock.mozdev.org Lately this plugin has started to gain popularity... do you think this could be a bad sign for you?
Are your friends a representative cross-section of the general population? That's the real question. It's hard to generalize from a small sample of your own friends, especially if you're at all technically-inclined. Personally, I've only encountered a small number of people who are actively blocking Google text ads. They're usually considered inoffensive. I do sometimes wish that different URLs were used to serve up image ads vs. text ads so that ad blocking software could be more discriminate, but....
Well, they are a little smarter around a computer than your average person, and I doubt they would be the same people to ever click ads in the first place. However, the plugin is now the second most popular plugin for firefox...
But I don't know how popular Firefox plugins are in the general population. Again, us techie types use them (hello, AdSense Notifier!), but I think (with no statistics to prove it) that the general population is more likely to download things like Google's toolbar than random Firefox extensions. I may be wrong. Of course, if the advertising streams start to die down, you'll see more and more sites switching to subscription models. But I don't see that happening yet. I think most people understand how the advertising model works to some degree -- ads are the price of free content. Not that everyone agrees with that model.
Those who install the plugin do not mean to block adsense but all sorts of ads and popups. This will definitely hurt adsense if this grows. I know few friends that use the ad blocker but this is still not that significant
Not much to worry about I'm sure. Firefox users are around 20%, and that's probably a very generous percentage to state. Actual is probably lower. Plus, as Eric stated, of THOSE users, how many actually use the plugins? And of THOSE users, how many will block AdSense??? When it comes down to it, you'll probably find out that the people who have done all of the above are the same people that don't click on AdSense in the first place. Good question though...doubt it will become a slippery slope though. Do you think Google would allow that to happen...as closesly as Google and Firefox work together? -Brian Renner entrepreneur7
IMHO, it depends on your site too. If your site is for more technically-inclined audience, you may worry a bit. Some of your visitors may block the adsense, like what happen to some of my friends. However, in general, most webmasters should not worry at his stage unless firefox goes mainstream like IE and the plug-in is built-in automatically. I use firefox but did not use the plug-in. Why? Because I don't find adsense to be intrusive & most pop-ups are blocked anyway. In summary, I'm not worried.
At my place of employment, which is rather large. There are tons of computers that folks are on all day. I don't know what there running for security, but I noticed before that with Internet Explorer even, NO adsense ads show on any web sites. I was told its some type of firewall that prevents pop-up ads also....... So even there nobody can even view any adsense ads even when using Internet Explorer.
The majority of Joe Public that use firefox probably don't even know that such a thing as plugins even exist.
I blocked ads with plugins for a very long time before I started use adsense. In fact before I came here and started investigating adsense I didn't know what an adsense ad looked like, nor did I know so many sites have them. The reality is most people don't use those to block unobtrusive ads like adsense, they use them to block the more annoying ads out there. Adsense is just a victim. If a significant enough percentage of people block ads, then new methods will be developed to deliver advertising to visitors. Like I said, if all the ads were as passive and unobtrusive as most adsense implementations, most people would not care... But there is more to deal with than that.
Your friends are egotistical nerds, subigo. Some Google ads may just interest them, but it sure feels clever to block those ads anyway though, right? Bunch of tarts. Anyway, no.. there's nothing to worry about: h**p://www.thecounter.com/stats/2005/September/browser.php My best performing site has 8% using Firefox and I doubt none of them are blocking AdSense adverts, either. Pete ** Replace with tt
if you don't mind losing visitors, here is the tools for those who block adsense on your site http://wiadomosc.info/www/block_adsense_adblock.htm I haven't use it yet, but will consider to use it when the majority of my visitors using firefox. Right now, about 50% of them using it so I should be worry
74% of my last 100 visitors on my main site used IE. 21% used Firefox (which is a pity as the site actually looks good in firefox). My sense is that Google likes Firefox and Apple and will go out of its way to keep those users happy. Part of that might well be a flag on image ads. It would be a good thing though for the plug in maker to offer a no filter option for Adsense. What most saavy users want to block are the irritating pop-ups which, even in firefox, take over your screen and have red on red close buttons. The amazing thing is that MSM sites use the awful things.
Thsi may have been discussed on DP before but I can't find a thread... Has anyone started blocking visitors to their site who are blocking ads? I have a rather high CTR so my feeling is that most of my visitors are not blocking ads and have Javascript enabled. But if the trend continues (Firefox, Norton) I'm not at all shy about shutting out those visitors that are blocking ads.
I wouldn't be too worried. The percentage of people using that plugin is very low and it will probably stay low. Also the reason why people tend to use them is because they're tired of really obtrusive sites plastered with ads. I just think proliferation of really crappy adsense sites are the reason why people are driven to this. Either way it doesn't matter because I don't expect AdSense as we know it will exist ten years from now. I see way too many scraper, keyword, spammed target and link farm sites that leech off of advertisers money and they are losing faith in AdWords quickly.
Leech off advertisers money, please. You're talking bollocks. If someone's searching for Acne Cures and they click to a spam/keyword site on Acne which has AdSense, and one of those adverts takes their fancy.. where does your 'leeching' idea fit in to this equasion? The site delivered a targetted click for the advertiser. Conversions aren't as good on the content network overall..never have and never will be.. when will people stop blaming 'spam' or keyword targetted sites and begin to understand the nature of the content network? People are driven to blocking ads via plugins because they see the plugin in a long list of plugins they're browsing 'cos their bored and geeky and think it would be 'neat' to block AdSense adverts.. there's nothing more to it. It meks dem feel clevah, and clevah peepol nevah click adverts anyway cos dey noe der adverts and dey noe by clicking someone is maykin money and dey don't like dat cos it meks dem feel less clevah by clicking even if duh advert is useful to dem dey will probably still type in duh URL in deh address bar just to feel clevah. Pete
my friends (not a tech crowd) still don't even use firefox, most don't know/don't care what it is. if a user wants to block the ads from my site, THAT LEECH is un-wanted traffic to me. if they don't want to see the ads that make my site possible/profitable then i don't want to give him my bandwidth. not sure about putting a guard up yet alang. some don't realize that advertising isn't going away ... and when you push away the ads, they come back more intrusive then before. look at how the gaming sites push a full page ad in your face before allowing you to proceed, you can hit the skip button ... but before long you won't be able to skip. just like how a lot of flash/movies put a short commercial in front of the movie.
for me, people that blocking ads just do not understand how internet work. Without advertisement, most of the website will die