Well I've spent a great amount of time in researching this, and mostly it's been quite difficult as the results I've got back were vague and many of the results are filled with adblocking tips -rather then preventing ad blocking. Basically I'd like to discuss some ways and tips on how we can all ensure our ads are being seen by users, and how we can prevent users from totally blocking our ads. There is no 100% way to stop the blocking of ads, but perhaps we can discuss some cross compatible ways to ensure that we have a fighting chance to display our ads. The only way I've seen possible is to create a javascript file that writes the ad code on to the page, and basically this will defeat many of the ad blockers (as they usually scan the html/php page for the ad code - but because the javascript runs client side, it is able to avoid this detection). example <script type="text/javascript"> document.write("<script type='http://www.googleadsenseorwhatever.com'></script>"); </script> Code (markup): This method will only work if the user has javascript enabled, but either way the ads still need users to have javascript enabled - so it should be a good way to make users view your ads. If anyone has any other solutions, please post them here. PLEASE remember this isn't meant to force users to do anything besides having the ads displayed on the page.
How about working the problem from a different angle. Work on a solution to block all content from users using ad blocking software. To the average geek user, ad blocking sounds like a right given to them by the Internet Gods. However when they are unable to enjoy free content because of their ad blocking rights and are forced to surf store fronts, special offer and pay sites, they may just change their tune.
too much easte of time to think about this, we should better focus on our website. If they are using ad blockers, probably they will never click on ads.
Do not forget that some ad blocking is also a security measure. There have been cases in the past where companies serving ads were also tring to install software on the users computer. Placing ads in javascript can be defeated by ad blockers which create local DNS entries to route the URLs of specified advertisers to 127.0.0.1 or a similar local machine IP address. You cannot detect that from your server and therefore you cannot defeat that.
What reason? Not wanting people to earn money for the work they did? Unethical is blocking ads, you can't skip commercials on tv, or when a movie starts at the movie theater. Why should you be able to ignore internet ads from people who do the same if not more work to earn their money. But anyway, its not that many people that use ad blocking software so not to worry for now.
I have to disagree with you on this one, Seiya. If someone chooses not to see ads, what right have we to force them to see them? People blocking ads are not preventing the advertizers from earning money from their work. They are just preventing them from earning money from THEM. Like you say, there are plenty of ppl not using ad blockers. Forcing someone to do something against their express wish is just counter productive. You can skip commercials on TV or at the cinema. You go make a cup of coffee, take a leak or channel hop.
. one can't skip commercial on TV but can on internet- Thats probably one of the advantages of the medium (user friendliness). I should remind you the basic principle of advertising i.e. Its about serving message to the relevant people in the most creative way. Its not about bombarding 'em with messages(it won't work). An ad is successful only if it works. What about innovating new ideas that would appeal more and ppl would love to see it. You can witness many such example on net
I disagree, they do it because its human nature to want everything for nothing. I don't blame the users for trying, but I do wish to make it trickier so only the tech savvy are able to block the ads (if a user really wants those ads gone, they'll find a way to block it somehow - but for the average user it's very easy to just set and forget ad blockers). You may think that these are people who won't click on the ads, but that's not true - there just people who are trying to stop ads entirely, so that they don't end up clicking on it. @Seiya do you have any stats for that? lol I mean I basically renamed by adscript file and I saw a dramatic increase in ad revenues, but then a few days later it dropped (I'm guesing users updated their ad blockers to stop the new renamed adscript). But still there's real potential - I've this two times and each time the ad revenues increase. @Nemesis I would agree on you with this if the users were paying for the service, then they would have 100% right to not have to view ads. But they're eating up our bandwidth (Not that I mind) and we're providing them with content that they enjoy - so it's only fair that they view our ads. We're not forcing them to click them, we're not forcing them to look at them - we just want those ads to be loaded so that they may glance at it. Same with TV, the ad still plays - it's a matter of whether the user looks directly and views it, or if they choose to ignore it or walk away (the ad still shows). @kay we're not in control unfortunately. I could think of a 100 ways to make ads more interesting and appealing but I'm not the advertiser so I won't be able to make those ideas come true. This thread became more of a moral debate, and I can understand why some have problems with this. But ultimately if the user is creative, they will find a way around whatever method we come up - and I don't mind that, so long as the rest are viewing the ads. Ad blockers are too easy to setup, and it's one of the reasons why the internet is become two tiered (free vs subscription)
Please take no offense on this, but I have one question...why do you want to waste your time on this unless you just want to prove it can be done? There are a couple hundred million users out there that are not savvy enough to turn off their Javascript and who are very easy to sell stuff to as long as you give them something relevent. The other side of the coin is...if you are trying to trick the savvy people don't bother, they won't click on your ads out of spite just to teach you a lesson that you shouldn't trick people into clicking on things they don't want to see in the first place. Do some links surrounded by compeling marketing copy and then send that traffic to landing pages with affiliate links. Cloak the link with dynamic server side code (ASP or PHP). That should work as long as you know what you are doing. As for the TV analogy... What about fast forward on Tivo - I don't watch TV ads anymore either. Just food for thought.
Increasingly, Adblockers are becoming available to less-savvy people. For instance, one was installed by default on Norton Internet Security, which a lot of people were getting installed as part of a package with their new computers. So although Adblocking is a minority thing at the moment, it may not stay that way. A lot of Adblocking is quite simple, and my approach to it is equally so. I just rename my image files so they sit in a folder that looks like it has ads in it. So a lot of people who block ads will also be blocking the other pictures.
As the online medium will grow old, it would gain an organised structure. The pop-ups and irrelevant methods would get replaced by a more relevant one. Few presently practiced examples of such method would be adwords, intellitext....... People (well equiped with adblockers) won't even be aware of that they were targeted by ads(People have problem with methods not with ads). This would organize the online economy. Its the method people are annoyed with not the ads. -- just thoughts.
Something I didn't see mentioned at all so far is this: <noscript>put your other ad here</noscript> Code (markup): I do this for my ads so search engines still see what ads I'm having displayed. Better caching, etc. Let me know how it works out for you.
I'm not talking about popups or anything like that, in my opinion those are unethical since they're heavily forced on the user. But I'm not trying to trick or stop tech savvy users, I'm just trying to make it more difficult to remove those ads. I don't care whether they click them or not, I'm more concerned with the ad appearing along with the content, as opposed to just the content. The fact that some programs come with ad blocking enabled means that some users don't get to see your ad even if they wanted to. Remember some people are not tech inclined and they have no idea how to disable these 'features'. So what I'm trying is to find ways to evade these programs (it won't be 100%, but at least that margin of users however small as it may be - will get to see the ads). If they want to block these ads, that's their choice - but they can't expect us not to evolve our methods of showing ads, in the same way that I wouldn't expect them to stop blocking our ads. "<noscript>ads</noscript>" That only works if you're running inhouse ads and if they are not javascript - which is both difficult and unreasonable for most. Most advertisers want to advertise with a reputable company like google rather then go on an individual site by site basis. The ads on my site are text based only, so no popups, no spyware, no adware, no image banners or flashing text - so I think its a small thing for the users to endure in exchange for the content that I'm giving them (which they clearly find useful). Most of us wouldn't grab something from a store and walk out without paying, so what makes it any more right for a visitor to take or use our content (and bandwidth) and walk out with so much as viewing an ad. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but personally I think we need some ad revenue in order to run our site and continue to provide useful content or we could turn to filling our content with affiliate/sponsor stuffed linkbait.
In my disucssions with people who do block ads, it is because they are convinced that ALL websites are flooded with flashing, audio banners and popunders. Which is in fact - not correct. But try explaining that to them!
Bingo! This is where our "preventing ad blocking attempts" fail... One doesn't even have to worry about javascript or anything, as this blocks it from the "source"... Bye
I totally agree with you here... I think you would make more if you went affiliate than doing contextual ad stuff. It may be just me, but I think it is a lot easier to come up with effective call to action marketing copy than try to keep up with how each new program (like Norton) figure out ways to block you. Lets say you put an affiliate link up against a contextual link - you get .10 cents per click on the contextual link or you get $6 for a conversion (Lead or sale) on the affiliate link. You don't have any control over how the contextual link is written (if from Google), but you do have some control on how you frame up your affiliate link. Then you look at your logs for one day and find that you had 100 clicks on the contextual link and had 5 conversions on your affiliate link. So you got paid $10 for the contextual ad, but got $30 for you affiliate conversions. Now I'm no math wiz...but it doesn't take much to see that you got paid a lot more for something you had more control over. I guess that was the point I was trying to make. Forcing someone to look at something is called Interruption Marketing - we have seen so much of that in our lives that we as humans have adapted to the point where it is somewhat easy to ignore it.
I can see online advertising evolving into something much more subtle. We have seen the growth of text link ads, and at the same time a certain decline in more traditional banners. If adblocking goes mainstream, perhaps we will start to see growth in more testimonial-based advertising: actually talking something up within the site's copy, rather than stating explicitly that it is an advert. A sort of blurring of the boundaries between the ads and the content. Is this the way we are headed?
A lesser of two evils I guess, either banner and text ads today or spyware and trojans tomorrow...lol.. that's probably an extreme case, but it's better to put up with a text banner then to later on have flash ads. And if you have fopen enabled on your server you can open a connection to the js file and download it and then have the code inserted right into the page - the user would have no real way of blocking these ads because they're embedded. The only problem is that it would take a lot of power on the server side and could slow page load. But I don't see how a user could block the ads with javascript enabled.