Adblock

[Copy112]

I recently visited a site mentioning Adblock, and the issues with it. It made me start thinking of the reasons why peoples use it, and how I can get them to disable it for my site.

The main reasons why I use it, is because some sites abuses it heavily, and got some incredible irritating banners. That both stole loads of space from the window, and slowed down the sites.

So, back to the main issue, how to convince the visitors to disable it?
Well, what if the ads got loaded last of the site, this can be achieved either by using css or javascript. The other idea is to slightly make them less irritating, and position them better.

There is another way to, to create some sort of system that disables the access to the page if the user disables the advertisement. But this would irritate a loot of visitors and risk them to leave. A quick google search reveals that there are plenty of anti adblock systems.

If anyone got other ideas and approaches to this issue, I would love to hear them.

[JGadrow]

Personally, I'd say don't do anything. People have pop-up blockers for a reason. If I "trust" a site, I allow it to bypass my pop-up blocker. If I don't, I manually bypass for a while (if I need to) until I'm certain I can trust it.

Even then, it's better to just not use pop-up windows if at all possible. It's even part of the WCAG documentation.

[Copy112]

Well, with adblock, I mean the applications as Adblock plus for Firefox that completely disables the ads of the site.

Pop-up is pain in the ass, and shouldn't be used, they also give me the expression that the owners of the site wants me to go away.

[die4me]

most people still use IE so i wouldn't worry about it

[ST-Mike]

Admins have ignored my deletion request - if you're not going to delete my account then don't have the option there please.

[Qwerty]

Well if people block the ads, chances are they won't click on them if they weren't blocked.

[karnedge]

I would just make sure users are aware that the ads are there to fund the website and without the ads there would be no website. In addition to this allow users to report any bad ads and take their comments seriously - if you have to, remove that specific ad from the pool. This sort of thing should be easy when you're working with a community, such as at a browser based game.

This is actually quite a great idea to combat adblock. +1 for that

[die4me]

Just make sure you don't say click them but you can tell them to put an except to show the ads on your site. one last things pop up ads are asking people to block your ads

[ST-Mike]

Admins have ignored my deletion request - if you're not going to delete my account then don't have the option there please.

[Nox]

I totally agree and although there can be some detection and so on, ST-Mike's solutions is much better, it's imho THE solution... it has also positive impact not just currently on your site, but also on other sites AND generaly in the long run, bringing up of visitors ... if you manage to make the gap between devs and players closer, I think it will have many benefits

But a thing is... even though people don't block ads, I think not many click them, at least me personally I could count ads I clicked because of interest in the ad itself during my life on my fingers cca... and I guess clicking just for sake of clicking aka making the person get more money is imho not as OK either because... on the other side there is also a person, who is paying the ad from his money (or his company's) and I also two times advertised in adwords... I guess I wouldn't be happy if you were zealously clicking on them without me getting nothing for it

I also almost never used any blocking... I just disregard them...that's also opinion I heard - that people are getting more and more used on them and learn to recognize and avoid them... you know the bitmap of web tracking test person's sight, banners and ads got almost no glance. But maybe your players will click, find some things among ads they're interested in.

[Jerry (WGF)]

Ad blockers destroy the internet.

Every website costs money, even the ones built solely as a hobby, from passion. And the ads are what brings in a slow trickle of money. I have my sites for the fun of it, and overall, I make enough in ad revenues to pay for the hosting, but if everybody would pop up ad blockers, then the income stops. If that happens on a large scale, websites WILL dissappear.

A company I worked for ran a download site, 650K pv, 500k UV a month, and they lost money on it every month.... do you think such sites will stick around, if nobody sees the ads?

If people hate the ads, they can always go elsewhere.

If I ever find a way to make my entire sites invisible to whoever uses an adblocker, I don't think I'd hesitate to implement it.

[JGadrow]

Of course, it could be argued that commercial interest has destroyed the internet which was meant only to facilitate free exchange of ideas. But those days are long gone. Just like commercial free television viewing if you have cable service (yup, that used to be why you paid for the service so you wouldn't see advertising).

The internet is becoming just the same as radio, television, etc. Just another way for companies to spread their corporate feces. That's part of why I say it's so easy to make money from advertising as long as you do it properly. Internet-based advertising is only starting to mature as a market and will only grow stronger as time progresses and more people use it as their media of choice. You can rest assured that corporate marketing gurus recognize the value of internet advertising and are looking for any way to spread their logos across the internet.

And ad blockers tend to work only for deployed advertising systems. If you create your own ad system, the odds are small that it will block your ads. Unless, of course, you're using pop up advertisements. In which case, any pop-up blocker worth its salt can detect when javascript is attempting to open a new window (or tab, depending on your browser).

[Nox]

Pop-up windows are pretty obsolete, much "better" are just divs in lightbox way...not blockable, more control, forced attention

...not that I'd advice that, I actually hate them

[JGadrow]

Agreed. In general, the only ads that I hate with a passion intensely enough to make me discontinue visiting that site are the ones fly across the screen or some other such nonsense trying to trick me into clicking on it.

Such tricks benefit nobody. The advertiser just gets a user who immediately navigates away because they never intended to go there. The site owner looks like a crook and the user is given a few moments of annoyance.

Place your ads in appropriately visible areas to be helpful for those who may actually find them interesting but not so distracting as to make it a pain to navigate your site. I also do some of my surfing based upon your advertising content. If, for example, I know you advertise services like adult friend finder or other such potentially lewd advertisements, I will not be visiting your website from Mon - Fri 9-5 simply because it's unprofessional. No matter how much I may like the content of your site, your choice of advertisement can negatively affect my viewing behavior.

[codestryke]

And ad blockers tend to work only for deployed advertising systems. If you create your own ad system, the odds are small that it will block your ads. Unless, of course, you're using pop up advertisements. In which case, any pop-up blocker worth its salt can detect when javascript is attempting to open a new window (or tab, depending on your browser).

On all our games we have a little side banner that shows our other games, nice little cross marketing addition We use an iframe to grab a central page on the extremecast.com domain just to make it easier to deploy new or updated games. Ad Blocker Plus does indeed blocks these, I'm not sure if we made there list of advertisers (I wouldnt think so) or they just immediately block iframe content with a source outside the domain.

Personally though my enjoyment (and speed) of the internet has been increased greatly since installing Ad Blocker Plus. There are just to many people trying to get rich on providing nothing more then ads and little or no content. This is one of those cases where the minority is ruining it for the majority and I don't think this is going to change. Unlike TV ads, radio spots etc etc there is a good amount of money that must be put out to enter that market, with the internet all it takes is a couple minutes of time and zero money.

[JGadrow]

Ad Blocker Plus does indeed blocks these, I'm not sure if we made there list of advertisers (I wouldnt think so) or they just immediately block iframe content with a source outside the domain.

Yeah, iframe is probably also immediately blocked if it's from another domain. I forgot about that one, thanks for pointing it out!

Unlike TV ads, radio spots etc etc there is a good amount of money that must be put out to enter that market, with the internet all it takes is a couple minutes of time and zero money.

Agreed. As I said, this market isn't mature yet. However, the value of the advertisements depends greatly upon the site that they're placed upon. Same thing for TV compare the price of an advertisement during a re-run of The Simpsons to the cost of an advertisement that runs during the Superbowl. It's still all about number of viewers.

I expect internet advertising will continue to remain a cheaper option than TV or radio slots simply because of the nature of the beast. However, I believe as the internet gains in popularity, it will become increasingly prevalent as it will become more important to advertise on 7 - 10 high-traffic websites than it will be to advertise during Will & Grace or CSI. Also, I've noticed more sites going to an advertisement-then-content scheme using redirects. I also expect something of this nature might end up becoming the norm. Probably also tracking sessions to periodically advertise content as Pandora has begun to do. These will transform the medium into a more mature advertisement industry. Again, I'm partly saddened by this because it's against everything the internet was started for. But, I'm sure there were plenty of people who said the same when radio and TV commercials started becoming the norm. We'll just have to invent a new medium for corporations to destroy in the next 20 years or so.