6 ms·

I worked for a company that got most of its revenue from online ads. When I started, adblockers were 20%. When it got up to 35% the boss decided to take actio

I worked for a company that got most of its revenue from online ads. When I started, adblockers were 20%. When it got up to 35% the boss decided to take action. We hired a third party anti-adblocker, and it worked great. It went back and forth with the adblockers as they updated to block our anti-blocking. Most adblock extensions use some standard rules-lists, similar to email spam lists like Spamhaus. I guess we pissed someone off enough and they introduced a rule to block all AJAX requests on our site. This pretty much ruined our site, so we finally relented and removed the anti-adblocking altogether.

r3bl 10y ago
Slightly off-topic, but I have to ask: have you tried (or considered) hosting your own ads?
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  It's really easy to get caught by basic lists. After use garbish/deceptive class names / ID's of DOM or file names, you get more popular and cat and mouse games start with block list maintainers.
mjevans 10y ago
Have you tried leaner, less obtrusive, ads? Something like straight simple text?
- legohead 10y ago
  We started off nice: "Hey, you are disabling ads, please turn them on" etc. Then we offered an ad-free subscription (almost worthless). And I think we played with another idea or two, before finally going through with the blocking adblockers.
  - chiph 10y ago
    I think you missed the point of the question - people install adblockers typically because they find the ads are intrusive (full-screen graphic overlays, etc), or their machine gets infected with ad network-delivered malware. If you presented ads that were respectful to the visitor (i.e. weren't offensive) I expect the blocker escalation war would cease.
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      How would your users know you had "respectful" ads?
      - ihsw 10y ago
        For example, when they visit, there are no interstitial pages, boxes covering the page when a user mouses out of the viewport, autoplaying audio/video, or any of that other obscene nonsense.
        ocdtrekkie 10y ago
        paulddraper is pointing out that if the user has an adblocker, they will never notice whether your ads are intrusive or not.
        ihsw 10y ago
        There is no chance to recover a user after they install an adblocker.
        daveguy 10y ago
        Unless you stop using ad networks and just inline unobtrusive text ads?
        ocdtrekkie 10y ago
        This is a trap. If you make your ads content-like, and integrate them into your content, then people will say your site is deceptive, hiding ads in content so people read them like factual articles.
fma 10y ago
Did your revenue go back up to what it used to be?
truncate 10y ago
Just wondering how fast would the ad-blockers respond to you changes?
curried_haskell 10y ago
When 99.99% of ads on 99.99% of sites are horrible monstrosities of Javascript and browser tracking and fingerprinting scripts, they will all be blocked and stay blocked. I'll look at an ad in exchange for viewing your website. I will not let you digitally rape me in exchange for viewing your website.
- flukus 10y ago
  Exactly. When and if the ad industry learns to regulate itself I will stop blocking ads. Until then, they've screwed themselves over.

r3bl 10y ago

Slightly off-topic, but I have to ask: have you tried (or considered) hosting your own ads?

angry-hacker 10y ago
It's really easy to get caught by basic lists. After use garbish/deceptive class names / ID's of DOM or file names, you get more popular and cat and mouse games start with block list maintainers.

mjevans 10y ago

Have you tried leaner, less obtrusive, ads? Something like straight simple text?

legohead 10y ago
We started off nice: "Hey, you are disabling ads, please turn them on" etc. Then we offered an ad-free subscription (almost worthless). And I think we played with another idea or two, before finally going through with the blocking adblockers.
- chiph 10y ago
  I think you missed the point of the question - people install adblockers typically because they find the ads are intrusive (full-screen graphic overlays, etc), or their machine gets infected with ad network-delivered malware. If you presented ads that were respectful to the visitor (i.e. weren't offensive) I expect the blocker escalation war would cease.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    How would your users know you had "respectful" ads?
    - ihsw 10y ago
      For example, when they visit, there are no interstitial pages, boxes covering the page when a user mouses out of the viewport, autoplaying audio/video, or any of that other obscene nonsense.
      - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
        paulddraper is pointing out that if the user has an adblocker, they will never notice whether your ads are intrusive or not.
        ihsw 10y ago
        There is no chance to recover a user after they install an adblocker.
        daveguy 10y ago
        Unless you stop using ad networks and just inline unobtrusive text ads?
        ocdtrekkie 10y ago
        This is a trap. If you make your ads content-like, and integrate them into your content, then people will say your site is deceptive, hiding ads in content so people read them like factual articles.

fma 10y ago

Did your revenue go back up to what it used to be?

truncate 10y ago

Just wondering how fast would the ad-blockers respond to you changes?

curried_haskell 10y ago

When 99.99% of ads on 99.99% of sites are horrible monstrosities of Javascript and browser tracking and fingerprinting scripts, they will all be blocked and stay blocked. I'll look at an ad in exchange for viewing your website. I will not let you digitally rape me in exchange for viewing your website.

flukus 10y ago
Exactly. When and if the ad industry learns to regulate itself I will stop blocking ads. Until then, they've screwed themselves over.