6 ms·

Why so much ads on a personal website? Half the content of the page is dedicated to them, it's very annoying: https://imgur.com/a/DBuXPCp https://imgur.com/a/DB

by m_b 7y ago

Why so much ads on a personal website? Half the content of the page is dedicated to them, it's very annoying: https://imgur.com/a/DBuXPCp https://imgur.com/a/DBuXPCp

teekert 7y ago
Well, the thought crosses my mind every time I think of a good idea for a blog post: Make post, fill with as much ads as is bearable, post to HN, profit. Can't blame him.
- pi-rat 7y ago
  And that short burst of traffic from a tech savvy group with probably >90% adblock might earn you, like what.. $1.50?
  - vanderZwan 7y ago
    My uBlock and uMatrix setup is pretty thorough and doesn't block these, much to my surprise
    - ekianjo 7y ago
      Local ads probably.
    - sjogress 7y ago
      The ads are served from static.haydenjames.io. Looks like a Wordpress plugin called Advanced Ads Plus[0] is used. 0: https://wpadvancedads.com https://wpadvancedads.com
      - isoprophlex 7y ago
        Soon you'll need a gpu to run real time deep learning models that detect and filter these type of embedded ads...
        vb6sp6 7y ago
        sign me up
      - A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
        Interesting, I can't make pihole make them go away. It does not really matter for this site, but I want to be able to avoid it in the future. Was anyone successful? Are they served from more than one place?
        scottlocklin 7y ago
        It's always gonna be hard to block first party ads that come from the same domain as the content. Fortunately almost no ads like this are really malicious.
        freeone3000 7y ago
        No, it's served from the same domain as the content. They're static images, so the ad and the in-copy diagram are actually from the same source. It's a bit heavy-handed here, but honestly, this is the sort of advertising I don't mind not blocking.
        A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
        Ahh, ok. That explains it. I was wondering what I was missing. Thank you. edit: and that I can live with.
        teekert 7y ago
        Exactly it's not third party, hopefully not selling the tracking info and it's aimed at the same interest group that reads the article. Might even be useful as opposed to all the targeting ads that never ever made sense to me.
        lozaning 7y ago
        Same reason you cant pi-hole youtube ads, they're all served from the same domain as the actual video too.
  - rkangel 7y ago
    I think you greatly overestimate the number of people using adblock (even on here) and underestimate the breadth of people who use hacker news. Remember that the people who use adblock talk about it a lot, and those who don't use it don't talk about it.
    - IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
      I try to minimize Adblock usage to the sites deserving it. The reason is that ad blocking is killing the media, which is necessary for a functioning democracy. The magnitude of suffering a collective return to autocracy would cause is so disproportional to being slightly annoyed by ads, it doesn’t even matter if your faith in the importance of a free press is just a fraction of mine. It’s usually not well received on HN, because journalists are generally held in lower regard than war criminals or chocolate thieves.
RL_Quine 7y ago
Every now and then I feel guilty about using an ad blocker, then people show how the internet really looks, and I don't feel bad anymore.
- Deukhoofd 7y ago
  Looks like these ads show even through my adblocker and pi-hole, mostly because they're advertisements for himself, using locally hosted images linking to other pages on his blog.
  - nkrisc 7y ago
    This is the kind of advertising I'm totally cool with. Much less likely to be malware than random ads from some ad network.
  - markosaric 7y ago
    This may be the future if everyone moves their advertising to first-party as third-parties are getting blocked by default
- squarefoot 7y ago
  A possible solution would be providing adblockers with timed counters for each image so that for example all external popups/ads get blocked but say only the first 5 each hour coming from each visited site will be shown for say 30 seconds to one minute (to avoid distraction when reading). I believe it would be an effective way to send a message: be nice to me and I'll see some of your ads, but screw my surfing experience and you get no revenue. Otherwise as others have already pointed out, blocking everything would be the only viable option as surfing without blockers today has become a painful experience.
  - a3n 7y ago
    "Thank you for your ads. You have 5 free servings left for free access to my eyeballs. Please subscribe to my eyeballs for uninterrupted access."
- 7y ago
fiblye 7y ago
Oh man, this site is wild. I haven't seen any obvious ads in weeks, but the site looks just like this image for me. Everything loaded after a 1 second delay, so I'm assuming that that's how they got around ublock. Crazy that I saw some no-name site like this getting around my adblockers before I've seen any major site do it so nimbly. Congrats, I guess.
- gruez 7y ago
  >Everything loaded after a 1 second delay, so I'm assuming that that's how they got around ublock. I'm not aware of any adblocker that disables blocking a few seconds after page load. >Crazy that I saw some no-name site like this getting around my adblockers before I've seen any major site do it so nimbly. Congrats, I guess. Not really surprising at all. Adblockers operate on blacklists, and if your site is small enough you might be able to fly under the radar and not get added to those lists.
- mminer237 7y ago
  There's not some advanced technical reason. He just hosts his own ads. It's not like ad-blockers can add every ad for every personal site. My personal site has some ads that aren't blocked either. Not because I'm trying to circumvent ad-blockers, but just because they've never heard of me.
worble 7y ago
As always, a reminder that the Reader button exists in the menubar in Firefox and it's a godsend for pages like this! (although one of the less intrusive ads still seems to get through). Alternatively, the article itself seems to load fine without any JS enabled.
robjan 7y ago
Half of the contents are listicles so I'd say it's a commercial site that just happens to be named after the author of the majority of the content.
ashitlerferad 7y ago
well these days, it's these tech ads or ads about face cream and celebs. I mean its so hard to monetize these days. You can't please everyone. Maybe if the site had ads like these https://i.imgur.com/hg31VTB.png https://i.imgur.com/hg31VTB.png then you would be happy???
fantasicferret 7y ago
Remember when the web didn't have ads. People just used it to convey info and everyone didn't think they were going to get rich because of some ad revenue.

by m_b 7y ago

Why so much ads on a personal website? Half the content of the page is dedicated to them, it's very annoying: https://imgur.com/a/DBuXPCp https://imgur.com/a/DBuXPCp

teekert 7y ago

Well, the thought crosses my mind every time I think of a good idea for a blog post: Make post, fill with as much ads as is bearable, post to HN, profit. Can't blame him.

pi-rat 7y ago
And that short burst of traffic from a tech savvy group with probably >90% adblock might earn you, like what.. $1.50?
- vanderZwan 7y ago
  My uBlock and uMatrix setup is pretty thorough and doesn't block these, much to my surprise
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    Local ads probably.
  - sjogress 7y ago
    The ads are served from static.haydenjames.io. Looks like a Wordpress plugin called Advanced Ads Plus[0] is used. 0: https://wpadvancedads.com https://wpadvancedads.com
    - isoprophlex 7y ago
      Soon you'll need a gpu to run real time deep learning models that detect and filter these type of embedded ads...
      - vb6sp6 7y ago
        sign me up
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
      Interesting, I can't make pihole make them go away. It does not really matter for this site, but I want to be able to avoid it in the future. Was anyone successful? Are they served from more than one place?
      - scottlocklin 7y ago
        It's always gonna be hard to block first party ads that come from the same domain as the content. Fortunately almost no ads like this are really malicious.
      - freeone3000 7y ago
        No, it's served from the same domain as the content. They're static images, so the ad and the in-copy diagram are actually from the same source. It's a bit heavy-handed here, but honestly, this is the sort of advertising I don't mind not blocking.
        A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
        Ahh, ok. That explains it. I was wondering what I was missing. Thank you. edit: and that I can live with.
        teekert 7y ago
        Exactly it's not third party, hopefully not selling the tracking info and it's aimed at the same interest group that reads the article. Might even be useful as opposed to all the targeting ads that never ever made sense to me.
      - lozaning 7y ago
        Same reason you cant pi-hole youtube ads, they're all served from the same domain as the actual video too.
- rkangel 7y ago
  I think you greatly overestimate the number of people using adblock (even on here) and underestimate the breadth of people who use hacker news. Remember that the people who use adblock talk about it a lot, and those who don't use it don't talk about it.
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
    I try to minimize Adblock usage to the sites deserving it. The reason is that ad blocking is killing the media, which is necessary for a functioning democracy. The magnitude of suffering a collective return to autocracy would cause is so disproportional to being slightly annoyed by ads, it doesn’t even matter if your faith in the importance of a free press is just a fraction of mine. It’s usually not well received on HN, because journalists are generally held in lower regard than war criminals or chocolate thieves.

RL_Quine 7y ago

Every now and then I feel guilty about using an ad blocker, then people show how the internet really looks, and I don't feel bad anymore.

Deukhoofd 7y ago
Looks like these ads show even through my adblocker and pi-hole, mostly because they're advertisements for himself, using locally hosted images linking to other pages on his blog.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  This is the kind of advertising I'm totally cool with. Much less likely to be malware than random ads from some ad network.
- markosaric 7y ago
  This may be the future if everyone moves their advertising to first-party as third-parties are getting blocked by default
squarefoot 7y ago
A possible solution would be providing adblockers with timed counters for each image so that for example all external popups/ads get blocked but say only the first 5 each hour coming from each visited site will be shown for say 30 seconds to one minute (to avoid distraction when reading). I believe it would be an effective way to send a message: be nice to me and I'll see some of your ads, but screw my surfing experience and you get no revenue. Otherwise as others have already pointed out, blocking everything would be the only viable option as surfing without blockers today has become a painful experience.
- a3n 7y ago
  "Thank you for your ads. You have 5 free servings left for free access to my eyeballs. Please subscribe to my eyeballs for uninterrupted access."
7y ago

fiblye 7y ago

Oh man, this site is wild. I haven't seen any obvious ads in weeks, but the site looks just like this image for me. Everything loaded after a 1 second delay, so I'm assuming that that's how they got around ublock. Crazy that I saw some no-name site like this getting around my adblockers before I've seen any major site do it so nimbly. Congrats, I guess.

gruez 7y ago
>Everything loaded after a 1 second delay, so I'm assuming that that's how they got around ublock. I'm not aware of any adblocker that disables blocking a few seconds after page load. >Crazy that I saw some no-name site like this getting around my adblockers before I've seen any major site do it so nimbly. Congrats, I guess. Not really surprising at all. Adblockers operate on blacklists, and if your site is small enough you might be able to fly under the radar and not get added to those lists.
mminer237 7y ago
There's not some advanced technical reason. He just hosts his own ads. It's not like ad-blockers can add every ad for every personal site. My personal site has some ads that aren't blocked either. Not because I'm trying to circumvent ad-blockers, but just because they've never heard of me.

worble 7y ago

As always, a reminder that the Reader button exists in the menubar in Firefox and it's a godsend for pages like this! (although one of the less intrusive ads still seems to get through). Alternatively, the article itself seems to load fine without any JS enabled.

robjan 7y ago

Half of the contents are listicles so I'd say it's a commercial site that just happens to be named after the author of the majority of the content.

ashitlerferad 7y ago

well these days, it's these tech ads or ads about face cream and celebs. I mean its so hard to monetize these days. You can't please everyone. Maybe if the site had ads like these https://i.imgur.com/hg31VTB.png https://i.imgur.com/hg31VTB.png then you would be happy???

fantasicferret 7y ago

Remember when the web didn't have ads. People just used it to convey info and everyone didn't think they were going to get rich because of some ad revenue.