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> If someone knows why obscuring HTML to force ads isn't more common practice, I'd be curious to know. Three basic reasons: 1. For websites that aren't as lar
by csande17 5y ago
> If someone knows why obscuring HTML to force ads isn't more common practice, I'd be curious to know.
Three basic reasons:
1. For websites that aren't as large as Facebook, most advertisers insist on running their own code on the page to do things like count impressions (to make sure the owner of the site can't lie about how many views the ads got). This is easily blockable.
2. It's not profitable for most websites to engage in an arms race with ad blockers. Your web developers' time is almost certainly better spent on trying to grow the userbase, not showing ads to a subset of users who will almost certainly not click on them. (And businesses will often make decisions based on data from third-party trackers that are also blocked by ad blockers, so it's possible the relevant department does not even know those users exist.)
3. There is already a very difficult-to-block form of advertisement available to many websites: sponsored content. Just bake the advertisement directly into the video, or as a paragraph of a long blog post with no distinguishing CSS, or something.
- toastal 5y agoAlso as a developer, I feel its my duty to be a good steward towards people that want to block ads or use classes that will block social media icons using classes from those lists and still look appealing. The client likely doesn't know and neither do the majority of users that haven't enabled such features, but respecting the wishes of those that do I think is the right thing to do. It's in the same class as respecting Save-Data: On or or DNT: 1.
- BbzzbB 5y agoThanks for sharing.