So has anybody ever tried to address the root cause of adblocker use, i.e. ads are really fucking annoying? I don't like ads in general, nobody does, but that alone wouldn't be enough to make me bother to install and maintain AdBlock. What does it is strobing "YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY WON" and animated "one weird trick" scams and softcore porn. This shit is everywhere, even on allegedly respectable news sites.
If you want me to turn off AdBlock, you need to insist on reasonable, non-offensive, non-animated ads. If your ad provider doesn't do that, get a better one, or lean on yours until they do. If this industry spent one-tenth as much energy pushing ad services for better quality standards as they do wringing their hands about ad blocking, shit would happen.
I'll continue to ad-block even if ads are non-intrusive or annoying. I prefer no ads to any ads.
If your website requires a monetization scheme to exist, and you can't find a monetization scheme that doesn't pollute your product with (even nice simple) ads, that's not really my problem. I didn't force you to publish.
If I want your content, then I'd be happy to help pay for its generation. If it satisfies my terms, of course (open licensing, no ads).
One site that annoys the hell out of me for adverts is http://www.autosport.com/ I read an article every so often, they appear in some Formula 1 feeds I am subscribed to. They also already have monetization scheme (you can few 10-20 articles "free" each month) but still insist on these horrendeous video ads with sound.
I'm on a limited data plan here in Canada (unlimited plans are not common and very expensive). So I have adblock, very rarely visit the site and now refuse to buy a subscription.
You are, fortunately for the rest of us, not a representative sample. If nothing else, most people prefer to take the path of least resistance, and won't bother learning about, installing, and maintaining an ad blocker until they get really irritated; and even then, as I said, many will happily whitelist sites that reach out to AdBlock users and say "We promise our ads aren't annoying, please help us out!"
(This does not require PageFair's services, BTW. Every site I've seen that does it has a text message under their ad panel, so if the ad doesn't load you see the message. Simple.)
The problem now is that advertisers have poisoned the well. It's hard to get people to change--that means it's hard to get them to install AdBlock in the first place, but it's also hard to get them to use their whitelist after installing it. Inoffensive ad vendors and users have an uphill battle to regain the trust of their users.
Agreed. Any site that offers me real value -- enough that I would return regularly -- is a site I'd probably give a few dollars a year to, rather than have ads. Of course, if I'm just a hit and run seeing your site once or twice a year or only once ever, then I'm not going to do anything and there is no relationship there.
Unfortunately, the problem with this is:
1) Most sites try to make the best of both options. They put ads everywhere, which essentially makes them beholden to the advertiser and not the reader and then offer an option to give them some money instead of seeing ads. That only addresses "I don't want to see 10,000 ads every day" part. It doesn't address the "I want to be your focus - not your product that you deliver to your advertisers" part.
2) Why is it that when places offer a "support us with money" option, they are so ridiculously expensive? Instead of spamming my face with ads every day, give me an option where I can go ad-free for maybe $5 a year. Nobody does that, though. They say "you can see ads or you can pay us $50/yr". Seriously, you are not getting $50 in value from advertising to me in a year, so why are you jacking up the price ten times over just so I can go without the ads?!
Ultimately, none of this matters. Internet advertising is a joke and a scam and advertisers will slowly catch on. The whole "it's super targeted you guys!" thing really isn't turning out to be that valuable and it is all rampant with fake click-farms and other inherent problems.
Also, the only thing I hate more than a huge site throwing ads in my face for their content is when every little mommy-blogger or part-time ranter on the internet with a Blogger blog has to monetize their stuff. Look, you are not making a living at this. You are not ever going to make a living at this. Why would you do something so gross as to fill a page with advertising for those six people you might get each month who actually bother to read your site?
Do people not realize that there was a time when we did things online (or even back in the BBS days) for the joy of it? For the joy of making and maintaining systems and services? Or for the joy of having people read what we have to say or make use of services we have to offer? Not only didn't we expect to make money (much less a living) from it, we actually spent plenty of our own money.
But now, if you can't monetize something, it just isn't worth doing, I guess. Gross. And you'd rather advertise to me rather than just take a buck from me in a value-for-value trade. Double gross.
PS: I pay for or donate to a number of online services and websites from RDIO and GiantBomb to a couple torrent sites, charities, and chipping in a dollar or two when I find something really special on one site or another that I really particularly appreciated. I'm not cheap. I just don't want to stare at tens of thousands of ads for 8-12hrs a day every day of my life. And, ideally, I'd also rather be a customer than a product... which I guess depends on everyone else also wanting to be a customer, but they're too cheap and would rather just look at a page that is 70% ads than give a dollar now and then.
I imagine most web devs don't mind about AdBlock if they run that kind of advert -- I mean, it's a self-selecting filter.
The people who are savvy enough to use AdBlock (and I'm sorry for my condescension here, I really am) are generally not going to be the people who convert from a YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY WON WEIRD TRICKS advert. Generally.
So the point of stuff like this for most web devs should not be ultimately to circumvent AdBlock, or to try to encourage/guilty AdBlocker users into quitting, but to make sure that you don't count AdBlock views as ad views.
I'm not saying that's what the article is arguing, but it's the useful information web devs should take from the article in my opinion.
And of course running ads which are well-made and unintrusive should absolutely be the goal of any site owner who relies on ads for income.
Webdevs reading this: it does work. I whitelist all sites that have responsible ads on their pages, reddit being a prime example. They have ads in a couple predetermined spots on their pages, and they're never intrusive. I've actually clicked on a couple (something I never do). Be responsible and open about your ad policy and I'll listen.
This brings up another case for detecting AdBlock: if you think your users are receptive to whitelisting non-annoying ads, you could detect the plugin and let them know that you strive to incorporate ads in a non-intrusive way and kindly ask them to disable AdBlock.
Edit: sounds like this is what reddit does. Props to them!
Agreed. I was the original complainer in this thread, and I've whitelisted several sites that asked nicely and promised non-intrusive ads.
I believe they all used https://www.projectwonderful.com/ as their ad provider, by the way. I haven't really inspected them, but if you want inoffensive ads on your page, that might be a good place to start looking.
It seems to be very heavily used on webcomic sites I frequent, and I haven't seen a bad ad yet.
I also like the idea of purchasing time on a site, rather than using targeted ads. Meanwhile, the hosting site can discontinue the ad if they feel it doesn't match their culture.
It's more analogous to renting a billboard from a friendly business you like, rather than hiring a bunch of people to follow your customers around with posters.
The HTTP DNT process at the W3C was supposed to fix this, but it got derailed by the DAA (the Digital Advertising Alliance).
You can manually stop this tracking with AdChoices. Click on that weird little blue icon that's in most ads, and you'll be able to disable tracking by DAA members.
Notably, AdChoices doesn't entirely prohibit tracking - I think you just need to be "minimized" to a certain extent. AdChoices is stupid, but it looks like we won't get a real solution in DNT unless something changes within the next month or so.
Many sites do this, but the problem with Adblock that most people are not happy about is that it AUTOMATICALLY blocks everything. You have to whitelist, and most people just turn adblock on and leave it be... If it was required to blacklist instead of whitelist it'd be better. Many sites with non-intrusive ads are being blocked because of this and that's detrimental. It's already hurting many businesses to the point that soon content online is gonna be behind a paywall and you're gonna end up having to pay $5/mo for every site you want to view.
I, as a user, wouldn't be happy having to blacklist all sites.
I won't pay a monthly fee for most sites, because I read a little on a lot of sites - I don't mind paying a 1 penny per article fee if it is convinient.
Unless you visit some very shady sites, having a auto-blacklist isn't needed, and a whitelist is best to keep both parties happy. And if Adblock continues to grow the way it does, the second route is gonna be what happens, nobody is gonna be able to make any money off advertising therefore they'll have to take other routes to pay for their servers to provide you with your content free of charge.
Fark does that. If they detect an ad blocker you get a little message at the top of the page asking you to allow ads to support the site. Their ads don't get in the way so I did it.
Incidentally, you don't need PageFair to communicate with AdBlock users. I've seen several sites that just have a text message behind their ad image, so you don't see it unless the ad doesn't load.
I guess PageFair additionally lets you collect statistics on how many users are blocking ads, which may be useful.
Suicidegirls (nsfw) (this is 2004) had subscribers, and they could turn on ads if they wanted to. The ads were carefully selected, and had rules about not flashing or having noises. The ads appeared on on place on the page and were a fixed size.
This was great for everyone. People who hate ads turned them off. People who don't care left them on, and they were unobtrusive. Some people liked the ads. (Yes, they clicked relevant ads, and bought stuff from the vendors.)
If you want me to turn off AdBlock, you need to insist on reasonable, non-offensive, non-animated ads. If your ad provider doesn't do that, get a better one, or lean on yours until they do. If this industry spent one-tenth as much energy pushing ad services for better quality standards as they do wringing their hands about ad blocking, shit would happen.