Norton Antivirus 2004 Ad Blocking - Tough Call?

DaaZ asks: "I'm a webmaster (and more) for a small Internet company and discovered a neat feature in Symantec's Norton Antivirus 2004 that might shake some fragile nerves looking at diminished revenues outlook. This feature is an ad blocking tool that very successfully blocks banners on websites, based on a simple keyword identification. It seems to place itself between the download and render engines of Explorer (I haven't tried with other browsers yet, lack of time) and removes code based on a keyword query. We have a rotating banner code on our Web site and with ad blocking enabled, it's completely gone from the source, and so are all our images that link to an external site. It even strips images that are not advertising banners, but simply images that link to an external site! We all hate advertisements, but as with public TV, it's the reason we can get it for free (provided you buy the nice TV and the cables and the storage unit and the TiVo, and the..." Does NAV2004 have some kind of feature where certain sites can be exempt from ad blocking (in the case you do wish to support a site with ads)? I believe the choice to block banner ads belongs to the consumer, not Symantec, and it should be more than a "yes-or-no" choice. If banner ads fail, more and more sites will be forced into a pay model, and the days of the "Free Internet" will be almost over. Do you think banner ads are still an effective way to offset the cost of a website, or has their time passed? If so, what do we replace them with?

"Now of course this is a sensitive case as, like most sites around, we get most of our revenues from the banners we sell to advertisers. In fact, we get over 50% of our revenues from these banners and many other big sites, like Google, have an even bigger share of their revenues from the banners. Google's AdWords are not spared and, in fact, with ad blocking enabled, I can't even access our AdWords account as the link to access it is 'Advertise with us' on the main page, probably blocked because of the word 'advertise'.

Now, of course nobody likes banners, but for many sites it is a large part of or the only means of revenue and so there is a fragile balance that is at stake. I hate banners, but without them my company has much less revenues, both from less cashflow from advertisers as well as clients, as we depend a lot on Google's AdWords capacity to bring us clients who are specifically searching for what we sell.

Norton Antivirus 2004 now comes bundled with a lot of new PCs, and I saw the problem on many of our clients with new PCs as well as some of our sales representatives, who have a hard time selling a product our potential clients do not see advertised anywhere.

So I'm asking to all you webmasters around what's at stake here and the potential repercussions. I know that for us it will be disastrous if NAV 2004 gains too much popularity and its ad blocking software is used by millions of people. It would mean our corporate clients would not see our banners or ads, our consumer clients would not find us and would not see the banners of our corporate clients, who would then not pay us because they'd be paying for something too many people can't see. We already have some of our clients threatening us to cancel their contracts with us if we don't fix this.

This also brings, in my opinion, the subject of spam and general Internet advertising. While banners are not spam, they're almost as hated, especially those that pop right in our screens and move around with flashy graphics. But where does the limit stand between what we can do with the net and the user experience that we'd all like to have? Of course the Internet still has a lot of grounds to make, still being a mere teen, especially in the capacity of consumers spending money to buy something on a product they already spent a lot of money. Banners are the downside of having a lot of content for free as we pay for it by being annoyed by people who want to sell us stuff instead.

But what could be done instead if users are sufficiently annoyed by banners to request such a tool, as was probably the case considering that ad blocking is automatically enabled in NAV 2004? Web sites need revenues and the consumers are not ready to pay for it, largely because of the natural impoverishment imposed by increasing technologies. Buying a computer now means paying for the hardware, the software, the Internet connection, the gizmos, the subscriptions to sites and of course the upgrades, all of which were not expenses 20 years ago."

Comments

Re:Banner blocking is bad

[kwerle]

Banners make the web work.

No, they don't. In fact, research shows that they:

• Cost viewers more than they save them.
  
• Cost ISPs more than they make advertisers.
  
• Cost advertisers more than they make them.
  
• Use valuable bandwidth that could be used to help save the whales.
  

Just thought I'd add a few random thoughts to the parent poster's.

Re:Banner blocking is bad

[nehril]

fool. you want these sites to continue, otherwise you wouldnt need ad blocking, because you would never go to those sites anyway.

what you are doing is freeloading: "I love your content, give it me for free, no I will make YOU pay to serve me, every day, on every site I hit, because I am too much of a loser to let a damned jpg banner load."

let me guess: you've never "bought the mug, the t-shirt, or donated via paypal" either right? *Act* on your "principles" and do everyone a favor, DON'T VISIT BANNER SUPPORTED SITES AT ALL.

otherwise you are just a hypocrite.