New Online Ad Technology To Bypass Popup Blockers

RetroGeek writes "Falk eSolutions AG is claiming it can detect and defeat pop-up and pop-under ad blockers. The best quote is that when they detect an ad blocker they will 'replace a pop-up or pop-under ad with what are called "floating" ads, or ads that appear as transparent images over Web-site content.' As far as I am concerned they can place as many transparent images as they want. He probably meant translucent. It should be easy to defeat the detection, after all visit a web site, the pop-up blocker detects a Javascript command, then doesn't run it. Replace this with: the pop-up blocker detects the Javascript command, runs it, then places the result into a bit-bucket. Any Mozilla devs here?" WebGangsta adds "While this may ignite another round of online advertising purchasing, this news doesn't affect anybody who uses a customized HOSTS file to stop the majority of ads from appearing anyway."

Comments

Is this really a problem?

[thebra]

Maybe what they are talking about is different, but there is already software to block floating ads. Just search google and software such as this and this claim to block in-your-face floating ads. I have never used these and probably wouldn't since they cost money and google is doing a fine job for me.

Re:Is this really a problem?

[Sylver Dragon]

Try installing AdBlock for Mozilla. Its a great way to get rid of the rest of the advertising crap on the web. Granted, there are those that question the morallity of doing so, but then we each have to make those decisions on our own.

ho-hum

[illusion_2K]

They're likely talking about layers.. which is something that Adblock already deals with. (along with Flash, images and custom paths - i.e. block anything in the directory */ads/*).

Just another reason to use Firefox/Mozilla.

Re:ho-hum

[c_ollier]

Try this working link.

because

[s20451]

One successful tactic in sales is to be annoying. Almost everyone hates telemarketing, yet if nobody ever bought anything from a telemarketer, it would not be profitable and nobody would do it. Same with spam.

This is a problem with technologies that allow your ad to be delivered to millions of people cheaply. If even a tiny fraction of people respond, it won't matter that you annoyed the hell out of the other 99%.

Re:because

[gl4ss]

I don't know about your local situation, but around here telemarketing almost solely lives from the fact that they don't really end up paying hourly rate to the callers, instead they pay a provision from the sales they make. this provision system is usually built so that you need to make a certain minumum amount of sales before you start any money from the company to yourself.

the thing is designed to get people started, work for few weeks, a month at the most and some very rare sellers staying for longer than that(some people just have a good voice), and then to quit. so the usual caller is _supposed_(in their business plan) to make few sales and then to quit.

so in reality basically telemarketing isn't really profitable(for most of the persons involved in it), it's just driven through something that is in effect a scam to lure young, inexperienced, desperate stupid people to make phonecalls to people for few weeks without pay. Mainly because of this in my opinion telemarketing as such should be totally banned or at the minimum have a law that would state that you can't hire people to do it on provisional pay.

Handy ad fighting URLs

[xTK-421x]

Free Popup Blocker:
http://www.mozilla.org/
http://toolbar.google.com (If you use IE)

Replacement HOSTS file:
http://www.everythingisnt.com/hosts.html

Tiny HTTP Server to respond to all those HOSTS entries:
http://www.pyrenean.com/edexter.php

Flash Remover:
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flash/ts/flash7 /uninstall_flash_player.exe (Uninstaller)
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ (for Mozilla)

There are several ways to avoid ads

[sisukapalli1]

1) Intelligent popup blocking by mozilla (do not open any unrequested popups -- there is also enough customization).
2) "Block images from this server" -- blanket nuking.

These are the "extensions" to mozilla and firefox that are very powerful

3) Adblock -- block images based on a URL pattern. Very powerful and easy to specify what to block.
4) Flash block -- block flash elements (even something like flash click to view)
5) Nuke Anything -- if something comes up on your screen, you can remove it "after the fact". For example, if you want to read an interesting article on some celebrity with a stupid image, you can remove the image very easily using this.

At the end of the day, the end user should be able to see what he/she wants to read and view. If the sites persist in doing annoying things or refuse to serve some pages to people that have an advanced browser, I believe it is better to avoid those pages.

S

Re:HOSTS link?

[Anonymous Coward]

look here- http://www.everythingisnt.com/hosts.html

transparent vs. translucent

[HTH NE1]

No, transparency includes all ranges from totally transparent to not entirely opaque. Translucency is more properly used when light but not details are carried through. A translucent floating image would scatter or effectively blur the content behind the image making it unreadable.

A tinted window is still transparent, but the windows in public restrooms are generally translucent.

Re:HOSTS link?

[maj1k]

i dunno, maybe that link on the side of the page that says:

Banner Ad Blocking

Re:why

[levik]

I think that this crop of blocker circumventors is not targeted at the users who said they don't want popups, but rather at people who installed a google/yahoo toolbar in their browser, and for whom popup disappearance is a side-effect.

The truth is, popup ads have about 10-20 times as high a clickthrough rate as regular banners do (even flash banners) - so the companies will keep paying for them. Where there is a will and a lot of money, there is a way.

If popups become ignored (as you propose, as opposed to being simply blocked) on a significantly large scale (doubt it will happen though), ad companies will not even attempt to show popups, but jump straight to DIV layer ads, so you're not really going to ever solve this problem permanently.

However, consider that Mozilla has had blocking for a couple of years now, and the ad industry didn't really do anything about it. It's not until Yahoo and Google (and soon MS) got in on the action that they started to get worried and started coming up with circumvention techniques. The truth is that Mozilla is currently not a big enough market for the companies to worry about. In fact, most current implementations of floating DIV ads leave mozilla users alone.

Don't expect this privilege to continue if our little underdog of a browser earns any significant market share.

Re:Here's an example...

[gmuslera]

Nice opening message...

Opera 7.5 Detected

You have been brought to this page because you are using Opera 7.5. Unregistered Opera 7.5 typically makes use of Google AdSense ads that are targeted based on the content of the webpage, this is an unauthorized use of our copyrighted material.

Im not sure about how useful is their content, but very sure about how hateful are their policy.

Re:why

[levik]

... For those who have not disabled javascript this just might be the nail that gets them to disable it.

As a webmaster, let me assure you that the percentage of the web audience who have disabled javascript (or in fact knows how to do so), is so insignificant that it's not worth talking about.

Again, it's not people who run mozilla or paid $29.99 for an IE blocker that this measure is targeting. These people hadly make up 10% of the web users... The reason ad companies are scrambling now to circumvent blockers is because the two largest toolbars now provide them, and soon so will the most popular web browser.

Re:Here's an example...(Alternatives)

[ItMustBeEsoteric]

WebElements

As said before, there will always be alternatives that don't do such things. Boycott the ones who do.

Re:HOSTS link?

[Anonymous Coward]

blocking ads by domains through Hosts file is the dumbest thing one can do, especially when you're on Windows. It's a resource hog

It's only a hog because of the "DNS client" service on win2k and winXP. If you disable the DNS client, everything goes back to normal. The DNS client service caches DNS requests to DNS servers. Win2k and winXP work fine without it.

click throughs

[budgenator]

That's why there are diferent types of ads to be bought;
some are priced by impressions, so I might pay for 700K downloads of my ad image.
Some are priced by click-throughs so I might pay for a 100K clicks.
Some are paid by a commission on sales generated durring the visit after a click-through.

There is advantages to each as well as disadvantages no matter which side of the fence your on. Few people realy object to seeing well targeted, tastefull ads, almost everyone objects to tacky, intrusive shot-guns ads.

Re:Here's an example...

[Insanity]

Opera's user-agent string, when emulating IE, is "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0) Opera 7.01 [en]"

The user-agent string seems to be a very bad hack. IE calls itself mozilla because it was forced to do so years ago, largely to keep stupidly-designed websites from automatically rejecting its connection attempts. But it still wanted to make itself known as IE, so it appended things in brackets that most stupidly-designed web sites didn't bother looking at.

Jump ahead a few years, and we have the same thing happening with Opera. It pretends to be IE (pretending to be mozilla), but adds its own signature after the end of the brackets, where modern stupidly-designed websites don't bother to look. My guess is that most scripts just stop parsing the user agent string once they hit the last bracket. The website referred to here looks at the whole thing because it's outright malicious and wants to "punish" opera users.

Re:why

[T-Ranger]

While true, the days of Pay Per Impression are long gone.

Once upon a time, PPI was the only way banners worked.

PPI is somewhat trivial to scam; have the image 50 times as a 1x1px image, tricking users to see it, etc etc etc.

Pay Per Click came next, and is still how "search engines" such as Oveture make money. But not used very much outside PPC search engines. Payments used to be noted with the search results, but I cant find any right now. "Casino" usually paid >$19.00 per click; usually was around 2-3c per click.

Most banner adds, these days, are Pay Per Lead, or Pay Per Sale. Cookies stay around for at least a couple of months, so the "proper" person is credited. half.com (part of eBay) was paying $5/per lead at one point.

Actual product providers (be it membership sites, or physcial goods) are notorious for not paying out for anything but PPL or PPS... The excuse being "bad ratios" Of course, they don't tell you what the required ratio is.

Anyone who has a PPI setup, and is honest about payments, would quickly go out of business.

Re:HOSTS link?

[Rushuru]

Nice and neat, but it doesn't stop your browser from actually downloading the image as the hosts file would.

Actually, it can. It depends what you put on your customized stylesheet.
Some people want to get a completely ad free web experience. Others, feel guilty about it, and don't want to get rid of the ads to show their support to the site, but want to make them less annoying.

iframe[width="468"][height="60"], a img[width="468"][height="60"]
{ -moz-outline: medium dashed red; -moz-opacity: 10%; }
468x80 images and iframes are downloaded and displayed, but they are 90% translucent and are outlined by a big red dash.

iframe[width="468"][height="60"], a img[width="468"][height="60"]
{ visibility: hidden !important; }
Banners & iframes are downloaded but not displayed.

iframe[width="468"][height="60"], a img[width="468"][height="60"]
{ display: none !important; }
Banners and iframes are neither downloaded nor displayed.

This site provides a sample antibanner stylesheet, as well as instructions on how to use it with opera, mozilla and others.

another great hosts file

[sklib]

There's another great custom hosts file at someonewhocares.org/hosts. I use it everywhere, and it's wonderful.

Get over yourself

[CalCudahy]

Wow, what a troll! And moderated at a 4 no less. Hey I ain't no huge fan of marketing but to make such a blanket statement is moronic.

I happen to work in a bio lab and actually like it when the sales reps come by. I need their stuff and they're constantly filling me in on their new products. The new RNAi stuff that these companies are coming up with make my life a hundred times easier. The sales reps are knowledgeable about them and don't feed me bull about what they can do, but give me the facts.

There are also tons of moral ad guys who do pro bono work for good causes. I know a marketing guy who does pro bono work for a local wild-life rehabilitation center. That's a pretty sweet deal for the non-profit conservancy.

So stop being so fucking ignorant and realize that not all marketers are out to dupe and harass people.