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Adblock Plus Maker Proposes Change To Help Sites
Dotnaught writes "Wladimir Palant, maker of the Firefox extension Adblock Plus, on Monday proposed a change in his software that would allow publishers, with the consent of Adblock Plus users, to prevent their ads from being blocked. Palant suggested altering his software to recognize a specific meta tag as a signal to bring up an in-line dialog box noting the site publisher's desire to prevent ad blocking. The user would then have to choose to respect that wish or not."
Nope - they're providing additional functionality to webmasters, so that they can go and say "Hey ABP user, you've been here a couple times, please consider allowing the ads to be displayed here"
NoScript's AdBlock-blocking trick was kinda dirty, but I don't see them as being hypocritical for allowing their own ads given the tremendous service(which increases safety while speeding up browsing) they provide for free.
Riiiiight. Because when it's other site's ad income you're negating it's about ideals and the rights of the users. But when it's your site's income it's because your service on your web site is automatically so much more beneficial than Google or Slashdot.
... you defend NoScript after attacking AdBlock for a lesser crime (merely asking you if you would consider viewing ads after visiting a site many times). What exactly is your angle? I think we may have the first case of Firefox extension fanboism on our hands here, folks.
Your position is interesting
My work here is dung.
In other (related) news, Slashdot today allowed me to disable all the ads on the site, simply for occasionally moderating an not posting stupid crap all the time. I was using adblock anyway but this removes the blank space and allows the content to expand into the areas the ads used to occupy.
Thank you Slashdot.
If they implement it like flash block so that the ad is replaced with a button to click to show the ad then I might consider turning the option on. If it pops up a dialog every time it blocks an ad then it goes in the bin!
Oh yeah, it will only show this pop up requesting the ad be displayed when there is a special meta-tag. I wonder how many seconds it will take for every ad service to include that tag.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
are TOO successful. You're a webmaster running a site that's partially (or completely) paid for by advertising. You see in your analytics report of hits that a significant percentage of viewers are running AdBlock. So not only are you NOT getting clicks, but your advertisers aren't even being seen to begin with. And let's assume you're honest (and that your advertisers are too), and that your ads aren't malicious and in fact serve a normal purpose: to advertise a legitimate product. Given this, I can see why AdBlock might be considering this option. If they've gotten enough complaints from legitimate companies/websites with legitimate ads saying essentially "hey, your product is costing me a substantial amount of revenue loss", then its understandable that AdBlock would consider this. Since AdBlock's an open source/freeware product(hi Stallman!/Stallman's acolytes! Please do ignore my semi-ignorant malapropism... there's plenty of room for you in my colon!), basically AdBlock (and NoScript) are allowing users to get something for nothing... for free! We are cheating the system in a way. So I say let AdBlock look at doing it. I'll admit, sometimes it's good to see advertising, especially if it's a product/service I'm interested in. I run AB/NS simply because I've been burned one too many time by a scriptkiddie, but I do allow websites I trust to show ads.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Having been on the Internet before all the businesses realized they could make a buck with it, I realize that the "free Web" was actually better for not having ads on it. Most of the sites that support themselves through advertising could disappear tomorrow, and no one would miss them; the only exception that comes to mind is Google, whose ads are non-intrusive enough that even people who don't like ads can tolerate them.
What I have to wonder is, are the AdBlock Plus folks getting kickbacks in return for this new "functionality"?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
I wouldn't mind spending some of my bandwidth to download the ads as long as they weren't displayed. This would help some websites that get revenue based on number of impressions.
I'll agree with all your requirements and add this: No ads served by advertising companies. I have no desire to allow companies like Doubleclick or Yahoo to track my movements across the web.
If a site hosts their own ads and they don't blink or move, then I will consider turning ads on on their site.
Also, the ad should be text or a simple image, no scripts. unnecessary scripts slow the browser down too much
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
This is a well thought out reply, and I particularly appreciate the last paragraph - I think that is an actual thoughtful response - can we block types of ads? That would certainly solve my grievance with the things. However, I can't say I agree with your response - regardless of the amount of effort you put into it. You brought up the primary reason - the tag will get copied, and it will become a race between modifying the "law and the hacker" - and as always, the hacker will win. That means we've got a potentially useful tool (one I don't use - I don't think it's the best for the purpose) that is suddenly completely useless. Additionally - while I take your point regarding the "extra reminder" for those who forget to unblock ads at sites where they would be happy to fork over bandwidth in order to give the site some revenue - it still seems damn silly. In order to fix what is really a discipline problem, we now invalidate the purpose of the original program. I'd suggest that, again, your solution in the last paragraph of your response is massively more appropriate - and that other solutions can be arrived at that are better conceived as well. This one stinks.
Why haven't ad providers tried to go to war with adblock? The rules in the main ABP filterset are generally pretty simple, like ad1.* ad2.* etc.
Why not acquire random domains and dynamically create links to the ads on these servers? I could see ABP blocking the first japi1fas6df.com/273849.gif, but not the 1000th. Is there a technical reason why this would be infeasible?
I got offered the choice of blocking slashdot ads today due to my contributions to the site. I had to think long and hard about whether to accept since I knew I was denying a site I value a source of revenue.
I have decided yes at the moment but I will probably change my mind since I have realised that the adverts never really bothered me anyway. I was always very good at ignoring adverts anyway so they made no difference to me. We live in a capitalist work and advertising is a part of that.
I dont read
It could be worse. They could make it a subscription service for webmasters to participate in this or something like this.
That would definitely cross some moral, if not legal line.
Dual Opteron < $600
I use AdBlock Plus.
I don't subscribe to any filters list as I create my own one-by-one.
I don't block ads served up by the local site.
I do block 3rd-party ads.
My statistics show that I can block more than 50% of all ads with just 3 filters:
*doubleclick*
*adserver*
pagead*.googlesyndication.com/pagead/*
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
This was true a year or two ago, but I've seen a marked decrease in the number of ad-spam sites in my google search results - practically none these days. Either my search skills are somehow better than average (unlikely); or you're working off of outdated data.
When VALinux release a browser or a plugin that I use then I won't mind it displaying only its own ads.
Imagine MS put in ad blocking in a release of IE but it allowed ads to be shown on MS sites or through their ad network.
You don't mind because of who they are, not because of what they are doing. If you don't understand why that's wrong, I don't know what to say.
Regardless, the proposal sucks.
A good portion of ad revenue comes from non-regular visitors. People who land on the site read a page, then find an interesting ad to click off on.
Regular visitors tend to become ad blind. Giving regular visitors the option to see ads isn't a big plus for webmasters.
Dual Opteron < $600
A button in Adblock would be cool to show seldom in one corner of the website to say "Support this site".
Then it would download the ads but not show them (or optionally show them [or optionally click them]). Your favorite sites would get more income. My browser knows what sites I've been to often, no extra tag necessary.
As far as I know, most people don't use ad-blocking, so the ad companies won't get weird ideas to circumvent that.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
Adverts don't have to be flashing, bouncing, animated AVIs with extra-embedded javascript.
There's a few sites I visit which have adverts done with this thing called 'text'. I can see them, which must mean that adblock isn't blocking them.
PS: Adblock is a tiny percentage of Internet users and they're all rabid anti-advert types so any revenue being 'lost' is just background noise.
No sig today...
Mods, he may not be offtopic.
SigBlocking is not the cure for $600 promos.
Depends on how good his comment is,
Everyone mods it up.
Later, it goes to +5...
Like that's the seal of approval.
It's related to the Captcha problem.
No software can strip the ads out of this post.
Text is Static - there is no LetterItemVeto.
Embedding may be the bane of the future.
Like the caps, my friend?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It's pretty safe to assume that if a site has ads, they want you to see the ads. Every ad provider that knows about the tag will require its use on every site that uses their ads. They might as well just make it a one-time option to enable ads on sites you visit frequently.
Also, if people really care about encouraging "acceptable" ads, they should create a new subscription list that only bans the obnoxious ones. Then maybe you could use the strict list on one-off visits and the "acceptable" list for sites you visit regularly.
If the ads come from their own website, I'm perfectly okay with that too. It means it's 99.99% less likely that the ad is running javascript that will exploit a vulnerability in the browser, install code, and turn my pc into a zombie.
When the advertisers realize that we have legit reasons to be worried about code running on our boxes, and they do their ads securely, and they play by our rules, then I'll be happier about seeing ads on the net. But right now, any ad appearing in your browser window only means that you're probably already compromised.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.