Ad blocking software - big problem? on the rise?

[Makaveli2007]

I dont have a site of my own with ads, at the moment..I was wondering: Does ad blocking cost a lot of you guys a lot of sales? or is it just a minor problem?

Is it on the rise?

Any industries to avoid (if I wanted to create a site running ads, which I wont have time for in the near future, anyway) where this is a particularly bad problem?

Btw, Im NOT using any tool like that myself :-)

[piatkow]

I can't say that I have seen a clear mis-match between page vivisews and Adsense figures.

The big problem that I have found on testing an ad blocker in the past was the false positives on site graphics.

[Makaveli2007]

thanks for your input!

[Beyonder]

I look at this as a really healthy thing for advertiser ethics.

The growing popularity of ad-blocking software is tied directly to the proliferation of horrible advertising methods.

There have been 3 sites I work with directly that have tried taking on annoying advertising campaigns and witnessed their regular repeat users flock to ad-blocking software as a result.

Heck I've seen ad-blocking change the face of online fax. It used to be that everyone was signing up for faxing services to spam out a promotion. My fax affiliate sites were very active, but almost exactly one month after I saw my email fax services, (starting with metrohispeed.com) establish effective anti-spam filters, the fax affilliate sites started losing volume.

I've witnessed a top review site (faqsaboutfax.com) launch 5 different free trial programs all at the same time just putter along as if there was nothing special at all on the site. This is the sort of promotion that would have caused a completely synthetic spike in the traffic a year ago and now, thanks to ad-blockers, it's barely registered an increase in traffic!

So yes, they do hurt the sites with bad activity, and they have a direct impact on other sectors, but in general it's an improvement over the horible ads we were seeing from the various low-brow "test your IQ" and "how many eyes does this girl have" types of advertisers.

[Makaveli2007]

I agree with you Beyonder...had one of the annoying ads on my screen today (not the first time ofcourse), and now that I thought about this ad-blocking stuff, it made me wonder: wont take many more of those, and I might consider it... Id get the type that doesnt block all ads, though (I read the firefox add on thing allowed you to only filter out certain types - not really sure, though admittedly)