defeating ad blockers with self served ads

ads delivered by the site domain

[ticktock]

We could defeat ad blockers if the ad was served from the same domain being visited in the browser location bar. Is there no way to do this?

[Frank_Rizzo]

Why not accept that some people block ads because they want to?

[ticktock]

I block ads wherever I go. I am not saying there is anything wrong with blocking Ads and there is nothing wrong with people that visit my site with an ad blocker turned on... Ads suck, but they pay the bills. I'm assuming, if ads could be served from the host, it would be much harder to block them. It's to easy now. I want to rock the boat a little.

Adsense just needs a way to know for sure the ad being served by this host is really serving an Ad to a legitimate visitor and not a Bot or a Farm somewhere. This is the only problem I can think of that needs to be solved.

[Samizdata]

I want to rock the boat a little

Careful you don't fall overboard.

Forcing unwanted ads on the minority who take active steps to avoid them seems unlikely to benefit your site in any way - these are people who are never going to click on ads anyway and who may now decide to go elsewhere for whatever else you have to offer.

It's your little boat, but it's in a very big ocean.

...

[ticktock]

There are many arguments for and against, I'm not taking sides. This is how progress happens. If a self hosted adsense could be developed, every publisher would use it and the ad block community would simply find another way to block them. It may not be so simple though.

[incrediBILL]

AdSense Premium Publishers can already do this, it's not new, been around for ages.

[ticktock]

Damn you Google. ;)
Thanks Bill - that's slick - I did not know about that. Only a matter of time 'till we are all using that I guess. Once all of the web is SSL it should be easy. I'll scrape by with my non-premium account until then.

[andyll]

Forcing unwanted ads on the minority who take active steps to avoid them seems unlikely to benefit your site in any way

Googles ads are not always blocked by the user of the browser. My company uses websense which blocks Google ads.

these are people who are never going to click on ads anyway and who may now decide to go elsewhere for whatever else you have to offer

never say never. There are millions of people who claim not to be influenced by advertising who are, of course, influenced by advertising.

Plus they might block ads as a general policy but be interested in ads for specific topics of the individual websites.

[Samizdata]

There are millions of people who claim not to be influenced by advertising

There is an old quote attributed to various successful and wealthy businessmen:

"Half of my advertising is wasted, I just don't know which half."

People who use ad blockers are not the ones you need to reach, don't waste the effort.

...

[incrediBILL]

Why not accept that some people block ads because they want to?

Too bad for them.

My site.

My content.

I'm the publisher here, not them, and I constantly make changes to thwart the ad blockers as much as possible.

[Edge]

these are people who are never going to click on ads anyway and who may now decide to go elsewhere for whatever else you have to offer

Sounds green, I'll save band width...

[Samizdata]

My site. My content.

Webmasters are, of course, entitled to restrict access by ad blockers if they want.

Whether it benefits them in any way is another question.

...

[Frank_Rizzo]

Visitors are entitled to block ads if they wish.

My web browsing experience.

My choice as to what I see.

I never used to block ads. But with all the despicable tracking techniques that have gone on over the years I will continue to block ads, and advise anyone I know that they have the choice to block ads if they wish.

The more the ad industry push ad tracking onto consumers the more consumers will be educated and the more ad blocking solutions will be created.

BTW. On some of my sites I run ads. I accept that some visitors will never see them because they are blocked and that is fine - their choice.

I give more of my time to make great content, rather than using underhand techniques to swamp visitors with ads.

[netmeg]

In the grand scheme of things to worry about, this one is pretty far down my list - maybe just above whether my sites render okay for ie6.

[setzer]

I run a high traffic tech site and find there is a surprisingly LOW number of people that block ads - around 5%. We use Google's ad manager too. Match up your impressions to visitor count, you may be surprised to see that ad blocking is not that huge of an issue.

[ticktock]

Comparing google analytics views vs. impressions may be very inaccurate if the ad blockers are pretending to pull down the ad. Are you sure the Ad blockers aren't skewing that stat? I just got an ABP update in FF today - I'll check to see what it is really doing.

[koan]

As much as visitors are allowed to block ads, publishers should also have an easy way to block those users. Everyone is happy.

[londrum]

half the people who block ads don't mind a site showing ads, i dont think, its just the ones that have pop-ups, pop-unders and blinking flashing pictures. that is why they installed the ad-block in the first place -- to get rid of those. the problem with ad-blockers is that they tar every website with the same brush.

it's like having an ad-blocker at home to get rid of radio jingles, and wiping out newspaper ads, magazine ads, TV ads, billboards, leaflets and door-to-door salesmen at the same time -- none of which did anything wrong.

[Frank_Rizzo]

It's gone past that. The ad industry is now all about behavioural targeting and customer profiling. The ad industry has itself to blame for any customer backlash.

Don't spy on us and we won't block your ads is the simple truth. The more you use techniques to profile, spy, categorise us the more we will produce anti-ad devices.

Ethics all gone out the window just for the advertising buck.

[Leonard0]

Match up your impressions to visitor count, you may be surprised to see that ad blocking is not that huge of an issue.

Wouldn't it be be better to compare page impressions rather than vistors?
Comparing my Adsense page impressions to my Analytics page impressions for November, I see a difference of 22%.
A more accurate way of detecting ad blockers would be to use one of the several ad block detection scripts available. It might be useful to set one up to track how many are using ad blockers and whether the trend is increasing.

[piatkow]

To get back to the original question I have seen an ad blocker take out legit graphics and text from one of my sites.

[Leonard0]

In answer to the original question:
Yes, it should be possible to detect when ads are being blocked and serve your own.
Use an ad block/firewall filter detection script freely available on the web.
Make certain that it is working correctly, otherwise you could be blocking your own Adsense ads.
Serve ads from your own domain, from an URL that does not contains words such as "ads" or the name of a known ad server such as OpenX (phpAdsNew).
It would probably work best if you sell ads direct.