Norton Ad Blocking

How to disable page if Norton Ad Blocking found?

[wildfiction]

A number of the users of my web site state that they don't see my Google AdSense ads because their Norton Personal Firewall blocks the ads.

I was wondering if there was anyway that a page page could "detect" the prescense of Norton Personal Firewall and the ad blocking setting and if it (the web page) "sees" that ads are being blocked then it informs the user that they need to disable ad blocking in order to see the page's conents.

This doesn't seem possible to me because the server sends all the info to the client and it's the client side that filters out what is displayed to the user. However, I know that the client can ask the user what browswer the user is using (for example) so that the page can be formatted or customized according to the browser. I was wondering if Norton and its settings were available to the browser in a similar way?

[Jack_Hughes]

take a look at your logs at the user agent field. if the norton software adds something identifiable to the user agent then you are in business.

[goofy]

norton destroys not only google adds but many other affiliate programs ,this is a very serious problem and the big companies should get some legal action? who is norton by the way that destroys billions of earnings from adds.

[jetteroheller]

whats about the idea

Google AdSense code

<noscript>
very annoying animated gif
</noscript>

<script>
if (! google_ad_width )
{ document.write ( very annoying animated gif ) }
</script>

Something what flashes in red yellow in the face of the user

Ad
successfull
blocked

[vordmeister]

I just tried turning on Norton ad blocker and I still seem to be able to see google ads.

When I last looked into Norton last year it appeared to block images of the standard ad sizes, just about anything with ad in the url. I'm not sure whether it will pick up sections like div class="ads", but I try to avoid identifying ads in this way.

Google ads often had titles missing but the description still there, so the javascript doesn't appear to be blocked.

[jetteroheller]

Oh!

At my last big change, all the ads are in divs

<div id=add120x240....

seems I make now a big action to replace all by nav instead of add

[PCInk]

> Google ads often had titles missing but the description still there, so the javascript doesn't appear to be blocked.

Norton seems to let Google adverts go (I can see both G and AS adverts when Norton is installed).

The problem with missing titles isw the ADVERTISERS url, not Google's problem.

Any url with?ad= or &ad= or the word 'banner' will be blocked (as examples). Google put the destination url into a variable in the URL to click through to. Norton scans that and filters words.

I changed plenty of AW url destinations so that AW now show with Norton installed.

[darkmage]

Well what is the point? You try to force them to turn off the ad blocker - will they then really click your ads anyway or simply go back to Google and go to the next result?

As for displaying an animated gif - well that's a good example of someone providing unhelpful advice. Norton turns off animated gifs.

Will the whole process make visitors think twice about blocking ads? Not on your life. And if they are somehow made to think that they should turn off the blocker so they can see more ads, you won't benefit because they would have long been annoyed at your site.

Ad blockers have been around for years and they have had minimal impact. It may be annoying to web masters but there are more important issues to worry about.

[wildfiction]

darkmage: If you have a free site which visitors come to just for the content then I don't see the problem with switching content if they can't see the ads because otherwise the purpose of you providing that content is nullified.

So if you can detect that ads are being blocked then you can put up a message on the web page stating:

"In order to view this web page you need to disable ad blocking. This is how you do that..."

I believe (and correct me if I'm wrong) but there is no benefit to you having visitors surfing pages that are only there for the ads on the pages?

[killroy]

One funny side note is that according to AdSense TOS you're not allowed to place it on pages that are there just for the ads ;)

SN

[wildfiction]

That's a good comment Killroy. Do you think that is taken in the correct context?

Newspapers and magazines have articles and content based on advertisers that read them and tailor their content according to their advertisers.

It is rare that you see an article bashing Revlon in Cosmopolitan on the opposite page to a full page ad taken out by Revlon.

There mere fact that Google's AdSense scans for keywords on your page seems to imply that the subject matter is key and if the subject matter is conent then it looks like you could be caught in a catch-22...?