Silver - that's actually an idea, but just a temporary workaround. It did bring up a thought though - slightly technical thought, but it boils down to the navigation page having ads, and all the content links don't have any... would be interesting...
Oh, and guys - i'm not talking about BT in specific... it's a general thing that AdBlock harms website owners.
I think a nice message should be displayed (once only) outlining the importance of not blocking ads that basically pay for the site like the script here. If BT implemented something like this, I think it would help educated the uneducated a little more.
You do that. Your visitors will just leave. Sorry, but unless you are charging directly for the content, you don't have any entitlement whatsoever to that money. You can view it as piracy if you want, and by all means it should be an interesting exercise in programming if nothing else. But at the end of the day, content is king - if you have good enough content, you'll be able to raise the rates you charge advertisers and more than absorb the few who block ads. If adblock users are making you worried that you might not be able to put dinner on the table, then running websites shouldn't be your full-time job. Yes, you may be denied a small percentage of your CPM revenue directly by AdBlock users. You'll be denied a much larger amount from the word-of-mouth referrals not sent your way. If you attempt to use "DRM" to stop this so-called web piracy, you WILL fail, just like every other DRM system that's ever existed. If you can write the code to do it, you'll be far more successful in selling that to other foolish webmasters than you ever will be as a content producer. Get over the sense of entitlement, and spend the time saved making actual improvements to your websites. If you're going to give out content for free, then free is what you're entitled to get back and any money you make through advertising on top of that is gravy. If you're charging for content and someone writes an extension that breaks your login system, that's a separate issue entirely since in that case you ARE actually losing money. For what it's worth, this is also the reason affiliate programs are great, and that it's stupid to have a single source of income from a site. Granted with affiliate programs you have to be even more careful to ensure a strict editorial/advertising divide, since people will try to hold you accountable if you push them to buy an affiliate product that sucks.
I don't block any ads automatically. I only use Operas content filter to block stuff that has sound, or something that's incredibly annoying (but it hasn't happened in a while).
This did actually happen on Bit-tech not all that long ago where one of the ads on a review page (the little square one at the top-left) overflowed. Out of interest, I presume that you don't get any money from the "featured shopping" ads - do you just put them up when no one has asked to advertise there?
The shopping adverts link to our shopping engine, which in turn generates revenue when a visitor clicks through to a e-tailer. So whilst it's not CPC we do indirectly generate income.
No, I know. But it does mean that people have to block adverts one by one when they are refreshed, rather than taking out the ad folder cleanly.
Publishing stuff on the internet is a job, just like selling shoes, as such people who do it as a job should get paid for it. Now, as we all know (well, wallstreet took a bit longer to realize it, but thats not the topic here) the internet doesnt make you money, if you want to make money of the internet you have to sell something, the only other way to do so is by helping others sell stuff, so websites like bit-tech have 2 choices (assuming we leave out option 3 which would be shutting down), sell the access to the content or have advertising on the site. If too many people block the advertising then they will have to go with the other option, they will have to charge for access. Same applies to every other site that is run by people who do it as a job and not a hobby. Of course advertising is annoying, but lets face it, what do you prefer? seeing some advertising or paying?, go to sites without either? forget it, the majority of useful content comes form people who do it as a job, so no, going to sites who dont have either only doesnt work.
Well I run adblock, but unless the ad pisses me off to such an extent that I can't concentrate on the the review/article in this site, then I block that particular ad on a "see it-hate it" basis. Bit-tech is sort of, "grey" listed, I'm sorry to say.
I don't mind ads, i just hate pop-ups, or pointless things that make lots of noise saying win this for free by clicking here and that crap, I enjoy the ads here because they are decent / good looking, aren't in my face constantly, and nothing pops up saying BUY ME!!! (I don't have a pop up blocker, just the build in one that is with firefox 3)
You're on the right track, but you also have to be very careful not to put ads in the middle of your content. I don't care how relevant or awesome your ad, if it's between two lines of text I want to read then you're getting blocked. Ads belong around the outside edge of the page.
agreed and agreed. As stated before, my interest in this is twofold: 1) the social aspects and emotions towards this. 2) the coding side of this. One of the ideas i just had was that it would probably be possible to do AJAX calls (or whatever) and populate the ads from a db, thus assigning random names to them every time. Or an AJAX call to a file in the db, which would have a random name and then return the ad... that'd make it virtually impossible to block, adn the only people that'd ever notice the script are those that are zealous adblock-nazis...
Admittedly I don't know too much about this stuff, but doesnt Element Hiding Helper allow you to block an element of a page, like a button or navigation link? I think your method would still be vulnerable to this as you would still need some static element to contain the ads? Right? Tweaktown has an adblock detection system, and its annoying. Ok whitelist it, ah ads slowing crappy linux flash down to a crawl and cpu cooler raging. Bookmarks -> Delete. I have adblock installed but I don't keep the filters updated, so only if the advert annoys me does it get blocked. I think the ethics of ad blocking are irrelevant. Webmasters and surfers have their respective interests and will fight tooth and nail to protect them. It's like a predator prey co-evolutionary system. Hopefully the end is result is a better internet.
The rest of my adblocked websites are typically in the > $1 million annual revenue region. I'm pretty unbothered by ripping them off as much as I want, without your opinion. It follows the same logic as my piracy policy: I don't do it to the small fish and couldn't give a f#ck about Megasoft products. That isn't to say that I pirate a lot (and I don't, at all), but gives you some idea that there's some legitimate consideration on my part in all my actions.
remixme - very valid point about element hiders. They would affect my second approach as well, as you would have to have some form of static elements... UNLESS... hmmm - me thinks about dynamic layouts...
you thinks about annoying your viewers so that they dont know where to find anything as it moves every time they visit your site?
