Convince Ad Blockers to Turn Your Ads Back On
43 As bloggers, many of us rely on adverts for income. A new danger is shadowing that income though; the ad blockers. We have already asked whether ad blocking is moral or not, but regardless of the answer, people will continue to use it.
If you’re looking to protect your income, you need a solution to this problem. Blocking all FireFox users is not a good solution, and even blocking only those using the extension isn’t ideal either.
The Answer Is To Hide an Image
In the morality discussion, we came to the conclusion that whilst ad blocking may not be moral, and while it may damage the internet as a whole, it will continue to be used because it suits individuals. And therein lies the answer.
If you want to stop the ad blockers, you need to make having the ads disabled worse than having them enable plea to the user to re-enable your ads.
To do this, simply add an image beneath your ads. Normal users will never see the image, but the ad blockers will.
Of course, if your adverts are pop-ups, CSS overlays and such, then the ad-enabled version will always be too annoying, meaning that this won’t help you at all. Online those who use less obtrusive, inline adverts (Like Adsense) stand a chance. That way you are allowing users to do what they want to do, whilst still achieving your site’s own goals.
The Code
Your HTML will not change much. Take whatever ad code you have, and wrap it in two divs, as shown below:
<div class="nameyourdiv">
<div>
## Ad code here ##
</div>
</div>
Now, add the following to your CSS:
.nameyourdiv, .nameyourdiv div {
margin:0;
padding:0;
}
.nameyourdiv div {
height: 280px;
width: 336px;
background: url(nameyourpic.gif) 10px 10px no-repeat;
}
You have to make 2 changes to the CSS above:
- Replace the values of height and width with the height and width values of your advert.
- Replace the nameyourpic.gif line with the URL of the image you want to use, relative to the stylesheet’s location (Important – Make your image 20px shorter and 20px thinner. This is a precaution to prevent your ads from being seen under rounded corners.)
How To Use This Effectively
It is still possible for ad blockers to block this advert and background image by removing the containing divs altogether. However, by making this as awkward as possible to do, we can ensure that most users will simply disable ad block for your site (Success!).
- The divs are already awkward to disable. Thanks to the nested divs, the only way to do it is with some advanced selectors which the vast majority of users won’t know/care about.
- Change the nameyourdiv and nameyourpic names to something unique. Create your own unique names so that ad blockers will have to create filters specifically for your site (Tip: Do not use names with either “ad” or “advert” anywhere in them).
- Change the names every now and again. Very few users are likely to create the necessary filters, but if they do, you can break those rules simply by changing the nameyourdiv and nameyourpic names every now and again (This is only likely to effect regular visitors though, so it’s up to you to decide whether it is worth it or not).
- Tell users why they are seeing the image. If a user is only seeing a “Haha. Got ya!” message, they won’t have a clue what’s going on. You don’t want to annoy them, you want to convince them to turn adverts back on, so tell them as much. “You wouldn’t be seeing this image if you hadn’t disabled my ads.”
- Update (06/10/07): Thanks to the comments on this article, I’m changing this last point. Originally I suggested making the image annoying, but as you can read below, that may have more negative effects than positive ones. Instead, using an image with a message along the lines of “I need the adverts to keep this site running” may work on your more caring readers.
To conclude, I want to re-emphasize that I’m not out to attack ad blockers (I do agree that there are certain ad types that need to be blocked!), but there are many bloggers who rely on their modest ads for some reimbursement for all their work. I’m trying to help them here, and at the very least, I never want to find another site blocking me just because I use FireFox…
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its a shame that we have to resort to this. its kind of a funny circle though, they install adblock so we in turn make it so their installed software, which is supposed to make they viewing more pleasant, even more horrifying than before they installed the extension. the only ads that are annoying are the blinking ones. someone needs to ask these people why they installed this in the first place. what is so bad about seeing ads on a page (granted that they’re not flashing)
Look the internet was not HERE for you to make money you have no right to a cash
I am going to spread the word about adblocker as much as i can.
Jake – I work for a website. We don’t sell anything, we’re an information site. We have several million users each week. That’s a LOT of bandwidth. There’s about 40 people who work here full-time, devoting at least 35 paid hours a week each to the site.
Who do you think pays for that? Advertisers.
If it were down to me, you’d have no ‘right’ to be using up my bandwidth if you’re blocking my ads. I’d ban you. We’re not a charity, we’re a publisher.
interesting idea, Michael, I’ll see if I can implement them for my GoogleAds. I guess wrapping the javascript part with those divs should work…
Interesting idea but for me, by doing so makes me look desperate.
I’ll probably do so if my living solely depends on CPM ads but this is not the case.
I’m not so sure that people who block ads will be your bread and butter anyway. But aside from that, companies like Google should develop ways of not being so easily recognizable by ad blockers. This will probably require more server side work on the part of the publisher, but could result in an ad that is undetectable by an automated filter. Such a “plugin” would probably mean more opportunities for publisher fraud, but perhaps it could be rolled out as a reward for publishers who have proven themselves trustworthy.
If I were using an Adblock plugin and came across even uglier flashing images I think it would drive me away, perhaps for good. I agree with the comment from the previous post – education is the key on this topic.
I like the way you’ve done this. I would just hope that a polite request would make people think a bit, rather than annoying them away. :)
Interesting way, but:
“The image has to be more annoying than the advert.”
What if the visitor gets annoyed by the site doing this?
I agree. The annoyances will make us unhappy to be visiting a page. If a visitor is unhappy with a visit, he/she will make attempts never to have to go there again.
Rofl, a nice little trick. Probably as good as the recent wordpress plugin which stops no-follow links from being highlighted with searchstatus whilst actually they’re still on no-follow.
Going in all against those sort of plugins though, will it truly make things better? Or is it going to make things only worse in the end? :P.
Rather than taking on a battle like this I’d say there should be other options to be considered, especially by those providing the ad services.
Before you know it someone might create a filter to block sites like these completely from being displayed in a method to strike back again ;). You can never be sure on how far this sort of thing would eventually go.
Neat and interesting solution! I’m not sure about the annoying images in the background, maybe adding a colored background since the div size is fixed would be a better option in order to fit the color scheme of your site.
I dugg it!
When I started reading this post I thought: “That’s a good idea, but I’d love to know how to do that.” Luckily you haven’t limitted yourself to posting a helpful tip: you also took the time to teach your readers how to put that into practise. Other bloggers often only tell you to do this or that, assuming that you’ll find your own way to get things done. I’m so glad you aren’t one of those. Thank you very much!
There’s no way I’d do this (interesting idea though). I believe that if a user wants to block my ads, it’s up to them.
I think this is an interesting idea, but I’m skeptical about its effectiveness. It’s a direct attempt to impact on the viewing experience of a visitor using ad-blocking software, and it will probably leave such a negative impression on them that they will leave your site straight away.
I think it’s more fruitful to think of the possibilities for indirect gains. Sure, your ad-blocked visitor can’t see ads, but what are the chances they would have clicked one anyway, seems they hate them so much?
As a result of a positive experience with your site, the ad-blocked visitor might: post about it on their blog, recommend you to a friend, or share you with social media, and in doing so, bring ten or more ad-enabled visitors to the site.
In the end allowing both ad-blocked and ad-enabled visitors to have a positive experience on your site will probably result in greater indirect profits than forcing ad-blocked visitors to turn off their ad-blocking. I think very few would be willing to do that, even if your site’s content promised to be useful.
Nice idea Michael , but you dont you think this will annoy the users .
Or just sell ads directly. :D
Adblock can’t get rid of ads that don’t come from a network web-wide, can it? Blockers would have to manually add filters to Adblock, and either way, you’re being paid a flat rate by your advertisers. It wouldn’t work very well for smaller blogs either.
well, when I implement this on my blog, I will make the “no-ad” image not annoying. Instead it will be fading into the design of the page while providing a tiny information why this image is shown. Something along the lines of:
“Oh, looks like you are using an Adblocker. I hope the Advertisement I’m using is not annoying, if so, please send me a message and I will make them less annoying.
My ad placement is unobtrusive, so I would appreciate it if you turn your Adblocker off even if you don’t click any Ad.
If you have questions or suggestions about why I’m using advertisements, feel free to use my contact form.”
For this case I’d add a link to the contact form.
I think this is a fair way to get the message to the visitor.
I don’t think you could practically add a link to your contact form since this is using background images.
The link to your contact form is fairly obvious, they should be able to find it.
I like Marco’s suggestion.
Make it gentle instead of making it harsh, making the site ugly looks like you are intentionally forcing people to unblock the ads, which it indeed is.
@Kristarella: It is possible thanks to CSS display:block;. However, I’m not sure if it will interfer with the links of the Ads. I guess I need to test it :)
Oh cool, okay. I can get by and more with CSS, but I think I’d like to learn more – there’s obviously more for me to learn, and CSS3 is very slowly coming in – would like to learn that too. Let us know if you succeed with that link, I’d like to see how it’s done :)
A nice way of solving it Marco :), I will see into using something like that on my own blog one day. A bit smaller message though since I usually just use the banner sized ads, that message would be like 4 times as long :P.
Perhaps a simple message like “Ad-blocker? Tell me what did I do wrong!” would already be sufficient, not destructive to the site in any way and if you link it to your contact form they might even give the suggestions you wanted :).
I’m currently working on getting it to work, so far no luck. It seems like AdBlock also removes the background image…or I just got something wrong…
Anyway, as soon as I got it to work I will write a short tutorial :)
I don’t see why AdBlock would block the background too. THe most common way of ditching AdSense with AdBlock is to simply put a filter to kill things coming from pagead2.googlesyndication.com. So theoretically you could place a rule in the Windows HOSTS file and block ads that way too. To block ads from any network, you really just need to stop incoming traffic from the ad server for a network.
Sorry that it’s taken me so long to reply here!
Doug – I’m not sure either. Provided they don’t obscure the content, I don’t usually mind.
Marco – Yep, Adsense was what I tested it on.
goldfries – That’s true. Any form of adblock retaliation isn’t going to be worth much if you don’t depend on ad cash.
Ken – If the publishers could come up with some such system, I’d be delighted! Though the Adblock plugins at the minute seem capable of handling just about anything unfortunately. :(
Kristarella – lol – I suppose annoying them mightn’t necessarily please everyone. xD
milo – I’m starting to think that that comment was misplaced. Perhaps an annoyance is less important than a plea to leave the adverts alone?
Slevi – I’m not sure where things would end either. It’s a pity that such pointless little wars always crop up.
Elliot – That could work just as well. So long as removing the ads isn’t really benefitting them, then anything is worth a show. (And thanks. :D )
Karen – Glad you liked it!
Redwall – That’s fair enough. It’s actually nice to see an ad-using blogger support adblocking.
Skellie – It’s definitely going to be more annoying than if the ads had just disappeared, but how much more annoying depends on the image you used. If you used a simple “I need ads for the upkeep” message, then how much more annoyed could they get? If that was offputting enough to them to send them away, what are the odds that they’d link out any way? No doubt I’d lose a few recommendations, but would it be enough to matter?
Madhur – Probably. Depends on the image. (Won’t annoy the normal users tho. :) )
Redwall – It works on anything. They just need to right click the image and hit block. :(
Marco – That seems a much better idea than my original one.
To everyone in general – I think I’ll update this article now. Yous are right that I came at the point of the background image wrongly. Thanks everyone!
“It works on anything. They just need to right click the image and hit block.”
Yes, but they’d have to do that manually. Blanket-blocking (the standard method…especially among the MegaDiggUsers) works by blocking the ad servers. My guess is that the users would probably be too lazy to right-click the image and choose the block option. What most people do is they download a pack of prebuilt filters to kill AdSense, Kontera, DoubleClick, etc. The idea is it stops the browser from downloading the JavaScript files required to display the ads.
True, except for 2 occsasions: if this wasn’t the first time they had visited your site (They may well block the ads then), or if your site became busy enough to warrant inclusion in one of those pre-made filters.
Plus, the idea is to get them to re-enabled your ads. It’s very easy to tell Adblock not to work on particular sites. If the filter is blocking the Google Ads, that’s fine. The background images will still be shown, and will hopefully get them to add your site to their exceptions list.
Makes sense to me.
I don’t get it. How will normal users not see this image and ad-blockers will? It’s simply an image as background in a div I don’t see the speciality behind it…
Dennis – They won’t see if because the advert sits on top of the background image. You’ll only see the background image if the ads are disabled. :)
Ah thanks, understood. Nice idea!
(will only stop me from disabling my ad-blocker if this is applied to loads of sites)
Thanks for that!! Awesome.
An addition that might help others. My site is a gallery and all the images are in the /Galleries/1/ folder (within subfolders).
The adblock plugin I have for FireFox allows you to add an image to it’s list of filters, so it only takes a second for someone to block your “please help” image.
I added a secondary div tag set outside the first. The secondary div calls an ASP script in the root of my /Galleries/1/ folder called Default.asp (this is on purpose…so the img src is simply “/Galleries/1/” – will confuse beginners maybe?). That ASP simply pumps out my “please help” image. So if someone adds /Galleries/1/ to their filter, it blocks ALL images from that folder and all subfolders — including the ones they are trying to look at!! Big incentive to remove my “please help” image from their filter.
‘Course there are ways around it, but I’m hoping most people will not care enough to jump through all the hoops to completely rid themselves of the ads.
Dean – Thanks for sharing. That’s a great way of stopping all but the truly determined from removing the image.
There’s no excuse for sites to block firefox, as IE now has plug-in support, and there are Ad blocking plugins for IE.And face it, who’s going to block a browser with over 55% of people using it?
Nathan, agreed. Blocking an entire browser’s is fool’s play. I can’t see many sites doing that and actually benefitting from it. :(
This seems like a good idea, the only problem I can forsee is that users may boycott your website out of annoyance!It’s worth weighing up the risks I suppose.
Rob,
It’s definitely a risky strategy, but it does give you something to think about. It may be worth trying. :)
I agree the commenter above its definitely risky. But It may be worth trying.
Well, It made total sense to me. But I think if you pursue this idea, doesn’t it look a little desperate on my part?
You cannot really convince them if they do not really do not want to. Perhaps, the user will be the one who will adjust.
Thanks for the code, works perfectly!
Now that I own my own site, I rarely use my Ad Blocker. Most sites I got to now have a modest amount of non annoying ads, so it’s not that bad.
I don’t mind unobtrusive ads. I’ve even been known to click on them if they interest me. My #1 reason why I normally avoid them and have sometimes blocked ads is safety. Some ads will attempt to install trojans or other viruses or programmes/links on your computer or browser; other times they lead to a site that will do the same. I really don’t think it’s immoral just to want to protect your computer’s functionality. Those things are kinda expensive. When ads are 100% safe I’ll be a lot more inclined to trust them and allow them to display.
I agree with Firestar. The only reason I have AdBlock and AdBlock Plus installed on Firefox and Chrome is to block the bad ads with viruses and the annoying ones. Now I see that some new types of ads can’t get blocked (like the Flash ads), and those are the interesting ones that people click on, so I don’t mind those (can’t block it with the AdBlockers anyways). I personally think that less ads makes the site more clean and uncluttered without a bunch of flashing/moving/bright, or just awkward ads all around the page. When somebody makes a standard for including a recognizable icon (sort of like a certificate) that shows that the ad is legit and not linked to bad sites/viruses, I’ll disable my adblockers :)