Adblocking software is a response to abusive activity by advertisers.
It's the continuation of what amounts to an arms race between advertisers and adblock software developers. If the cycle of ad blocking and more agressive advertising continues, ultimately we all lose in a classic "tragedy of the commons" scenario, where overuse of a common resource can cause it's ruin.
At adblock.org, we're interested in discussing the issues, and pushing for all parties to stop the battle and work toward cleaning up the advertising mess that's been created on the Internet.
I didn’t see it myself to capture, but this one gets a nod. Shmuly Tennenhaus at Revenews points out one of the most ridiculous ads I’ve seen in a long time. A “Press the Fart Button” ad on The Jerusalem Post. That’s rich.
The first nomination for the Adblock.org advertising hall of shame goes to Lower My Bills. It doesn’t take long to find one of their over-the-top ads with creative that has nothing to do with the subject and everything to do with catching your attention. This one was found on Yahoo Finance.
There are many of them, but this is the first I’ve found since starting on this ad-rating project. Upon page-load, the video starts where an attractive woman is nuzzling a goofy guy. After several seconds the video stops and will resume if you mouse over it.
Rusty Griswold: I think he’s gonna pork her, Dad.
Clark Griswold: Just eat your breakfast, Russ.
Rusty still watching
Clark Griswold: He’s not gonna pork her, Russ.
Rusty Griswold: I think he’s gonna.
Clark Griswold: He may pork her, finish your breakfast.
This is reason #4,241 why we have ad blocking.
I came across the “screen peel” effect, offered by Visual Steel, in real life here: Information Week.
The ad presents itself as a peeled over corner of the web browser. It’s animated and the page corner moves and the content “behind” the exposed corner scrolls by.
When you mouse over the corner, the whole screen peels away to expose the full advertisement.
The effect is quite good, especially with a reflective image of the content onto the back of the peeled corner.
I do like the idea of a small ad that when interacted with, can expand and allow the user to explore further. If it weren’t for the pulsating corner, I’d give this one a positive rating. But it’s a bit too distracting.
A few years ago, we published a simple adblock detection script. Our purpose for this was to catch the users who had Norton Internet Security installed and inform them that the software they have installed may be blocking content (both ads and non-ads) without their knowledge. A few years have passed, and it seems that NIS have resolved some of their issues with default behavior and invisible installation.
The changing world of adblocking has us with many more users who are blocking ads intentionally than being unaware (at least for now), and therefore our detection script’s audience has changed (at least our implementation of the detection script).
Our purpose has always been one of awareness. Based on some recent feedback, we’ve developed another method for messaging Internet users, including the ones who are purposefully blocking ads, with a more passive but still visible notification about adblocking along with a site-specific alternative to adblocking software.
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Regardless of the actual topic of a post here on adblock.org, the comments typically devolve into a debate over the right to block ads.
So, let’s take the subject head on, shall we? Is the blocking of ads unethical?
A number of commenters here at Adblock.org have recommended that I take a look at Adblock Plus, a replacement to the long-time adblocking Firefox extension, Adblock. Many users of this Adblock extension recommend the use of the FilterSet.G blocking list.
I took a look to see how it works and from a Website owner and advertiser perspective, and how well it allows the user to control their adblocking.
A few years ago, I wrote a not-so-glowing review of PithHelmet, an ad blocking, privacy, web-page modification tool for Safari on OS X.
Now that I’m getting back into the swing of things here, being a mac user, I thought it would be a good exercise to give it a go again.
After a lengthy hiatus, we’re getting adblock.org back on track. We’ve moved the site from an old custom design to a Wordpress blog back-end. This will allow us to write more and better manage the spammy comments. We hope you find it useful and that we’ve resolved all old links to point to new ones.
We also plan to get back on the adblock scene, talking about issues and developments surrounding ad blocking community and and ad blocking software.
According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, the following is the standard Internet Advertising sizes. It is very likely that NIS blocks all of these ad sizes (and probably more).
It’s a good idea to avoid these graphic sizes in your website design. Also, at least for now, you can avoid getting these images blocked by NIS if you omit the width and height attributes from your img tags.
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If you’re concerned that you may have Adware on your computer, you’re not alone. It has become a mainstream problem and concern for computer users that they may have adware software on their computers. Generally speaking, software programs exist that are used to detect and give the user the ability to quarantine and safely remove the offending objects that are targeted as adware and spyware.
