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.
September 11th, 2004
Thank you for visiting AdBlock.org, a website promoting responsible use and development of AdBlocking software.
We acknowledge that you are developing adblocking software based on user demand and we do believe in user choice. We feel this demand is fueled by a large amount of annoying and distracting advertisements on the Internet and while these advertisers have surely been overzealous and careless in their actions, the same problem is possible on the other side, in development of AdBlocking software that goes too far in its actions.
Therefore, we respectfully suggest the following guidelines in developing AdBlock software.
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Posted in For Developers, Adblock Software | 6 Comments »
September 10th, 2004
Norton Internet Security 2004 has ad blocking turned on by default. One of the ways that NIS attempts to block ads is that they block link tags that contain text that matches any entry in a long list of targeted text and words. for example, NIS will block any link that has contains the text “/ads/”. This blocking is indiscriminate and will block any html that contains the text in this adblock list. All of this is done invisibly and without the user actively choosing this behavior.
Update 2004-Sept-10: There have been no major changes to the default block list with the exception of one item marked below. (and frankly, we may have just missed it from the last list). There appear to have been a number of changes to the exception list though, again, nothing notable. We may start tracking that list as well.
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Posted in Adblock Software, For Webmasters | 22 Comments »
September 1st, 2004
We’ve had a large number of new visitors from various webmaster boards. If you’re one of them, welcome! Thanks for spreading the word.
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Posted in Adblock Software | 69 Comments »
August 31st, 2004
According to the Symantec website, starting this fall, Norton will be making their new line of Internet security products available. On August 18, 2004, this press release states that pre-orders are available as of the end of August. Elsewhere on the website is indication that the software will be available on October 1, 2004.
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Posted in Adblock Software | 2 Comments »
August 19th, 2004
Why does adblocking software exist at all? After all, advertising not something that’s so loathsome or unheard of in other media. We all put up with advertising on television, print media, billboards, even blimps and banner-towing airplaines.
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Posted in For Developers, Adblock Software, For Webmasters, For Consumers | 2 Comments »
August 18th, 2004
Masking Links
A technique to avoid the effect of adblock software is to mask the information that the software is looking for. Any URL is susceptible to blocking by adblock software, whether it is is an image url, Javascript, or a click URL.
A simple technique is to use a server side programming language to handle every url through your own server with a redirect.
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Posted in For Webmasters | 10 Comments »
August 10th, 2004
An interesting approach to adblocking is that of broadbandreports.com’s webmaster with this page on adblocking. If you register with the site, you can choose to browser with no ads. Or, to try it out, you can turn off ads for an hour.
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Posted in For Webmasters | 2 Comments »
July 27th, 2004
The popularity of adblocking software has resulted in a very large number of adblocking software packages. We’re not necessarily against the concept of adblocking software, but we feel that it is important that the software is well designed, configurable, and installed deliberately by the computer user.
There are a large number of ad-blocking software packages available, some are much better designed than others. We recommend that you take a good look at what’s available before deciding which software to use. If you must use adblocking software, we’d recommend that you find one that is very configurable and is visible in its operation so you know when a website has been modified by the software.
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Posted in Adblock Software | 15 Comments »
July 27th, 2004
The AdBlock detection script will notify your users of the impact that they have on your, the website owner, by using AdBlocking software.
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Posted in For Webmasters | 27 Comments »
July 27th, 2004
Install this script on your site to notify and educate your users about the effects of AdBlock software by presenting them with a message on the page if and only if they have software on their computer that has prevented an image from loading properly. Follow the instructions below to install and test the Adblock Detection Script.
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Posted in For Webmasters | 32 Comments »