"Half of our users block ads. Now what?"

[wraith808]

That's just it (responding to the spoiler).  You don't pay for TV- it's broadcast.  And what is the rule about anything that you don't pay for?

[f0dder]

Anyone interested can look up LRPS (long range penetration strain). It's not a new idea and has been around for decades.

-Renegade (March 11, 2013, 08:55 AM)

Sounds painful!  

[superboyac]

best of all - sell your own product.

-40hz (March 10, 2013, 08:14 AM)

Yes.

[SeraphimLabs]

The real hassle with adblocking is when you're counting on ad revenue to run a business.

But honestly, the bottom line is very much there even with adblocking. I know people visiting my client sites adblock at a fairly high rate, and I don't completely blame them.

If everything is being managed correctly, a simple header-footer ad arrangement returns nearly 10:1 over the cost of hard drive space and bandwidth. If a business can't make ends meet on that, they either are too small of a scale, or are wasting large sums of money elsewhere.

I actually show a higher return per unit cost giving away hosting than I do selling it. It's all in what kinds of content you have, and how it is presented.

But once again, because big business can't handle playing by the rules and treating the end user with respect, the little guy gets shafted and has to deal with users conditioned to either ignore or block ads.

What really irks me is I have multiple times told the advertising networks text and images only. No flash, no sound. And every time I turn around I'm seeing one of those stupid blinky noisemaking flash ads in my rotation, irritating my clients as much as it irritates me. A few times as well I've observed malware in ads too, although when I find one of these I usually flag it with the advertiser so it gets pulled down.

[Tinman57]

The real hassle with adblocking is when you're counting on ad revenue to run a business.

But honestly, the bottom line is very much there even with adblocking. I know people visiting my client sites adblock at a fairly high rate, and I don't completely blame them.

If everything is being managed correctly, a simple header-footer ad arrangement returns nearly 10:1 over the cost of hard drive space and bandwidth. If a business can't make ends meet on that, they either are too small of a scale, or are wasting large sums of money elsewhere.

I actually show a higher return per unit cost giving away hosting than I do selling it. It's all in what kinds of content you have, and how it is presented.

But once again, because big business can't handle playing by the rules and treating the end user with respect, the little guy gets shafted and has to deal with users conditioned to either ignore or block ads.

What really irks me is I have multiple times told the advertising networks text and images only. No flash, no sound. And every time I turn around I'm seeing one of those stupid blinky noisemaking flash ads in my rotation, irritating my clients as much as it irritates me. A few times as well I've observed malware in ads too, although when I find one of these I usually flag it with the advertiser so it gets pulled down.

-SeraphimLabs (March 11, 2013, 11:50 AM)

+1  Exactly.  I remember a time when I actually clicked on ads of some of my favorite (free) sites to make them a little cash to keep things running.  But the advertisers started with their bag of tricks, including mouse-trapping which is illegal to start with.  I finally got tired of all their little tricks and started blocking them all.....

[hgondalf]

Would it increase your revenue if someone invented an application that would automatically click ads? The app could then discard the results of the click or perhaps place the results (and cookies) in some kind of browser-based sandbox.

[TaoPhoenix]

Would it increase your revenue if someone invented an application that would automatically click ads? The app could then discard the results of the click or perhaps place the results (and cookies) in some kind of browser-based sandbox.

-hgondalf (May 15, 2013, 09:13 PM)

They already exist, and I think they violate terms of the ad agreements.

[Tuxman]

Interestingly, these days some of the largest German "online newspapers" (spiegel.de, faz.net et cetera) started a campaign against ad blockers by showing large red "pls disable your ad blocker because we'll die if you don't" sobbing banners on top of the page.

The result:

The request from German publishers to turn off #adblock led to +129% @AdblockPlus installs & +167% donations. Thanks!

I like it.

[tomos]

Came across a adblocker-workaround yesterday:

was checking out flights (ryanair.com) and had to first fill a captcha -
the captcha involved clicking an ad and waiting till it told me what text to write - real 1950's stuff like [product xyz cleans best]

I'd imagine they get a fairly good price from the advertiser - not only do we have to watch the ad, we also have to parrot it's slogans - great brainwashing [advertising] methods.

Unfortunately I didnt take any screenshots and today they just have a relatively regular captcha...

[SeraphimLabs]

Would it increase your revenue if someone invented an application that would automatically click ads? The app could then discard the results of the click or perhaps place the results (and cookies) in some kind of browser-based sandbox.

-hgondalf (May 15, 2013, 09:13 PM)

They already exist, and I think they violate terms of the ad agreements.

-TaoPhoenix (May 16, 2013, 12:30 AM)

Yes.

Not only are you specifically forbidden from using any kind of auto-click software, you also are forbidden from asking your users to click on them or using software to require them to be clicked on.

Best practice is to not talk about the ads in public at all on a site.

[relipse]

What do you think made that software back in the 90s to go out of business, where you put ads on your desktop?
Users would get a program that moved the mouse and clicked the ads. (iforget what it was called) but it soon went out of business.

[mouser]

May I plug my recent long post on Project Wonderful and other ad services that aren't based on clicks and so aren't susceptible to this kind of click-fraud.