What does ABC, NBC, CBS, ESPN, Comedy Central, MSNBC, CNN and your website all have in common? Well, they are all content providers who are fully or partially ad funded (I’m guessing you are too). Oh, and you are all experiencing a viewer revolt over your advertisements.
Tivo and DVRs have made ad skipping within your TV shows commonplace. The growing number of DVR users has forced networks into a scramble to find new ways to reach their viewers with targeted marketing. Likewise, viewers online are using technology to ‘block’ ads from showing above, below, besides and within a site’s content. While the number of people using ad blocking software is still small, little is standing in the way of massive adoption.
An ad blocker typically works by selectively ignoring requests within your sites HTML or JavaScript to contact a 3rd party and download an advertisement. The software knows to ignore a request because someone has added it to a list, such as EasyList. The method used by the software and its list is crude but effective. Since most ads are served by 3rd party ad networks, the list need only identify the IP addresses or domains of major ad distributors to effectively block most of the ads on the web. It is worth noting here that ads that fail to be downloaded also fail to register an impression, effecting your ad revenue directly.
While tools such as ad blockers have a head start in the race, sites are now ramping up their countermesures. Knowing that they lose money by hosting ad-free content to visitors with ad-blocker, some sites are using a tool developed by hackers to identify ad blockers. Once located, those visitors can be sent special messages requesting that they turn off the blocking on your site. Some sites may even deny visitors with ad blockers access to their content.
One low-tech method to combat these ad blockers is to host ads within your own domain and from randomly generated urls. This takes both the predicability and the top level location out of the equation for most ad blockers. Still another suggestion, posted by the guy behind EasyList, is to create interstissile text ads within your content, much like what is done in the Radio industry as well as ad supported Podcasts.
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