iOS9 and ad blockers. Great user experience!
 

So I installed iOS9 on my wife's iPad and then picked up the Crystal Ad blocker in the app store for 99 cents. It blocks all of the horseshit that sites try to load on her. Highly recommended!

because it wasnt possible before, now its in the news it is and every apple sheep is downloading an adblocker. I wonder what effect this has on content creators on youtube who depend on those ads.

They removed one of those adblockers from the App Store today. I imagine that's just the beginning.

The creator removed it, probably from publisher backlash: Just doesn?t feel good ? Marco.org

It only works in Safari and much of the Youtube watching is likely in the Youtube app.

I personally use https://www.ghostery.com/en/ on all our computers. When you install the plugin and got to a site like TMZ or The Verge it is astonishing how much shit is loaded. Beacon after beacon, ad after ad, tracker after tracker. I had over 50 pieces of crap load from each of those sites and hamper my user experience, now everything loads quickly after blocking. Much like adult, these media companies have to beat the shit out of something and ride it until the wheels fall off at the expense of a positive end-user experience.

I went to the MacWorld UK site yesterday and after waiting 10 seconds for the site to load (because of what seemed like millions of ads) I had to leave the site immediately afterwards because there were so many ads I could not click around the site without running into one.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but there needs to be some level of balance.

I just went to the main Macworld site and 20 Trackers/ads/beacons loaded and that is light compared to TMZ, The Verge, and others.

I am all about these companies making money but I'm not down with the abuse and making the Internet shitty.

Yeah, just say that part of the story.

The Most Popular Paid App in the App Store Is Gone

http://content.screencast.com/users/...f/00000015.png

Every time a webmaster thinks an adblocker is a good thing, a kitten dies.

/facepalm.

Death to Adblock.

There are creative ways around ad-blockers to serve ads that are not offensive to UX (user experience).

50% of ad networks ads are never seen or fraudulent. I don't know how much of this 50% is caused by ad-blockers but it is immaterial in the real advertising picture.


Adapt or die.

My Ghostery install shows 26 now for The Verge so they must have toned it down since I initially checked awhile back. However, the 69 Ads, beacons, trackers that TMZ loads is pretty rediculous if you ask me:

http://i58.tinypic.com/2uogg43.jpg

I think you both have it wrong.

Nobody minds an ad once in a while, but too many websites have way way WAY too many ads. The content that the customer wants is surrounded and completely lost in banners, pop-ups, pop-udders, voice-ads, fake IM ads... no wonder ad blocks are gaining in popularity.

If you want to know how to do it right, look no further than right here on GFY. They have a single rotating banner at the top, and OCCASIONAL-ONLY pop-up when you enter the site, and small tiny banners at the bottom.

The placement is perfect too. All of the content you want, is exactly in the middle of your screen where you expect it. All it takes is a quick glance to look at the banner and decide instantly if its interesting or relevant to you. You are never ever bothered by it.

If GFY content was surrounded with endless ads and managed the way some other adult sites are managed, then GFY's popularity, usage and revenue would go way down, way fast.

No actually you are the one that has it wrong. Ad blockers block ALL ads, they don't allow the occasional ad here and there. So as a webmaster this is not very convenient for us now is it?

From an interesting article:
Will Ad Blocking Be Google's Kryptonite? - Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) | Seeking Alpha

https://staticseekingalpha.a.ssl.fas...101_origin.png

Look at the trend line -- don't cry about it innovate and adapt :2 cents:

If best practices were followed from a publishers perspective, what is the best way to deal with ad blockers ? Deny them access to the site ? Restrict them to certain content ? Go 100% subscription only ?

(just playing devils advocate here)

A lot of articles talk about using ads that don't bother users, but if you visit a site with friendly ads with most ad blockers, they are gone just like the ads that do bother users.

Where are the guidelines to follow so that your ads are user-friendly and will not be blocked? People talk about them, but then ad blocking software blocks those ads anyways.

The ads that don't get blocked are not the friendly ones, but the ones that trick the ad blocking software.

More ad-blocking software is gonna pop-up. And I don't doubt Operating Systems will probably start coming with ad-blocking software. Look at how pop-ups have had to keep evolving to Chrome. We are just gonna have to deal with this.

Maybe make your content look like ads too. Maybe put content videos and images in a directory called "ad_blasting_banner". That way people that use ad-blockers see nothing. Just a thought.

Good question with no pat answer.

We have been large network traffic buyers but the ROMI (return on marketing investment) on our network ad investments has deceased radically the past few years.

I think advertising contracting with websites that will serve our ads and are willing to only be compensated for the real CTR or actual sales conversions would show a much greater ROMI.

We have various fraud click thru measuring and prevention systems in place and we are not getting what we are paying for currently in web network advertising :2 cents:

The other side of the coin is: serving our own ads hotlinked. Right now this is not that big of an issue but ad-blocker use will affect us at some point in the near future as ad-blocker users are currently affecting other advertisers' hotlinked ads ROMI.

Eloquently stated:

Seth's Blog: Ad blocking

and LOL:

Ad Blocking Irony + Subtraction.com (with video showing the issue). Fucks up user experience!

"This advertisement literally makes it impossible for me to read about blocking advertisements. Perfect."

I like Seth's thinking ...
''in yo' face'' advertising even if seen is rarely effective.

But the second article -- I think there are many alternatives for the same content on the web and a better alternative is only a click away. More importantly, the web surfing consumer knows that it's true ...

Add me to the sheeple. I did it based on this thread and wow what a difference it makes.

What really prompted me to go down this road is my 9 year old son. I bought him a new laptop about 5 months ago. It was a Signature Series version from the Microsoft store. That means it doesn't come with typical bloatware or shitware and is completely clean. Within 72 hours he had 6 pieces of adware installed in Chrome hijacking his browser that took me two days and a combo of different apps to fully remove.

He loves Minecraft and likes downloading and installing new maps to play. Many of the actual downloads come through Adfly (or similar) and they put the real download links out of sight, instead, have fake "download now" ad banners leading to adware. It turns out since he is 9 and not seasoned to spot trickery, he was duped into clicking the wrong things and it hosed his computer for a few days so I essentially had enough and founds Ghostery. He has not had a problem since!!

Minecraft add-ons are a popular way to spread RATS too. Just in case, I would go ahead and tape over the camera.

I just looked up what RATS are. Damn that is screwed up. Thanks for the tip.

Yeah, I was just thinking about this with my folks. They are older seem a bit daft on what are ads and what aren't. This solves that.

But to be clear. The coolest part of it is the speed. Everything loads super fast now.

I even click on those fucking things.

I hate downloading any software from a site other than the company that built it.

Unfortunately, much is to do with user experience.

No of course it is not convenient.

The point I was trying to make is that there are just way too many ads these days. Look at Youtube for example. It used to be a fun place to hang out and waste time on, but now using it is annoying as hell, so its no wonder that ad blockers are gaining in popularity.

I seldom surf the net, read news or sports anymore because of the absurd amount of ads.

I can't read yahoo sports without a bogus "update your flash" popup freezing my screen.

Going to install ad blocker myself.

I did it on my ipad. My computer that still does a little web business needs to see the real site.

My home internet connection was down for a few days, so I used my phone to check out various sites I'm addicted to, and found the mobile web experience horrible.

On some sites, I couldn't read the content because of ads blocking the page I was trying to access. This was my first real experience with the mobile version of the web (I use a desktop 95+% of the time, because I do a lot of image and video editing), and it really put me off... I'm surprised that so much traffic is now mobile traffic when the surfing experience is so awful.

I'm sure making money off stolen content is much harder when surfers install ad blocking software.