Friday, April 1, 2016

Advertisers Win the Ad-Blocking War

Advert blocking grew by more than 41% in 2015 and cost the industry $22 billion in revenue. Ad-blockers are not new but there has been a significant elevation in public consciousness partly owing to the number of options available. You have probably encountered adverts from browser vendors promoting their ad-blocking systems. Only the popular Lynx browser is yet to implement similar technology.

Ad-Blocker Blockers

Publishers began to retaliate last year and several popular sites now show messages to any visitor running ad-blocker software. Messages range from gentle suggestions to purchase a subscription to actively hiding page content while an advert-blocker remains active.

Detecting an ad-blocker is simple. A script checks whether the advertising script has loaded or a specific DOM node has content. If adverts fail to appear, the article is unloaded or the visitor is redirected to another page.

Beta Ad-Blocker Blocker Blockers

Ad-blocker blockers depend on client-side scripts which, themselves, can be blocked. Ad-blocker software teams can block the blocker within minutes of a new website script being reported. Several solutions are in development which thwart any publisher's attempt to undermine the ad-blocking process.

Frail Loop

Advertisers and ad-blocker organisations spend inordinate amounts of time battling the innovations of the other. In computing terms, this is known as a "frail loop". Two or more technologies recursively weaken each another until neither is effective.

Advert Network No Opt-out Initiative

Dozens of ad-revenue-dependent organisations have formed the Free Advertising and Responsible Targeting Syndicate. Their first proposal, the Advert Network No Opt-out Initiative, aims to end advert blocking forever by reversing content and advert publication methods.

Continue reading %Advertisers Win the Ad-Blocking War%


by Craig Buckler via SitePoint

No comments:

Post a Comment