We do okay with AdSense, and I haven't seen any evidence that suggests we're being impacted by ad blockers. Mind you, our audience is pretty mainstream (our topic isn't geared to techie types). and I'd guess that most of our readers take ads as they come.

I also suspect that people who *do* use blockers probably aren't great prospects for advertisers.

Side note: We earn a lot more from affiliate links than we do from advertising, because we use affiliate links in a way that adds value and solves problems for readers. That strategy won't work for every site, but it works well in some subject categories. (Travel is a perfect example, but The Wirecutter--a product-review site now owned by The New York Times--is an example of an information site that makes good use of affiliate links.)

"While we're at it, let us also outlaw the Mute function on all remote controls, since its sole function is to avoid hearing the advertising that is the broadcaster's primary source of revenue."

That is completely differwnt. An equivalent for the television would be a cable box that detects commercials and puts a black screen over them so you can't see them. Maybe that's coming next? Direct tv will now auto sensor all ads, unless they have been approved by them and pay them a percentage of the commercials profit. Do you think these ads blockers are not gearing up to take your money?

If you are going to block ads, then block ads. The big websites will be getting white listed (because they follow) the rules. I follow the rules to bit you are penalizing small business and helping big companies? This needs to go!

[edited by: Steven29 at 10:40 pm (utc) on Jun 2, 2018]

That is completely differwnt. An equivalent for the television would be a cable box that detects commercials and puts a black screen over them so you can't see them. Maybe that's coming next?

This exists since a while. In the 90's, you had VCR with skip commercials features. And nowadays, on most DVR , there is a function to skip commecials too - [gizmodo.com...]

[en.wikipedia.org...]

Stealing what? What is the damages/loss? Under what agreement are you operating, and is it enforceable? Reason why I ask, advertising is a third party (most folks) and the user has no agreement with them. If they chose to block THAT content it has nothing to do with the site. If, on the other hand, showing that third party content is REQUIRED to access the site, then theoretically the site is not accessible by anyone until they click "I agree". That would include search engines. Why? The user has located your site in a search engine and has every expectation the site is open access. Meanwhile, as a publisher, what expense have you endured to place a copy and paste js/script into a page?

Forced unilateral agreements are invariably found to be unenforceable in courts of law and COULD lead to sanctions against the forcing party. IOW, beware what you ask for you just might get more attention than desired, the unwelcome kind from jurists or regulators!

These are just a few questions that come to mind. Probably more might surface if one really takes a look at how "this all works".

Your revenue will drop more because of this versus ad blockers. Stealing!? Seriously. IMHO, if that is how you feel, then you should not have a website.

Care to explain how my revenue will drop? The people using ad blockers have no value to me at all, so if they leave it's no skin off my back. But if, say, 10% of them whitelist me then it will have a significant impact on my revenue.

FWIW, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm in business for the money. I've been self employed for the last 23 years... my first business was for the love of the industry, and my second was because I thought I could make a mark, but now I'm just in it to pay my bills and hopefully save up enough that I won't struggle when I'm retired.

This business costs me money to run. I have rent, insurance, payroll, and bandwidth to pay, and I cover that overhead with ads.

Don't like it? Don't come to any of my sites, and we'll both be happy.

Considering that, among visitors without ad blockers, may be something like 1% are clicking on ads, does it mean that the 99% others are also "stealing" like those with ad blockers ?

There are two significant differences:

1. At least I have the chance for them to click on an ad. Ad blockers take away any possibility of such a thing.

2. Last month about 40% of my Adsense revenue came from CPM, so they'll bring value even if they don't click on anything.

I lose about 50% of my potential ad impressions to ad blockers, which is pretty significant. I only use Adsense, with two 300x250 banners on the right and a 728x90 on the bottom, so it's not so heavy that it's obtrusive or anything like that. As I explained before, the majority of people blocking ads on my sites don't even seem to know that they're doing it.

Even though I'm having the highest traffic numbers of the last 15 years, my revenue is about 1/3 of what it was 2 years ago, thanks in large part to ad blockers. I've had to let 2 employees go, and now I'm working 16+ hours a day, 7 days a week, trying to do my job AND theirs.

So yes, ad blockers are a real problem for this industry.

Care to explain how my revenue will drop? The people using ad blockers have no value to me at all, so if they leave it's no skin off my back.

If they leave:
- this will account for your bounce rate, which is a criteria that Google is taking in consideration, of course it's hard to know how much it can impact a ranking,
- these people might share your content with others, on social networks, or link to your content from their site,
- they can also contribute to your content, if you have a forum, or comments section,

I am not saying blocking is good or bad, I am just saying that it's hard to predict the impact on the online eco-system of a site.

so it's not so heavy that it's obtrusive or anything like that.

Then, you should apply to get whitelisted by Ad Block Plus, this will already be an extra chance to get extra money from all the millions of ABP users.

@bt

3- change ad code to serve ads from ips - not domain names. 111.222.333.444/ and not ads.adserver.net/

Yep, once that IP gets on winhelp2002.mvps.org list = kiss that IP good bye for a while... ;)

Ad Blockers Should Be Illegal
Ad blockers deprive sites of needed income

Let's apply this to the real world. Do we outlaw DVRs and their fast forward buttons because commercials deprive networks out of needed income? Do we make blinking illegal because someone might miss an advertisement on a billboard?

I can understand the loss of advertising income is painful to many publishers, but the loss of freedom to choose would be much more painful to free societies. Just like people have a choice to block ads, publishers also have a choice to expand their income through other means if advertising revenue does not meet their expectations. Markets evolve. One can either adapt to meet these challenges or stay firmly set in their ways and become obsolete.

- Adblockers are surely hurting income in most cases
- Many solutions suggested will not just hurt, will kill your websites

Nobody forced me to build my personal websites, I didn't have the advertising business model in mind when I did, the choice was on me. After a while the ads paid many things, it was a nice surprise and model. Today I'm just as uncomfortable as many of you, the work put on my initial websites went up but the income goes down constantly.

Change? What I don't like about how things look now is that everything seems to be pushing me, forcing me to take a different direction. I sold stuff online and I got bored, that business model is dead to me regarding my past product, today I feel the situation is showing me opportunities to go in that direction again (with diff products) and I just don't want to. Ad business is easier and even with low income it made me lazy.

What's worse from my point of view is how easily we participate on the vicious circle of our own competitors. Many have nothing but use your/mine/our-websites to create new content. Many here do research, and reach places others don't, well it's easy to copy text (yours) and build new content, I just hate it. If the whole idea of working for advertisers hurts, this feeling of doing work in the indirect benefit of my competitors is killing my interest.

Then, you should apply to get whitelisted by Ad Block Plus, this will already be an extra chance to get extra money from all the millions of ABP users.

That's a good tip, thanks :-) I'm not sure how many of my users use Ad Block Plus versus something else, but anything helps!

I found the link here, for others that may need it:
[acceptableads.com...]

The arguments here are very one sided, so for my 2 cents worth... I have absolutely no time for web sites who sole purpose is to display ads for revenue. And that includes my favourite news site that is so infested with ads that it takes ages for a page to load. As for muting... I would like to neuter whoever is responsible for video ads auto-playing at full volume.

No. You do not have the right to publish obnoxious web sites for selfish intent. If you want visitors, clean up the rubbish! Otherwise go out and get a real job.

No. You do not have the right to publish obnoxious web sites for selfish intent. If you want visitors, clean up the rubbish! Otherwise go out and get a real job.

Now that's just silly.

I have the right to make my site look any way that I want. And you, as the consumer, have the right to not visit my site if you find it so annoying.

But in what world do you think you have the moral right to visit it anyway, use my bandwidth and take advantage of my resources (in your example, the news articles), and just circumvent the parts that we rely on to pay the bills? Do you think that reporters work for free? Do you think that servers are free? I'm sure that the news site you mention would love for their site to be faster, but just like everyone else in the world, they have bills to pay.

People with ad blockers are the same type of people that go to a Mexican restaurant, order a free water with extra lemon then use the sugar to make lemonade, eat all free the chips and salsa, then leave without feeling obligated to pay for anything... all while ranting about how the Mexican restaurant is too expensive, anyway, so they somehow deserve to get to eat and drink for free. And the restaurant should be happy to get it.

The amazing thing is that, somehow, you've justified it in your head, too. You don't even realize the immorality of your actions.

People with ad blockers are the same type of people that go to a Mexican restaurant, order a free water with extra lemon then use the sugar to make lemonade, eat all free the chips and salsa, then leave without feeling obligated to pay for anything... all while ranting about how the Mexican restaurant is too expensive, anyway, so they somehow deserve to get to eat and drink for free. And the restaurant should be happy to get it.

That's one heck of a generalization there. I happen to use an ad blocker and also like Mexican food. What prompted me to use an ad blocker was an attempt to regain control of my privacy. At the time about half the ads served online were handled by Google, and I don't like being tracked or profiled by some mega corporation that respects users privacy for only how they can use it to make more money. Unfortunately, to a large degree, publishers are in the same group - wanting as much money as they can get while doing their part to hand over the privacy of their visitors to Google without even a thought.

Google controls too much. From serving ads, search, their web browser, their email client, online video, etc., it's difficult to do anything online without firing some Google code. I personally don't like it, and have taken steps to minimize it. Blocking Adsense ads is just one part of a larger strategy to control my privacy.

Ad blockers are not going anywhere. If anything, ad blockers will evolve to become more intuitive and easier to customize. Those experiencing a loss in advertising revenue may be best to go their own way and find their own advertisers. I still see ads but they are not served by the major sources, and I don't go out of my way to block them. Another way to deal with the loss in revenue may be to go to the source and demand a larger percentage of the earnings, though I don't see that as an option companies like Google would even entertain.

For the record, I normally order unsweetened ice tea when I eat at a Mexican restaurant, use a sugar free sweetener, definitely chow down on the salsa and chips, and leave a 20% tip when all is said and done. Sorry to shatter your perception of ad block users....

But in what world do you think you have the moral right to visit it anyway,

Er.... because somebody made it available to a search engine that promises to deliver the best response?

Whet might be helpful is for websites to insert into their serp listing: WE REQUIRE PII AND DISPLAY ADS. That way no bandwidth will be lost because the user will know in advance whether to visit or not.

cssdude: People with ad blockers are the same type of people that go to a Mexican restaurant, order a free water with extra lemon then use the sugar to make lemonade, eat all free the chips and salsa, then leave without feeling obligated to pay for anything... all while ranting about how the Mexican restaurant is too expensive, anyway, so they somehow deserve to get to eat and drink for free. And the restaurant should be happy to get it.

Valid description on how some people browse the web, you forgot to mention the many who still send you an email asking you for more information (free) or just complain that you missed X piece of info to complete their homework. Many still leave the restaurant after grabbing your free stuff and say "mehh... I'm not impressed". Yet that doesn't describe the general population or the people we are interested on visiting our website. From beginning such people are not the ones we should be aiming for. But... also... taking the same description to the other extreme: people who make their own lemonade are not the ones willing to pay for it anyway (don't fit the free grabbers, I'm talking people who build things, they are a diff animal).

I described myself being someone who NEVER clicks on ads (for years) just like many other visitors. But, given an ad delivering interesting information I go to the website directly because I don't trust most ads (unless there is a validation click for a promo but that's something I rarely ever see, ever...). What I'm trying to say here is somehow your post points me on another direction that is worth considering: people buy stuff but not on your/my website. Is not the direct context of the thread but is worth considering.

In general, the context of the thread is mostly: Adblockers / income via advertising / how adblockers hurt income / people not seeing the ads / someone middle-man-tool getting in the way between us, ads and visitors. If we think about it we can see it from other angles discussed on this forum:

- whats your product? do you have a product?
- are you actually selling a product?
- is the visitor the product?
- is the info your product? if that's the case (I think it is in most cases) people get in, grab it for free and do something else, perhaps another site earning the money you/me are not earning.

Is not a pretty scenario if we think about this: so I don't click on ads but if I see an ad with good info I go to the website directly, I buy stuff yes, and if the product meets my needs and interest I will buy it (I have), so the advertiser got his product sold, I got to buy it, I just never took the middle-man path, hate to say it but most times the middle man doesn't have a product (yes I hate to say it) but we are analyzing options here. The point is not that we all must create and produce products and sell them, but consider the possibilities on having your own product and selling it on your website, it's your product, no middle man.


I was there in the past and was a diff challenge, good, then not so good. I got money, then advertising proved to be way better income. I'm not interested on selling a product (again), but considering my options is becoming something to consider, why? read the comments of most people (and I agree), ad income is pennies, how difficult is it to sell a product that matches those pennies? think about it.

On my last post: I do understand the thread and I do hate how things are going, but we should also consider the big picture, consider outsider opinions (that make sense) and things can go in the direction of: so you don't have a product, you work hard to post "text" that anyone can copy and republish, your income depends on people buying a product that you don't own or produce, no ads will be shown if people set up an adblocker, but yes still you don't have a product to sell... Somehow this is like me earning money (a tip) when people ask me where is the restaurant and I tell them "next block to the right", valid? well that's not the issue here, the issue is the restaurant is not even considering paying me straight (I don't even have a direct connection to that restaurant).

Is not a pretty scenario if we think about this: so I don't click on ads but if I see an ad with good info I go to the website directly, I buy stuff yes, and if the product meets my needs and interest I will buy it (I have), so the advertiser got his product sold, I got to buy it, I just never took the middle-man path

@explorador, I mentioned earlier that about 40% of my revenue in May came from CPM; paid by the impression, not click. So in your case, just seeing the ad was enough to bring revenue to me.

I think that many people just don't think of themselves as a "whole". It's true that the average user is worth about $0.002 per page to me, so one person with an ad blocker is completely negligible. But when 50% of my users have an ad blocker, it becomes a problem. And you, as one person, are just one tiny little drop in the bucket. It's pointless to convince you one at a time, something has to change on a global level.

The simple fact is that the majority of the free information on the internet is created in the hopes of making money, and there's no real revenue stream that's not based on ads. Some can get away with paid memberships, sure, but I'm sure that's the slim minority. And a very few are big enough to be on the stock market, so they don't care if the site itself ever makes money; they get paid based on the perception of value.

So all that ad blockers are doing is attacking the free internet. If you don't want there to be websites with free information, then by all means, use an ad blocker and attack that system. And when we're left with nothing but Facebook, Amazon, and big news sites with paywalls, please be sure to take responsibility for your part in the demise of the internet.

@csdude55 how do you get to 50% of user use the ad-blockers? How do you estimate that number, what are your assumptions?

Why are we the publishers attacking the users. Advertisers should be forced to pay for an impression regardless of whether the user has blocked it or not.

Why do I the publisher need to bear this costs?

If advertisers wants the public to see the ads (that they should be paying for) then the advertiser should be responsible to take the steps to make that happen.

how do you get to 50% of user use the ad-blockers? How do you estimate that number, what are your assumptions?

One, can compare the number of visitors/page views, and the number of of page views recorded by Adsense.

Advertisers should be forced to pay for an impression regardless of whether the user has blocked it or not.

With ad blockers, there are no impression at all. Ad blockers are blocking the requests sent to the ad server. (otherwise it wouldn't make sense).

@QuaterPan

One, can compare the number of visitors/page views, and the number of of page views recorded by Adsense.

No... Some ad-blockers block analytics scripts, some don't, at times ads are not loaded due to AdSense issues. There is no way I know to reconcile this, such that one could come to a dependable estimate.

The only somewhat reliable way would be to run an ad-block detection script and even that would be blocked if users have turned of the js. Alternatively one could use server logs, but then one would need to reliably separate out bots from humans. This in turn raise the question, should publishers be compensated for unsolicited bot traffic? Isn't that stealing too?

With ad blockers, there are no impression at all.

That is just a matter of design of the ad code. I'm certain that if motivated the code could be designed to report impressions with or without firing the ads.
It would work as:
Impression -> Auction -> Block -> no ad or Impression -> Auction -> no Block -> ad

whereas now it is:
Block -> no impression -> no auction -> no ad or No block -> impression -> auction -> ad

Obviously this is Utopian wishful thinking.

RE: Adblock users

A year ago, before Adsense started not filling ad units, I was filling the empty divs with my own advertisers, so I had a pretty rough tally of how many adblockers were being used on my sites.

While all 3 of my sites are completely different, they belong to the same categorical niche. I found about 12% of my page loads were performed by a user with some type of adblocker, which is not too far from other tallies:

11% of the global internet population is blocking ads

[pagefair.com...]

No... Some ad-blockers block analytics scripts, some don't, at times ads are not loaded due to AdSense issues. There is no way I know to reconcile this, such that one could come to a dependable estimate.

The estimation is enough to have an idea of how many visitors have ad blockers. Also, there are not only third-parties to analyses the traffic. For example, I am doing it myself, from server logs.

Another simple example, create two empty javascript files "ads.js" and "nomatterthename.js" add to your page

<script src="/ads.js">
<script src="/nomatterthename.js">

and look at your logs to see how many times each file was effectively downloaded. All ad blockers will block the ads.js, and will let the other one pass. This will give you the "minimum" number of people using ad blockers. (for example, this will not count other blockers like u block origin, or firefox private mode).

That is just a matter of design of the ad code.

No, because, a request has to be made to the ad server anyhow, and ad blockers are blocking all requests, so it's impossible for an ad network to know an impression was attempted. Or, it would request to send a notification server side, but then people would send false notifications.

@NickMNS, I do something similar to the others, but I don't really want to publicly announce how I do it. I'll describe it by PM if you want.

But I use my system to show an alternative ad (currently, I use an RSS feed for Coupons.com, but the revenue from that went from $150 /month to $10 this year so I'm about to drop it), and I count how many times that ad was shown.

I also use Urchin (which is server-side) in addition to Analytics, and I compare both to the numbers shown on Adsense. I can see that my traffic on Urchin hasn't really changed much over the years (it actually went up last year), while Analytics has gone down significantly, and Adsense has gone down even more significantly.

I was discussing this with a close friend over lunch, and she made a very interesting point. Who benefits from this the most, financially?

Well, think about it. Google and Facebook seem to be the ones really pushing for both mobile traffic and ad blockers. It seems counter-intuitive, until you realize that both make their money from stock... they couldn't care less about ads. It's all about perception.

Chrome is by far the #1 browser right now, so Google could easily stop third-party ad blocking extensions and instead have a built-in fix to prevent spyware and always allow approved ad styles. But they don't.

Facebook seems to be actively encouraging viruses and bots, which falsely inflates their traffic numbers and increase their stock value. And then, when people get viruses they install ad blockers to prevent the symptoms.

Big companies like Amazon and Ebay also benefit. Small businesses lose the ability to advertise, but everyone knows the big companies, so it just strengthens their hold on the marketplace and weakens their competition.

Plus, apps for Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Ebay come pre-loaded on phones, so even people that don't know how to download an app can use it easily. Joe's Auction House doesn't have that advantage.

So of course the big companies WANT the free internet to die. No free websites like Webmaster World means that more people are on Facebook trying to find answers. No place for a small business to advertise means more people use Amazon or Ebay. All win for the big companies, all lose for the small ones.

Instead of finding a solution that benefits everyone, small publishers seem to be promoting ideas and concepts that inevitably hurt themselves. It makes no sense, and it's very short-sighted on the publisher's end, but I believe that the big companies are banking on the rest of us being that short sighted.

Google and Facebook seem to be the ones really pushing for both mobile traffic and ad blockers. It seems counter-intuitive, until you realize that both make their money from stock... they couldn't care less about ads.

Google make most of their income from Adsense, by far. Stocks are their equity.

I have the right to make my site look any way that I want. And you, as the consumer, have the right to not visit my site if you find it so annoying.

I couldn't agree with you more.

But the difference is that my web site is not seeded to the max to trick visitors into coming to the web site.

Sure, some may claim that the ads offset the running costs of the site. But that is mostly BS because it costs little to host sites these days. The bandwidth is paid for by the visitor. You only have back channel to deal with and if you don't want to pay for that, stand aside for the similar sites that do provide the service/info that you are duplicating.

There are good approaches on the thread, some are focusing too much on finding who is to blame and how bad and evil they are. While I understand it, life and this forum itself push to other directions.

Adsense continues to work on some cases, in others is just pennies. There is a point where we might see a benefit in terms of performance, speed, user experience etc just by removing it all already, some already did this. Advertiser codes have bee hurting websites a lot for years.

There is a pattern on some forum members: started as a hobby, no money, then ads and money and then hating how things look. I totally understand it and feel the same way but it's not the only way to look at things. Depending who you talk to, people give you very crude, maybe cruel but good insights like:

- so all these years and you just don't have a product
- how hard is it to change your business direction?
- sell your own adspace
- sell products, do it yourself
- why beating a dead horse?

And some very, very interesting in the form of "at any point and age you face changing your trade".

For me, at present adblockers aren't a significant problem - maybe if I was in a different line I'd use them. However, some of the justifications for using them are...

The argument seems to go that it is fine to look at a website with an adblocker on because it is just a load of plagiarised, second rate text and photos for which the author / publisher doesn't deserve paying. I mean c'mon don't you know the internet is free, and that is a god-given right our forefathers fought for!

Here's another top tip. You can read the magazines and newspapers they put on display in stores for free too. But that's fine - if they go bust you can just look at their competitor's online, for free!

In fact everything should be free; well except your very precious time which you spend doing your much more worthy, important work!

I'm gonna tell you guys an interesting story. This is a true story, not a parable.

About 20 years ago, I had my first store. One day, one of my regular customers popped in to shoot the breeze, but he was mad! He started to tell me how this other nearby store (similar industry as mine, but not competition) was a rip off and cheating people.

"How is that?", I asked.

"They get this big truck load of product for one price," he said, "then they just turn around and sell it to you for a higher price! They're nothing but a bunch of crooks!"

I had to think about that for a minute... surely he didn't say what I thought he said? I mean, this guy is like 35 years old, surely he gets the basic concept of profit?

So I replied, "umm, buddy, that's what we do, too."

"What! Well, then, you're just ripping people off, too!"

"Maybe I'm misunderstanding," I said. "I mean, you know that this building costs like $2000 a month in rent. Those two employees over there cost about $2000 a month each in payroll. Plus I have utilities, insurance, inventory payments, tools... and I need to pay myself so I can cover my own bills. Without making a profit on sales, how do you think I'm supposed to pay those bills?"

His reply: "Well, you should make enough money on offering services!"

We did offer a few services at the time, charging $35 /hour. And I pointed out to him that, at best, we could do about 4 of those hourly services a day (but 4 a week was more likely), which was nowhere near enough to pay those bills I'd just outlined.

And then I asked, "How do you think Walmart pays their bills? That factory you work at... do you think they sell the product you make for the same price it costs them to make it? How do you think they pay your salary?"

With that, he just shrugged his shoulders, called me a crook, and left. Never to be seen again. And I'm sure he went down the road to tell another business about me being a rip off and cheating people.

Why am I telling you guys this story? I think that people with ad blockers have the same logic that this former customer of mine had. In their mind, businesses don't need money to survive, they should all just exist for the honor of being able to serve them! They might have overhead, but that's not "my" problem.

You have to ask yourself this. If a person employs an adblocker would they actually be a quality conversion for your advertiser? It is your job as a publisher not only to get the click but to acquire a qualified lead for your advertiser. The person with the adblocker has already said I am not interested in buying anything so I don want to see ads. How serious of a click do you think is going to be? Think about surviving years with happy and committed advertisers. This is how you make long term stable money. The quick and easy way is the path of the dark side.