Have you ever heard of “Adblock” or “Adblock Plus“? If you are a user of Mozilla and relatively tech savvy you probably have. For those that aren’t in the know,  “Adblock” or “Adblock Plus” are  plug-ins which block ads from being served by a website.  As a web matser, a web marketer and an avid web surfer, I see all sides of the arguments for and against the use of such plug-ins. There are many websites out there that do ugly practices such as using annoying, slow loading or irrelevant ads. Even more, it is frustrating to be “tricked” into clicking on an ad, rather then getting to actual content. I don’t blame people for blocking ads or using plug-ins.

Unfortunately, as a webmaster I see Adblock as a carpet bomb solution. Sure the user had choices, but even “good” behaving websites and advertisers are blocked. In a perfect world,  Ad blocking software would not block all sites, but only those deemed “abusive” by the web community. A sort of “vote” or “stumbleupon” button would log votes for abusive sites, and after 10 users it would be added to a blacklist. Therefore, ad-blocking would be automatic to that site. In the end the user should have full control, but bad sites would penalized. Thankfully, ad-block plug-ins are manageable and flexible, but many people do set and forget. I can’t tell you how often I forget to turn off the Ad-blocking plug-in at trusted sites. I am conscious of this because I want to reward webmasters for their hard-work. But for the average user, they are not going to know. In many cases, blocking ads can affect a websites revenue to such a degree it could have to shut down. I know you think “who cares”, but the reality is there are many small niche websites who rely on ad revenue  as their source of income. In many cases, that small income pays their hosting costs. Sure larger sites have other streams of revenue, but in many ways the ads work to tell you about new products or even their existence. Blocking ads chokes off their avenues to you.

Having said this, I don’t agree with some people who have made the argument that Adblock software will kill the web as we know it. We need to look carefully at such statements. According to the most recent info, there are 125 Million users of Mozilla, and at the same time, there are over 40 M downloads of some sort of Ad Blocking software. That is 1 in 3 Mozilla users using some way to block ads. I would suspect most people who install the add-on are unlikely to click on ads. Furthermore, with the current browser share of over 75% of users of Internet Explorer, puts things in a lot perspective. Sure IE has a Ad blocking add-on, but only 200k users have downloaded it. In reality though, most users of IE do not use such add-ons. They are not comfortable with anything beyond outside the box.

Nevertheless, what is one to do if one wants to bypass a users ad-blocker? In truth, there are many ways to do it, by looking at any quick search via Google, there are only two which I think are fair. The first assumes you don’t uses third party ads. That means you are hosting the ads yourself (no Adsense). Ads that are static images should load even with Adblock, those loaded with JavaScript will be blocked. This is not practical, but is one way to ensure an ad is displayed. The more extensive way, is one from Adblock.org. In my view it’s the much more preferred way for all parties. It allows one to block ads, on the user side, but it also explains the issues and allows for revenue.

This solution offers the option to disable advertising on your site with the option to donate.  We think it’s a great way to raise awareness to the problems of ad-blocking software and still retain the spirit of ad-blocking users want. This method is based on an honor system. How does it work:

Step 1. Download this JavaScript file and put it on your web server host: blockable.js

Step 2. Add the following line to the header of every page:

<script type="text/javascript" src="/blockable.js"></script>

Step 3. Put all advertisements inside a div or span tag with class=”blockable”. You may add surrounding div or span tags, or add the blockable class to an existing div.

<div class="blockable">
advertising html
</div>

Step 4. Create a page with donation instructions and links to turn ads off and on. Get an example script here.

You can edit to add your own messages. You can see a donate page example here for more ideas.

You should link to your donation page from wherever you display ads. For example, put a small link under every ad, inside the “blockable” div, so it goes away if users are using voluntary ad-blocking, but not if they are using another type of ad-blocking. We also ask, to do the right thing and leave the the link to adblock.org who came up with this idea.

We also recommend you download the ad-blocking plug-ins and to see how your site works. Once again we want to note, these solutions are really only necessary for sites who have highly technically users. The reason: those users will be more likely to have ad-blocking add-ons with their browsers. The average user is likely to use the browser as is….