 |
| The Anti Adblock Killer logo (kindly provided by reek) |
When I'm using someone else's computer, or my own after a fresh install, I'm often surprised, overwhelmed even, by the amount of advertisements webpages are nowadays clenched with.
I understand that the owners have to make a living and pay for web hosting somehow, but things are getting out of control. At least in my opinion.
Things are even worse on less reputable domains: There, they literally trick you into clicking on ads by making them look like legitimate content, or more recently, create "invisible" ads on top of a desired link that will direct you to ads on your initial click. Ain't that sneaky...
Blocking ads is very easy. So I'm not going to spend too much time explaining it. It's a matter of installing an app or extension and setting them up to your needs. I'm using AdAway on my phone and uBlock Origin on my PC, but many others will get the job done as well.
Instead I'll try to give website owners who would like their ads to bypass these ad-blockers some tips on how they could go about achieving this it.
Not sure why. Maybe because I feel a sorry for them, or maybe I'm impressed by their efforts, or maybe just for the sake of it. Yes, that's the one.
Not sure why. Maybe because I feel a sorry for them, or maybe I'm impressed by their efforts, or maybe just for the sake of it. Yes, that's the one.
Let's get some things out of the way first:
Many websites rely on third parties ad-providers to create and provide ads for them. They usually get into some kind of agreement with them, and point them to wherever they want ads to be displayed. Big ad-providers (yes, you Google) handle billions of ads requests every day and need to keep track of them. This is probably done by using a certain naming or numbering scheme.
The few that don't rely on third parties ad-providers, still use very conventional and common ways, which are very predictable as well. More on that later.
The few that don't rely on third parties ad-providers, still use very conventional and common ways, which are very predictable as well. More on that later.
Adblockers compare all DNS and/or web requests (so-called GET request) made by an app or a web browser with a list of known ad-servers/ad-technique and prevent them from loading. There is of course more to it, but this is the basic idea.
So you may think that as long as your advertisement provider is not in the list, it won't be blocked. That's true. But Fortunately (or unfortunately for advertisers) there are a lot of lively communities who have devoted themselves to update and distribute these lists EVERY THREE DAYS.
So now that you know, and with no further ado, here's what you need to do:
- Don't rely third parties ad-providers
Because of their nature of being all over the place, they're easily blocked, if they aren't blocked already. If possible get into an agreement with your ad-provider and asked them to send you their ads. You'll then host these alongside your "actual" content, so that both of them carry the same hostname. - Bend the rules of web development
You're mistaken if think hosting ads on the same domain as your website alone will save you.
You should generally avoid using descriptive names for CSS and HTML elements. Especially for those related to ads. Something like ".ad-banner" is way too obvious and will be blocked right away.
Be creative. You could for example use an IP address rather than a hostname, encode it to Base64 a few times, put them inside a fancy JavaScript function, and hide all of it behind a short URL. This should confuse ad-blockers. Always try to make it look like anything else but advertisement. Here's a great example. (Banner on the left) - Don't Anti-Adblock. Ever.
Here's the deal: Don't ever force us to turn off our ad-blocker. Seriously. With this, you're basically asking for trouble. It's not like your website is so unique that we won't find another one like it. If that was the case, you would need any ads. And when has that ever worked? Many of us rather leave your page than disable their ad-blocking.
If you can't come after the advices given here, just stick to bothering newbies, old folks or less tech-savvy individuals with ads and hope for better days.
