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New Online Ad Technology To Bypass Popup Blockers
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Apr 28, 2004 04:00 PM
from the spy-v-spy dept.
from the spy-v-spy dept.
RetroGeek writes "Falk eSolutions AG is claiming it can detect and defeat pop-up and pop-under ad blockers. The best quote is that when they detect an ad blocker they will 'replace a pop-up or pop-under ad with what are called "floating" ads, or ads that appear as transparent images over Web-site content.' As far as I am concerned they can place as many transparent images as they want. He probably meant translucent. It should be easy to defeat the detection, after all visit a web site, the pop-up blocker detects a Javascript command, then doesn't run it. Replace this with: the pop-up blocker detects the Javascript command, runs it, then places the result into a bit-bucket. Any Mozilla devs here?" WebGangsta adds "While this may ignite another round of online advertising purchasing, this news doesn't affect anybody who uses a customized HOSTS file to stop the majority of ads from appearing anyway."
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why (Score:5, Insightful)
using these popup blockers have said they don't want them, to try to
defeat them is only going to make many users hate you, and your product
I would see that if it is a legit company they just might see their sales
drop from the angry net users. For those who have not disabled javascript
this just might be the nail that gets them to disable it.
Re:why (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:why (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually a lot of spammers are middlemen, they make money wether a product sells or not, they work as advertisers and get paid by the people selling the product. What they rely on is the percecption that "spam works", so people will hire them to do spam campaigns.
Spammers make profits without making a sale [washtimes.com]
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Re:why (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:why (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:why (Score:5, Informative)
Once upon a time, PPI was the only way banners worked.
PPI is somewhat trivial to scam; have the image 50 times as a 1x1px image, tricking users to see it, etc etc etc.
Pay Per Click came next, and is still how "search engines" such as Oveture make money. But not used very much outside PPC search engines. Payments used to be noted with the search results, but I cant find any right now. "Casino" usually paid >$19.00 per click; usually was around 2-3c per click.
Most banner adds, these days, are Pay Per Lead, or Pay Per Sale. Cookies stay around for at least a couple of months, so the "proper" person is credited. half.com (part of eBay) was paying $5/per lead at one point.
Actual product providers (be it membership sites, or physcial goods) are notorious for not paying out for anything but PPL or PPS... The excuse being "bad ratios" Of course, they don't tell you what the required ratio is.
Anyone who has a PPI setup, and is honest about payments, would quickly go out of business.
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Except (Score:5, Interesting)
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because (Score:5, Informative)
This is a problem with technologies that allow your ad to be delivered to millions of people cheaply. If even a tiny fraction of people respond, it won't matter that you annoyed the hell out of the other 99%.
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Re:because (Score:5, Informative)
the thing is designed to get people started, work for few weeks, a month at the most and some very rare sellers staying for longer than that(some people just have a good voice), and then to quit. so the usual caller is _supposed_(in their business plan) to make few sales and then to quit.
so in reality basically telemarketing isn't really profitable(for most of the persons involved in it), it's just driven through something that is in effect a scam to lure young, inexperienced, desperate stupid people to make phonecalls to people for few weeks without pay. Mainly because of this in my opinion telemarketing as such should be totally banned or at the minimum have a law that would state that you can't hire people to do it on provisional pay.
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Re:because (Score:5, Insightful)
But it should matter to the owner of the medium, because after all, ads can't exist without a medium to run on. Pissing off 99% of their users is not generally desirable for most web site owners, so I am not sure if this is going to fly. At the same time as pop-up blockers have become popular, site owners have realized they're actually hurting their own business by hosting them. No, not every site, and pop-ups do still exist (though as a Firefox user you can forgive me if I don't know this from experience), but there have been plenty of high-profile companies that have sworn them off recently. Even AOL's cutting back.
I think that's what's getting lost in all this. Advertisers are still at the mercy of the site owners, not the other way around (despite the bad economy... it only makes things worse to piss off your users). I doubt you'll ever see this technology used on a major commercial site; it'll probably be relegated to the internet red light district where most pop-ups seem to be served up these days to begin with.
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Re:why (Score:5, Insightful)
If the people who are working on this actually cared about offending people, they wouldn't be working in marketing.
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Re:why (Score:5, Insightful)
marketing is a career that one chooses once one has graduated college and realizes one has no other skills companies want
I dislike these arguments of moral superiority, which lend greater importance to these issues than they truly warrant. You are being annoyed by pop-up ads, not seriously harmed. You are free to avoid any site that uses them.
I don't think it follows that needing a salary so that one can feed one's family is equivalent to being morally challenged. I'm not sure if you have children or not. But if you did, would it be moral of you to turn down a marketing job in a tough economy?
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Re:why (Score:5, Insightful)
If you had morals, you would realize that the ends do not justify the means. Just because your children are hungry does not automatically give you carte blanch to set your moral aside. In fact doing so only proves you never had any morals to put aside.
Character means you find a way to feed your children without being immoral or unethical. Saying there is a tough economy and you had no choice just shows the quality of your character.
What a man does with his life is not nearly as important as how he does it.
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Re:why (Score:5, Insightful)
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Get over yourself (Score:5, Informative)
I happen to work in a bio lab and actually like it when the sales reps come by. I need their stuff and they're constantly filling me in on their new products. The new RNAi stuff that these companies are coming up with make my life a hundred times easier. The sales reps are knowledgeable about them and don't feed me bull about what they can do, but give me the facts.
There are also tons of moral ad guys who do pro bono work for good causes. I know a marketing guy who does pro bono work for a local wild-life rehabilitation center. That's a pretty sweet deal for the non-profit conservancy.
So stop being so fucking ignorant and realize that not all marketers are out to dupe and harass people.
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Re:why (Score:5, Insightful)
For the large, reponsible companies-- brands 80% of the population of your home state would recognize-- of course not. But for Fly-By-Night-Porn.com and other tiny web companies which would otherwise get zero business, even a minimal response rate from those getting the ad can be well worthwhile, even if the other 99.999% of the people seeing the ad swear up and down they "will NEVER do business with those #$%^ing @#$%^&*s so long as they exist". And they can always change names [infoworld.com] if the original company name gets tarnished.
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Do you watch television? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you could choose, would you choose to have the commercials disabled? Of course you would.
With this reasoning advertisers can safely assume that even annoying ads pay off.
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Re:why (Score:5, Informative)
The truth is, popup ads have about 10-20 times as high a clickthrough rate as regular banners do (even flash banners) - so the companies will keep paying for them. Where there is a will and a lot of money, there is a way.
If popups become ignored (as you propose, as opposed to being simply blocked) on a significantly large scale (doubt it will happen though), ad companies will not even attempt to show popups, but jump straight to DIV layer ads, so you're not really going to ever solve this problem permanently.
However, consider that Mozilla has had blocking for a couple of years now, and the ad industry didn't really do anything about it. It's not until Yahoo and Google (and soon MS) got in on the action that they started to get worried and started coming up with circumvention techniques. The truth is that Mozilla is currently not a big enough market for the companies to worry about. In fact, most current implementations of floating DIV ads leave mozilla users alone.
Don't expect this privilege to continue if our little underdog of a browser earns any significant market share.
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click throughs (Score:5, Informative)
some are priced by impressions, so I might pay for 700K downloads of my ad image.
Some are priced by click-throughs so I might pay for a 100K clicks.
Some are paid by a commission on sales generated durring the visit after a click-through.
There is advantages to each as well as disadvantages no matter which side of the fence your on. Few people realy object to seeing well targeted, tastefull ads, almost everyone objects to tacky, intrusive shot-guns ads.
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Re:why (Score:5, Informative)
As a webmaster, let me assure you that the percentage of the web audience who have disabled javascript (or in fact knows how to do so), is so insignificant that it's not worth talking about.
Again, it's not people who run mozilla or paid $29.99 for an IE blocker that this measure is targeting. These people hadly make up 10% of the web users... The reason ad companies are scrambling now to circumvent blockers is because the two largest toolbars now provide them, and soon so will the most popular web browser.
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Re:why (Score:5, Insightful)
So one ad busting proxy can protect thousands of people from ads all day
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These guys missed the boat. (Score:5, Insightful)
These people are trying to serve ads to people actively trying to block them. Oh yeah, that's brilliant.
Re:These guys missed the boat. (Score:5, Funny)
Will I pay to renew in a couple years? Hell no. Will I click another banner ad to do so for free? Oh yeah.
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Is this really a problem? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is this really a problem? (Score:5, Informative)
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This is too easy (Score:5, Interesting)
Every time I see a pop-up that defeats my pop-up blocking, first I'll for damned sure never buy that product. In addition, I will never go to the hosting website again. And I'll make damned sure they know why.
There is no topic on the internet that can be served by only one site.
ho-hum (Score:5, Informative)
They're likely talking about layers.. which is something that Adblock [slashdot.org] already deals with. (along with Flash, images and custom paths - i.e. block anything in the directory */ads/*).
Just another reason to use Firefox/Mozilla.
Re:ho-hum (Score:5, Funny)
For a moment I thought you were linking to some great new software that stopped lawyers ... now THAT'd be a great new product!
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Re:ho-hum (Score:5, Funny)
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Just like the old saying (Score:5, Funny)
Here's an example... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's an example of this style of anti-popup-blocker advertisement. This site, which is very useful by the way, will not "work" if javascript is not enable or ads are not shown.
I haven't tested this in other browsers, but this system is pretty neat (awful?)... it changes itself so its hard to detect the functions and block them.
Not awful...They have the right idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds to me like they're taking a good approach. They're not attempting to circumvent anyone's ad-blocking software--anyone who doesn't want to see their ads, doesn't have to.
But they're providing a valuable service, and they deserve to be compensated. If you don't want to pay for it by letting them display their banner ads, then you don't get to use their site.
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Re:Here's an example... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Here's an example...(Alternatives) (Score:5, Informative)
As said before, there will always be alternatives that don't do such things. Boycott the ones who do.
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Interesting, technique, but not foolproof. (Score:5, Insightful)
It can't actually detect if an ad was replaced by a blank image by a proxy server, but it'll know if the ad is the wrong size.
Solution? More sophisticated ad blockers should attempt to match image size to a URL pattern by fetching it a few times and seeing what it gets back. Then it should autogenerate the replacement content with that size.
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DMCA? (Score:5, Interesting)
Handy ad fighting URLs (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.mozilla.org/ [mozilla.org]
http://toolbar.google.com [google.com] (If you use IE)
Replacement HOSTS file:
http://www.everythingisnt.com/hosts.html [everythingisnt.com]
Tiny HTTP Server to respond to all those HOSTS entries:
http://www.pyrenean.com/edexter.php [pyrenean.com]
Flash Remover:
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flash/ts/flash
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ [mozdev.org] (for Mozilla)
My suggestion: (Score:5, Interesting)
There are several ways to avoid ads (Score:5, Informative)
2) "Block images from this server" -- blanket nuking.
These are the "extensions" to mozilla and firefox that are very powerful
3) Adblock -- block images based on a URL pattern. Very powerful and easy to specify what to block.
4) Flash block -- block flash elements (even something like flash click to view)
5) Nuke Anything -- if something comes up on your screen, you can remove it "after the fact". For example, if you want to read an interesting article on some celebrity with a stupid image, you can remove the image very easily using this.
At the end of the day, the end user should be able to see what he/she wants to read and view. If the sites persist in doing annoying things or refuse to serve some pages to people that have an advanced browser, I believe it is better to avoid those pages.
S
The amorality of direct marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet they do it anyway! Remarkably obtuse people. Of course, I know the reason for it. It's all about eyeballs and the more they can prove they are shoving their stuff in front of more eyeballs, the more money they get. That's why this is so amoral: They don't care how anyone reacts, or that that are despised, or that it causes business problems for the advertisers. They just want mo' money, and that's the end of their thought process.
Buh bye, new technology. It won't work. I will defeat it. I will refuse to view ads on the Web. Don't yammer at me with the tired old whine, "But how else are I gonna pay for my web siiiiiiite?" I dunno, Sparky, figure something else out. I will never allow advertising on my web site. It doesn't belong on the Web.
The Web is about people to people communiciation. Just because a bunch of greedheads decided to use it to make money doesn't subvert the purpose of the Web. As for the endless war against pop-ups: They lose. Every time.
transparent vs. translucent (Score:5, Informative)
A tinted window is still transparent, but the windows in public restrooms are generally translucent.
You bunch of whiners (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You bunch of whiners (Score:5, Interesting)
When Advertisments start to deter a user from surfing the web, you know it's gone too far. yes, sometimes the ads are nice and you're actually looking for them, but generally, they're obnoxiours and rude. Salon, I think, has a good idea on how to handle things. I don't have time to really read much news online, so I don't subscrube to them. I do however go through their 1-ad view for a free-day-pass when there is 1 article that someone has sent me.
I will bitch and bitch and then bitch some more when I am bombarded with ads. I hate them when I pay 11$ to see a movie and I'm forced to see commercials, and I hate them when I pay money to go to a website (hey, access to the internet does cost money and image ads are a b/w hog).
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Banner Blocking Manifesto (Score:5, Interesting)
"Banner Blocking Detected You have been brought to this page because it was detected that your web browser, software on your computer or some other event is preventing some or all of our banner ads from being displayed on our pages correctly. If you are not using a utility to block banners, you may have been inadvertently brought here because a banner image did not load correctly. Please make sure you have enabled images and disable any ad blocking software then try again.
If you sincerely want a banner free experience on our site and are willing to help support our efforts directly, we do offer a paid subscription option. This option is especially useful for educators who would like to use our site in their classroom without the distractions banner ads create.
Banner Blocking Manifesto
We understand that you may find banner advertising annoying. This website, however, is not sponsored or produced by some faceless rich corporation or public entity. This site is the product of the hard labor of one individual and his family. Producing and delivering the content on this site is expensive. If we are to continue to make the resources on this website available to individuals like yourself free of charge, we must be allowed to use banner advertising as a means of paying the costs of maintaining this website.
The relationship between the web content provider (in this case us) and the content consumer (you) must be a symbiotic relationship. If small web publishers like us are to continue to be able to provide access to useful information free of charge, we must get something in return. In this case it is the ability to display and earn revenue off of banner advertising.
Kenneth Barbalace
Creator of EnvironmentalChemistry.com
How to Disable Ad Blocking Software
There are scores programs and services on the market that offer banner ad blocking abilities. As such we will only focus on a few of the most common programs.
Symantec Norton Internet Security: If you are using Symantec's "Norton Internet Security" software, banner blocking may have been turned on without your knowledge. You can turn off ad blocking in Symantec NIS by opening Norton Internet Security. In the main window, double-click Ad Blocking and then uncheck "Ad Blocking".
ZoneAlarm Pro firewall: If you are using the firewall ZoneAlarm pro, you can turn off ad blocking under the tab "Privacy" and then slide the "Ad Blocking" control to the off position.
AdSubtract: If you ar using AdSubtract, right mouse click on the AdSubtract icon in your task tray (looks like an orange circle with a plus and minus sign) and select "Disable AdSubtract".
WebWasher: If you are using WebWasher, right mouse click on the WebWasher icon in your task tray (looks like a blue circle with a white "W" and then select "Deactivate standard filter".
Related Resources TechTV - Rage Against the Ad-Blocking Machines [environmen...mistry.com]
"Ask SlashDot" article [environmen...mistry.com]
Steal this Site" [environmen...mistry.com]
Collateral damage from all these "blockers" (Score:5, Interesting)
With each measure people take to block the popups and other types of advertisement, they also end up blocking content and applications that they need.
Once, people thought the browser will become the "application environment". The latest W3C inventions makes that more viable every day. But, now look what we've _removed_ from the environment:
1) Dialog Boxes: Gone. You can usually still use a javascript alert, but you can't prompt the user with a dialog box anymore, a primitive UI component.
2) Random things broken: "Adblock" css and stuff like that, which blocks images and iframes when the relative path to those things starts with "ad"? So, if slashdot's preferences were called "adjustments", that would get killed.
Sure, people can sometimes turn these things off, but more and more often, people are having these things installed without even knowing they're there (like millions will when XP SP 2 comes out).
This whole situation is rapidly making the web a much less hospitable environment for applications.
another great hosts file (Score:5, Informative)
Re:HOSTS link? (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't touch the Hosts file.
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Re:HOSTS link? (Score:5, Informative)
It's only a hog because of the "DNS client" service on win2k and winXP. If you disable the DNS client, everything goes back to normal. The DNS client service caches DNS requests to DNS servers. Win2k and winXP work fine without it.
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Re:HOSTS link? (Score:5, Interesting)
Rather than messing with hosts, use a custom style sheet. I know Safari on OS X supports this. I'm guess most modern browsers do as well (maybe not MSIE).
Here's mine.
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Re:HOSTS link? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it can. It depends what you put on your customized stylesheet.
Some people want to get a completely ad free web experience. Others, feel guilty about it, and don't want to get rid of the ads to show their support to the site, but want to make them less annoying.
iframe[width="468"][height="60"], a img[width="468"][height="60"]
{ -moz-outline: medium dashed red; -moz-opacity: 10%; }
468x80 images and iframes are downloaded and displayed, but they are 90% translucent and are outlined by a big red dash.
iframe[width="468"][height="60"], a img[width="468"][height="60"]
{ visibility: hidden !important; }
Banners & iframes are downloaded but not displayed.
iframe[width="468"][height="60"], a img[width="468"][height="60"]
{ display: none !important; }
Banners and iframes are neither downloaded nor displayed.
This site [aagh.net] provides a sample antibanner stylesheet, as well as instructions on how to use it with opera, mozilla and others.
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