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Reflective Surface

Still powered by a contradiction in terms

Popup-blocking is theft

November 25, 2002 at 2:22 pm · Filed under Random

If you are using a browser that block popups, you are a thief, according a company called Anti-Leech.

This company makes a “tool” that allow a site to deny access to visitors using popup-blocking tools. The company says this kind of blocking steals the profit companies would receive from ads.

Don’t people ever learn? Banners and popups are not a viable form of advertising anymore. Last time I checked, click-through rates were down to 0.5%, meaning only big sites can profit from this kind of ads.

Well, if a site calls me a thief because I block popups that don’t interest me, they are not worth visiting anyway.

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Mark said,

April 14, 2003 @ 6:55 pm

You want my content you put up with my ads. No ads no content - simple :)
Oh - I don’t serve popups and the site is entirely funded by advertising banners quite nicely thank you. The ad-blocker detection is home-brew and only just installed.

Mark
http://www.yourjokes.co.uk

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Ronaldo said,

April 14, 2003 @ 8:47 pm

That’s OK, as long as you don’t call me a thief because I don’t want popups or ads. After all, everybody has the right to decide whether he or she wants your content — and you ads — or not.

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Mark said,

April 15, 2003 @ 5:01 am

I wouldn’t call anybody using ad-blockers a thief - freeloaders yes - thief no.

I believe the rash of ad-blockers appeared because of pop-ups and pop-unders which I too find irritating so I won’t serve them.

The problem for me is that http://www.yourjokes.co.uk is funded entirely from advertising and the ad-blockers can and do interfere with the operation of normal banner ads. If those ads don’t work I get no revenue - the same must be true of countless other sites. I suspect the end result will be fewer free access websites. If some genious comes up with a viable micro-payments scheme ads would vanish. Maybe a micro PayPal ?

In the meantime I think I may develop my own home-brew stuff into a product and try selling it. Not sure quite what the best marketing method would be though - banners or pop-ups :)
Mark
http://www.yourjokes.co.uk
http://www.kwikbreaks.co.uk - no blocker detection - yet :)

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Ronaldo said,

April 15, 2003 @ 2:03 pm

I understand your concerns. I try to honor the site needs when I use a free service. I usually don’t block ads, but I always block popups. If a site can’t work without popups, that is fine. I will enable popups selectively if I need the content. As I said, I only object to people calling me a thief :)
I agree that the best solution for funding sites would be micro-payments. Although I don’t think ads work anymore — because of the so-called “banner blindness”, which makes people automatically ignore ads in Web pages — I understand that many sites have no other option. Unfortunately, micro-payments seem to be far from viable yet and I guess we will have to put up with ads for a long time.

As for you product, as long as you don’t spam, everything else is fine ;-)

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Mark said,

April 15, 2003 @ 6:40 pm

Spam - now there is some spawn of the devil - I’ve given up on the freeserve email I used to post here - I started getting spam on it before I’d even used it to send an email let alone as an address to register on anything.

I suppose eventually freeserve will bin it andthe email will go as I never use it todial up anymore I just grab the mail from it on the remote chance that there will be something there other than vaigra ads and invites to watch various perversions.

Mark
http://www.yourjokes.co.uk

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Ronaldo said,

April 16, 2003 @ 1:08 pm

I had similar experiences with various Internet services providers. Small providers are likely to profit more from selling the e-mail addresses of their users than from paid access, so it’s a huge temptation for them.

I hope someday somebody will devise a clever way to stop spam. The new Bayesian filtering in Mozilla is a great improvement, but there is still a long way to go.

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mark said,

June 2, 2003 @ 7:36 am

I happened to spot that someone visited yourjokes from here - the blocking of visitors with ad blockers is temporarily removed while I come up with a general purpose set of code I can sell to others.

That is not likely to happen any time soon as I’m working on other stuff more likely to generate some income first ( http://www.mx5bitz.co.uk ).

So - all you freeloaders are (temporarily) wlelcome :)
Mark
http://www.yourjokes.co.uk

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Ronaldo said,

June 4, 2003 @ 8:04 pm

Hehe! Thanks for letting me know… :-) However, it’s unlike the person was blocking ads. I’m one of the few intolerant enough to do so. :-)

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Robin Barrett said,

November 28, 2003 @ 1:31 pm

I don’t mind ads. You have a right to your ads. But pop-ups, pop-unders, and installation of programs (like gator) without my permission is not fair use of advertising.

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