

How We Detect Adblock - pagefair
http://blog.pagefair.com/2013/detect-adblock/?cmp=52	
The tech behind the detection.
======
PhasmaFelis
So has anybody ever tried to address the root cause of adblocker use, i.e. ads
are really fucking annoying? I don't like ads in general, nobody does, but
that alone wouldn't be enough to make me bother to install and maintain
AdBlock. What does it is strobing "YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY WON" and animated "one
weird trick" scams and softcore porn. This shit is _everywhere_ , even on
allegedly respectable news sites.

If you want me to turn off AdBlock, you need to insist on reasonable, non-
offensive, non-animated ads. If your ad provider doesn't do that, get a better
one, or lean on yours until they do. If this industry spent one-tenth as much
energy pushing ad services for better quality standards as they do wringing
their hands about ad blocking, shit would happen.

~~~
nfoz
I'll continue to ad-block even if ads are non-intrusive or annoying. I prefer
no ads to any ads.

If your website requires a monetization scheme to exist, and you can't find a
monetization scheme that doesn't pollute your product with (even nice simple)
ads, that's not really my problem. I didn't force you to publish.

If I want your content, then I'd be happy to help pay for its generation. If
it satisfies my terms, of course (open licensing, no ads).

~~~
JacobJans
I'm curious. What websites do you currently pay for access to? Any?

~~~
nfoz
I donate to Wikipedia, Democracy Now
([http://www.democracynow.org/](http://www.democracynow.org/)), and TVO
([http://www.tvo.org](http://www.tvo.org)).

------
swanson
Is it really worth potentially breaking your site for innocent, non-adblock
folks in order to serve ads to a user who has explicitly and deliberately
taken steps to not be served ads?

Take the reddit approach: put a humanizing message kindly asking users to
disable it and then don't make offensive/hostile ads. And then make some
percentage of the ads a "thanks for whitelisting us, we really appreciate it"
message.

~~~
pdenya
What potential break are you referring to? They're not recommending disabling
functionality for users with ad block on.

It's nice that they're discussing these techniques, hopefully other sites will
do it better. I browse with click-to-play for plugins and it's often mistaken
for ad block.

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anon1385
>We then carefully observe what happens when a page loads. onLoad and onError
events tell us if they’re successfully retrieved or if requests have been
blocked

Unfortunately for them many Adblock users also use Noscript or Javascript
Blocker. Circumventing Adblock this way will just drive more people to prevent
untrusted websites running code on their machines. A net win for web security
but probably not the intended effect.

~~~
wingspan
Can anyone else confirm this? Personally, I've always used AdBlock, but never
used a Javascript blocker because it is substantially more effort and I am
lazy. I do use Disconnect, though, to block that certain flavor of JS.

~~~
npsimons
The first two things I install on any fresh browser is NoScript and AdBlock. I
then make a point of permanently blocking JS from any domain looking like it
might be used only for ads. I'll selectively turn on JS for one (very
constrained!) domain at a time if I need to do something (like login to
purchase or comment), but if I'm just browsing and a site no-worky-without-js?
Tab closed, no second thoughts. There's a certain blogging platform site
(can't remember what it's called) that gets linked here a lot that doesn't
work with JS off; I've never read anything posted there.

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toomuchtodo
You guys should take a look at piracy and how well that worked out for content
creators. They still get paid, but it'll always be whack-a-mole.

I have a comfy six figure IT job, and I'd still spend a few hours for fun just
to figure out how to work around your javascript. Now think about how much
time someone determined will spend on it.

Pivot and go do something with a higher possible success rate.

~~~
debacle
I agree. Google's business model doesn't seem sustainable and I doubt they'll
ever be profitable.

\s

~~~
alayne
He's talking about being in the ad block circumvention business, not being in
the ad business.

However, I don't like Google's business model either. Being profitable isn't a
measurement of making the world a better place.

------
alyandon
AdblockPlus, NoScript and RequestPolicy are my tools to control the content my
web browser displays. My general rule is that I'll only disable ad blocking on
a few trusted sites and never on a site that uses a third-party advertising
network.

Most advertising networks have intrusive or annoying ads that actually block
my ability to read a site by using pop-overs if my mouse cursor accidentally
touches a keyword, divs that obscure content until I've paid sufficient
attention to locate and click the "X", etc. If that wasn't bad enough, these
third-party networks also present a security risk and have been used in the
past as delivery vehicles for malware.

In the end if a web site relies solely on intrusive advertising for support
and they plead with me to disable adblock, I'll most likely choose to stop
reading/participating on the website rather than make an exception for them.

------
eli
Coincidentally I just open sourced some JavaScript I've been using to detect
adblock: [http://esd.io/blog/detecting-adblock-
javascript.html](http://esd.io/blog/detecting-adblock-javascript.html)

There's not much to it, but it's important to note that many ad filters
actively try to avoids detection by whitelisting "test ads" or blocking
externally loaded adblock detection code. That's why I suggesting inlining
this javascript snippet but all of this, of course, is ultimately a cat and
mouse game.

------
donohoe
Destructoid reported an ad-block rate of 30-45%. In general the wider estimate
is 30% of ALL ads across the web are getting blocked.

[http://www.destructoid.com/half-of-destructoid-s-readers-
blo...](http://www.destructoid.com/half-of-destructoid-s-readers-block-our-
ads-now-what--247904.phtml)

At Quartz we're lucky - it appears to be 13%. I've used Ad-Blocker for years
in the past. Not sure why I stopped (new computer, never installed?) but its
been a few years at least.

However now that I work more on the ad side of things (how to make site
experience better and maintain reading experience) I can see that blanket ad-
blocking is harmful to sites bottom line.

I'm not sure what the answer is, its still Users right to manage their browser
VS site operators trying to stay in business

~~~
eli
I don't have much data yet, but on our B2B news sites it appears to be in the
4% to 9% range depending on the industry.

I don't think ad blocking specifically is behind the trend away from
leaderboards and towards "native content" advertising, but it's only going to
accelerate it.

------
bliker
I assume that you are just injecting some snippet of JS into pages. What does
protects you from getting (ad-)blocked?

If you get more customers somebody will create ad-blocker-blocker-blocker (we
are going deeper). And ad-blockers have much better position than you have,
they can execute anytime and intercept code before it is evaluated.

------
vezzy-fnord
I find AdBlock to be superfluous.

I just block advertising websites from my hosts file.

In particular, using this:
[http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/](http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/)

------
slig
I know several people (me included) that installed AdBlock because of YT
annoying pre-roll ads. Google seems to be shooting themselves in the foot.

------
wingspan
To all the bashers: detecting AdBlock or other plugins like Disconnect is
sometimes necessary for ad-free sites as well. Some sites malfunction when the
user has such an extension installed, and it is a great user experience when
the developer is thoughtful enough to put up a banner at the top of the page
saying "This site may not work correctly if you are using AdBlock". (sorry for
the "some sites"; I was browsing recently and saw such a banner, but cannot
recall where). Of course the better option is to test your site under AdBlock
and make sure it works regardless, but sometimes the detection is needed.

------
PhasmaFelis
What does PageFair do, exactly? I mean, they're very proud of themselves for
detecting Adblock, but it's not clear what they do with that information.

~~~
kamjam
_We won’t bore you with complaints here though; hopefully you’ve now got
enough information to understand what’s going on in the background when you
sign up to use our free adblock measurement service._

From the homepage: _Measure: How many of your visitors are blocking ads and
how much does it cost you in advertising revenue?_

etc etc. They are selling a service.

~~~
ams6110
While I get the point, you can't claim revenues you never received are a
"cost."

~~~
viraptor
It does cost you if the ad revenue is supposed to cover your bandwidth costs.
If you're hosting something heavy and users don't offset it by clicking the
ads every once in a while, it's a problem. Also there are plugins out there
which will load the ad content, but never display it - that means if you pay
to advertise somewhere, you just paid for nothing (service was provided, but
noone saw the ad).

~~~
qbrass
Having ads that nobody likes and ads that nobody sees pays the same.

The case where you need to know if ads are being blocked or not is when you're
trying to determine if you should change the ads or find another way to
monetize the site.

------
nocman
How to get me to turn off Adblock:

1) Make ads that aren't annoying 2) Make ads that are low bandwidth 3) Make
ads that don't take over the whole page (hiding the real content) 4) Don't
show offensive ads (pornography, crude humor, etc) 5) Only advertise stuff
that is of high quality and an excellent value for the money -- no junk.

Of course I realize that this will never happen, but one can dream.

------
jonathansizz
I've long thought that a useful feature for Adblock to include would be the
option to load ads into the cache, then immediately delete them. This way the
websites would make their money, the costs being pushed onto the advertisers
instead.

~~~
kamjam
But he script supposedly detects elements in page, css etc so this would not
solve the issue of views, but I have no idea what the payment model is - is it
just views or clickthroughs?

------
philjackson
Is there somewhere I can go to see an example of Pagefair in action?

~~~
pagefair
You can check out this article on Destructoid to see how they used the tool
(fyi- we used to be called "Block Metrics")

[http://www.destructoid.com/half-of-destructoid-s-readers-
blo...](http://www.destructoid.com/half-of-destructoid-s-readers-block-our-
ads-now-what--247904.phtml)

~~~
jamesbritt
I'm curious if Destructoid paid a licensing fee to use Hopper's art. I'm
skeptical that adding another figure (sad Keanu or not) qualifies this for
"fair use" in this particular case.

And if they're skipping out on that payment then calling out people who block
ads makes me think of a certain kettle and pot.

If they _are_ paying for that content then props to them for practicing what
they preach.

------
colinbartlett
Only a matter of time until someone writes code to detect PageFair.

~~~
generj
AdBlock -> detected by PageFair AdBlock -> detects PageFair and destroys it

Seems easy enough.

------
shawnreilly
My prediction; Websites/Services will eventually start providing an
Advertising Policy similar to today's Privacy Policy or Terms of Use. This
Advertising Policy will help the content consumer understand the
Websites/Services Stance on Advertising, what types of Ad's they allow, etc.
This will help consumers choose what Sites they want to allow (aka support Ad
revenue), and what Sites they want to Block.

------
brymaster
Twitter detects if you're using an adblocker before logging into their ad
platform: [https://ads.twitter.com/](https://ads.twitter.com/)

"To use this site, you need to disable AdBlock or any other ads-blocking
extension you are using, or customize it to show ads on this site."

------
Kiro
"Filter lists also name particular files for which requests should be blocked
regardless of domain; for example any javascript file called ads.js"

We have a file called that which has nothing to do with showing ads. If that's
correct it will effectively break the service for anyone using AdBlock.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
These days, it's a good idea to test your site with AdBlock the same way you
test it with multiple browsers. When a page appears to be broken the first
thing I try is temporarily disabling AdBlock; the second thing is loading it
in IE.

It does suck that you have to jump through these hoops because flagrantly
intrusive ads have poisoned the well for innocent site-owners. I wish it were
otherwise.

