An Anti-Adblock Strategy

Back in the days when I wrote shareware for the original IBM PC, there were a few strategies that you could use to encourage users to pay their way. One way was crippleware, where I would provide extra features to paid users. Another way, which actually worked, was to tell users that my wife was a witch and she would place a Black Irish Curse on anyone that did not send me a check. Another way to encourage users to pay was to have an annoying message pop up from time to time reminding users to pay their way.

Nowadays I make most of my money off of Google AdSense ads on several hundred thousand web pages of content that I have accumulated, some of which I have even written. I have expertise in a variety of unexpected areas and people on the internet like stopping by my websites.

I make money from AdSense, but some users have Firefox and Adblock. These users are getting a free ride. I don't fool myself and I expect that this kind of user is unlikely to click on ads. I do feel a little ripped off, though. I have read that some webmasters have banned FireFox users, but I have always thought that this was a little overkill.

I have harkened back to my shareware days and developed a Nag script for adblock users. It works by looking for the AdSense IFRAME tag that has a name property of "google_ads_frame". If it can't find it, it displays an alert every few seconds reminding the user to please disable Adblock.

Does it work? The script works, but I am doubtful that it generates any new revenue. I might cut back on traffic, but this is no great loss because the traffic that it cuts back on would not have made me any money anyway.

Here's the code. Just copy here and paste it on any web page that has Google AdSense ads. Don't try it on a page that does not have Adsense - that's just dumb.

<script> function chkad() { try { var n=document.getElementsByTagName('iframe'); var f=false; for (j=0;j<n.length;j++) { var tn=n[j].name; if (tn=='google_ads_frame') { return false; } } return true; } catch (e) { return false; } } function nag() { if (chkad()) { alert("This page is not displaying correctly.\r\nPlease disable AdBlock on this site,\r\nand then refresh the page"); setTimeout("nag()",12000); } } if (!document.all) { setTimeout("nag()",5000); } </script>

 

I've put it on My Biofuel Digest page so you can test it.