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Comment by ToastyMallows | Hacker News Reader

Webdevs reading this: it does work. I whitelist all sites that have responsible ads on their pages, reddit being a prime example. They have ads in a couple predetermined spots on their pages, and they're never intrusive. I've actually clicked on a couple (something I never do). Be responsible and open about your ad policy and I'll listen.

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This brings up another case for detecting AdBlock: if you think your users are receptive to whitelisting non-annoying ads, you could detect the plugin and let them know that you strive to incorporate ads in a non-intrusive way and kindly ask them to disable AdBlock.

Edit: sounds like this is what reddit does. Props to them!

Agreed. I was the original complainer in this thread, and I've whitelisted several sites that asked nicely and promised non-intrusive ads.

I believe they all used https://www.projectwonderful.com/ as their ad provider, by the way. I haven't really inspected them, but if you want inoffensive ads on your page, that might be a good place to start looking.

I quite like the idea of projectwonderful.

It seems to be very heavily used on webcomic sites I frequent, and I haven't seen a bad ad yet.

I also like the idea of purchasing time on a site, rather than using targeted ads. Meanwhile, the hosting site can discontinue the ad if they feel it doesn't match their culture.

It's more analogous to renting a billboard from a friendly business you like, rather than hiring a bunch of people to follow your customers around with posters.

It just seems like a stand-up way to do ads.

Sometimes it is not the positioning or the non-intrusiveness which bothers me, it's the following me around and tracking. I find it a little creepy.

As do a lot of other people.

The HTTP DNT process at the W3C was supposed to fix this, but it got derailed by the DAA (the Digital Advertising Alliance).

You can manually stop this tracking with AdChoices. Click on that weird little blue icon that's in most ads, and you'll be able to disable tracking by DAA members.

Notably, AdChoices doesn't entirely prohibit tracking - I think you just need to be "minimized" to a certain extent. AdChoices is stupid, but it looks like we won't get a real solution in DNT unless something changes within the next month or so.

Many sites do this, but the problem with Adblock that most people are not happy about is that it AUTOMATICALLY blocks everything. You have to whitelist, and most people just turn adblock on and leave it be... If it was required to blacklist instead of whitelist it'd be better. Many sites with non-intrusive ads are being blocked because of this and that's detrimental. It's already hurting many businesses to the point that soon content online is gonna be behind a paywall and you're gonna end up having to pay $5/mo for every site you want to view.

There are two problems with your claims:

I, as a user, wouldn't be happy having to blacklist all sites.

I won't pay a monthly fee for most sites, because I read a little on a lot of sites - I don't mind paying a 1 penny per article fee if it is convinient.

Unless you visit some very shady sites, having a auto-blacklist isn't needed, and a whitelist is best to keep both parties happy. And if Adblock continues to grow the way it does, the second route is gonna be what happens, nobody is gonna be able to make any money off advertising therefore they'll have to take other routes to pay for their servers to provide you with your content free of charge.

Fark does that. If they detect an ad blocker you get a little message at the top of the page asking you to allow ads to support the site. Their ads don't get in the way so I did it.

Incidentally, you don't need PageFair to communicate with AdBlock users. I've seen several sites that just have a text message behind their ad image, so you don't see it unless the ad doesn't load.

I guess PageFair additionally lets you collect statistics on how many users are blocking ads, which may be useful.

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