Simply *hide* ads?

[dzy]

Suppose I want to support a site by loading its ads (typically whenever a site politely asks me to do this, I comply, or whenever I actually like/respect the site or its owners), but the ads are still distracting/annoying. Is there any way to simply make the ads invisible? I've done this by loading custom stylesheets, but that's a tiny bit of a pain, and relatively few people know how to do that. It would be a nice feature.

[Gingerbread Man]

1. With the exception of video ads, advertisers generally pay per click, not per view.
2. It's very easy to use JavaScript to check whether an element is visible.
3. Even if you did somehow manage to find advertisers that pay per view and don't check if the ads are visible — and the odds are slim to none — the author of Adblock Plus won't support the dishonest practice you describe.

   Here is one of the many posts on this topic: forum/viewtopic.php?p=8821#8821
   
   The webmaster isn't paid because somebody likes you downloading ads - it's because somebody wants you to see those ads and maybe even to buy something (spend actual money). You can game the system only for so long, if the ad downloads don't result in revenue the webmaster will either get paid less for the same number of impressions or he will even be kicked out entirely. And that's only if he *is* being paid by impressions - however, Pay Per Click is far more common nowadays.

[dzy]

• 1. Sites with a lot of traffic -- such as the one I was thinking of when I made this post -- should have no problem putting up pay-per-view ads.
  2. How many ads actually do this for a period of time after the page has loaded?
  3. The "dishonest practice I describe". What a strange choice of words from somebody on the Adblock Plus forum. I have never responded to an advertisement in my life. There is no need for me to sacrifice my experience for no reason other than some screwed-up moral obligation that I *must see ads only if I choose to load them*.

Thanks for your time anyway.

[N/A]

Any ad, be it an incredibly obnoxious flash ad or a simple text ad, can have negative repercussions for your privacy and/or security when the request for the ad is sent and regardless of whether the ad is actually displayed or clicked on. In order to protect yourself form this you must prevent the requests from happening.

If the website is not advertising responsibly, and that means serving only appropriate types of advertising from its own servers and not engaging in any tracking or backdoor data passing, then the website's use of advertising should not be supported. You would only be helping to perpetuate bad practices.

[lewisje]

Is there any way to simply make the ads invisible? I've done this by loading custom stylesheets

Try making hiding rules; for example, example.org##.adDiv will hide any element with a class of "adDiv" on example.org and all subdomains; what follows the ## can be any CSS selector supported by both Firefox and Chrome, so your custom stylesheets can be ported over without much fuss.