I have a feature request: "
Stealth mode"
ABP Stealth mode, or similar, where the ads would be downloaded normally like there wouldn't be ABP in effect at all, but then just do not render and show the ads on the page.
In this way, it would be much harder anyone to tell if the ads are really showing or not. Of course still if they have script-based ads, they would not work and they would notice they have been blocked. But for the most common normal ads, noone could tell and the site wouldn't have to tell his advertisers many or most of the visitors never see the ads.
The setting could be an option per site, as other ABP options.
I'd like to "support" some sites which now tell "please disable ABP we see you are using", but still would like to block ads from showing. Download normally, but do not show ads.
Of course one of the purpose of ABP, especially in mobile devices, is to save bandwidth and hide from the profilers (like Ghostery). But the other purpose of just blocking annoying ads from showing is the intent which still would be in effect if that "Stealth mode"-toggle would be set on some sites.
Implementing this could be just replacing any normally downloaded ad then with some small icon "ABPSM", if wanted, and one could just click it to see the actual ad.
On menus, if the feature is set on the global settings, there would be all "Allow foobar.com", "Temporarily allow foobar.com", "Stealth allow foobar.com"
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The Greylist, (Redlist, Bluelist) sounds like a better name. When there may become later even more different ways to not show ads, the different colors could be assigned for every method of blocking.
I've asked this also before on Android side. There, with rooted Android device, and using
the ABP app, some
AdMob apps refuse to work because somehow they notice the ad banners are not actually downloaded from the ad-servers (my friend told the issue, havent tried). Having this kind of Grey-listing would download the ads normally but just replace the ad's graphics with an empty grey empty image in the app's screen.
Google banned ABP app from Google Play, because ....well you know.
But developers of AdMob-enabled apps do get paid just by showing the ads, even if noone is clicking them, I believe?
But I doubt they would start to build AI in the
AdMob-API, to start figuring out if the downloaded ads are eventually actually shown on the screen. It would require extra CPU-time and battery. (Actually I am afraid it is the Google's only option eventually.)
Is it really so, that in the web sites which monetize via ads, do not get any revenue if not anyone is clicking the ads on the pages?