EasyList hypocrisy

Everything about using Adblock Plus on Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey
DannyCarlton
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EasyList hypocrisy

Post by DannyCarlton »

AdBlock Plus blocks ads. Dishonest, but hey, you can rationalize almost any kind of dishonesty if you try hard enough.

I blocked AdBlock plus users from my sites, and Easylist added that specific block to their whitelist. (I changed it, and they're now blocked again) Talk about hypocrisy. You say you have the right to not see ads, but why then attempt to prevent me from blocking AdBlock users from my sites?

Also, why are so many of the really nasty advertisers whitelisted in the Easylist? How much do they pay for that. Has the FTC called you yet?
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Adblock Plus Fan
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Post by Adblock Plus Fan »

Do we not have the right to save you your bandwidth? I mean we do use less bandwidth than people who see your ads but never click them. The less bandwidth we use the moar money you save.
1. save money
2. ?????
3. profit!
DannyCarlton wrote:(I changed it, and they're now blocked again)
pics or it never happened
DannyCarlton wrote:Also, why are so many of the really nasty advertisers whitelisted in the Easylist?
pics or it never happened
MonztA
ABP Developer
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Re: EasyList hypocrisy

Post by MonztA »

DannyCarlton wrote:AdBlock Plus blocks ads.
Eh no. The filters do it.
DannyCarlton wrote:Also, why are so many of the really nasty advertisers whitelisted in the Easylist?
This just has to be for content like videos to play.
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rick752
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Post by rick752 »

I'll tell you what Danny.

I'll make a deal with you. I will remove the blocks in my EasyList against your sites. You keep serving that popup page telling people that they are "thieves" and let's see what happens over time on those. I really don't think your ad revenue will increase at all. Oh yeah, and let's tone down the "death to adblock and here's how you do it" stuff (which doesn't work). We would really like to know here what happens to your revenue. Make sure you keep track of the number of visitors to your sites too.

Now run over to the NoScript forum and tell them they are thieves too for not allowing the script for your ads ... or your popups.

Keep in touch.

I am removing those whitelists now. :arrow: :arrow: :arrow:
(subject to change at my discression)
Last edited by rick752 on Fri Jul 27, 2007 4:21 am, edited 3 times in total.
IceDogg
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Post by IceDogg »

hy·poc·ri·sy (hĭ-pŏk'rĭ-sē) pronunciation
n., pl. -sies.

1. The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.
2. An act or instance of such falseness.

Don't see either of those applying here. Go figure.. lies and made up stuff by advertisers.
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Post by Adblock Plus Fan »

rick752 wrote:(I see you took your rant from the Adsense Forum .. to AMO's ABP Discussions ... to here)
lol and here I thought nothing ever happened at AMO. Entertaining flamewars are delicious.
rick752 wrote:Now run over to the NoScript forum and tell them they are thieves too for not allowing the script for your ads ... or your popups.
If amo was any indication, he will have his @ss nuked by the noscript guys for sure :mrgreen:
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rick752
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Post by rick752 »

@ Danny:

I have removed those whitelists and am leaving you alone (for now) simply to try to show you that what are trying to do is futile and will be more annoying to visitors than the ads themselves. Others have tried annoyances like this before and have stopped doing it as their visitors started dropping. Even if you DO beat us, you will have to deal with NoScript and other blockers that are either out there or coming out.

Outside of your incredible rants about this on a few different sites, you actually seem like a real "stand up" type of guy. Don't do this to yourself, man.

To show that there are no hard feelings, here are a few presents:

Code: Select all

@@http://resourceshop.net/google.com/promo_fakeAd.gif
@@http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js$image
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chewey
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Re: EasyList hypocrisy

Post by chewey »

DannyCarlton wrote:Also, why are so many of the really nasty advertisers whitelisted in the Easylist?
Easy: They aren't.
mrbene
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Post by mrbene »

Adblock Plus Fan wrote:Do we not have the right to save you your bandwidth? I mean we do use less bandwidth than people who see your ads but never click them. The less bandwidth we use the moar money you save.
Not true. The site that contains ads (the "publisher") will contain links to 3rd party ad servers - that's how ad blocking is so effective. The ad servers dynamically choose which ad to deliver on behalf of the advertiser, and the bandwidth bill is footed by the ad broker.

There's a simple example, where there is one publisher, one advertiser, one ad broker, and 100 web browsers. When there are no ad blockers involved, lets say that 2 out of the 100 web browsers actually click on the ads (ignore for a moment that this is incredibly high click-rate). This would result in a 2% click-through rate:

100 pages rendered
100 ad impressions
2 clicks


Now, of those 98 web browsers who didn't click on the ads, lets imagine that 10 installed adblock. This means:

100 pages rendered
90 ad impressions
2 clicks

This means that the click-through rate suddenly jumps from 2% to 2.22%. This is the type of increase that advertisers go nuts for - less impressions and more clicks.

Just some thoughts.

/mrbene.
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Post by Adblock Plus Fan »

mrbene wrote:The site that contains ads (the "publisher") will contain links to 3rd party ad servers
Actually depending on how the website is configured, we can block the linking itself and save them a few bytes of bandwidth. Rare but possible (well actually maybe not so rare after all, ads linked by javascripts seems to be popular nowadays).
Besides I mostly meant ads served 1st party anyway. :P
mrbene
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Post by mrbene »

Yes. In my revisions I removed the softening language. Good jump :P

Do you like the conclusion otherwise? That ad-blocking actually increases the click-through rate?

/mrbene.
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Post by Adblock Plus Fan »

You mean we actually do the 3rd party servers a favour by improving their statistics? :shock:
Yeah we are such nice people. :mrgreen:
I guess that would explain why the google adsense mods never gave a flying **** when the guy ranted in their forums
IceDogg
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Post by IceDogg »

Fan, actually I think he means it helps the webmasters trick the ad company into giving them more money because the click through rates would appear higher than they really are. Thus, making them look more valuable to the company and pay them for for ad placement.

Am I understanding him correctly??
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Post by Adblock Plus Fan »

I do not see it. They do not pay per rate, they pay per click.
The rates will not help the webmaster, but it will be a bargain advantage for the adcompanies, like "hey look at these rates, our ads are effective! High % of people click on them" kind of deal.
Last edited by Adblock Plus Fan on Fri Jul 27, 2007 11:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
mrbene
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Post by mrbene »

Icedogg, I don't know that I'd call it outright "trickery", but rather "statistics". Yes, my thesis is that a site that attracts a high percentage of ad-blocking users would have a higher click-through rate than a site that had a low percentage of ad-blocking users, thereby making them more interesting to advertisers.

I feel that the only case where there would be losers is where an ad broker is being paid per impression and is paying per click - and in this case, the ad broker would be the loser, not the site, and definitely not the advertiser.

/mrbene.
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