Ad­block­ers’ impact on web design and web de­vel­op­ment

There’s hardly any chance that the Danish student, Henrik Aasted Sörensen was aware of the profound effects his Phoenix (pre­de­ces­sor to Firefox) extension was to later have on the web design industry back when this game changing add-on was still in its infancy in 2002. From its very inception, both the concept and the pos­si­bil­i­ties the extension offered were very well received by the internet community, which in turn played a sub­stan­tial role in per­fect­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion. While the early versions of Sörensen’s program only blocked user-defined ads, today’s product au­to­mat­i­cal­ly shields users from known ad formats before they can be loaded, a de­vel­op­ment that has continued much to the chagrin of de­vel­op­ers and those re­spon­si­ble for running web projects.

And while the effects (and losses) of this de­vel­op­ment may be apparent for the ad­ver­tis­ing industry, Adblocker’s impact on web design and web de­vel­op­ment may not be as obvious. However, ad­ver­tise­ments con­sti­tute an important source of income for site operators. What’s more, ad­block­ers are often much more than what their names may let on: in addition to also pre­vent­ing ad­ver­tise­ments to be shown to viewers, ad­block­ers also prevent other con­ven­tion­al web design com­po­nents and ap­pli­ca­tions for properly func­tion­ing, even if no ad­ver­tise­ment is involved. For this reason, it’s important for web de­vel­op­ers to be aware of the impacts that ad­block­ers have, even if they have no intention of running ads them­selves.

In contrast to Sörensen’s original add-on, today’s ad­block­ers function au­to­mat­i­cal­ly and don’t require any special settings. This is due to the fact that browser ex­ten­sions make use of a pre-defined list of filter rules. These contain well-known ad­ver­tis­ing networks or typical URLs and ex­pres­sions, like adserv, ads, and are con­stant­ly updated by both de­vel­op­ers and users alike. All of this means that ad­block­ers are very flexible and cannot easily be dealt with through a catch-all solution. Whenever a user visits a website with an adblocker running, all of the site’s content is first examined on the basis of these defined rules. Next, any matching results are either directly blocked before they can be loaded or are hidden within the displayed HTML document. In order to be able to expand this set of judgement criteria for the filter, users are also able to create their own filter rules. What’s more, whitelists can also be used to block certain content and override specific websites. Adblock Plus and Ghostery, which are often used by those with Firefox and Google Chrome browsers, are among some of the most commonly used ad­block­ers. In­stal­la­tion is easy and can be carried out via your add-on manager. It’s important to dif­fer­en­ti­ate ad­block­ers from script blockers, which de­ac­ti­vate virtually all active web content (e.g. JavaScript, Flash or Microsoft Sil­verlight elements). These ap­pli­ca­tions aim less to filter out ad content and instead are intended to support the general security of web users; this is due to the fact that active website elements are often plagued by security gaps. The most commonly used script blockers include: NoScript for Firefox und Script­Safe for Google Chrome.

Those re­spon­si­ble for managing web projects need to make sure to always be aware of the ways in which users are in­ter­act­ing with your website, online store, or ap­pli­ca­tion. This is the only way that you’ll truly be able to measure and increase the success of your web project.  In order to guarantee an optimal start, user ex­pe­ri­ence should always occupy a pre­dom­i­nant role during the design and de­vel­op­ment phase of your web presence. If, at some future point in time, it turns out that certain elements aren’t func­tion­ing as they should be, then this generally means that they’re being used im­prop­er­ly or aren’t being perceived by the users as they are intended to be. The root cause of such short­com­ings could be traced back to the use of ad­block­ers. Due to their filtering rules and the fact that ad­ver­tis­ing material is often quite similar to con­ven­tion­al content, filter add-ons are in­creas­ing­ly re­spon­si­ble for also blocking add-free content. This is es­pe­cial­ly beginning to become a problem in the e-commerce sector, given that product de­scrip­tions and call to actions can be affected by ad­block­ers taking place in the wrong locations. Provided that the user isn’t informed by the adblocker as to which content is being blocked, then they normally will never be aware of which items have failed to be displayed. The result of this is that the potential customer may not get to see the item they wish to view or open any relevant links related to this item. A similar problem known to arise from a phe­nom­e­non is called banner blindness. Some ad­block­ers may affect the func­tion­al­i­ty of web analysis tools given that they’re able to recognize tracking codes (for example those of Google analytics) and prevent the script from being executed. While this does help protect the privacy of users, it does present potential drawbacks in that it makes eval­u­at­ing and analyzing traffic and con­ver­sions more difficult. What’s more, ad­block­ers are able to in­di­rect­ly influence SEO measures due to the fact that ads running in search engines are also affected by this filtering process. And given that both sidebar ad­ver­tise­ments as well as ad­ver­tise­ments presented in the top positions of the search results aren’t seen by some users, your project’s search engine op­ti­miza­tion efforts and the high organic ranking that these are able to achieve make it possible to compete with already-es­tab­lished rankings.

Click here to download the in­fo­graph­ic showing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of ad­block­ers worldwide.

In order to steer clear of filter-add on lists, there’s one universal-yet-time-consuming method that can be employed: ex­plic­it­ly with­draw­ing your content from con­ven­tion­al ad­ver­tis­ing types as well as formats. Following this, users are able to:

• go the technical route by avoiding pop-up elements all together,

• and clearly indicate to ad­block­ers that the element in question is not an ad­ver­tise­ment,

which can be done by creating a clear, optical dis­tinc­tion between it and the ad­ver­tis­ing banner. In order to si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly fight against banner blindness, you should make sure to keep nav­i­ga­tion­al as well as content portions of your web presence away from the ad­ver­tis­ing areas of your website. Here, the right sidebar as well as the header are of par­tic­u­lar im­por­tance, as these seem to be more spo­rad­i­cal­ly perceived by users even in the absence of an ad filter. Next, make sure to regularly test the func­tion­al­i­ty of your website. In terms of how it’s carried out, this tactic is no different than typical AB or mul­ti­vari­ate tests. These tests, which are designed to inspect the func­tion­al­i­ty of your web project, take many factors into account and check whether your web presence supports different screen sizes and res­o­lu­tions, devices, and web browsers; they also look into the effects that the most common ad­block­ers. Regarding the problems arising from web analysis, there’s also one simple fix for this dilemma. For example, there are WordPress tools, like Block­A­lyz­er, which reveals how many of your users currently use an adblocker. The results obtained from this ap­pli­ca­tion can be used together with the rest of your sta­tis­tics in order to obtain a more global overview of your actual con­ver­sion rate.

Even if there’s no panacea for these adblocker woes there are many different options to choose from in order to combat the detri­men­tal effects of these browser ex­ten­sions. A large portion of these solutions do require, however, the ability to recognize which users are employing an adblocker feature. For­tu­nate­ly, this is a re­quire­ment that, with a little bit of know-how, can be fulfilled. A JavaScript program built into an HTML document allows you to determine whether an adblocker is being used, and can directly initiate the desired reaction to the presence of such users. The following is a list of plausible solutions for dealing with users that have been iden­ti­fied as ad­block­ers:

• Notices and warnings: The built-in JavaScript code is able to register that users have switched on their adblocker. Site operators are given free rein regarding the way in which they convey to users that it’s important for them to turn off their ad­block­ers.

• Blocking users: one option that should be carefully con­sid­ered before it’s actually im­ple­ment­ed involves pro­hibit­ing known users of ad­block­ers from accessing your web project. Such script can be created, tested, and im­ple­ment­ed into your HTML document free of charge on Antiblock.org. Given that you’re not able to give users any ad­di­tion­al input once they’ve clicked out of the prompt you’ve created, this option can prove to be risky. A more water-downed version of this method may be worth mulling over. These allow you to prevent users with ad­block­ers from accessing certain premium content offers, such as movies.

• Offer al­ter­na­tives to turning off ad­block­ers: there are other routes one can take other than re­quest­ing users to turn off their ad­block­ers. The fact that a user has chosen to install an adblocker may simply be due to the fact that many online ad­ver­tise­ments are still con­sid­ered to pose a security threat and punishing such visitors may not bode well among certain target groups. An al­ter­na­tive solution to this problem comes in the form of changing the con­di­tions on which users are able to freely access your content. For example, simply re­quest­ing that visitors share your site on outlets like Facebook or Twitter may prove a viable al­ter­na­tive to dis­play­ing ad­ver­tise­ments. And of course, at least when it comes to sites with heavy viewer traffic, there’s always the option of demanding payment in order to view ad-free content.

One al­ter­na­tive to the measures mentioned involves learning a few tricks that prevent your ad­ver­tise­ments from being read as such by ad­block­ers. For example, simply excluding the presence of certain keywords, like ‘ad’ or ‘banner’, in the ad­ver­tis­ing element’s URL may be enough to cir­cum­vent many ad­block­ers. To this end, it may be worth­while to regularly take a look at the filter lists of known ad­block­ers. The size of the ad­ver­tise­ment is also a deciding criterion for ad­block­ers. Given that ad­ver­tis­ing banners often are of a standard size, ex­ten­sions contain the cor­re­spond­ing functions in order recognize ads simply based on their pixel numbers. Small vari­a­tions of this number, which may only occur provided the original copyright holder approves of such mod­i­fi­ca­tions, is enough to cir­cum­vent the nets of these automatic ad filters. Just like no­tice­able keywords, the image’s pixel count also shouldn’t appear in the URL. A further pos­si­bil­i­ty involves creating one’s own in­di­vid­ual ad server in order to remain in­de­pen­dent of external ad­ver­tis­ing networks, which are generally known to most de­vel­op­ers of ad­block­ers.

Lawsuits and court cases brought against adblocker de­vel­op­ers are no rarity. But with the exception of a few, modest victories, no sub­stan­tial successes on this front have yet to come about. Rec­og­niz­ing the fact that ad­ver­tis­ing filters are part of today’s online reality and reacting to this fact with relevant counter measures is an important step towards success for your online presence. Of course, it’s possible to design web presences and ad­ver­tise­ments in such a way that prevents them from trig­ger­ing ad­block­ers. But it’s important to remember that these steps are often as­so­ci­at­ed with much more ad­di­tion­al effort on behalf of the ad­ver­tis­ers and site operators. And it shouldn’t be forgotten that each filter add-on is well-endowed with a large community that generates new filter rules on a daily basis.

A more elegant approach to dealing with this challenge involves finding al­ter­na­tive ad­ver­tis­ing formats or revenue sources that spare users of less popular banners and pop-ups, while at the same time manage to generate the desired income. Limiting access to content only for those who pay is, an addition to native ad­ver­tis­ing, is a further point that many website operators consider. For those who focus on premium content and look for creative solutions to cir­cum­vent­ing ad­block­ers will most likely find out that many users will be willing to turn off their ad­block­ers or accept your al­ter­na­tive con­di­tions for viewing.