Members who block ads

[Bossanova]

It's come to my attention that for certain browsers, there is an ad-on that allows to block ads. Seeing as I use to make money off ads, I tested this out to see if it actually did block..and of course, it does.

Now, I threatened to ban users who block the ads, seeing as it's also a TOS violation on most forum providers. Really, though? You can't monitor it every second, or try and find out if every member is blocking the ads.

For those of us that make money off these ads, it's really frustrating, isn't it? The members will use ad-blockers - TOS violation, but yet they won't even offer to donate money to legally remove the ads.

 

[MrJohn]

I would be very interested to see exactly where in these forums TOS it says that you are breaching the TOS for having a pop-up blocker selected in your browser...

 

[Bossanova]

I would be very interested to see exactly where in these forums TOS it says that you are breaching the TOS for having a pop-up blocker selected in your browser...

For ProBoards it is. To block the ads on the forum without paying ad-free.

 

[MrJohn]

http://www.proboards.com/tos.html

I see nothing in this page that says that I have to turn off my pop-up blocker or I breach the Terms of Service.

 

[Nathan]

It's come to my attention that for certain browsers, there is an ad-on that allows to block ads. Seeing as I use to make money off ads, I tested this out to see if it actually did block..and of course, it does.

Now, I threatened to ban users who block the ads, seeing as it's also a TOS violation on most forum providers. Really, though? You can't monitor it every second, or try and find out if every member is blocking the ads.

For those of us that make money off these ads, it's really frustrating, isn't it? The members will use ad-blockers - TOS violation, but yet they won't even offer to donate money to legally remove the ads.

So it's legal to allow minors to see all those envoy ads which aren't suitable for a certain age group?

Adblockers aren't illegal, in fact I use an adblock and it's great, most ad programs have malicious content embedded in them, therefore im doing nothing illegal, all im doing is protecting myself from the malicious content :great:

 

[Bossanova]

Hm..seems someone fed me false info then. >_>

I know it's not illegal, but when using the adblock, you're wasting peoples money who pay for the ads.

 

[Nathan]

So why does your first post come off with the impression of you complaining it's illegal?

How are we wasting advertiser's money? Is it our fault that people try to shove ads on the sites we visit then expect us to click? No, not at all. No one said we wanted to see ads when we visit a site either 😛

 

[DarkRaven]

I don't know about you but I find all those ''Adult Friend Finder,'' ''Party Poker,'' and ''Mate One,'' ads really annoying. Whenever I have ads on my forum (once in a blue moon), I ask them politely to turn their adblock off but I understand how annoying ads are so I'm not going to ban them for it.

Edit: I forgot to mention how annoying ''Evony'' is.

 

[fantanoice]

If I don't want to click them then I don't want to see them. That's my view. The forum hosts are still getting paid, so what's the problem? I'm not going to click the damn things anyway, so they're not losing any money on my part.

 

[CyberFreak]

For ProBoards it is. To block the ads on the forum without paying ad-free.

I think i know what you are getting here. Many hosts have rules saying you are not allowed to block or hide adverts. That is aimed at the administrator. It is possible i think on proboards and it definitely is on Invisionfree where you can add some code to your site and it hides the adverts to all your members whether they have an adblocker or not. That is against the rules but individual users having an adblocker isn't against the rules. It is hard to track anyway. I could easily say that i don't use and adblocker and if someone wants to ban me, i would just say prove it am using one. It is near enough impossible to do.

As for wasting advertisers money, alot of ads like Google text ads and Bidvertiser ads are done by clicks (CPC). Basically they don't pay anything if their ad shows 10000 times and no one clicks it. They pay for every click. There are options where people can pay this way and if people chose to pay for impressions then it is there fault in my opinion :yes:

 

[starscream]

If some members are using ad-block plus or some proxy which blocks ads. Then i don';t think you can make them disable it anyway.

 

[Bossanova]

For ProBoards it is. To block the ads on the forum without paying ad-free.

I think i know what you are getting here. Many hosts have rules saying you are not allowed to block or hide adverts. That is aimed at the administrator. It is possible i think on proboards and it definitely is on Invisionfree where you can add some code to your site and it hides the adverts to all your members whether they have an adblocker or not. That is against the rules but individual users having an adblocker isn't against the rules. It is hard to track anyway. I could easily say that i don't use and adblocker and if someone wants to ban me, i would just say prove it am using one. It is near enough impossible to do.

As for wasting advertisers money, alot of ads like Google text ads and Bidvertiser ads are done by clicks (CPC). Basically they don't pay anything if their ad shows 10000 times and no one clicks it. They pay for every click. There are options where people can pay this way and if people chose to pay for impressions then it is there fault in my opinion :yes:

Ahh..ok, I see. I don't mean to make it sound like something illegal, I just mean, if I were to have a company display my ads, I'd sure in the hell want them displayed and not hidden, otherwise, I'm wasting my money paying someone to display my ads when they aren't even being seen.

 

[starscream]

CPC advertisers are blocked by most of the ad banners. Opnex based ads are not in the ABP listing. But people can manually turn it in.

 

[AnAccount]

People block ads on forums for many reasons. I remember one free host I was on that had loads of inappropriate ads that my friend blocked (he was using Firefox at the time) and he blocked them because all they did was make the board load slow. So there is nothing wrong with blocking ads. I would say that is especially appropriate for those who are running forums where people of all ages can join, and all they show is inappropriate images for young forumers. I don't see anything wrong with blocking ads, nor do I think it's illegal.

 

[Dasher]

I personally don't block ads. I just don't pay attention to them. On my site I wont even add them because I don't want to be held responsible for something that the 3rd party ad company put on my site. My site is supposed to be kid friendly and I intend for it to stay that way.

As for other sites, that's their business. If they have inappropriate ads, the least they can do is add a disclaimer or something along those lines warning the users before registration or viewing of the sites. If the blocking of ads violates the TOS of free forum hosts they have the right to knock your site off there servers, because they own it. Your not paying for it. You have no rights for it.

It can't really be argued that it's illegal. Because in all actuality, it probably wont ever be. Yes, morally it's probably wrong because your wasting peoples money, but they're probably wasting their money. Users don't normally pay attention to ads. I don't like the ads that pop-up on game sites like Miniclip that take up the whole page and you have to click "skip this ad". They're beyond annoying.

Now as for adult sites, if they have ads at least 90% of them probably have some form of malicious code in them. It's what they do. That should be illegal. Because they get into your PC. Definition of PC is Personal Computer. Wait, did I say personal? But isn't that an invasion of privacy? But the government doesn't care. They can invade privacy all they want? Yup, because they're the government.

There's my POV.

 

[krushrpants]

As for wasting advertisers money, alot of ads like Google text ads and Bidvertiser ads are done by clicks (CPC). Basically they don't pay anything if their ad shows 10000 times and no one clicks it. They pay for every click. There are options where people can pay this way and if people chose to pay for impressions then it is there fault in my opinion :yes:

Adsense actually does pay by both number of impressions and number of clicks, with clicks obviously being worth a lot more.

 

[CyberFreak]

Isn't that only if you use banners? For text ads i think you can only pay per click. For banners, you can per pay click or per 1000 impressions. I think that is how it works. I haven't used it for a few months so i can't remember what the options are.

 

[Azza12342]

This might be harsh, but for me, a forum that doesn't allow people to use their own free will in using a ad-block can do one of two things.

1. Ban me as they don't deserve me on their forum (anyone for that matter).
2. Shove their forum up their ***.

I know that may be abit harsh, but if you want to tell people what they can and can't do when it obviously isn't in any TOS'S is just stupid and you should close your forum down. (Not mentioned to anyone directly, just a general speech 😛).

 

[John1]

Hm..seems someone fed me false info then. >_>

I know it's not illegal, but when using the adblock, you're wasting peoples money who pay for the ads.

Don't pay for the ads then :shrug: