The IE8 InPrivate mode doesn’t prevent Google AdSense ads from being displayed

Have you downloaded InternetExplorer 8, yet?

As Microsoft introduces Windows 7, that’ll be the default browser so if you don’t do it by yourself on your current XP or Vista setup now, it’ll be done for you, in the next OS release.

Microsoft’s new web browser is packed with features and one of them has been quite a cause for concern, for the online advertising industry which heavily relies on external JavaScript calls to display ads.

Publishers displaying Google AdSense ads have been quite vocal about the possibility for a new feature, among many others, called InPrivate [browsing] mode (also called the “porn mode“) where the browser doesn’t record anything, may it be history, cookies or cache that’ll be wiped out at the end of the session (so you don’t get slowed down during that session), because it was feared that the ads, originating from Google, would cease to be visible.

If that were to happen, as is the case with AdBlock Plus for Firefox, it would have the potential to destroy large parts of the online advertising industry because IE8 is promising to become the browser of choice, over time.

But although things might change, right now, it looks like the InPrivate mode won’t prevent Google AdSense ads from displaying.

Millions of AdSense publishers might let go a long sight of relief, when looking at the following proof that AdSense ads display normally, even when using the InPrivate mode…

By the way, it should be noted that we used IE8′s “express settings”…

…and we also had InPrivate filtering turned on in such a way that IE8 would block content for us (with its own “default” settings)…

inprivate_filtering_turned_on

…with these settings “enforced” (none that we determined, actually)…

So that was pretty much as far as the typical web user would go, when using such settings. Assuming a “typical user” would be using them, in the first place.

In all fairness, it might be a while before this type of “filtering” reaches mainstream.

The AdBlock Plus extension, however, has prevented publishers from collecting untold amounts of advertising revenue, since it’s been released to the Firefox user base so the idea of seeing IE8 come out with a similar feature, not activated by default but easily available to all, has made honest and hard working —ad supported— publishers very nervous.

Fortunately, it doesn’t look like Microsoft will wage war with Google on that front. Perhaps the Redmond giant has a slight idea of what kind of “blogger-storm” it would attract upon itself by doing so or maybe it’s just common sense (yes, that too can happen at Microsoft, according to certains rumors).

Whatever the reason, Microsoft’s IE8 InPrivate mode seems to play nice with Google AdSense ads on all publisher web sites that we checked (and we checked many of them, from all over the world, in several languages) so for now, it’s all good.

Let’s hope —and perhaps lobby— for things to stay this way.

And for AdBlock Plus to grow up and stop hurting honest web publishers.

Tags: ie8, internetexplorer 8, microsoft, adsense, google adsense, google, online advertising, online ads, web ads, ppc ads, pay-per-click, ad zones, display ads, hide ads, prevent ads from displaying, adblock plus, inprivate, filtering, web browser, internet users, advertising revenue, money, finance, common sense

Does Adblock Plus hurt Google’s AdSense publishers?

Downloading the Adblock Plus extension for Firefox is easy. It takes under a minute. Activating it takes a few seconds and once the browser has relaunched, Google AdSense ads become a distant memory.

People who install Adblock Plus or similar extensions, in either Firefox or Internet Explorer, do it for a variety of reasons…

some hate advertising, flat out;
some want to protest against Google’s privacy policies, which may be viewed as intrusive;
some never click on the ads, so they see no point in viewing them;
some want a faster browsing experience; and finally
some just follow a mass movement against online advertising.

But when people refuse to view the ads that pay for the free content they’re accessing, it endangers the entire online advertising ecosystem, especially the one involving Google AdSense and its publishers.

By using Adblock Plus when visiting ad supported web destinations, regular visitors become freeloaders. These people take all the free content and leave nothing behind, no even being courteous enough to even tolerate the generally non-intrusive ads accompanying that content.

Given the popularity of Adblock Plus, being the number one extension for Firefox, popularitywise, this means web publishers are going to have to find alternative ways to make money, such as…

relying solely on Google Custom Search (beta) which isn’t currently blocked — and that’s a long shot, to say the least;
switching to alternative advertising service but since they pay roughly 10 to 100 times less than Google, that’s a losing proposition that won’t pay the bills;
ending the universal access to free content, limiting the free stuff to marketing purposes only and charging for memberships to access the previously free content;
syndicating the locally produced and owned content to a larger network which still hasn’t been affected by Adblock Plus, yet.

That’s a lot of trouble to counter a handful of nasty ad blocking extensions but as the web publisher continues to reach new lows, there seems to be little other choice, in order to make ends meet.

Adblock Plus and similar extensions are probably the main reason why publishers see very high stats in their internal counters and much lower counts, according to Google. The difference is likely comprised of all the users that visited with such extensions on.

Keep in mind Adblock Plus —also— kills the Google Analytics code so trying to make sense of the numbers accumulated there isn’t even possible since a large portion of visitors aren’t accounted for. Yikes! So much for analytics…

So with all this in mind, it’s not hard to see that Adblock Plus and similar extensions are hurting web publishers, big time. So much so that an entire nascent online publishing industry is being strangled as it tries to emerge.

It’s like as if somebody sold a system to block all ads when reading newspapers, or watching TV or listening to the radio. It would have devastating consequences but online, it’s even worse since this media is still in its infancy.

People who value liberty, independent opinions and fair use should be enraged that ad blocking extensions even exist. If a web site has too much advertising for one’s taste, go elsewhere. When the web publisher sees his traffic count going down, he’ll get the message and change things to the visitors’ liking. There’s no need to block all the ads… for all sites, at once!

So, is Google also hurting, because of these ad blocking extensions?

Within its web publisher (affiliates) network, yes. Google hurt should follow the same curve as the downfall in revenue web publishers have been seeing for the last few months, especially since September 2008 and even worse, since February 2009.

However, the way Google displays its ads within its own search engine make it immune to ad blockers, there. As such, Google hasn’t been losing one penny from ad blockers, within its own search empire.

Also, everybody knows that the same link clicked in a publisher’s web page will usually bring between 6 and 18 times less money than the exact same link clicked within a Google Customer Search (beta) search results page. The logic behind this is probably that Google values its own web property above all others, even quality independent sites.

So while Google looks as strong as ever, every other AdSense publisher out there seems to be dying. Some slowly. Some, much faster. The smaller publishers being the first to call it quits.

Maybe that’s why Google hasn’t retaliated (legally or otherwise) against Adblock Plus.

They’re still making boatloads of money so why should they care if their web publishers are being driven into financial distress? Seriously, Google being the sole “safe” outlet to publish the pay-per-click ads, they may even be making MORE MONEY because of Adblock Plus.

So, the web publishers need to figure out a way out of this trap, by themselves…

Adblock Plus and similar extensions will likely continue to thrive (until the free web dies); and
Google isn’t moving to help out publishers… even as they’re being driven out of business.

Using scripts to force visitors to deactivate such extensions will likely become the norm because the financial drain is so bad that there’s just no other choice but that’s awful because web publishers are forced to confront their visitors because third party ad blocking extension makers have decided to attack them, head on.

Until such anti-ad blocking scripts are coded, web publishers will continue to feel the punishing crunch in their Google AdSense revenue. As bas as it is, the situation could get a lot worse.

Yes, web publishing was wonderful for a while but Adblock Plus and similar extensions are ruining the entire experience for everyone and accelerating the end of the free web, in the process.

Tags: adblock plus, google adsense, adsense, abblock, ad block, ad blockers, ad blocking, advertising, online ads, deleted ads, ads ripped out, ads not rendered, web publishers, ad revenue, sponsored links, free content, quality content, ad zones, visitors, adsense stats, ecpm, number of visitors, number of clicks, ad conversion, firefox, internet explorer, ie8, extensions, plugins, membership-based access, paid content

Will Adblock Plus kill Google’s AdSense?

Quality online content is freely available, today.

Thanks to revenue generation services like Google’s AdSense, web publishers can concentrate on creating and managing that content while advertisers bid to be seen alongside it. In the process, countless web publishers get monthly checks, from Google, which help pay for it all.

Again, placing ads alongside quality content provides the following advantages…

context-specific advertising space for millions of advertisers, from all over the world;
a relatively stable monthly money stream, for participating web publishers; and
tons of quality free content for all web visitors.

Furthermore, with Google’s AdSense service, visitors are presented with highly targeted ads which closely match their tracked preferences. In other words, a majority of ads presented are relevant.

So while that seems like a logical and straightforward online ecosystem, the people at Adblock Plus don’t see it as such.

In their view, such ads are a bad thing.

So bad, that they give away a plugin for the Firefox browser which basically eliminates all Google AdSense ads from web publisher pages, without Google’s consent or the web publisher even knowing about it.

Because Adblock Plus is a Firefox extension, the ads are basically stripped away from the rendered web pages.

If web publishers don’t read articles such as this one, they may never even know that their economic lifeblood (their ads) are secretly being trashed, by the Adblock Plus extension.

So Google AdSense publishers take thousands of blogs and forums by storm to discuss the recent freefall in the revenue they derive from their ads. And we’re talking about a more than 50% drop, roughly between September 2008 and March of 2009, according to many publishers who have been quite vocal about this spectacular drop in their earnings.

While it was historically possible to pay the rent by adding AdSense ads to content, it’s a lot more difficult now because Adblock Plus, among other things, is the single most downloaded extension for Firefox and on the Internet Explorer front, it’s no better because other similar extensions also attack the ads.

So where is this taking us?

If web publishers can’t make any more money with their Google AdSense ads, the quality and universal accessibility of content is probably going to be suffer, a lot.

Because of Adblock Plus and similar extensions to popular web browsers, expect…

a lot less variety of content;
a lot less free content;
more membership-based content, available for a monthly fee or per-access fee;
alternative ad methods that’ll need to be even more intrusive and less targeted, to make up for the lost revenue.

In other words, what sounded like a good deal for the typical web visitor tired of seeing clueless ads popping up everywhere might pave the way to a somewhat nightmarish web where a limited set of content is available for free and everything else has been forced to migrate to membership-based access rules, to keep up with the bills.

adblocker_064

People who install Adblock Plus most likely don’t realize they’re being converted into digital freeloaders, of sorts.

You see, contextual ads —especially those from Google AdSense— add value to the original content by providing lots of links providing more information or commercial offerings, about any given theme. Visitors who prefer not to click on such ads don’t have to while those who find interesting leads can follow them through. It’s that simple.

By having Adblock Plus and similar extensions installed on so many browsers, at home, at school and at work, the entire revenue model falls apart and risks bringing the beautiful web we know down with it.

As such, any responsible web user should never install such extensions in their browsers.

Case in point, this is what the people behind Adblock Plus say about their creation:

“While nobody profits directly from it, widespread adoption of ad blocking software will make intrusive ads economically inefficient until they become as rare as pop-up windows already are today. And aside of making the internet a better place it is simply good to know that this work is used.”

If “nobody profits directly from it”, it should also be noted that that billions of dollars are likely lost each year by web publishers and that means Adblock Plus is an obstacle to the rightful redistribution of money, in society.

Concerned web publishers are absolutely right when they refer to Adblock Plus as a digital calamity which is causing enormous harm to the web, in general.

More people are coming to realize that the web can’t continue to be free is people keep using Adblock Plus and similar extensions because freeloading destroys most revenue-generating models, especially the one based on Google AdSense.

Adblock Plus is so efficient that it blocks regular Google AdSense ads but that’s not all, even the customized AdSense feeds, like those displayed in the Los Angeles Times, get deleted. In short, anything related to Google’s ads gets pulled from the web pages shown to users. It’s very sad, indeed.

Since the Adblock Plus developers and fans don’t seem too keen on the idea that web publishers need money to operate, a series of retaliation might be needed to save the web as we know it.

Among the measures that are obviously becoming more necessary, Google and web publishers should sue Adblock Plus for, directly or indirectly, stealing them of their revenue stream by empowering users with a tool that blocks all ads by default, instead of letting the user only block the ads he feels are too intrusive, on a case by case basis.

By banning all ads altogether, without any kind of prior notice to the web publishers or advertisers, Adblock Plus might be exposing itself —and those who code and distribute it— to costly civil and criminal suits. Similar extension coders expose themselves as well. By attacking the web’s revenue model and the web publishers, these “ad blockers” paint themselves as targets for the moment when the legal actions start flying around.

Do you think the Los Angeles Times, for instance, will tolerate that over half of their online viewers refuse to even view their ads? Of course not. It’s just a matter of time before another way to generate money is decided upon. Since it will likely be a sort of membership, all readers will pay dearly for those who were too foolish to support the current “all free” content access model.

And in all fairness, the Google AdSense ad zones are usually well located, alongside the content and pose no problem for the visitors. Only a minority of spam-like sites stuff the ads in such a way that it become intrusive. Should all web publishers have to pay for the lack of judgement of a minority of spam-spinners? Of course not. That’s why the very principle of “blocking everything, everywhere”, with Adblock Plus, is so twisted, unfair and unethical, if not downright illegal, in some circumstances.

For the time being, Google has been careful not to talk about extensions like Adblock Plus. However, it’s unlikely that they’ll stay silent much longer as they too must be suffering from the spread of this extension and others like it.

While the power to view ads or not now lies in the hands of visitors, web publishers could choose to show blank pages to them. The pages could also display short messages asking the visitors to turn off their “ad blocking extension” if they wish to view the content. Some visitors might find it supremely frustrating but by activating such an extension, they definitely had it coming.

When enough web publishers refuse access to freeloading visitors, the popularity of such extensions might start to go down. For the time being, the economic nightmare stemming from Adblock plus continues, for countless Google AdSense publishers who can’t make sense of their stats, anymore.

Adblock Plus might sell itself as a “plus” but in the end, it’s a huge “minus”, for everybody. The end of free content online would change our world, for the worse.

The trouble with Ubuntu Server for beginners

At one point or another, any web publisher who is hosting web sites elsewhere will be tempted to bring a few of them closer to home, say, on a web server located downstairs, in a work-at-home office.

And when that happens, operating system-related choices need to be made.

Sure, there’s Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 or Apple’s MacOS X Leopard Server which come with their fair share of goodies but both are somewhat mediocre —and prohibitively expensive— compared to UNIX and Linux-based alternative, which are the crowned server room favorites.

So after dabbling around in either Windows or Mac server offerings for a while, initially weary of the “nix” alternatives, web publishers will likely cozy up to the idea of firing up such a box, namely to have access to the vast universe of options related to Apache, PHP and MySQL, running a rock solid, non-bloatware OS.

By the way, Apple came real close to building a winner with it’s MacOS X Leopard Server but it falls short on just about every count, the moment you try to go further than what Apple expected you to do with your server.

For instance, GD and ImageMagick aren’t available and installing them is the proverbial equivalent of landing men on the moon.

Furthermore, FTP management is a complete and utter drag since they have to be linked to “users” and only 10 seats come with the US$500 version. Yes, it’s lame. Ditto for email. And just trying to make domain name aliases redirect correctly is a complete waste of time. In other words, Leopard tried but it failed.

And that’s, in part, why UNIX or Linux alternatives seem so enticing. Most people end up in the Linux camp and the Ubuntu Server build feel like a natural winner. After all, Ubuntu desktop is quite impressive so the server edition should deliver the same kind of experience, right? Wrong! Ubuntu’s Server Edition, like many other Linux Server-oriented releases come without a GUI.

No graphic user interface makes the download shorter and the OS lighter but it condemns the web publisher, the one firing up Linux on a black PC box, in his basement office, to typing long, hardly understandable commands even geeks find tedious for jobs that could be much more easily handled… through a GUI.

This is going to drive 5% of the “nix” gurus crazy but 95% of the would-be “nixers” are completely stunned, at that point when the Ubuntu Server installation states that it has finished and all that’s offered to the user is a black screen and a prompt line. Users are going “What is that?” and they basically scrap the whole thing, install Windows and use WAMP or XAMPP, half-way solutions which lack raw power but come with an comprehensive interface where some productivity can actually occur.

And then, UNIX and Linux gurus continue to question themselves why the “nix” adoption rate is stalling, even as their archenemy, Microsoft’s Vista is the epitome for bloatware and costly licensing fees.

The problem, with UNIX and Linux servers has everything to do with no GUIs or very darn poor GUIs with very little comprehensive server controls, if any. Sure, a user could type “apt-get install kde” into the command line and install a GUI but it wouldn’t sport anything to control the server stuff so it’s basically pointless.

So the message to the “nix” crowd is: throw in a GUI —with server-specific controls— that the GUI-addicted web publishers will digg or risk losing countless would-be converts who hit a wall when they see how utterly unwelcoming these GUIless servers are, for them.

Let’s assume the message will be heard and something will be done about the regularly decried GUI issue, on OSs like Ubuntu Server Edition. The guys developing Ubuntu releases are some of brightest people around and perhaps that’s a problem (if such a thing is even possible) because they seem to underplay the fact that web publishers aren’t all guru-level “nixers” and that’s seriously holding back their adoption rate.

But there’s a ray of hope.

Yes, a bright light is shining on some Linux distributions, like CentOS, through the use of VirtualMin which is a free and paid mixed offering that delivers the kind of Linux-server handling which should come STANDARD with all distributions, such as Ubuntu’s Server Edition.

Users can also opt for Webmin but it’s not going to win any beauty contests soon, as far as its interface is concerned. The engine underlying the Webmin script, however, is as reliable as the Linux OS itself. A good interface designer would do that project a lot of good.

UNIX and Linux are wonderful operating systems and once they’re setup and somewhat manageable through a web interface like VirtualMin, they offer the utmost in power, stability and versatility… but one has to get to that point and it’s not easy, right now.

Once the “nixers” figure out a way to make their server-oriented OS release interesting for human beings, their success, for that important niche, will grow exponentially.

Tags: unix, linux, open source, free, server os, servers, operating systems, nix, nixers, linux gurus, linux experts, linux server, unix server, ubuntu server, centos, virtualmin, webmin, windows server, leopard server, mac server, macos x, manageability, stability, gui, graphic user interface, guis, user interfaces