WIRED News: A Tightwad's Guide to Ad Blockers

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

A Tightwad's Guide to Ad Blockers

By Michelle Delio

Banners were a bore. Pop-ups pissed people off. So what's an advertiser to do?

Put TV-style commercials on your computer screen, of course.

Officially known as rich-media advertising, video ads can appear on a Web page or can briefly take over a user's entire screen before allowing access to a site's content.

Many marketers and website owners believe that watching ads is a fair exchange for free content.

On the other hand, many Internet users recoil at the thought of wasting time waiting for a barrage of video ads to download and play. And the new rich-media ads are particularly annoying if one happens to be watching a streaming video or listening to music on a PC with the sound levels cranked up.

There is no perfect solution to dealing with advertising, just as there is no perfect ad that will consistently grab your attention without annoying you. But if one does decide that the annoyance factor is higher than advertising's value, there are methods to block some or all ads, some or all of the time. These range from a classic homespun hack to a fancy new rich-media blocker program.

More at: http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,63442,00.html

[Mr.Green93]

1. watching ads is a fair exchange for free content.

help keep the internet free. Click on ads.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

3. When watching TV

do you sit and focus on all the commercials, or do you channel surf? When listening to music on the radio, do you pay attention to the fifteen minute commercial blocks or do you put in a cd instead?

I don't give a damn about commercials or ads from ANY source. I don't even allow popups from DU!

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

6. Yes, if you trust the site, understand "spyware," and know what a...

..."tracking cookie" is. If you understand "spam trap" sites and know what can happen when you're stuck in one. If you're familiar with how a web site can do a "drive by" installation of software and / or spyware on your computer without your permission. If you run "Adaware" and "Spybot Search And Destroy" and consistently come up 100% safe. If you have up-to-date virus definitions in your anti-virus software and a good firewall.

Advertising pays the bill for many site providers. I just question whether most people understand the risks and privacy issues behind "Clicking on ads."

[Mr.Green93]

7. Good points

[Khephra]

2. The Google ad blocker does a pretty damn fine job for most material

It's easy to install and it's free.

[trotsky]

4. Does a great job with pop-ups.

That, or switch to another browser like Mozilla. It kills pop-ups. Dead.

If you want to zap banner ads & the like, I used to use a program called AdSubtract. It worked really well.

[salvorhardin]

5. Mozilla Firefox

If you just want a browser (without the accompanying e-mail client, chat client, etc.) then go with Mozilla Firefox, and after installing it get the Flash Click-To-Play extension. This extension replaces all Flash elements on a page with a button that you can click if you want to load and play the Flash content.

Mozilla Firefox also blocks pop-ups, has search functions built into the toolbar and allows you to specify which ads to block by simply right-clicking on an ad and choosing "Block images from..."

Add in tabbed browsing and it is quite simply the best browser out there.