By: Todd Smith
Had enough of blinking, flashing banner ads telling you to pay attention to them instead of the stuff you came to the Website to read? Sure, for the most part you've probably learned to ignore banner ads but they're still distracting and suck up precious bandwidth.
Well guess what: you can avoid seeing them all together if you want to.
It's called ad blocking and thanks to nifty little utilities, clutter free browsing can be part of your surfing experience. And what's not to love about it? Pages load faster and you're not assaulted by candy-coated ads for stuff you don't need or want.
Many people argue that banner ads are a necessary part of the Web since they provide revenue for sites we'd otherwise have to pay for. Perhaps but it doesn't mean we have to watch them. Do you watch every ad while you're in front of the TV? Do you read every ad in your favorite magazine? Do you read all the subway ads on your way to work? I doubt it. Why should the Web be any different?
The good news (unless you're DoubleClick or a Web advertiser) is that blocking ads is about as simple as launching your Web browser or any other application. Several well-designed utilities from major companies like Siemens and Symantec help you do it.
So Just How Does This Ad Scrub Work?
Ad blockers are essentially special-purpose proxy servers positioned as guardians between your browser (or other Internet software) and your Internet connection. When loading Web pages, your browser requests link addresses which the proxy server compares to a frequently updated list of known ad server addresses. When it finds a match, it discards the browser's request to retrieve the ad. Simple as that.
Using an ad blocker is even simpler. I use Webwasher (www.webwasher.com). Downloading it was fast (about 900 KB) and required no installation on my Mac. It's also small and unobtrusive. It placed no gooey files in my system folder and needs only 3MB of RAM to run. When I'm ready to surf, I double click the WebWasher icon on my desktop to fire the application up (about 2 seconds) then I launch my browser. I hardly notice I do it.
What I do notice is how much better surfing is. My pages load fast and I enjoy a "personalized" Web browsing experience like no other: banner ad silence.
So Why Block Ads?
There are three main reasons I use ad blocking software: increased speed, enhanced privacy and reduced visual noise.
Increased Speed
How much of a difference can a few popping and spinning banner ads make? You'd be surprised. Blocking ads approximately doubled my surfing speed on many commercial sites. On Yahoo, I noticed nearly triple my surfing speed. This turns out to be quite noticeable even though I'm on a high-speed connection. With improvements like that, you can imagine why corporate networks would want to block ads. It saves the bandwidth for actual users instead of giving it to The Gap or IBM.
Enhanced Privacy
SURFER BEWARE: ADVERTISER'S ON YOUR TRAIL. Many of you may have accepted that anonymity is a thing of the past on the Internet. However, freedom fighters shouldn't surrender yet.
Since most banner ads use cookies to track our surfing habits and connect them to large databases, banishing banner ads reinforces your online anonymity. Personally, I don't feel the need to let DoubleClick know who I am, where I live, what my credit card number is, what I watch on the web and what I buy. They have been doing this surreptitiously for some time so blocking their ads is kind of like self-defense.
Reduced Visual Noise
Perhaps the most appreciable difference is that I enjoy the serenity of an ad-less Web experience. It's kind of like an afternoon by the lake compared to driving the strip in Las Vegas.
If You're A Web Marketer, Should You Be Concerned About This Ad-Busting Attitude?
If you' re trying to reach me you should. I wouldn't, couldn't go back to "normal" ad infused Web surfing.
Yet I'm only one person of millions on-line. Is ad blocking really a concern? Well WebWasher claims to have more than 3 million home and network users and growing. With major developers like Symantec and others including ad blocking in their security suites, I don't think the trend is heading south. I can tell you that I get a "Thank God!" response nearly every time I recommend the ad blocker I use.
As surfers "take back" their bandwidth and seek refuge from "brand bullies," the general deluge of overwhelming ad volume and ad based spying, I'll bet ad blocking use will grow.
So what do you do? People still need to find out about your product or service somehow. The question becomes how can you build a relationship with your target customer? The 1-1 marketing gurus may hold the answer.
As far as I'm concerned, permission-based relationships with organizations I've engaged (because of what they do for me, not their flashy ads on every second site I visit) is the only way to go.
And how do we find each other? Ezines I sign up for, endorsements from websites I frequent or companies I buy from as well as referrals from people I know and trust are a few. With so much marketing noise, combining your message with a voice I regard as credible is almost guaranteed to make me stop and listen. Once I listen you're only half way there. You better have something compelling to say.
Now if I could only block ads on TV, the radio, in the movie theatre, in magazines, the paper, bus shelters, billboards... you get the idea.
Todd Smith of the boutique professional services firm The Banyan Effect, helps innovative companies with a progressive social or environmental agenda build their organizations. Based in Toronto, he can be reached at todd@thebanyaneffect.com.
Popular ad blocking software:
AdKiller 1.2
Robin Lewis (Free) - www.robinlewis.co.uk/AdKiller.html
AdWiper 1.02
WebWiper ($18; 30-day demo) - www.webwiper.com/frameset.htm
InterMute 1.5.0
AdSubtract ($20; 14-day demo) - www.adsubtract.com
Internet Junkbuster 2.0.2
Junkbusters (Free) - www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/ijb.html
Internet Watcher 2000 1.1
Bernard D&G ($50; unlimited demo) - www.internetwatcher.com
InterQuick Pro 2.0.1
Deerfield.com ($40; 30-day demo) - interquick.deerfield.com
Muffin 0.9.2
Mark R. Boyns (Free) - muffin.doit.org
Norton Internet Security 2000
Symantec ($60) - www.symantec.com/sabu/nis
Proxomitron Naoko-3b
Shonenware (Free) - members.tripod.com/Proxomitron
WebWasher 2.2
Siemens (free home use; free demo) - www.webwasher.com
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