You probably know it you come to a website and you are immediately overloaded with all kinds of different advertisements. You are looking for a solution to not get this in the future, but what do you need? An ad blocker! Read in this article how an ad blocker works and what its advantages and disadvantages are!
What is an Ad Blocker?
Installing an Ad Blocker ensures that advertisements cannot be shown. The reason some people install this is that they see ads as something annoying and irritating. As a website owner you are not happy with this, because many owners of a WordPress website are dependent on this advertising revenue. Some website owners are even completely dependent on this.
Advertising revenues are needed
Many companies need this advertising revenue to pay their costs. Companies have had to incur various costs to provide the website with content. Maybe you own a website that posts news items that journalists have made up. These journalists do have to be paid and for this precisely this advertising revenue is needed. Because of this, from the perspective of WordPress website owners, such Ad Blockers can pose a danger to the continuity of their website and business.
Fewer ads means less revenue
Detecting and blocking ads from Ad Blockers leads to these ads being shown less often. As a result, advertisements are seen less and less by visitors. This leads to less revenue from ads because manufacturers/companies want to pay for ad space, but do so based on the number of people who see these ads. As a company / owner of a WordPress website, there are fortunately a number of possibilities to advertise and simultaneously retain visitors for the website.
What are the pros and cons of Ad Blockers?
| Advantages Ad Blockers | Disadvantages Ad Blockers |
|---|---|
| From the consumer’s point of view, the advantage is that you can surf the internet faster because no ads have to be loaded. | Some websites ban visitors who use Ad Blockers. These are mainly websites where their income often consists of advertisements. If these advertisements are no longer visible to visitors, the revenue will also disappear. Here a consumer will therefore (temporarily) have to disable the Ad Blocker to get to the website. |
| Less disruption for consumers while reading/viewing the content on websites, no more space is taken up by advertisements and banners. | Advertising revenue allows websites to pay fees from it. For example, with a journalistic website, its journalists are paid. If this income disappears, it may be that in time the entire website will have to disappear, so that, for example, these journalists no longer have a job. |
| Advertisements could bring viruses with it, you can limit this risk with this. | By using Ad Blockers, more can be unintentionally blocked than just the ads. Sometimes this also blocks, for example, texts and images that are important to properly display the content of the website. |
| Consumers get more privacy because cookies are no longer stored. | As a website owner, it is a disadvantage if cookies are no longer stored, with this valuable information is lost for the advertisers, with which they could normally advertise much more specifically. |
How does an Ad Blocker work in Firefox?
In Firefox, you can choose a built-in Ad Blocker. Allows a consumer to block ads by choosing the “Tracking Protection” setting. With this, Firefox ensures that cookies are stopped. This does not allow any information to be collected about anyone.
How do you add exceptions to ads?
If someone does want to see the advertisements of your website, this can be indicated to many Ad Blockers. Instead of a blacklist, a white list is used here. Sites that are named on this white list, the ads will be shown there. What is always possible is to temporarily disable the Ad Blocker when a website is visited. As a result, the advertisements are shown and a visitor can take in the content of this website. As a website owner, there are several options on how to deal with Ad Blockers. Below are some possibilities.
- Do nothing
With this you will see that your advertising revenue will decrease, as more and more people start using Ad Blockers. This can lead to the fact that you can no longer keep your website up and running in the long term when more and more advertising revenue disappears. This is certainly true for businesses/websites where advertising revenue makes up a large portion of their revenue.
- Disable Ad Blockers
You can ask visitors to disable their Ad Block. Especially if you have a website where you are largely dependent on income from advertisements, you can explain this to your visitors why you ask them this.
By explaining this briefly and concisely when visitors come in, you have a chance that they want to turn off their Ad Block. They can do this by indicating in the settings of their Ad Blocker that your website should be whitelisted. The next time they visit your website, the ads are simply shown. - Memberships
By offering memberships, you can give visitors choices. For example, they can opt for a free membership with advertisements, or a paid membership without advertisements. Especially if you have a high-quality website where you have many visitors with an above-modal income, this is a good alternative.
This gives these people the opportunity to take in the content in peace, without ads. Where you as the owner still have your income from the memberships. And so you can pay your people to provide good, new content again. - Keep visitors away from your website with Ad Block
You can also choose to exclude visitors who use Ad Blockers. If they are not willing to take these ads, from which you get your income, they will not get access to the content. That’s the other side of the internet, of course; many visitors have become accustomed to the fact that everything is free, that they are no longer willing to pay for information. And that ‘pay’, you do that on some websites simply by accepting the advertisements.
The price of the content of the website in this case consists of advertisements. With this method, you give visitors the choice of whether or not they think it is worthwhile to view the advertisements or whether they refrain from visiting.
Need help? Get in touch!
Do you not yet know how you want and can show your ads in WordPress or are you thinking about another source of income and should this be built? Contact our WordPress specialists, they not only know about online marketing but also development. You can reach us by calling on 030 20 72 488 or open the chat and send us your question. Also check out our WordPress Maintenance Packages.
