Comments on: Advertising in Action: Getting past the filters http://www.automaticable.com/2008-02-16/advertising-in-action-getting-past-the-filters/ adjective: of or pertaining to things that should work but go awry Wed, 14 Sep 2011 19:38:41 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Kyle Wegner http://www.automaticable.com/2008-02-16/advertising-in-action-getting-past-the-filters/comment-page-1/#comment-34 Kyle Wegner Sun, 17 Feb 2008 15:25:56 +0000 http://www.automaticable.com/2008-02-16/advertising-in-action-getting-past-the-filters/#comment-34 Yes, Google Reader gets past Adblock and other filters. For what reason I'm not exactly sure. I have 2 guesses though. 1) The ad serving networks have not been included in Adblock's filters since they aren't serving ads directly to web pages, just to RSS feeds. This one would be easy to test, since I believe you can add in your own filters to Adblock, I've just never tried it. 2) The way Google Reader serves its content may be different. The banner ad may be served directly with the content, meaning there is no way to sort it out between regular content and ads. I am not sure if this is really an option or not since I am limited in my tech knowledge, but I could definitely see this is being another reason ads are not blocked. My guess is that Adblock probably won't focus on filtering out RSS feeds since that is not really the medium it normally works with. It may also be hard to put together a general "block all ads in RSS feeds," since different RSS readers will work differently. There is a good chance that there is already an ad-blocking firefox plugin for Google Reader since it is so popular. It may be a Greasemonkey script or something, but I'll bet it is out there. I'm sure it's not impossible to figure out what content is made up of advertisements. Yes, Google Reader gets past Adblock and other filters. For what reason I’m not exactly sure. I have 2 guesses though.

1) The ad serving networks have not been included in Adblock’s filters since they aren’t serving ads directly to web pages, just to RSS feeds. This one would be easy to test, since I believe you can add in your own filters to Adblock, I’ve just never tried it.

2) The way Google Reader serves its content may be different. The banner ad may be served directly with the content, meaning there is no way to sort it out between regular content and ads. I am not sure if this is really an option or not since I am limited in my tech knowledge, but I could definitely see this is being another reason ads are not blocked.

My guess is that Adblock probably won’t focus on filtering out RSS feeds since that is not really the medium it normally works with. It may also be hard to put together a general “block all ads in RSS feeds,” since different RSS readers will work differently. There is a good chance that there is already an ad-blocking firefox plugin for Google Reader since it is so popular. It may be a Greasemonkey script or something, but I’ll bet it is out there. I’m sure it’s not impossible to figure out what content is made up of advertisements.

]]> By: Scott Wegner http://www.automaticable.com/2008-02-16/advertising-in-action-getting-past-the-filters/comment-page-1/#comment-33 Scott Wegner Sun, 17 Feb 2008 02:20:56 +0000 http://www.automaticable.com/2008-02-16/advertising-in-action-getting-past-the-filters/#comment-33 So you say that RSS readers such as Google Reader are immune or less-prone to ad-blockers such as Adblock Plus-- why is that? Isn't it subject to the same filtering that any other webpage would be held to? Why is it different now, and do you think it'll last that way for long? So you say that RSS readers such as Google Reader are immune or less-prone to ad-blockers such as Adblock Plus– why is that? Isn’t it subject to the same filtering that any other webpage would be held to? Why is it different now, and do you think it’ll last that way for long?

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