FAQ


About the project
Ad blocking statistics
Notification to adblock-users and access denial
Monetizing ad blocked traffic

About the project

Why do we advocate online advertisement?
Our advocacy is dictated by the current situation. We understand people who use ad blockers, and often we ad block ourselves in our leisure time. We hate aggressive, obnoxious and aesthetically horrible advertisement. However, we believe that overall ads blocking is not the best way to deal with it. Blockers do not tell bad advertisement from a good one, killing it all. No one likes evil and snappish dogs, but it is unlikely that someone decides to kill ALL dogs as a solution to this problem!

For the majority of online media and a huge number of various websites advertisement is an important, and often, the only source of subsistence. If web projects lose advertisement, they will extinguish. Since the share of ad blocking has reached a critical level, it raised a matter of protecting websites from AdBlock and many other similar blockers. Advertisement cannot disappear, doesn’t matter how hard we oppose it. The efforts to eliminate advertisement will only lead to media getting it directly to our brain through other means, introducing it in the content, not separating it from the useful information, which is much worse than irritating, but transparent advertisement formats: banners and teasers.

What is AdRegain?
AdRegain is our own technology mitigating the damage caused by online ad blocking, which combines ad blocker detector, collection of statistics on the share of ad blocker users on website and the tool to ensure communication with user (notification or access denial). In addition, we help websites to recover (monetize) ad blocked advertisement traffic through the special system enabling displays bypassing ad blockers.

Ad blocking statistics

Why do I need to know the share of ads blocked by users on my website?
A couple of years ago the answer to this question had no practical sense, only a small number of users blocked advertisement. Nowadays the percentage may turn out to be so high, that it threats the project existence, the more so since this number continuously grows. Understanding the scale of this problem on your website enables you to decide whether anything needs to be done and what is the best way to deal with it (see Ways to deal with ad blocking).

What does the share of adblockers depend on?
The share of users, who block advertisement, depends on various factors, from country to gender representation of readers. For instance, in Poland and Greece advertisement is blocked by one third of users, while in the USA – by 15-16%. The more users are tech-savvy, the more often they install special browser plugins. That is why the share of blocked ads on programming websites would be higher than that on cooking website. Apparently, this is also the reason why men block advertisement more often than women do. In any case, to avoid guesses as to what share of advertisement revenue is lost by your website, measure it free of charge by AdRegain Statistics.

What do I need to do to measure the share of users with ad blockers on my website?
For the collection of statistics it is sufficient to install a simple js-code on site template so that it appears on all pages. AdRegain Statistics doesn’t require jQuery or PHP on the website – adding js-script to html-code on the website would suffice. The code will be sent individually for your web-site after you fill out the form. The service is provided free of charge.

Can statistics collection script slow down my website?
The script sends statistics to your account on a self-time basis. It means that even if there are problems with servers, or if the script is blocked by third party software, it will not slow down the work of your website.

Who else can see my website statistics besides me?
We do not disclose the data of our clients and their websites to any third parties. If we use the collected data in publications on ad blocking issue, we use such information generally for all websites and countries, with no reference to specific website data.

What is a breakdown for ad blocker statistics?
Information is collected chronologically with the division of traffic by mobile (mobile operating systems) and other (PCs and laptops) traffic. In addition, the users who agreed to disable ad blocking following your request are also recorded. In order to identify the share of such users, you need to install AdRegain Wall script on your website besides AdRegain Statistics code.

Notification to adblock-users and access denial

What is more efficient: to ask users to disable ad blocking or to completely ban access to website?
It depends on the loyalty of your audience. If you have a lot of regular visitors, who are fond of the website, it is likely that they will satisfy your requests and add your website to the exclusions list. It is reasonable to ban access as an extreme measure against ad blocker, if the share of blocked advertisement traffic becomes critical for your project (for instance, 25-30%) and you cannot display alternative advertisement (i.e. replace network banners with the banners under direct agreements with advertisers, for instance, AdRegain Chameleon). In our opinion, running alternative ads is the best solution for lost traffic, as it doesn’t banish reader, displays him/her non-intrusive advertisement and generates a real website revenue.

Why does your js-script require a full insertion on page, rather than a link?
AdRegain Wall script must be added to the page in its entirety, besides it should be in an obfuscated form generated by our constructor. Otherwise ad blockers will simply blacklist the link, preventing js-code from loading on the webpage.

I would like to insert a link to the address of our Editor in Chief to people using ad blockers in the js-script message. How can I do that?
AdRegain Wall constructor allows customizing the color of text, background and some other script message layout. If it’s not enough, and you need, for instance, to add a link or other formatting to the text, you can use html-code in Body field, in particular with tag style. However, do not use classes and ids in tags – they may lead to blockers cutting out page elements.

Is it possible to charge payment if users don’t want to view advertisement?
It is up to you. Paid service is beyond our competence. If you introduce such fees to your website, you will simply need to monitor your database to see whether a user has paid for ad-free experience. If s/he has paid – just do not run blocking js-script for him/her.

Monetizing ad blocked traffic

Is it possible to prevent AdBlock from blocking Google Adsense or Yandex.Direct on my website?
Unfortunately, it is next to impossible. Google and Yandex deliver their ads in a centralized manner, while blockers are very good in blocking network advertisement. There is nothing to be done, as plugins prevail over web-site in browser and can control the loading and display of any of its elements. It is true not only for the above ad market leaders, but for all more or less popular advertising networks, and even popular banner rotators, installed directly on web-site.

How to monetize ad blocked traffic, if I cannot display banners through Google and Yandex ad networks?
Finding efficient approach depends on website subject, loyal audience and the share of people using ad blockers on website. Free AdRegain statistics may be helpful to understand it. Then you need to decide whether to negotiate with users regarding turning off AdBlock, to deny access to such users or to simply replace the banned banners with your own banners under direct agreements with advertisers. In the latter case the most important is that ad blocking systems do not distinguish banners from other website elements. This requires a case by case approach.

We offer AdRegain Chameleon turnkey solution for medium and large websites.

Smaller websites can recover the traffic lost from blocked Google and Yandex ads with the display of advertisement supplied by partner CPA-networks (Admitad.ru, ad1.ru, Leads.su и т.п.). Such advertisement is posted by webmaster and is not recognized by blockers. However, simple camouflage is required, such as avoiding the words “advert”, “ads”, “banner” and other ad-associated words in html-code, tags, links – check it with free AdRegain Probe tool).
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