That is what Google Contributor once did, but was shut down recently to be completely re-thought from the ground up (and hopefully will be relaunching in the next few months) because:
1. Nobody used it
2. It didn't block ALL ads, just most (based on if you won or lost the bid)
3. There was a LOT of backlash against it because it was google and even though you can opt out of tracking nobody believes them.
4. The old "adblock is free" argument.
It used to be that you'd pay an amount between $1 and $15 per month and it would use that money to "bid" on ad spots like a normal advertiser would. If you won the bid, you'd see a picture, a pattern, or anything else you wanted in that spot. If you lost, you'd see another ad.
The fee split worked identically to a regular ad, so Google would take their cut, the site would take the rest. And any money not spent at the end of the month was refunded back to you (not rolled over, actually put back in your bank account).
The last time Google contributor got brought up, I mentioned I'd be happy to participate so long as I wasn't being tracked and could still block any remaining ads. As is, it seems that running adblock would prevent contributor from paying any of the sites I visit so I don't see the point.
I actually don't even run an adblocker any more - I just use a javascript blocker set for "default deny" which seems to work just about as well as a real adblocker.
> With Funding Choices you can automatically identify ad blocking visitors and ask them to disable their ad blocker especially for your site — or give them an alternative way to fund your content via Contributor.
> Contributor lets users buy an ad removal pass for your site, helping you monetize your site's content again.
Great! Now, can I have that for Google? I'd gladly pay in exchange for the added privacy.
Google does do this AFAIK. They dont get any money when people turn on adblock and have always leaned towards simple ads as well as filtering out sites with crummy ux in search
Most sites have tracking via GA as well, why not just show advertisers that, and let them buy e.g. 1/3 of the monthly traffic? AFAIK most ad-blockers don't block GA (though other plugins do).
Edit: Ah, I just checked, uBlock apparently blocks GA whereas AdBlock doesn't.
AdBlock Plus once blocked Google ads, till Google decided to pay them [0] to "whitelist" their ads by default. The cynical part of me sees this as a precursor for AdBlock to sign a deal with Facebook and let their ads/tracking through too, for a price of course.
We just launched almost exactly what you describe. It is called FairBlocker. An ad blocker with a monthly subscription fee (of your choice), which we then split up among the sites where ads are blocked.
We're looking for feedback from people who get the problem - what do you think? Feel free to email me directly if you want: zack@fairblocker.com
I think it could be interesting to see if Google could arrange an "ad blocker subscription" pass for websites. The site would block people with ad blockers unless they were a subscriber.
Google would charge 10-15 bucks or whatever the average web user is worth in gooogle adsense.
I guess the hard part is actually effectively detecting ad blocking. I assume you could write an adblocker that downloads and then just never actually displays ads. Without total control over your browser, I'm not sure how ad blocking detection would ever be accurate.
They could deal with advertisers themselves and manually approve and display text/image ads from their own domain (as it was done in printed newspapers), but isn't it easier to just leave a div+javascript and have the right of arbitrary code execution in a chunk of your page get auctioned off to the highest bidder by several shady ad network?
Just go to www.bbc.com and look at what domains your ad-blocker denies: edigitalsurvey.com, chartbeat.com, googletagservices.com, scorecardresearch.com, effectivemeasure.net, iperceptions.com, krxd.net, optimizely.com... now imagine if your printed newspaper shot at you a GPS receiver with a mic, a cam, etc. Surely it wouldn't be morally wrong to duck and avoid that bug?
Adblock is not site specific, google could make it their policy that any extension targeted to mess with advertising on a specific site would be against their TOS.
This would catch a whole pile of potential malware and, unfortunately, stuff like this would be caught in the dragnet.
Some people block ads because they don't like the tracking that comes with it.
When asked to add a site to the whitelist to support it the downside is that you will be tracked.
OK, a thought experiment: what about an ad blocker that downloads the ad, but doesn't display it? Because the argument seems to be that it is not necessary to look at the ad, only to download it, so that the site get's paid.
I am pretty sure such an downloading ad blocker would be considered a kind of click fraud.
At least some adblockers work on keywords. I once made an api call called 'track' that got blocked as a tracker. It was for the pathway you were on after choosing something on that page. I had to rename it to get it to work properly.
It didn't matter that it was an api for that domain. It didn't matter that it had nothing to do with Google ads. It certainly wasn't on any list unless they were adding all newly registered domains to it.
Google used to let you block domains a long time ago. I'm not sure why that was removed, but I have a feeling it had something to do with giving the expectation that you can block ads from a specific domain.
Slightly unrelated: Why don't more sites allow hiding of ads for a small fee? Over the last year I've probably donated a lot more money to sites than all advertising revenue I would have generated were I not using AdBlock.
What I would like to see is a kind of browser extension that automatically donates a (very) small amount to every site I visit per page view. In return, the site would not show me any ads. Safety would be a concern though.
Of course this would not be good for Google at all, so they might want to block such an extension too...
1. Nobody used it
2. It didn't block ALL ads, just most (based on if you won or lost the bid)
3. There was a LOT of backlash against it because it was google and even though you can opt out of tracking nobody believes them.
4. The old "adblock is free" argument.
It used to be that you'd pay an amount between $1 and $15 per month and it would use that money to "bid" on ad spots like a normal advertiser would. If you won the bid, you'd see a picture, a pattern, or anything else you wanted in that spot. If you lost, you'd see another ad.
The fee split worked identically to a regular ad, so Google would take their cut, the site would take the rest. And any money not spent at the end of the month was refunded back to you (not rolled over, actually put back in your bank account).
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