How To Stop AdBlockers From Hurting Your Blog Income?

Have you noticed a decline in your AdSense or other ads earning, even when your traffic is same or got better?

Well, you are not alone as this is happening with all the bloggers around the globe & in this article you will learn why this is happening & how to fix it.

Ad blocking technology (Which blocks ad display) is making the life of upcoming & existing bloggers (Including you) challenging by affecting the overall blog revenue. It’s true that Adblockers make web surfing faster & more enjoyable experience, but at the cost of revenue for bloggers & web-publishers.

Many bloggers like us understand that by not blocking ads, we are supporting bloggers & encouraging them to churn out more compelling content. But, still a majority of internet users use Ad-blocker to have a smooth web experience. I don’t even blame them, as it’s annoying when you open a website & it shows multiple pop-up ads & is full of ads. But, how do innocent bloggers like you & me whose blog revenue is going down due to increased use of Adblocker?

Recently, you might have heard a  lot of chatter about Adblocker on iPhone as Apple allows ad blocker apps to be a part of app store & one can also block ads on Apple devices. Today, you will be learning tips on preventing Adblock from hurting your revenue &  so that you don’t have to shut down your blog due to less or almost negligible revenue.

I can’t think of a platform better than ShoutMeLoud to talk about Adblockers where a majority of us are bloggers and are interested in earning money online. Here I’m sharing tips which I have researched, used & would love to hear your tips on how you are tackling this serious issue of Adblocking on your blog.

When it comes to monetization, we can divide blogs into 3 major categories.

  • The first are blogs based on affiliate marketing to earn money.
  • The second are blogs which are managed by a brand.
  • The last one are the blogs who rely on third party advertising (such as AdSense) to earn money.

Many of us who starts with blogging belongs to the third category. We use AdSense or other Advertising networks to generate revenue from our blog. Harsh has already covered AdSense and other ad networks very well in the past.

Basically, ad networks work like this: You sign up for their service and enter the code they provide in your Theme or widgets. When a visitor loads your page, the ads are loaded and shown to the visitor. If the visitor clicks on any ad, you get paid. All these steps are crucial for you to earn money. If any of the above steps goes wrong, you won’t be paid. Now Adblocker is the culprit that is not allowing the ads to load on your page.

If you are from the third category, your blogging business is under a heavy risk. Before talking about the solution to the problem, let’s clarify what AdBlocking is and how it works.

What [the Heck] are Adblockers?

In simple terms, an adblocker is a software, browser extension or a mobile app that blocks ads from being loaded on a page. If you have an adblocker extension installed on your web browser, you will see a blank space in place of advertisements. This removes the clutter (sometimes annoyances) from a web page and it speeds up the page loading time for a visitor. For a publisher (in this case, you) it just stops any ad impression & you won’t make any money from such views.

If you want to know more about this, I recommend reading this masterpiece by Nilay Patel, where he has shared great insights on the effect of AdBlocking in future for Web & publishers.

How to tell if your blog is affected by Adblockers?

Well, all blogs who rely on third party advertisements like AdSense are already affected by ad blockers. To know how much is your blog affected, you can just compare your Google Analytics Pageviews and Google AdSense Page views. If you see a difference you know it.

AdBlocking software mostly affects blogs who have tech savvy readers as most of the visitors are smart & prefer using AdBlock software’s.

So, how to save your blog from Adblockers

As AdBlocking is growing rapidly, it is a good idea to follow the below-mentioned steps. There are many levels on which you can work; Beginning from requesting a user or stopping him from browsing any page.

Move to Native Advertising

Native advertising is the surest way to not let ad blockers eat your blog.  AdBlocking software works by reading the page code and comparing it with a list of advertisements. If they find a match, they stop loading that object. In the case of Native Advertising, all the advertisement resources (images, videos) are stored on your own host and hence they cannot be blocked.

Harsh has already covered more on this topic here. You can make a page related to advertising ( Popularly known as media-kit)  on your blog. Be sure to include your page views, social media followers, and subscribers so that the potential advertiser can understand your impact on the internet.

Rely more on Affiliate Marketing

We often talk about affiliate marketing on ShoutMeLoud, it is a way to earn money by referring a service/product to our visitors. Just like native advertising, resources used in this (such as banners) are stored on our own hosting and hence it cannot be removed by ad blockers.

Master the art of Affiliate marketing with this exclusive eBook.

Create a Mobile App

create mobile app to prevent adblocking
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More than 50% searches on Google are done from mobile phones. If you have a mobile app for your blog, it will be tough for a user to block advertisements. Quality apps run on their own and don’t rely on the web browser and hence they cannot be affected by any Adblock plugin installed on Phone.

I am sure that creating a good app for Android or iOS will cost you some hard-earned bucks, but once it is all set, it will give you an assurance that your hosting resources are not being wasted on someone using Adblock.

WordPress Plugins To Disable Adblocker:

Notify and Request users to whitelist your site or Disable Adblock

Many free WordPress plugins are available on WordPress Plugin repository for this. You can show a message or a notification to a visitor asking him to whitelist your Blog. The message will only be shown to users who are using an AdBlocking plugin. So, you don’t have to worry about your loyal readers being distracted by this. After disabling the AdBlocking Plugin or Whitelisting your site, when the visitor refreshes the page, he won’t see the message again.

Here is what I use on Getting Geek:

Whitelist Getting Geek on Adblock

We know Ads suck, but at Getting Geek we have tried to not let them to that. Ad blocking is a good idea to get rid of stupid “Download Now” Buttons around the web, that’s not in our case. We think you won’t find Ads on our site terrible. Support us by Whitelisting Getting Geek on your AdBlocking Plugin or by disabling your AdBlocking software.

AdBlock warning
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If you are using this tactic, please try to make your message Impressive, a nice request (or warning) will definitely make it good for the blog.

The best WordPress Plugins that can do this is: Adblock Notify by B*web or Simple Adblock Detector

Stop Adblockers from seeing your post

This is a really aggressive approach where you can prevent AdBlocking visitors from seeing your content entirely. Personally, I recommend not to use it but it’s an option which is good to know. If you are into this, you can do that easily by using the Adblock Notify by B*web plugin. (Link shared in above point).

After installing the plugin, you need to create a page notifying why the visitors can’t access the post and how can they do that. Later, after publishing the page set your Plugin to redirect all users with Adblock to the new page.

Find new ways to earn from your blog

Advertising is not the only way to squeeze money out of internet. You can do a lot more other things to earn money from your blogs. The notable things that you can try are paid reviews, sponsored posts and setting up a merchandise store into your blog. We should remember that we are also a reason that AdBlocking software are becoming so popular, we need to adapt new ways, do experiments and ensure your blog can survive in future.

Apart from the ways that I shared with you, do you know any other way of fighting AdBlocking? If yes, please share with me in the comments below. Also don’t forget to ask any question related to this topic.

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Authored By
Saurabh is a tech blogger and is an all around computer nerd. Currently, he is at his home messing up with some ugly looking code. Send him your Questions, Suggestions and Pizzas at [email protected]

19 thoughts on “How To Stop AdBlockers From Hurting Your Blog Income?”

  1. Charles Smith

    Thank you for sharing such useful information about adblockers and wordpress plugins in order to disable adblocker. Adblocking is undoubtedly a growing concern for publishers. Even I face loss of ad revenues. As yet I have used Adzsafe. It disables adblocker present on user’s browser instantly and lets my ads to be loaded and viewed safely. But I would definitely try these wordpress plugins. Thank you.

  2. uthman saheed

    This is a serious threat to revenue generation. But its unfortunate that many bloggers are not treating this with due care. Some will only tell you to disable adblocker, otherwise you won’t access their post. Once I see this, I move on to the next post on google. simple.

  3. Mark

    Article is misleading and not based on fact.

    All websites which have begun blocking AdBlock users see a sharp decrease in visits to the site and zero increase in ad revenue. All you are doing is preventing some people from visiting your site, and guess what? You and your site aren’t special butterflies on the internet, odds are very high that there are at least a few dozens websites with the same interest as yours that decided not go block AdBlock users.

    What does that mean? It means users will just go elsewhere and not even bother with your site. This may not seem like a big deal at first, but think about it. Those people are now not going to link your site to anyone else, including friends and family which do not use AdBlock. That’s right, you are killing word of mouth in the vein and misplaced hope that blocking AdBlock users will help your ad revenue. News flash: it doesn’t and hasn’t for any sites which have implemented it.

    Here are some alternatives to blocking AdBlock that will not destroy your websites reputation:
    1) Ditch Google AdSense. One of the reasons why so many people use AdBlock isn’t so they don’t have to look at ads, its so their computer doesn’t get infected with malware from horrible ad services such as Google AdSense. You can’t make good money on ads without doing your do-dilligence. Not using Google AdSense and using a more reputable ad distributor? Then inform your website visitors about it and ASK them politely to whitelist your site.

    2) Ditch ads all together. Internet ads are going the way of the Dodo due to poor quality control and vicious malware use. Many of the more popular blogs have switched to systems like Patreon to gain revenue and have seen much higher levels of revenue and success then trying to force people into watching ads.

    Those who are stuck on the “I have to have ads to run my site” train are getting left behind by something called progress. Those who don’t follow progress will get left in its dust.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Mark
      Spot on. Thanks for adding such a valuable & meaningful comment. 👍

  4. Mat Chow

    Hey Sourabh,

    What an Amazing blog!!

    The internet advertising landscape has changed, in part, due to changes in the web browser landscape. Innovations that give users greater control of their browsing experience, tend to be quickly adopted by technical audiences. These innovations then gradually spread to general audiences. Examples such as pop-up blockers, and cookie control, which first appeared as 3rd party add-ons for Internet Explorer, are standard browser features today.

    But with your post we came across this wonderful information on adblocker and the ways to prevent them.

    Thanks for sharing 🙂

  5. Rohtash Nimi

    Thanks useful information for website owner. Its a very big problem for blogger now days. A blogger do hard work and spend many hours on making a post but a adblocker lost ower every thing……..

  6. Prabhu

    Nice article and intuitive information but I would not agree to the concept of hurting your income. You can not hurt the user experience to make few bucks. Like Harsh and other Pros always say it has to be your passion and you would never need anything else from it but Satisfaction which is the most important thing. You might as well say that not all blogs show this ad blocker thing and show ads but you can not deny the fact that there are people who are misusing it. Based on the audience you have to decide I think and most of the time you got to let the audience decide. Because they are the market and from them you are getting paid. I have not had a bad experience yet and my earnings did not go down. Yes I might have earned more but due to not showing this the trust I got is much more appealing than money for me. 🙂

  7. Chirag Jain

    Hey,
    Thanks for sharing important article over here. I have a doubt regarding this as I had heard that google blocks the adsense account for using this. Is this correct information ?
    I hope you will reply to this comment soon.

  8. Pramod Kumar

    Great article, It is a better solution to use affiliates link along with adsense. If adblock blocks adsense ads, then affiliate link still appear.

  9. Gaz

    Awesome Post. Adblockers are blocking a lot of Adsense Ads on my blog because the difference between Analytic Views and Adsense Views is considerable. I will try to move to Native Advertising asap.

  10. ruchira jain

    Great post.Very informative post for new bloggers who want to make money by blogging. I also want to learn about blogging and your article is very useful for me . I want some more post about this topic from you.Thanks you for this great article.

  11. Nirmala

    Hey Sourabh,

    You’ve crafted a nice post for us, specifically for the bloggers who monetized their blog with Adsense program.

    Yes, most of the online readers use Adblockers to hide ads and thus the bloggers struggle to make money.

    You’ve revealed some interesting solution to deal with the Ad Blocking programs, I’ll try to execute them.

    Thanks for contributing your helpful post for SML readers.

  12. Shrinivas

    Hi Saurabh,

    You have shared a informative note on how to avoid Adblockers. Thanks for listing my Simple Adblock Notice plugin over here.

  13. Ryan Biddulph

    Hi Sar,

    Native ads present users with a smoother, seamless experience so it makes sense to go that route. Anything invasive or obnoxious is no longer tolerated. I block ads or my browser informs me to block them. I’m for pop ups for list building; I post a form on my blog. But popping up advertisements is going the way of dinosaurs. Pull people in with value. Wow them. Grow your traffic. They will click. Guaranteed. Just use power versus force to make your point and you’ll not have to worry about this issues. Awesome, awesome point Sar. Thanks so much for sharing.

    Ryan

  14. Eric

    I personally would advise against the aggressive approach of blocking adblock users access to the content. Tested it on one site – it increased bounce rate and it seems the visitors just went away instead of disabling adblock. Even if adblock users are not direct income source, they may share your content and increase your popularity.

  15. Nikhil

    Hi Saurabh,
    Great article. I really admire your research work that you have done to sort out this issue. Adblockers are not good to bloggers or webmaster making money through ads.

    Adblockers try to offer a good user experience, but they are not good for the bloggers who put their time and efforts to create an informative piece of content.

    I will use this technique on my blog to get rid of adblockers.

    Thanks for this great info.

    -Nikhil

  16. Adesanmi Adedotun

    Hi Tripathi,
    I sincerely observed a sharp decline in my earning even when my visitors are rising at the speed of light but I think with this, things will definitely back to normal.
    Thanks for sharing.

  17. MINHAJ UDDIN

    Hi Saurabh,

    Great article on how to disable Blockers. Yes, it is so much boring reading blog when any ads pop up!

    I generally use plugins for my browser. It works well.

    Anyway, thanks a lot for sharing this useful post with us, keep it up.

  18. Vishwajeet Kumar

    Awesome post sourabh. Adblockers really become a concern among bloggers who are primarily making money from adsense or other contextual ad networks. I also appreciate your suggestion to use native advertising. by the way I will try out your plugins to stop Adblocker. Thanks again for this great and informative article.

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