[amorgan]

Purely out of curiosity, why are you opposed to websites knowing how many of their visitors are blocking ads? I get that you're against being tracked, but if they can't find out how their revenue is being affected, then how can they decide if a change in revenue source is necessary?

[RexM]

I think it's mentioned in the commit on uBO: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/commit/ba05804060ec7c4399c...

But basically making external calls to any outside site leaks information (metadata). Some people really don't want want to be tracked. period.

[amorgan]

Totally understand that some people don't want to be tracked, but our service doesn't track anyone nor has any interest in doing so.

My response is also raising a question which I'd love to hear your thoughts on.

[redml]

It is a form of tracking. You're tracking if the user has adblock installed. Many people install adblockers for privacy do because they don't like being a part of data that will never be used in their best interest.

[amorgan]

We're checking if the display of an ad is possible, but the only reason we're doing this is to inform the website owner of how ad blocking is affecting them. Once they have this information, a lot of good can come from it that would benefit all of that websites visitors.

[mesozoic]

You say a lot of good would come but I think it would just make them more likely to use aggressive adblock countermeasures so deflating their numbers is probably more in line with the best interest of adblock users.

[tobltobs]

You would be shocked if you would look into the log files of a webserver.

[redml]

The only solace I have that the only data the webserver will have is activity on that one server rather than all of my activity aggregated and analyzed by google or microsoft.

[tobltobs]

"Some people really don't want want to be tracked. period." And what will those people do if IPv6 becomes common?

[rbinv]

What does that have to do with anything? IPv6 does not mean static IPs for everyone forever.

[irq-1]

> if they can't find out how their revenue is being affected,

Does "being affected" mean reduced? Because they're not losing out on ad revenue they would otherwise gain. That's the piracy argument with ads: if only everyone who used our product would pay us what we want, we wouldn't be losing so much money. You can't count browsers with ad-blockers as lost revenue. (You also can't count search engines, REST and curl, etc... as lost revenue.)

> then how can they decide if a change in revenue source is necessary?

Shouldn't a change in revenue model be driven by the opportunities of a subscription (or other) model, not by issues with advertising?

It seems like you're selling a service that will make your customers unhappy about reduced revenue, which they can't do anything about. What can a customer do differently if they find 16% using ad blockers, or 34% using ad blockers? Their ad revenue is the same regardless of the percentage. Their other revenue models haven't changed. All that's changed is that now they're mad about users with ad blockers. At best, if the percentage is going to drive a decision about changing revenue models, all they really need is a single data point, not a monthly service.

> why are you opposed to websites knowing how many of their visitors are blocking ads?

Because people aren't rational. They'll get angry about a transaction cost of the advertising model, and do all the same stupid things we saw 2 or 3 years ago: rants of moral indignation, poorly implemented content blocking, big obnoxious pleas, etc...

[amorgan]

Truly appreciate your thoughtful response - thank you! I don't believe ad blockers are going away nor do I think it's time well spent or an effective strategy asking visitors to disable them or try to sneak ads past them. What I do believe though is once decision makers within these companies learn the % of their visitors that are blocking ads it will spur a productive discussion on what they should do about it - such as a shift in revenue strategy as you suggested.

As thomasahle pointed out earlier, ad blocking visitors seem to be more engaged because they bounce less and visit more pages. Now this is based on a relatively small sample size, but so far the trend is holding true. That is a huge takeaway that cannot be understated. Ad blocking visitors are valuable but in a slightly different sense.

And you're right, some websites will signup for a month and cancel after they've analyzed a large enough sample size and we're ok with that because it's all about education & gaining knowledge. Prior to using our service they could only guess, now they know with relative certainty.

[SimeVidas]

It looks like Adblock Analytics can track users (IP adressess). Do ad blockers block all trackers, or just ad trackers, by default?