New Ads – Please Whitelist Hackaday On Adblock

adblock-plus-whitelist

If you’ve been watching very closely you may have noticed that our ads have changed. If you didn’t know we run ads, I’m asking you to consider whitelisting Hackaday.com in your advertisement blocking browser plugin.

The plan to transition to advertisements which are more targeted for our interests was mentioned back in July, when Hackaday was purchased by SupplyFrame,  I say ‘our’ interests because the companies who have signed up so far are ones with which I have personally done business when hacking my own projects. These include the manufacturers: Atmel, Microchip, NXP, and Texas Instruments as well as distributors: Arrow Electronics, Element 14, Mouser, and RS Components. The ads are in the exact same places as they have always been, at the same size, with the core belief that on-page advertising should be entirely unobtrusive. If you find the ads to be otherwise, please do let us know about it (screenshots are helpful!).

Hackaday highlights a steady stream of project features every single day. These are the best engineering-oriented hacks the web has to offer. There is some cost involved in do this, which we cover by including advertisements on our pages. Please don’t block the ads. If you haven’t been blocking, thank you! If you do use an Ad blocker, I certainly understand that you want to get away from ads that automatically play audio, flash annoying colors, or include inappropriate content. Our ads don’t do this. Please throw us a bone by adding our domain to your “whitelist”. This is very simple, and after the break I’ve included the instructions for doing so with Adblock Plus.

If you are using Adblock Plus for Chrome there will be a red octagon with ABP on it to the right side of the address line on your browser. Right-click that and choose options. The image above shows the options page. Click the “Whitelisted domains” tab, type “hackaday.com” in the box, and click on “Add domain”. Make sure to pat yourself on the back as this small act helps to support Hackaday. Thank you!

163 thoughts on “New Ads – Please Whitelist Hackaday On Adblock

  1. Isn’t there a “friendly ad” whitelist or something? Something you can subscribe to with adblock that unblocks all ads that are considered polite and unobtrusive such as those on Stackoverflow.

    Seems like you should be on that list. Also, I’m currently seeing 4 ads for a Texas Instruments “BeagleBone Black has arrived”.. is it intentional that every ad on the page is the same?

    1. Yes, I believe all of the ads on one page will be for the same company now.

      I looked at the Adblock Plus auto-whitelist. I’d love to be on that list but there are a couple of requirements we don’t meet. The ads have to be labelled “Advertisement” which I think is a bit sill in our case. And the ads can’t be a video… I don’t think there are any videos, but there are some animated gif type of things.

      1. The animated gifs make me lose control of my eyeballs. I can’t keep them from jumping over to the gif when it changes :)

        I guess that’s why they are valuable, but does have a high cost to me.

        Can you give me a rough idea of how much revenue I’m taking away from HaD by blocking the ads, and a way to make a monthly donation? I get a lot of enjoyment from reading HaD, and I would like to provide some small amount of support in return.

        1. So does the white-on-black color scheme. Reading this page for a couple of minutes gives me a massive after-image when I go back to black-on-white. I have to use a plugin that disables CSS on hackaday.

        1. +1 on the obnoxious animated ads.

          I have become accustomed to scrolling a page with static content. Once something moves, I usually block the element. I have narrowed down which DIV tage comes up for those damn forsee surveys and blocked those too.

          1. Amen. Anything that isn’t a static banner (and work safe) gets blocked. These new ads which use HTML5 video are the worst. Like I want a video ad popping up on a new page.

        1. Gotta +1 these comments too. I disabled ad-block, saw the annoying animated gifs, and re-enabled.

          Frankly you explicitly said “with the core belief that on-page advertising should be entirely unobtrusive” – except by it’s very definition *animated* advertisements are obtrusive. That’s exactly why the ABP auto-whitelist adds this as a requirement.

          I love this site, and would gladly disable ad blocking (and even make sure that I look at them and click when appropriate) if they were actually unobtrusive.

    1. +1, though I’ve had you guys whitelisted for a while. . . but thank you for not running the large breasted women in t-shirts adds; they weren’t offensive but contributed to the boys club vibe of HaD.

      1. I don’t think that’s fair. Some people are put off by blatent ‘sex-sells’ ads (Regardless of whether or not they enjoy the basic content.) I dislike misleading ads, and the sex-sells type can be some of the worst. I saw an ad of that type on another site. I wasn’t familiar with the product pictured (the “non-babe” part of the ad), and I thought it looked like a fancy camp stove. Looking at the site, it happened to be some sort of replacement for a rear differential (car parts).

        I *like* the “large breasted women in t-shirts ads”. I’m a straight guy, and I don’t feel that I’m particularly sexist by admitting that. I find the t-shirt content interesting, not just the t-shirt’s contents. That said, I’m not fond of being overloaded by these ads. One, maybe two (assuming they are different ads) to a page is plenty. Whether I enjoy a particular ad on a page or not, the same ad on the same page is NOT going to make me more apt to click EITHER ad.

        Now: to our benelovent overlords… I don’t block ads, but I OFTEN don’t click ads when I first see them either. One personal pet peeve is that I will remember an ad, I will remember the site I saw it on, but if I actually have a need of that ad, I will often go back to that site and search for it IN VAIN. It will be nowhere to be found. I only know of ONE site that had a page of their sponsers (http://thedailywtf.com/). Back when I visited that site regularly, it seemed like they would post, perhaps once a week, an article that was something like ‘Please visit our sponsers’. Not OVERLY obtrusive, and easy enough to avoid.

        So what I ask is this: run unobtrusive ads; no audio, no video, no blinkenlights. But add a link, say ‘OUR SPONSERS’. Put it at the top of the page (between ‘FORUMS’ and ‘STAFF’ would be good, or some place on that line), and then maybe a tiny writeup for each sponser. Add an additional link that would allow me to see every one of their ads that has run in say, the past month.

        If you want to be REALLY innovative, maybe run one article a week ABOUT a particular sponser (sponser disclaimer for the haters). Links to regular articles that show our sponsers are already here (ATTiny, ATMega, et. al. for Amtel; PIC builds for Microchip; etc). It may sound crazy to run articles on sponsers, but you do that anyway (Red Bull challenges anyone). I am sure that the sponsers would be more than willing to let you know about specials, contests, new products, etc. If you treat your sponsers more like partners, it tends to become a win-win. And if a sponser doesn’t WANT to be more like a partner, do you want them as a sponser?

        OK, I’ve said more than enough

        1. Do what he said. Make a “Sponsors” page with advertisements or referral links. I don’t know how much more you get for ad clicks than for views, but that seems like a better way to get clicks.

      2. Some people are put off by blatent ‘sex-sells’ ads (Regardless of whether or not they enjoy the basic content.) I dislike misleading ads, and the sex-sells type can be some of the worst. I saw an ad of that type on another site. I wasn’t familiar with the product pictured (the “non-babe” part of the ad), and I thought it looked like a fancy camp stove. Looking at the site, it happened to be some sort of replacement for a rear differential (car parts).

        I *like* the “large breasted women in t-shirts ads”. I’m a straight guy, and I don’t feel that I’m particularly sexist by admitting that. I find the t-shirt content interesting, not just the t-shirt’s contents. That said, I’m not fond of being overloaded by these ads. One, maybe two (assuming they are different ads) to a page is plenty. Whether I enjoy a particular ad on a page or not, the same ad on the same page is NOT going to make me more apt to click EITHER ad.

        Now: to our benelovent overlords… I don’t block ads, but I OFTEN don’t click ads when I first see them either. One personal pet peeve is that I will remember an ad, I will remember the site I saw it on, but if I actually have a need of that ad, I will often go back to that site and search for it IN VAIN. It will be nowhere to be found. I only know of ONE site that had a page of their sponsers (http://thedailywtf.com/). Back when I visited that site regularly, it seemed like they would post, perhaps once a week, an article that was something like ‘Please visit our sponsers’. Not OVERLY obtrusive, and easy enough to avoid.

        So what I ask is this: run unobtrusive ads; no audio, no video, no blinkenlights. But add a link, say ‘OUR SPONSERS’. Put it at the top of the page (between ‘FORUMS’ and ‘STAFF’ would be good, or some place on that line), and then maybe a tiny writeup for each sponser. Add an additional link that would allow me to see every one of their ads that has run in say, the past month.

        If you want to be REALLY innovative, maybe run one article a week ABOUT a particular sponser (sponser disclaimer for the haters). Links to regular articles that show our sponsers are already here (ATTiny, ATMega, et. al. for Amtel; PIC builds for Microchip; etc). It may sound crazy to run articles on sponsers, but you do that anyway (Red Bull challenges anyone). I am sure that the sponsers would be more than willing to let you know about specials, contests, new products, etc. If you treat your sponsers more like partners, it tends to become a win-win. And if a sponser doesn’t WANT to be more like a partner, do you want them as a sponser?

        OK, I’ve said more than enough

        btw, WTF is up with the site? Mostly black, but with a light grey article backgroud, and the same color text. If no one else is getting this, I will have to assume that someone has been tweecking with my browser.

  2. Never been a fan of ads. Don’t run them on my site, never will. I might give this a try only out of love for you guys and the good you have done. But Im not gonna say i like the idea.

      1. Thanks for giving this a try. I actually find the “Related Posts” images that aren’t scaled to be more obnoxious than the actual ad below it. This is on my list of site stuff to fix, but I like having the related links when I’m reading posts (like walk down Hackaday memory lane)

        1. Agreed, related links are nice. I only really take issue with having to ‘dig out’ the content I come for. As long as it doesnt segment the article around it Im willing to keep it on . I like your sponsors , I like your site, I think I can make an exception for yas.

      2. Second this
        I absolutely hate in-content ads (ads that break up the actual content into segments. As long as ads are on the sidelines, I don’t mind them nearly as much — and yes, I even look at them every so often :)

  3. Always seemed to me, the adverts on HackADay were quite appropriate to what I like to do. I see adverts for MCUs, parts at Digikey, programming tools and the like. I’ve been quite pleased with them. No “Area seniors want to meet you” type ads!

  4. I used to hate targeted ads, especially when I thought facebook or similar were sharing my personal information with third parties. However, I have to admit I actually like hackaday’s advertisers and often discover companies / services I’m interested in. Its way better than facebook’s targeted ads or, *ehem*, vagisil ads.

  5. disabled adblock, the ads i see now don’t annoy me at all so, no problem.
    I’m however not disabling ghostery, so many tracking going around, not sure if that costs you guy’s $$$, if so, sorry

      1. I am with polossatik on this one. I won’t let code from random domains run on my system. It is a power drain with security implications.

        I have said this before. If you, hackaday, host the advertisements directly, then adblockers do not work at all. That is how sites used to run in the olden days. I will accept any ads served up by hackaday directly. No third party anything. No scripts, no trackers, no zero day exploit risks. Hackaday certainly isn’t going to pay for re-imaging my box because some third party advertiser hosts their ads in some outsourced server that became compromised. Why should I care about financial security of someone else if the feeling is not mutual?

        Right now I am blocking 6 separate domains with over twenty scripts that they want to run. Nope. Not gonna happen.

        1. I realise that it’s not unusual these days – Ghostery counts 8 for me, NoScript counts seven domains.

          I also agree with the idea that if you serve me the adds directly I am happy to have them… I do realise that might require some more negotiation…

        2. Thanks for making me realize why my browser never gets hijacked while I see lots of crap on other peoples’ system.
          Sorry hackaday, but if you can’t stick to ABPs acceptable adds I don’t care you’re missing revenue.

    1. Ditto what Fully and others here have expressed
      far better than I could.

      With having monocular diplopia
      means an added issue for me
      as the visual Stressors of non static adds are really a migraine trigger.
      I found that overriding background colors,
      images, textures, goofy fonts.

      …You name it, the list is tedious.

      I’ll keep looking in this section to see what transpires
      and if see if an unblocking
      begins to look reasonable.

      I really like this site
      and especially am fond of the
      “limited” moderation of commenting.
      (hey come on, even the regular Trolls sometimes get a good zinger in !)
      and yes I was a fan of good ol’ Rotten dot com
      before it was cut adrift.

      you’re asking a lot of trust from your audience.
      please treat it with care.

    1. Like I said in the article, I understand what prompted people to write ad blockers in the first place.

      I think it is entirely possible to find a balance that keeps both readers and advertisers happy at the same time. Not obnoxious and annoying, but well targeted for our relatively focused demographic of readers.

      Like Tom the Brat said above, I’ve never had need for a Seniors meet-up service ;-)

      1. I feel that most people don’t have a problem with the advertisments themselves, it’s the associated “BLING”, that commonly go with it. The problem is complex, but some if it is due to small bloggers.

        If a blogger becomes popular, they can not keep what is basicly a “personal” webpage on a “personal” website. Once you have a large enough fan base that you have to buy “extra” bandwidth, you have to find a way to pay for that bandwidth. So, ads.

        A “personal” blog is often run by an individual, and statistically speaking, someone who is not tech-savy, and someone who has a full-time-job/ family/ outside interests & responsibilities.

        Option one: Search out businesses who are willing to pay 0.x¢ a view / clickthrough (10% of listed webtraffic @ 10,000 pageviews/month @ some phase of the moon @ … @ ???). Businesses that you support / respect / work for – with, etc, etc, etc…

        Option two: “Buy” an adserver service.

        So, what do you do? Spend mega-time & mega-effort in the beginnings of your blog, or “buy” a pre-packaged ad-service? Yea, you might like more control of the ads on your site, but the ad service is a few clicks, add a line or two into your web page editor, and done.

  6. Alright, I’m going to whitelist you guys for a while and see what comes up. If anything other than a static image shows up, I promise you will be deleted from the whitelist.

    1. You guys are now unblocked but I continue to not see any ads.. Are you sure it is *your* domain I have to unblock? Please do not ask us to unblock *other* domains, that is not cool.

  7. I find ads just part of any website anyway, they don’t annoy me.
    But i know myself that there has to be ads or else there has to be some other source(premium) to earn from creating content!
    Well, these hackaday ads are nice too so far :).

    1. I have never used an adblocker for that very reason but you know those ads that are thinly veiled spyware/ransomware/ trojans ya those sites go in the blacklist and I never return.

      I know exactly why people use ad blockers and its the fault of 80% of the internet and the continued push for income from said net… but continued vigilance on your part will I believe, make more people amicable to whitelisting you but remeber with great power comes great responsibility.

    1. Just whitelist it. Right click the octogon int he title bar, options , whitelist tab, add hackaday.com. Should set you up for ever, and only for this site. What you propose will set all sites to advertise,

  8. i disable ads due to privacy and security concerns … you never know what’s in those flash/iframe/HTML5 ads! … got a virus from them before on other sites and than a month later got an “we’re sorry” email from the ad company that does not mean shit

    so i leave all except google text ads disabled

    if there static images hosted from your server i will consider it but other than that … sorry guys id gladly donate im just not risking it

      1. Not really. All he did was sent a GET request and received a response. If the server operators wanted they could check for advertisements being served and refuse any further requests if they are not.

        An analogy was if I asked you for ten dollars, you gave it to me and then called me a hypocrite for accepting it.

        1. Actually fluffy its not as simple as that.

          Browsers make the GET request for the adverts _after_ having requested the page which contains all the content of the post. So technically people using Adblock are using the bandwidth for the rest of the site and there’s little to nothing we can do about it on the server side. Any solution to prevent Adblock users from using a site would end up in a horrific hairy ball of nasty and we don’t want that.

          Just a technical point. Rest assured we are never going to block users for not watching adverts!

        2. Some of them do that already. Hulu for example – they make you wait through a series of black screens while asking you to unblock. Like hell I will. However I’m glad the new management at Hack A Day doesn’t want to go all draconian on it.

      2. Sorry – we both pay for bandwidth. But the thing is I pay a higher amount for piddling bandwidth. So I have to conserve it. And the ads land on **MY** machine and take up space there too. I should charge rent for ad storage.

  9. Yeah just giving the benefit of the doubt i disabled it on hackaday.com ONLY and restarted browser, control-F5 (cleared cashe) nothing is showing ads … removed it from the whitelist … not sure whats going on but it does not look like its HaD thats showing the ads

  10. I don’t mind simple banner ads. What I do hate are video prerolls that autoplay when I land on a page (I usually have music playing or a news stream playing on another monitor, and noisy ads REALLY piss me off.) There are of course the pop-up ads that are also annoying – major networks and news sites use both of these invasive methods, which is where I draw the line.

    But don’t worry HaD – I still see yours. I’ve got a few Texas Instruments ads up right now. I’m not clicking on them, but I DO click on some of your ads – I occasionally make a purchase, too, thus becoming a HaD ad campaign acquisition. ;)

  11. had to whitelist supplyframe too. However, those animated gif ads made me turn the filter back on.
    Also the ad between content and comments is either too large, or should go entirely. It ruins the flow and makes for a terrible scrolling exercise.
    The rest of the ads are ok I guess.
    I’m going to mention the animated gifs again. They are as bad as the most annoying flash ad. No. Just… no!
    keep up the good work

  12. i just temporarily tried this: the ads are ugly. they had a white background instead of black, so they were totally disruptive. and they appeared in the middle of content making scanning the page annoying. plus they were for the same vendor for the entire page which seem ridiculous. so they added no value for me. i’m back to adblocking

  13. I have never blocked any ads before, but after reading your pleas about how this is just a move to cover costs and help the internet for the good of mankind in a totally not for profit fashion—- I am enabling adblock right now. And I will never view your ads again. If you feel ashamed about the profitable business that your company does, you don’t have to make up appeals to our emotions in order to try and squeeze more juice from the situation.

  14. I mute the sound on the TV when an ad comes on, because they annoy me, I adblock ALL animated .gifs AD or CONTENT or AVATAR . . . no to whitelist.
    If you want to show ads, ad them to content and make them static, cool.

  15. Whitelisted…

    I would recommend NOT having flash ads.. I don’t have the newest hardware out there and they take forever to load and render. I’m ok with text ads and static images, I’d appreciate it if thats what you kept it to.

    Also, make sure the ad servers are fast, nothing more annoying than waiting for a page to load while it tries to contact the ad servers.

  16. I whitelisted HaD months ago. I visit here rather often and the ads usually match my intersts.

    I mostly block sites with intrusive ads. Flash ads that pop up and expand across the page, ads that take up a lot of bandwidth to load, ads that make very loud noise.
    Things like that stay autoblocked.

  17. I don’t block advertising because I don’t want to be offered products and services that are relative to my interests, and sometimes I even miss those. I block advertising because there isn’t enough control over what gets through the ads. I’ve seen close friends infected by all manner of malware over the years, followed by an apology from the site owner because their ad agency wasn’t diligent enough to prevent the cargo in their advertising.

  18. Tried it with ads, I don’t mind the banner or the top right side, but the one in the content is too much, so I’m back to blocking until i hear that advert is gone.

    also same thing advertised 4 times on one page… bit too much

  19. Mike, just FYI: using ghostery (=on/all blocked) en adblock plus with http://hackaday.com whitelisted (on FF 24 on Mint) I get no ads on the home page when using my bookmark to go to HD but get 1 out of 2 times or so ads when clicking on the articles (and if i then go back the homepage the ads stay the same).
    Oddly enough a “reload page” serves always ads.
    So must be some caching that’s going wrong when blocking all the cross site trackers.

  20. Not a chance! I do all I can to avoid invasive adverts telling me to buy this or buy that or do this or do that. Find an alternative funding route. I am fundamentally opposed to this.
    Whilst I do very much enjoy hackaday and check it on an almost daily basis, I would rather go without than be subject to adverts.

      1. Selfishness? How old are you? 20?

        Web sites for a business are a business expense. That’s how it used to be. Nowadays all businesses want to have their cake and eat it too.

        It is time they look for a different way to add revenue if they think the site should be free.

        Not sorry at all for blocking.

        1. I’m not really sure what you’re getting at? I’m well past 20 but I still know what the word selfish means. Just because you and those like you can’t seem to handle an animated gif for whatever lame reason you use to justify it this site loses revenue, which means it can’t pay as many staff or improve the site, so the rest of us suffer.

          Websites were only a business expense when they served as a brochure for your business. You don’t put ads for other companies in a brochure because it is an ad for you.

          Hackaday is a blog, this is kinda like a newspaper or magazine which is ad supported. Would you expect metro newspaper to have to start selling t-shirts to support itself? Would you enjoy reading it if the entire editorial was bias toward one company because they pay the wages this month? The site takes enough flak for featuring too many arduinos already.

          1. Yes you are selfish.
            You expect others to suffer so that you do not have to suffer.
            That is being selfish.
            The reason people do not like advertisements is due to the abusive nature that advertisers have taken as well as the apathetic attitudes towards user safety and security.
            I can not nor will ever understand why an animated gif advertisement on a page changes between images so fast that I am not able to read any part of the ad. That kind of stupidity alone justifies blocking ads.
            Then there are the ones so embellished with flashing color that they can cause certain individuals to suffer a seizure. And you want those people to suffer mentally, physically and medically. You are most definitely selfish.
            As far as I’m concerned, as long as advertisers have the insane stupidity to try and track me, or refuse to be responsible for the viruses their ads can pass, I will block them.
            I’ve had both Hackaday.com and ads.supplyframe.com white listed for a few weeks now Today is the first day since that I have actually seen ads on the site. And that is because they were using an advertiser service that was blocked by ghostery.

            Be careful of strangers you decide to follow around. There are those with guns that have a shoot first, and ask questions later policy. Following strangers around is not a very healthy or safe business to be into.

            Unfortunately, future televisions will be monitoring what people watch and then relaying that information back to the networks. Just like ad trackers do.

  21. see… i don’t use adblock, but i noticed when hackaday fixed their adds to target my interests. it’s much more interesting to see something helpful from a cnc company than to see something about makeup or retirement options(thanks facebook, google, yahoo, and ask.com, i’m 17, not retiring for at least another three years) hackaday has the best add setup i’ve seen. i have a small screen, and the adds don’t block my view of the webpage. i’m interested in what they show me, and when adds are pertinent to the article it makes me happy. however, i’m kinda sick of seeing adds on hackaday for pre assembled cheater machines. if i wanted to BUY a perfectly fine functioning machine, i wouldn’t be on HACKADAY. or instructables. maybe you could refine it a little bit more, but hackaday is definitely the most targeted add system i have seen, and i appreciate that. thank you.

    1. Good question!

      So the way advert systems work is you usually can’t bill a customer for an ad impression unless you can prove it actually happened. So the tracking is required to run separately from the ad service so you can verify the end user actually had the ad delivered.

      So yes if you allow the ads domain without the tracking domain then you’ll be seeing ads, but HaD won’t be getting any benefit from it.

    1. If your server can tell who is allowing ads or not, why not run a monthy contest giving away a cheap sensor or something to reward those who actually help HaD, and aren’t selfish pieholes that just want free content? Just a thought.

    1. Or, alternately, how about allowing users to set a preference of “no animated ads”. That way 95% of people who don’t care still get the more impressionable ads (Which I assume make you more money), and the few that hate them but want to support you can opt out.

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