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Management Assistance Program

Popups and Ad Blocker Wars — It’s Your Move. (December 22, 2020)

Unfortunately, few people see an advertisement on a website and click on the ad to see more about the product or service. And by “few” I mean not enough to make that online advertising effective. So advertisers soon began to rely on popup ads that site visitors could not ignore because they at least had to click on the little X in the upper corner to close the ad. Of course, some didn’t like that and soon there were popup ad blockers. Usually these were added as a browser extension. Websites fought back with anti-popup blocker technology. These came in the form of a full screen message stating “We have detected a popup blocker. Our site depends on ad revenue to survive. So, either disable your popup blocker— or go away!” That means it is time for the web users’ next move.

My friend Shawn L. Holahan is Practice Management Counsel/Loss Prevention Counsel for the Louisiana State Bar Association. She just shared this video with me that details four ways to defeat these “blocker blockers” in Chrome. While I’d encourage you to watch the entire video, here’s her summary:

  • Right click on popup “Please disable adblocker to support us” or something like that
  • Click inspect
  • Control F
  • Type in “please disable” or a string contained in the popup (e.g., “Welcome to NBC news”)
  • Delete where it appears.
  • Poof. It’s gone.

Of course, given the history lesson above, it’s not likely this will work “forever.”

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