This page was reprinted from Search
Engine News
and is published on Tampa Graphic Design website.
March 2004, Year
EIGHT, Issue
Three,
Page Four
Hate Ads? Norton Internet
Security to the Rescue!?!
Who’d a thunk a firewall would be set by default to screen advertising?
—
by Stephen Mahaney
If you hate ads, then you’ll be delighted
to know that Norton Personal Firewall / Internet Security 2004 (NPFW/IS2004) comes shipped with an ad-blocking
feature – with the default set to ON!
Now, isn’t that thoughtful? No longer will your customers need
to worry about clicking your money links when they frequent your
site. When they read descriptions for certain products and services you’re
offering they’ll ponder those missing links because, (drum roll, please) Ta Daaaaa, Norton has nuked em!
…yep, wipes them entirely from the source code being displayed by your
browser.
In fact, NPFW/IS2004 does such a good job of blocking ads that your site visitor can even turn ad-blocking OFF, hit reload, and the ads will still be gone! …pretty slick, eh? that’s because NPFW/IS2004 removes the ads from the source code itself!
Ohmygosh!
Of course, by now, you should be asking yourself…
- Will that cut into my affiliate sales?…uh, yeah.
-
Does it nuke my display ads? …yep, like they were never
there. - Banners?…those too, gone.
- What about Google AdWords?…renders them unclickable.
- MSN Featured Sites? …same, unclickable.
Like I said, if you hate ads, you’ll love Symantec’s NPFW/IS2004. Of course, if you’re an advertiser,
an affiliate, or just about any other online business that relies on
the myriad forms of advertising, your income stream could be in big trouble.
In case you don’t already know, Symantec almost has a LOCK on the internet
security business via their Norton Anti-Virus Protection niche.
And now, NPFW/IS2004 is being used
on the overwhelming majority of new corporate and personal computers.
Furthermore, NPFW/IS2004 is being
bundled with many, if not most, new systems being shipped. It’s the #1
internet security software and it’s doing it’s best to torpedo your advertising
efforts.
Who / What’s affected?
Affiliate Links
- If you sell as an affiliate through any of the popular
affiliate programs your links are being removed from text ads and
your banner/display ads are reduced to empty white space.- If you sell through affiliates, then your sales could
drop off significantly. You will need to make sure your affiliate
links are not something that what is being filtered by NPFW/IS2004.Be sure to test the links you are giving your affiliates by
running them through our complimentary ad-block scanner.
There you can identify what on your pages, if anything, is being
filtered by NPFW/IS2004.
- Any graphic of standard banner or display ad size
is removed from the source code of the page by NPFW/IS2004. So far we’ve identified
that whenever the following sizes…
120
x 240120 x 90
468
x 60234 x 60
120
x 60125 x 125
…appear within the image tags the image is removed.
However, the good news is that NPFW/IS2004 can be defeated if the image
is just one pixel different or if the width and height specifications are omitted.
- Company logos are an example of innocent graphics that can be
mistakenly removed because they inadvertently happen to match the
size parameters (listed above) of
known ads that NPFW/IS2004 is
looking to delete.
- If you sell goods and services via advertising with Google AdWords
or AdSense, you should know that NPFW/IS2004 is removing the links to
your site, rendering your ads useless.
- At MSN.com NPFW/IS2004 removes
the links for all of the MSN Featured
Sites (results 1-5) also rendering
these very expensive ads useless.
See for yourself…
Of course, a picture is worth a thousand words so I’ll save some wind
and let you see for yourself how well the new NPFW/IS2004 ad-blocking feature works. Here’s
a page with ads. Click the image below to toggle between the same
page before and after NPFW/IS2004 removes the ads.
Click the image to switch between ads on and ads blocked.
Notice the disappearing links under Ads by Google in the right
hand sidebar. In order to visit an advertiser’s site one would have to
manually copy-&-paste the URL into the location line.
By the way, here’s a partial list of what they’re blocking…
.gif){kind=spacer} |
|
How does ad-blocking software work?
Most ad-blocking software installs a customized proxy server on your
computer and changes your browser settings to route HTTP requests through
this proxy server.
At the simplest level, the software inspects the data to see if it’s
being sent to the URL of a known ad-server to download, for example,
a banner ad. If so, it can either throw the request away and tell the
browser that the requested data could not be found or send a bogus image
like a 1×1 transparent pixel to the browser. Thus the ad request never
makes it to the ad server and the browser does not display an ad.
More sophisticated ad-blockers, like NPFW/IS2004 go beyond simply filtering out
certain data requests coming from the browser. These actually modify
the HTML and JavaScript code as it passes through the proxy server. This
takes ad stripping to a higher level and also runs the risk of damaging
the layout of pages in the process.
Does NPFW/IS2004 affect ALL ads?
Glad you asked. No, actually it doesn’t – Overture’s to be precise.
For some reason Norton forgot(?) to add Overture to it’s filter. Doing
so would have been e-a-s-y and put Overture’s paid listings on
equal nuking with Google’s AdWords. But for reasons known only to Symantec,
they neglected to do so. Of course, the filter can be manually applied
but people-who-aren’t-nerds are unlikely to do that.
In the meantime, if you’re already buying AdWords, expect to hear from
an Overture sales rep telling you something like…
“You should be advertising with
us because, well, we’re better than Google because their ads get
filtered by standard firewall settings and our ads don’t.”
And they’ll be telling the truth! …which leads us to ask the next
question…
Will Symantec take money to omit advertisers from the filter?
Maybe they already have. The problem is, who can check? That’s a lot
of power for one company to wield. Getting to decide what ads average
consumers world-wide can view using their default firewall
settings is a LOT of power indeed. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist
to do the math on that one.
If you think this is going away, think again!
Like pop-up blockers, expect that ad blocking software is here to stay.
Rumor has it that online ad agency Doubleclick is experimenting
with software that defeats pop-ups. We, ourselves, have developed software
that will work around the ad-blocking issue (more
on that in a minute). But, for the moment, let’s talk about where
this is likely to go in the future.
The question being asked right now is: Is this legal? …especially
in light of the fact that Symantec is selling ‘Norton’ as Internet Security – actually
a firewall, not an ad blocker. Of course there are others (like
ZoneLabs) that sell ad blocking packaged within their firewall
but they have yet to turn the default ON.
There are some who feel it violates restraint of trade laws.
They may be right. However, ad blocking is likely to become popular with
most people so we expect it to stay around in one form or another. For
that reason, we feel it’s best to adjust rather than to resist.
And, we’re doing just that.
By the way, Norton cut a deal with one of Europe’s leading ISP’s, Tiscali, “to
deliver Internet security protection to Internet users across Europe.” According
to the press release, they’ve…
“…developed a service that will
enable Tiscali customers in Italy, Germany and the UK to use its market-leading
range of Norton Internet security products by paying a subscription
to Tiscali in conjunction with their monthly Internet usage fee. The
service will appear on Tiscali’s portals starting this month [January
2004].”
The release goes on to say,
“…Norton Personal Firewall 2004
provides a full firewall, comprehensive privacy protection, program
control, ad blocking, and a comprehensive intrusion detection system
in one convenient product. Norton Internet Security 2004 is an easy-to-use
and comprehensive security and privacy suite for home and small office
PC users, featuring Symantec’s best-of-breed antivirus, firewall, intrusion
detection, privacy protection, spam filtering, and content filtering
solutions in a single, tightly integrated suite.
Sounds to us that Symantec is planning to give away NPFW/IS2004 to Europe at the ISP level in
order to collect a piece of the subscription business these ISP’s have
locked in. Frankly, it’s a beautiful plan for a golden source of steady
revenue. And, since it solves people’s security issues for free – and
through trusted sources – it’s a sure winner for ISP’s, Symantec, and
even the governments who are currently frustrated by how easily private
computers are being turned into spam zombies, virus senders, and potential
terrorist instruments.
So, expect to see this marketing plan soon within the U.S. as broadband’s
always-on access becomes the rule instead of the exception. In fact,
we wouldn’t be surprised if legislation is considered that requires ISP’s
to insure their customers’ computers are secured. If such were to become
the case, we’re sure NPFW/IS2004, ad blocking included, could
very well become the “solution” provider.
Solutions? …work arounds?
We’ve heard of one site that rewrote their .htaccess file to
redirect Norton users to specialized advertising pages. Another webmaster
found a way to put pro-Mcaffee and anti-Norton messages behind links
set to display whenever a site visitor came calling with Norton ad-blocking
turned ON.
Of course neither of these are really a solution.
Here’s what WE are doing…
Naturally, to online marketers like you and me, this problem is a real concern.
That’s why we’ve assigned some of our best people to come up with a fix.
And, they’ve done so. It isn’t perfect (yet) but it beats the pants off
every other ‘solution’ we’ve found thus far.
Are we willing to share? …sure. To get the scoop on what we’ve got
so far, see this month’s resource article.
Also, be sure to test your pages using the complimentary ad-block scanner we
developed especially for you to see what is being blocked on your own
site.
And, if you’re of the mind to complain about Symantec stepping on the restraint
of trade laws, you can try contacting the FTC. Personally, though, we feel more apt
to flow with the river and work around the problem – we, like you,
have a business to run!
Be at peace but stay alert,
Stephen Mahaney – President
Planet Ocean Communications
