I use ghostery. I see nothing but white.
I am fine with billboards but audio, video, flash, or other content are not acceptable to me. It must NOT distract from the game in any way, not in the form of noise or flashing lights nor in the form of lag and bad performance. If you cannot say it with a few words and a picture, go hire a better ad writer.
You guys kill me :)
My favourite: "I just want to play chess occasionally and discuss on the forums. Why should I pay for that?"
Either pay the subscription or watch the adverts.
Cheapskates!
You just don't understand or choosed to ignore my entire post and cherry picked a sentence that fitted your point of view. Good for you if you paid for a diamond membership, as for me I do not need it, so I will not pay for it.
It's not about being ''cheap'' wanting to play free chess games, as advertised on chess.com main page without disturbances and annoyances. It's pretty basic. There is nothing illegal nor cheap here, but if you don't have the computer to support these processes in the backround, blocking ads, at least in live chess, become a valid and legitimate option. :)
I will not block these new ''well played'' adds, as they don't affect my experience on the website. If all adds were as such, I would not need to activate adblock on chess.com.
-sigh-
I own/operate a very large site (millions of pages, millions of monthly visitors), and the self-entitled whiners witnessed here are similar to those I see on my site regarding -- GASP -- ads on a free website. Oh the humanity!
That's part of the generally agreed value proposition, isn't it? Free content/entertainment that large numbers of people enjoy, has historically been supported by advertising of some type.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, websites, etc.
As someone steeped in the technology of online, and a member of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, I "get" the complaints of people that claim the ads are intrusive, too flashy, etc. But when you used to buy magazines, did you rip out those horribly intrusive double-page ads, or full-page ads when you used to buy newspapers?
Why using AdBlock is a bad thing:
http://www.andrewt.net/blog/posts/adblock-is-a-bad-thing/
Traffic to a website is a finite and fixed expense. For free-to-access users, the only way to derive revenue to pay for continuing to respond to traffic is through online advertising. And for sites like mine, and to some extent Chess.com without the top-tier traffic of really big sites, ad networks and ad exchanges are the only option -- which will unfortunately have ads created in a wide range of ways, both compitently, and incompitently.
But that's part of the "deal" isn't it? Accepting the currently imperfect monetization model for free-to-access sites we use and enjoy.
Some of the ad technology will be getting better. I've contributed to HTML5/CSS3 standards being published by the IAB and adopted by several creators/distributors of display advertising -- this means no Flash.
AND NOW A RANT OF MINE!
It is the absolute worst type of completely impolite lack of common-sense manners to advocate the use of ad-blocking tools to block ads on Chess.com on the pages of Chess.com, a site given to you free to use.
Sorry, that's just how I see it.
Feel free to flame away.
Am I the only one here who finds the message funny?
The way adblock works (and yes, I do use it), your browser never makes the request to pull the ad up. So the advertisement companies never register it as a view.
Hey salmiakki, the guy above speaks the truth. I bet he's some kind of IT/CS (information technology/computer science) guy. No offence, I am too.
Basically there is a function in the JavaScript, called detectAdBlockers().
It's a mere 34 lines in length (which is next to nothing) using RAW JavaScript without any Framework. It will randomly pick out of 3 images for each of the 3 ad containers. It's funny, probably an april fools. 
What it does, is, it iterates through every <div> element on the page and checks whether it's ID equals begins with the string "div-gpt-ad" and if so it subsequently checks whether the element has got some height to it.
Here's the line of interest:
if (divEl.id.indexOf('div-gpt-ad') == 0 && !divEl.clientHeight)
Now well, if it's got no height then obviously the ad is not displayed as it should be.
I hope I didn't go too much into details.
Greetings and Love everyone,
Benzo guy
Nothing will get me to turn off adblock. Subscriptions aren't worth the $ considering most of the features are free on other sites. Not a cheapskate just not mindlessly throwing my money at every hobby I pick up.
''I own/operated a very large site (millions of pages, millions of monthly visitors), and the self-entitled whiners witnessed here are similar to those I see on my site regarding -- GASP -- ads on a free website. Oh the humanity!
That's part of the generally agreed value proposition, isn't it? Free content/entertainment that large numbers of people enjoy, has historically been supported by advertising of some type.''
You don't get it. Most people using an adblocker are not against adds to gain revenue and pay the bills. But they are against the fact that they can't even play, thanks to these ''flash ads'' with sound and video that create lags and slow down. Unless you have the computer to handle these processes in the background, you will not even be able to enjoy the free content.
If you are using Adblock Plus, it might be worth right-clicking inside the ad panel. You may be able to block the ad berating you for using the adblocker. More irony.
Hilarious AND effective! Many thanks.
PS: please note the cute girl in the "BLOCKING ADS - WELL PLAYED" chess.com message.
Huh. I got a picture of Eric in a fur coat and a weird hat.
Doesn't matter. Already zapped.
You don't get it. Most people using an adblocker are not against adds to gain revenue and pay the bills. But they are against the fact that they can't even play, thanks to these ''flash ads'' with sound and video that create lags and slow down. Unless you have the computer to handle these processes in the background, you will not even be able to enjoy the free content.
I get it completely. If you turn off, disable, or uninstall Flash, the ad networks are aware of the lack of Flash and serve a static/animated-GIF alternative ad. Problem solved.
''I own/operated a very large site (millions of pages, millions of monthly visitors), and the self-entitled whiners witnessed here are similar to those I see on my site regarding -- GASP -- ads on a free website. Oh the humanity!
That's part of the generally agreed value proposition, isn't it? Free content/entertainment that large numbers of people enjoy, has historically been supported by advertising of some type.''
You don't get it. Most people using an adblocker are not against adds to gain revenue and pay the bills. But they are against the fact that they can't even play, thanks to these ''flash ads'' with sound and video that create lags and slow down. Unless you have the computer to handle these processes in the background, you will not even be able to enjoy the free content.
Don't respond just block him as well.
http://www.andrewt.net/blog/posts/adblock-is-a-bad-thing/
Feel free to flame away.
The comments by the author (is it you?) imply that blocking ads is stealing from the website owners. Therefore, in the same way, viewing ads (or worse, clicking on them) but not buying the product is "stealing" from the advertiser.
come on, admit you thought it was funny for a day :)
lol I thought it was funny! The best April Fool's joke I've seen today! :) (But I do have to admit that the first time I saw it this morning, I did think it was real.)
come on, admit you thought it was funny for a day :)
It IS a decent joke, but you do realize what one of those memes insinuates, right? The one saying 'Don't be this guy' ?
come on, admit you thought it was funny for a day :)
lol I thought it was funny! The best April Fool's joke I've seen today! :) (But I do have to admit that the first time I saw it this morning, I did think it was real.)
It's not such a great joke because as many who've posted here have indicated the asumption is that I want something for nothing. It's an insult.
I've said many times on this site that I welcome ads as long as they work (look it up before telling me no). How can this be misunderstood?
The point is that the ads on this site (and ONLY this site) force me to use task manager to close my browser and restart. My objection to that is not cheap. Those of you who reduce it to that level are being malicious.
No, I'm not the author.
The majority of online display advertising is impression-based. Advertisers pay a range of prices (depending on a website's audience) for 1,000 impressions... CPM in industry-speak. Broad-interest high-traffic sites can get up to $20/CPM for the first few impressions from a new visitor. More niche-interest lower-trafficked sites see rates as low as $0.50/CPM, or even lower.
So yes, website owners -- especially those in the lower-tier or "long-tail" as the industry calls us -- struggling with the expense of servers and bandwidth do see ad-blocking as a form of content theft. Even more so now as rates are falling due to real-time ad exchanges and monetizing high-traffic on niche-interest sites becomes more and more difficult. Due to my involvement, I know of two nice and useful sites that had to close because of this.
From an advertiser's perspective -- which I also know because I used to work in advertising -- buying any ads is a gamble. Hopefully an informed and well-strategized gamble, but a gamble nonetheless. If only 0.01% of those seeing ads click and then do something, the value of the gamble depends on the cost of the campaign versus the value of that 0.01%. And since the majority of online advertising is designed to generate awareness, not necessarily an immediate purchase, not following-through after clicking a banner is no big deal.
Why not just disable Flash if it's such an issue?
The advertising supplier will fail-over to a non-Flash animted GIF or static image. Which means an ad is shown, and Chess.com gets paid for the impression.
These new chess.com advertisements ARE ADVERTISEMENTS! I will support Chess.com by allowing these specific ads. (I also clicked on it. YAY!)
Also, I think Chess.com gets paid to display ads, and a little more if someone clicks on them, but the most important point is the former. If Chess.com already gets paid to display ads, who cares if I actually see the ads if I never click on them anyway? Let the advertisement companies think I see them. They don't know that I have ABP installed!
F
The way adblock works (and yes, I do use it), your browser never makes the request to pull the ad up. So the advertisement companies never register it as a view.