Stop ads being blocked?

I don’t know where the best place to post this is but...

I want to put some ads on my site to help cover some of my dedicated server costs as I run a community for free... Ads might be a nice way to help cover costs but I wondered if there was a way to stop ads blockers from blocking the ads LOL. It defeats the purpose of putting ads on my site if half the people block them and don’t see offers that they might genuinely be interested in. In no way am I trying to force clicks or anything but people disable ads for the sake of disabling them... do any of you know how to stop ads being recognised and being blocked? I have no idea how these blockers figure out what an ad is compared to a regular javascript unless it’s tracked via the links.

Anyway if it’s possible, how do I do it? I know some might see that as wrong that I want to stop ads being blocked but it’s advertisements to help keep their community running.

I understand your situation, ads are crucial for many free services to survive.

If you are using your own ads (not some ad server) one effective solution could be putting your ads in to the same folder as regular images on your site. This way site visitors must either disable your ads one by one or disable all images.

I will be using my own ads if I manage to find some sponsors but at the moment I will be using an ad service... I won’t be using google ads since some malicious idiot clicked that many it got me banned and Google refuse to answer the 4 emails I sent, logs etc... oh and with over 12 months of being banned they still refuse to answer me.

I am guessing that ad blocking software is pretty intelligent and knows what an ad is and what isn’t... is there some way to wrap the JS in a div or something that will make the blocking software bypass this?

Thanks!

Actually I don’t think ad block software is very smart, its easy to see what the Firefox Adblock Extension does. They have a list of locations to block (mostly ad services and big sites) and some regular expressions rules to block the rest.
If you serve the ads locally from your own server and don’t user the word ’ads’ in the filename or surrounding html there is little chance your ads will be blocked. Using a third party ad service and getting around the ad filter might be a problem through.

I use NoScript personally, so don’t expect me to ever see your ads unless I want to, or you serve them as plain html or images from your domain. Nothing personal.

The path is the main method of blocking ads noted above, but another option may just be to ask the community? Present the problem (gotta pay for server) and present the options (donations or ads). Who knows you might get someone to donate the money for a few months and you can skip the ads...

I don’t want to mention that blocking ads won’t help the costs of running the dedicated server... I don’t want the ad supplier to have an excuse to say that I’ve influenced clicks or anything like that lol.

I have seen some scripts that create a popup if a adblocker is detected. I just put the ads on 2 days ago and there was already discussion of how to block them, unbelievable and ungrateful but I can’t force people not to use the adblockers but if there was a way to combat the adblocker, that’s within reason HEHE!

MODx forum adds rock! They don’t bug you a bit - that’s how it should be done.

Yeah I have one ad banner on my site... it’s on the forum and doesn’t at all bother your browsing, it’s adverts related to gaming as it’s gaming community yet people still feel the need to be unhelpful. Anyway I will see what I can find to combat the blockers, if it’s possible.