As we’ve discussed, a lot of web browsers (people not software) — including me — have installed ad-blocking software. In my case, I was driven to it by feverishly animated Air NZ ads on the NZ Herald website and whirling dervish property spruiker ads on PropertyTalk.

So, look what I spotted following a search result  to the PlunderBund website …

Clever. Their site detects I'm blocking ads and asks me not to. ('Please consider helping Plunderbund and unblocking ads for our site. Instructions.')

The ‘instructions‘ when you read them, are a very reasonably-worded request, with background…

Ad revenue is what enables us to do what we do. It’s how we fund our reporting, overhead (site expenses, supplies), etc. If you are running AdBlock, or similar advertisement blocking software, please consider helping us out and whitelisting Plunderbund in your software. Since most of our advertising revenue is sold per-impression, the more eyeballs that see the ad, the more revenue we get – and that means more resources we can bring to bear when it comes to generating content.

In AdBlock, whitelisting Plunderbund looks like this:
@@||www.plunderbund.com
Instructions for Norton can be found at Symantec’s website.
We sincerely appreciate your support.

Bravo to them for making the request. I keep one browser (Chrome) unfiiltered, so popped over to see how the page looks. Not great:


Meh, no thanks.

Still, no harm in asking.

– P

PS: Amazing! The screen-grab graphic I posted of the request to unblock ads was being blocked! It had the file name: ‘Please-unblock-our-ads.jpg’. Futzing around with it, I posted a version named ‘PB-request.jpg’ and it worked. Spooky.