Do you use an adblocker?

[L337 M33P]

Where did you get that from? I got mine from a thread on another forum who posted it. Mind you, replacing all the IP's from 127.0.0.1 to 192.168.bla.. took Notepad a while, lol

One is the HOSTS file that comes with Spybot S&D, the other is a hosts file I got from

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

 

[tom10167]

There's a "supertrick" feature in K-Lite that blocks some advertisements, it is enabled, I have never donated to a website.

I don't care about banners or anything really, but the ones that sort of popup(They're flash generally so Google won't get them) annoy the hell out of me. www.weather.com has them. =\

 

[MRD]

I actually wrote a little C++ utility to merge host files. You just give it your new hosts file, your old one, and it merges and sorts them, throwing out duplicates and telling you how many unique ones you have.

I downloaded a whole bunch of hosts files from the net and merged them all together. Whenever I find a new one, I merge it in. It blocks a great deal of ads.

 

[Malpine Walis]

Well, I use opera so no popups for me. as for ad blocking it is entirely a mental process unless the ad is especially obnoxious. Like a flash banner with sound for example. if you do it that way, you will eventually never see another banner again.

 

[Excelsior]

Just to clarify, I am not talking about popup blockers. I block those with google toolbar

I block those with a little something called FireFox

-Excelsior

 

[nil_esh]

I don't exactly use an adblocker. I use Mozilla Firefox, and block pop-ups of course. And I occasionally block images for ads that annoy me, especially for sites I regularly visit. I also have an entry in my userContent.css that blocks all Flash and allows me to view the Flash only by clicking on it.

I've tried some stylesheets that attempt to block ads, but they have broken to much for them to be useful enough. Most ads don't bother me too much, and I just mentally block them. The Flash ads are the most annoying, but I never have to see those.

It is very rare that I follow an ad link. Although it has happened. I would be likely to click on an ad for a software development tool. I think the ad on overclockers.com for heatsinkfactory.com resulted in me purchasing from them, but it could've been somewhere else. I occasionally click on a Google ad (text ads are much friendlier than banners). But in general, I ignore ads.

As for advertisement as a means of supporting a site -- for the most part, it doesn't seem to be working from what I've heard. At least not enough to cover the costs. The days where you could put ads on your website and rake in money are over. I'd like to hear from the people running the sites, though. Are they even breaking even from the ads alone? A lot of sites offer subscription (for extra features usually) as a means of revenue. Maybe the cost of hosting has gone done so maybe its easier to break even, I dunno.

 

[hrdwrjnkie]

I use an adblocker, but for the sites that I frequent (mostly ocforums as it is one of the few free sites that I go to) I bookmark an ad link or two. Everything that I buy through newegg goes on overclockers.com's referral. This way the site gets the benefit but I don't have to suffer through the ads.

 

[SewerBeing]

I block pop ups, but I dont block ads, I have had bad experiences with ad blockers, so I just ignore adds.

 

[PCGUY112887]

I too block popups, I don't really mind the ads I see on sites, and usually I click the ads for good sites because then I see it register another click (and more cash) the the onwer of the site.

I think that EVERYONE should go start click crazy on ads on the OC Site!

 

[Silversinksam]

I block everything, but I have exceptions, this site and a couple others I do not filter at all.

I use an OLD version of Adsubtract Pro (2.52) That is not available anymore as the new version of Adsubtract is a joke at best.

 

[rogerdugans]

Yes, I use an adblocker: Firefox and the firewall I use....
Many banner ads nowadays are hosted on ad servers and not the originated web page server- these can be blocked by a decent firewall.

Yes, I have donated to some websites- or at least to a website.

I do allow some ads and popups to go through however- this site is the only one I currently have configured to let any and all ads/popups in.

 

[JoT]

I use a combination of adblockers and hosts files to block pretty much everything the web has to offer. The only ads I've ever seen that aren't blocked were the OCForums ads, which I don't think are a nuisance enough to block.

To give you an idea of how thorough my adblocking routine is: I didn't run Adaware or Spybot for 4 weeks, an all-time record for me. But during that time, I had all my blockers and popup-stoppers enabled. I scanned yesterday, and Adaware reported only 6 tracking cookies, nothing more. COOKIES! All in crappy IE, so see what you can do when you load down a crap program with good stuff?

 

[SimGuy]

Adblocker? No.
Pop-up blocker? No. ALT-F4 works well.

 

[turd]

I do have an ad blocker but I rarely use it. It just sits for those moments when I get annoyed, it blockes flash, etc.

I dont really need it, as far as the "free ride" I dont take no cookies, no referrer, nada. I do put OC com down for my many purchases from newegg, directon, frozenPC, etc. But its often a little more involved then just clicking on the advertisment, often your getting doubleclick or some other such that is tracjing you for marketing.

 

[RangerJoe]

Opera has a built in ad blocker...so yes

 

[mR. STuPiD]

Its been an etirnity(sp) since I have last seen an annoying ad on my PC. I don't use an adblocker, just this guys host file, adding additions as nessecary. As for donating to sites, I'm too poor, but I do have the OC Newegg link bookmarked, so OC gets some money off of that. Actually, I don't have any of the ads on OC blocked besides the annoying falkag ones. (the shoot the monkey and you get spyware type) Everything else on OC is targeted to the vistitors it gets, and actually leads me to click on them time to time.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, thats a 750kb hosts file. If you use it your going to want to disable the service dnscache or your system will slow to a crawl on login.

 

[Stedeman]

I only block pop-ups, the embedded ads are fine and I understand there point. But I do tend to mentally block out ads although I use the O/C Forums newegg link every time I go to newegg (I think it started when Skip owned the forums)
I don't know if we still get $ for it but here it is for all you guys who have newegg book marked just switch it to http://www.newegg.com/index.asp?refer=0vercl0ckers to give credit to the forums

 

[Gregory_WE]

I use Google Toolbar, just for popups... I still get ads for like this forum and stuff, but I rarely click on any of them since most don't interest me at all.

 

[dropadrop]

I voted yes even though I only add advertisement pumping hosts to my hosts file so that nothing is retrieved from them. Works pretty well on most pages, though I'm starting to consider testing something that would block shockwave and flash as default...

 

[Disputant]

I don't use an ad-blocker, but I do use a pop-up blocker.