Ad block detection listening enables you to detect whether or not a customer or visitor is actively using an ad blocking technology to hide advertisements. The result ("yes" or "no") is stored in a profile property for use in a segment. You can also use an event to trigger a dialogue that appears when ad blockers are detected.
Note: The Ad Block Detection listener does not work on Safari mobile or desktop browsers.
Configure the Ad Block Detection listener
To add an Ad Block Detection Listener, choose Listeners from the BlueConic navigation menu, and select AdBlock Detection Listener in the list of available listener plugins. Give the listener a name and fill in the listener configuration options.
Where
Choose where to detect the ad blocker -- on all pages in all channels, or only in some.
Profile property
Select the profile property where the detection result is stored (or create a new profile property here). The default value is "AdBlock Usage Detected."
To create a new profile property, click in the profile property field and enter a new profile property name.
Event
When an ad blocker is detected, BlueConic throws an event, adblock_detected. You can use this event to trigger a dialogue by adding a "Show on event" rule in the When tab of a dialogue. To prevent the dialogue from showing on every page view, you can add additional rules to the dialogue.
How to create a segment of users who are blocking ads
With the Ad Block Detection Listener in place, it will take just a few seconds to use the Segments menu to create a segment for "users blocking ads":
- Choose Segments from the BlueConic navigation menu.
- Select the profile property "AdBlock Usage Detected".
- Select the value "yes".
Interact with your users
As with all data collected and segmentation performed in BlueConic, ad block segmentation is available to be shared out to any number of other systems so you can use this information in campaigns and analyses.
You can also use BlueConic dialogues to take advantage of the otherwise empty ad placements. Prompt users to sign up for newsletters, to subscribe, to share content on social networks, etc.
Here is an example from our example publishing site.
Consider a typical ad placement:
When blocked, you can attempt to recoup lost revenue from this ad space by placing highly relevant messaging in its place:
Privacy management
Listeners can be added to Objectives, allowing for privacy management of the information that is being picked up. The listener will only update a profile if the visitor consented to at least one of the objectives that it is linked to.