Reuters Headers including Ads

[mrbene]

Visited Reuters news:

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps ... 4220071129

For me the "News" header says "News - Brought to you by Chantix", since what I remember previously as simply a "News" header has been replaced with a larger image:

http://www.reuters.com/resources/images ... header.jpg

When images start including both content and advertisement, what gets blocked?

[rick752]

Try this:

Code: Select all

.reuters.com/resources/images/ch*nt*x_$image

That should take care of that on AND the one over the map.

[mrbene]

Aye, the filtering is easy enough. The questions I'm more interested in are:

How to handle advertisements that coexist in an image with desired site content. This example is a limited one - I know I'm at "News", since I'm on Reuters. More interesting is the fact that it wouldn't take much to dynamically insert actually interesting content (like the headline) into a "brought-to-you-by" type ad, so that instead of "News", it would be "Venezuela may expel U.S. envoy over vote suspicions brought to you by Chantix".
Whether this was rolling through multiple different advertisers for different people - ie, I see chntx_$image, but it would be incredibly easy for Reuters to cycle through different file names for different advertisers.

Opinions?

[rick752]

Obviously, you wouldn't be able to remove PART of an image. This type of integration could only be done with an image .... everything else would have its own element. You would either have to delete that image or leave it.

They could cycle the name of the image if they wanted to, but it certainly would NOT be as easy to cycle through html elements that are used as containers for those though

Code: Select all

reuters.com##div.nLogo + div
reuters.com##div.customRightRail > div > img[src^="/resources/images/"]

As it seems, that image is 'hard-coded' into the html. If they did it dynamically, there would be a script or stylesheet available to block.

EDIT:
Dynamically inserting usable text within an ad image would simply be high maintenance and a drawback to the site owner as well as the user on many levels.

[mrbene]

Aye, with current Adblock, you cannot exclude part of an image, or part of a flash element, or part of a video (whether Flash or Quicktime or whatever), and I don't know exactly how Microsoft's new "Silverlight" will pan out. I expect that ads will become more commonly embedded in these non-HTML elements.

There are already engines that dynamically insert usable text into an image - CAPTCHA type technology. As I understand these are generated in large volume and cached - something feasible to do with a finite number of sponsor and content pairings.

[rick752]

... or part of a flash element, or part of a video

That is not true, mrbene. Since the last couple of ABP versions, Wladimir has made it possible to block or allow individual 'parts' of video and flash because those formats ARE made up of separate parts (it is already being done in the EasyList). The ads CAN be stripped out of video .. the problem is in some cases that they will still use the allocated time for the ad which causes a blank video player for a while. You may as well play the ad so that you know the player is working.

[mrbene]

Really? Hmmm.. Definitely missed that advance. I haven't sat down and spent any serious amount of time with the 7.x versions - I ought to do that sometime. There's some aspects of the UI that I really want to re-work each time I spend any amount of time with it, tho.

[rick752]

That is usually what the blockable item type "OTHER" means in the 'blockable items' list. They are usually parts of media or flash objects and are fully blockable or allowable. Ads and main video will usually show up as 2 different "other"s.

[rick752]

Anyway ... getting back to the topic , Reuters has been fixed in the EasyElement