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I've created a website that has political banners (in .GIF and .PNG) with the intention of people being able to copy and embed them with the code provided below the image. Strangely, 3 of the 10 banners weren't appearing and I discovered that my Ad Block extension was treating those as ads, but none of the rest. They are all sourced from the same file path, they all contain relatively the same content, just different sizes.

It would be my preference to not have these treated like ads whatsoever, but obviously that is not a decision for me to make. I'm curious as to why some are being excluded over others, though.

If these are considered advertisements by the extension, it seems silly to me that as the 'source of advertisement' and host of this site, I can't simply provide something for others to share when they are voluntarily there to see just that.

If this is something I have to eat for the greater good of preventing spam, then that's fine. I'm just curious to see if I have any options.

Many thanks PWM

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Usually this is down to the name of the css class or id attached to the image's parent div, or the image's filename.

Anything that could be construed as advert related should be avoided i.e. ad-spot, banner, 468x60 banner etc.

Debugging

If you visit the page in FireFox with ad-block enabled and go to 

Tools > Adblock Plus > Show Blocked Items ( or push ctrl + shift + v)

Adblock will show you what's blocked and which filter it's blocked by, that should help you figure out what's wrong.

The Chrome version doesn't appear to have this functionality yet.

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  • Very true. After reviewing the code, I'm even more vexed. The domain name is just a name (i.e. johnsmith.com), the directory is /buttons/, and the file names are all the image size and the color (ex. 460x70-blue.gif). Maybe it's buttons... but I'm still confused because they are all in that directory. Thanks for providing the insight, though. – RCNeil Feb 24 '12 at 14:15
  • @RCNeil I've just updated the answer with some debugging info, but 460 x 60 is a standard ad unit size so I can see why that filename might trip the filter. – toomanyairmiles Feb 24 '12 at 14:16
  • Very appreciated. That should certainly help me. Thanks mate! – RCNeil Feb 24 '12 at 14:24
  • @RCNeil No problem – toomanyairmiles Feb 24 '12 at 14:41
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    Just looking at ad block lists like easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist.txt shows that images are very likely to be blocked if they contain sizes. – DisgruntledGoat Feb 25 '12 at 0:34

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