While assembling this site I was frustrated with the way certain elements were appearing in different versions of different browsers. One especially puzzling addition was a new Word Press text widget which was supposed to add a Google Adsense block to my sidebar. While the ads showed up properly in IE 6.x, only a placeholder showed up in my primary browser Firefox 1.5.x. What was wrong?
The Adsense block also showed up correctly in my Portable Apps Firefox 2.0b2, so with that test it became clear that it was the Adblock Firefox extension that was blocking the advertisements in Firefox 1.5.x.
Consider the www.digg.com crowd. They are more likely to:
- suffer from short internet attention spans (i.e., favor skimming multiple pages over in-depth reading of a few pages)
- be tech savvy than the average web surfer
- use Firefox than IE
- use ad-blocking extensions in Firefox
Maybe Diggers are less likely to click on advertisements, but maybe they’re also less likely to even SEE the ads in the first place.