BBC News with extra adverts

[glittertigger]

The BBC has "improved" its news homepage. The main difference I can see is more ads. Apparently this is because I am an international user (that Paris IP address again) and in their editor's words they "wanted to do a better job of incorporating them into the page design". As far as I can tell this means they have made them harder to block. Gah.

Comments

[wimble.livejournal.com]

I'm not seeing adverts even when I select the International option on the homepage. Maybe it knows that I'm lying.

Opera's got a nice filter in it: I right click on the page, select "block content", and then click on things. The URLs of the things are then generalised and added to a "don't load these items" list. It works great for LJ sponsored accounts: I see a white gap headed by the words "Advertisement" and "Customize", but no actual advert.

There are equivalents for Firefox. I believe the "normal" one is AdBlock Plus. It doesn't have Opera's point and click interface, but it's easy enough to use if you've got any idea of how to get an image's URL.

Dunno about IE, I'm afraid.

[glittertigger]

I still see the adverts even if I select the UK version, which is what makes me suspect they are basing it on IP addresses. I'll have a look for a better filter.

[e-pepys.livejournal.com]

Gosh, I didn't know the BBC did adverts for foreigners. That's evil.

I just tried it by connecting via SLAC (California) VPN and an advert appeared. So it does look like it's based on IP address.