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DoGooder brings its "advertising with a conscience" to Google Chrome
Unlike extensions such as AdBlock, DoGooder doesn't actually block a publisher's original ads. Instead, it loads them and then covers them up with its own ads. That's a good thing for publishers, since it means their ad impressions won't be affected. DoGooder also maintains a whitelist of websites which have similar advertising practices, and the extension allows users to flip back to the original ads if they wish to do so.
DoGooder's ads are unobtrusive and small -- most of the ones I saw were well under 30KB. That's not much of an additional payload and I'm more than willing to do it to cover up obnoxious animated ads (DoGooder's ads are typically nice-looking and static) and do a little good.
The replacements are especially welcome on sites where I do actual reading -- and I love having DoGooder turned on while sifting through items in Google Reader.
Released earlier this year for Firefox, DoGooder is still a work in progress on Google Chrome. On sites with multiple billboards (like Pirate Bay, for example) the extension only replaced one or two ads out of four. Still, if you're a Chrome user and looking for a way to block annoying adverts and support some good causes DoGooder is well worth installing.
Grab it from the Google Chrome Extensions Gallery.
Comments
7
Subscribe to commentsF-ZeroMay 8th 2010 3:20PM
It's an interesting extension, but does anyone know how it affects performance/bandwidth consumption, since as you said it allows normal ads to be loaded, so you'll be needing extra bandwidth because you load 2 ads instead of one?
Lee MathewsMay 8th 2010 3:27PM
That's why I mentioned the file size...Most of their ads are between 9KB an 30KB, so you're not looking at a lot of extra bandwidth -- unless you're on ad-heavy sites...
Here, for example, it only made a difference of about 55KB.
tracker1May 8th 2010 4:51PM
This has to be the most ignorant extension on the planet. First, it does nothing to promote those ads to other people on a given site. Second, it effectively blocks the money that a publisher might see anyhow, since many ad networks pay per click, not per impression these days. Third, any money made by these ads goes to the plugin publisher, and if no money is made, how does it really serve anyone, it'd be better to publish a nice site that lists charitable organizations and their causes.
MarteyMay 8th 2010 5:50PM
Concerning your third point, the DoGooder website states that they donate 50% of their profits.
benMay 8th 2010 7:02PM
50% of their profit.
How do they calculate their "profit", and how much do they pay themselves.
advertising with a conscience? Ripping off real content provider is not what I considered "conscience".
RyanMay 8th 2010 9:49PM
Didn't Gator do this and it was considered, um, bad?
minibarMay 9th 2010 10:29PM
i'd want an option to block rather than download the undesirable ads, and i'd want to know the privacy policy of the desirable ads including whether they use tracking to follow you around.