As many of you are aware, I have been fighting the Norton ad blocking battle for over a year. Older versions of Norton Internet Security blocked affiliate and advertising links and banners, leaving a big blank space on the page. Well finally some good news! Norton has changed the default on NIS 2005 so that Adblocking is not on out of the box.

We all have a voice and can make it heard to affect change, even with a big company like Symantec. I have recently gotten several reports from affiliate telling me that the 2005 version has been changed. From webmarm on AffiliateBoards: “My NIS 2005 shipped to me with default ad blocking OFF. When I went into the control panel to switch ad blocking on, it gave me a big warning that web pages may not display as intended and are you sure you want to enable ad blocking.” I have had several others confirm this as well. Thanks for listening Symantec. That’s what we wanted to see.

Leaving this page up for information purposes since many users still have the old software that has blocking on by default and even blocks text links and site logos in some cases. See examples and discover some options since many users still have ad blocking turned on and don’t realize it.

Norton Blocks Affiliate Links, Banners & Webmaster Revenue
http://www.5staraffiliateprograms.com/norton-blocks-revenue.html.

I was interviewed back in October for an article for Internet.com about Norton blocking affiliate links and revenue that was published in November.

“Affiliate Marketers: Blocking Software Is Killing Us”

“Besides searching and destroying viruses and erecting protective firewalls, Symantec’s Norton Security 2005, McAfee Internet Security Suite 2005 and other PC security products block ads and cookies, which cause affiliate marketers to lose sales.”
http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/emarketing/article.php/3442701

Another article I helped write was published by About.com
“Is Norton Blocking Your Internet Marketing Efforts?”
http://marketing.about.com/cs/internetmarketing/a/norton2004.htm

I am glad the media helped to put a spotlight on this issue, and a change has finally been made. I can only assume Google and other large Internet companies helped to force the changes since their ads were blocked too. Glad to see the changes implemented - changing the default is what we have been asking for.