How to turn off IntelliTXT ads
Update #2 I've further modified my script to block ads from Kontera as well. Still available here and over at UserScripts.
Update: I've created a GreaseMonkey script that automates all this. You can find it here or over at userscripts.org. More installation info here.
You might have noticed a recent trend in web advertising - keyword linking. Essentially, web sites are contracting a company named Vibrant Media to scan their web pages, find keywords that advertisers have paid for and link them to advertisements that appear when your mouse hovers over the word. These links are recognizable by the double underline beneath them (and of course, the big ad that pops up when you put your mouse near them). You can see an example and more information on the technique here. I'm using this site because they, unlike most other sites using the technology, provide a link to turn them off.
Personally, I see enough advertising in the average day to choke a whole team of horses, so I immediately started looking for a way to turn these ads off. It would seem that Vibrant Media doesn't provide any sort of general opt-out page. Meh. So, time for a bit of sleuthing. It turns out that disabling IntelliTXT ads for any random site is pretty easy - here's what you do:
- Find the front page of your favorite IntelliTXT-using site.
- View the source of the front page - the raw html (both Firefox and IE have ways of doing this). What you're looking for is a URL of the form:
Make a note of the text in SITE_NAME (likely to be the name of the web site you're viewing) and ID (likely to be a four-digit number). You'll need them.http://SITE_NAME.us.intellitxt.com/intellitxt/front.asp?ipid=ID
- Now we're going to construct the URL that turns off IntelliTXT. It's going to look like this (I've split the URL across two lines for clarity - be sure and remove the line break and backslash to make this all one line):
Copy the values of SITE_NAME and ID into the URL above, then paste the result into your browser.http://SITE_NAME.us.intellitxt.com/intellitxt/switch.asp? \
ipid=ID&state=off&url=http://www.SITE_NAME.com/ - That's it! You should be redirected to the front page of your chosen site, which should be blissfully free of double underlined words.
Now, go try it out on a couple of sites and let me know how it works for you.
I've never seen that type of advertising before. It is terribly annonying. I tried your trick and it worked, but wouldn't it be simpler to just not go near the words in the first place? I mean, if you don't mouse over them you won't see the ad, right? Just my two cents.
Sure, but given the game of mouse Frogger I have to play on some sites to prevent them from displaying, I'd rather just turn them off.
hey i tried it and it didn't work....
Won't this go away once you clear your cookies?
no - Mind sharing what didn't work? Which page did you visit that still had ads?
A_Pickle - the new version works by modifying the DOM rather than using Vibrant Media's cookie system, which they've stopped honoring anyway. So clearing cookies shouldn't pose a problem.
Why not just update the hosts file so that intellitxt.com points to 127.0.0.1 ?
@Tony - well, for one thing Vibrant Media serves their ads off of many hosts, not just one. I suppose one could try to keep up as they add new servers, but why bother?
This post is actually quite old - the latest version of DisableTextAds blocks similar ads from multiple ad networks without relying on what host they're served from - no user intervention necessary. You can read more here.
This is even easier with Opera's user JS.
You just block any external scripts from those root domains:
window.opera.addEventListener(
'BeforeExternalScript',
function (e) {
// Vibrant Media intelliTXT double underline ads
else if( e.element.getAttribute('src').match(/intellitxt.com/) ) {
e.preventDefault();
}
// Kontera double underline ads
else if( e.element.getAttribute('src').match(/kontera.com/) ) {
e.preventDefault();
}
},
false
);
In Internet Explorer, just add the sites to Restricted Zone. Thus, no javacscript, no cookies, etc allowed. Works great and very simple.
IE:Internet Options; Security tab; click Restricted Sites globe; clicks Sites...;
enter sites like this:
b>*.intellitxt.com
*.kontera.com
Thats it. No special scripts, etc.
above incorrectly has b> in it. All sites should be entered like:
*.domain.xxx
*.intellitxt.com
*.kontera.com
Headbonk's user JS for Opera works great, except that the first "else if" needs to be just "if". If you haven't used Opera JS before, the instructions are here:
http://www.opera.com/browser/tutorials/userjs/using/
Edward