Currently there is an arms race going on between web advertisers and users. Every time a piece of ad blocking software gets more smart (see Adblock Plus on Firefox), advertisers find an even smarter way of detecting and circumventing the software.

A new type of ad blocker would finally give the users the upper hand. Every time you visit a web page, it loads normally into a "virtual browser window" which isn't visible to the user. From this window, the browser filters out ads/unwanted information and displays the content in a new window, visible to the user. All user actions (mouse and keyboard events) are replicated 1:1 in the virtual browser window.

Web designers would have no way of detecting whether the user is filtering the ads. Even if they tried to embed ads into relevant information (for instance by putting both in a flash animation), the browser could simply overlay the ads with white rectangles.

The ad blocker would of course be collaborative and subscription-based so that any attempt to change the location of ads results in a quick response by the ad blocker.
-- kinemojo, Aug 16 2007

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