Those "Sponsored Ads" in e-mails are an annoyance to both sender and recipient and they seem to escape blocking. Until now. These two (so far) fail-proof sentences at the end of an email will let you enjoy e-mailed rants, ad-free.


(Click the images above and below for a closer look at the before and after effect.)

In his personal blog, Joe McKay writes about his experience in blocking Gmail's sponsored ads using words referencing tragic or catastrophic events (which Google bans from their ads) as well as words from George Carlin's infamous list of seven words you can't say on TV.


That's great news, but how on Earth do you send an email to your boss that's littered with f-bombs and talk of murder? After finding a few victims and experimenting with various potential ad-blocking words, here's the relatively kindly signature we came up with:

I enjoy the massacre of ads. This sentence will slaughter ads without a messy bloodbath.

Result:




Those two simple (and innocent) sentences at the end of an e-mail appear to consistently block Gmail's sponsored ads for us. We've tested e-mails of varying lengths because Joe remarked that he found that there needs to be a ratio of one ad-blocking word for every 167 normal words, but so far, we haven't seen those sentences fail.

Got your own methods of avoiding the extra ads in Gmail? Maybe you've put together a better ad-blocking signature sentence? (Remember, we're aiming for something workplace safe.) Let's hear about it in the comments.


How to avoid Gmail's Sponsored Links [Joe McKay]