Posted on 11/14/2015 8:56:14 AM PST by markomalley
The nation's struggling media, which has gone all-in on digital platforms to stay alive, now faces a new threat, easy-to-install ad blockers that are expected to wipe out $20 billion in all online publishing revenue next year, according to a sobering new report.
The group PageFair, which helps publishers fight ad blocking, revealed that the use of the money-robbing practice has surged in the United States and globally, and is expected to cost U.S. online publishers and advertising-supported sites $10.7 billion in "unrealized revenue" this year. That is expected to double next year.
The report said that ad blocking is hitting all online firms, not just news publishers, and is used especially by online gamers.
It drew the attention Thursday of media analyst Alan D. Mutter who warned that the media is threatened by the explosion of ad blocking. "When blocking technology prevents an ad from being served, however, the publisher doesn't get paid. And that is turning into a growing problem for everyone from gaming-site operators to the news media," he wrote in his blog "Reflections of a Newsosaur."
Unlike other online publishers, the media's business is costly and employs tens of thousands, and as a result needs to see advertising grow. A Brookings Institution report issued this week found that the media has moved to digital platforms because printing on paper is not sustainable. a
In the U.S., ad blocking usage grew 48 percent in the past year to 45 million users. In Europe it increased 82 percent.
PageFair said that the search engine Google Chrome is the main driver of ad blocking because it is easiest to install. Globally, some 126 million Google Chrome users block ads. For Firefox it's 48 million and for Safari it's 9 million.
And worse for internet publishers, the use of ad blocking is just starting to take off on mobile devices, where the most growth in usage is occurring.
"The bottom line: As technology develops and ad blocking plug-ins become more commonplace, the growth in ad blocking usage will receive yet another catalyst. This has the potential to challenge the viability of the web as a platform for the distribution of free ad-supported content," said PageFair.
Ghostery is a strong component of repelling kr@p.
Every marketing bimbo thinks shoving ads into people’s faces is what “everyone does!”, so they do it too.
No original thought in the marketing industry. None.
They think annoying their customers is they way to get money from them. The advertising sales bimbos claim all kinds of numbers like, “10 million people per month will see your ad! Isn’t that awesome!”
What they don’t say is, “We jam 10 millions ads out there every month and no one reads them, half are blocked, and it just pisses the reader off who will come to hate your company and products, but pay us $1 million to do that, mmmkay?”
I only want an ad blocker that still allows me to see ads with mixed-raced couples and white guys watching sports with black friends.
and
Self-destructing cookies [firefox only, sorry].
Both programs free--forever.
I find Disconnect works well on PaleMoon.
I hate takeover ads. One of the best new ad blockers is UBLOCK ORIGIN. It also allows you to push a button and turn it off on sites you like and want to get the ad revenue.
Howsabout they just let the CONTENT load first??
There would be plenty of time to read the ads, too—they would be hard to miss alongside the text THAT YOU WANT TO READ.
I will not stare at a blank page ( under a headline or so) waiting for unknown crap too slow to download—and just leave.
If unblocking the ads would gain our military two aircraft carriers, I’d do it. But the most this would gain is jobs for 250,000 liberal reporters ranting against our military and weakening our economy and social values.
I was going to add that ... it happened to 0regon. The state raised the tax on the ‘wealthy’ - thought they would get X, planned on getting X pre-spent what they thought they’d get but only got Y ...
Without ad-blocking, some sites are positively inaccessible, so the advertisers are wasting their money after all, whether their ads are blocked or not. This is especially so with platforms such as Kindle, that don’t have the capacity to display most of the active content on a typical website.
If you watch a hockey game on TV you can see the boards covered with advertising, yet because it’s static you take it in without being unduly annoyed; you hardly notice it, but the message is still there, and you’re taking it in as you watch the action on the ice. Imagine if they rigged things so those ads would jump out at you; covering your screen and making it impossible to watch the game!
It does not help that many websites are converting to ‘mobile friendly’ and have horrible scripting. On many of them, menues and links do not work.
Some have pop-ups that cover much of the screen and the X to close it is unreachable.
Luckily, with the Web, there are always alternative websites.
I went to Microsoft.com and searched on “ad-tracking”. I found part of their website that explained how to initiate “Tracking Protection” and I went to the link. I downloaded several recommended “add-ons” and when I now look at “Manage Add-ons” the “Tracking Protection” part of the list comes up.
Immediately, Drudgereport went from a near 1 minute load to next to zero. I’m convinced...
Who actually clicks on the ads?
A lot of these obnoxious ads have been infected with malware and have infected people’s computers that visit those sites. One way I fight this, besides an ad blocker, is to not use Flash. Flash always seems to have new vulnerabilities discovered. Don’t use Flash if you don’t have to. That will also stop a lot of ads.
I need to mention that I’d loaded Ad Blocker and its plus version before but I really didn’t see any improvement. I now think it was because of the “ad tracking” crap that was getting loaded first. I might go back and see if that helps too.
Problem with that is when the ads do load they shift the content around and you cant read it because its moving.
Overdoing something is a great way to wear out its welcome. Surely there must still be people in the world who can figure out how to make advertising enticing, rather than annoying? A crowd of virtual hucksters shouting in my face is likely to move me to “fie on it all.”
Its like crying the country doesnt have 250,000 more lawyers.
I completely agree with you. I also don’t mind non-intrusive ads. I do mind ads that hide the text I am reading, or worse, crash my browser (I mean you Daily Caller and Lucianne).
I installed AdBlockerPlus after reading about it here on FreeRepublic. It has very much improved the experience of surfing the web.
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