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.
Perhaps if advertising wasn't so obnoxious then people wouldn't feel so compelled to block it.
Exactly. I have started avoiding some webpages like breitbart. It’s 90% ads and 10% what I wanted to read in the first place.
My computer got so bogged down with ad tracker apps that it took forever to load some pages. I finally searched MS and found out how to disable ad-tracking and you wouldn’t believe how fast those former slow loaders now load. Drudge had something like 23-24 services loading crap.
Heck, I even get a report of 2 trying to load here.
I use Adblock Plus (& NoScript) .... it’s made Breitbart & Hot Air readable.
I was getting up to 800 ad cookies in just an hour.
And the ads are mostly virus or malware. If they at least weed out the malware ones, then sure, ...maybe but that chance is as slim as me seeing all Victoria Secret models cook me lunch wearing just aprons.
Calling for the Waahmbulance
Well they actually didn’t lose it, they just didn’t receive it. No business would rely on ‘expected ‘revenue’ to fund themselves.
Advertising careers must attract the least intelligent people on the planet.
If it isn’t junk mail, it’s annoying telemarketing phone calls and now obnoxious flashing, floating and pop-up ads. Every time people say they don’t want the junk that advertising companies put out, they find another way to innundate us with what we don’t want.
I’ve been using ad blocking software for years. It makes the web much faster and more usable.
I understand the funding necessary for webpages, television stations, etc. Advertising supported pages aren’t the problem, it’s the way in which the ads are implemented.
I can’t even load breitbart in Pale Moon because of the ads. If I want to read the article bad enough, I use Chrome - with adblock.
When a page slows down your entire computer and takes minutes to load because of the ad load, they’re wrong.
Netflix streaming seems to be doing alright with their no-commericals and reasonable price.
Hulu just started offering a no-commercials (mostly) level of service. It will be interesting to see how they are doing in a year or so.
CBS is offering a subscription service to all of their old and current content. [I do not know whether it has commercials.]
My problem with the streaming video that has inserted advertisment breaks is that most I have tried stall out about 1/2 to 3/4 way through the program/movie. Then, trying to restart and get back to that segment of the program/movie requires sitting through numerous additonal commercials.
In the 60s, cable was advertised as the commercial-free alternative to broadcast TV. THEY LIED. I would rather record and skip through the commercials. Having 38-42 minutes of content and 18-22 minutes of commercials just does not make for a pleasant viewing experience — especially when the same commercials are repeated ad nauseum.
do you have a specific recommendation for what worked for you?
Online ads take bandwidth. In limited bandwidth situations, that steals money from the consumer. This is much the same as spam faxes.
Spam faxes are illegal.
Further, this is the media complaining that their customers aren’t cooperating in their revenue schemes. Much like consumers are not buying their printed bullstuff.
Bandwidth cost money. Why should I pay for ads when I go to a website? Every time these ads are automatically downloaded to your browser it is costing YOU money. And they got the NERVE to say it is costing THEM money!
> Well they actually didn’t lose it, they just didn’t receive it. No business would rely on ‘expected ‘revenue’ to fund themselves.
Liberals ALWAYS count expected revenue, especially government ones.
They failed, or refused, to police their industry. At times my computer has been inundated with malware that comes directly from them. Boohoo now that they are reaping the whirlwind and going broke!
My eyes are my own and my computers are personal.
I never would have installed an ad-blocker had most websites adopted that practice.
But the web ads got too obnoxious. I got sick of a pop-up ad covering the text of what I was trying to read and then having to find the hidden "X" to close it. Sometimes I could never figure out how to close an ad and I'd have to leave the website and move on.
In that, AdBlock was a godsend. As soon as I installed it, I was surfing the web again like it was 1997 with a cable modem. Everything nice and clean and fast.
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