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.
Care to share?
Ads are becoming data hogs.
See my post 33 and 36.
I know, let's have a telethon for them! Go AdBlock.
*punctuation mine
I want an ad blocker for ads with a black guy and his white girlfriend.
None is needed for ads showing white guys and their black girlfriends
because there aren’t any.
CBS Streaming is wall to wall commercials.
Yet another data mining bastard masquerading as a "service"?
“One of the best new ad blockers is UBLOCK ORIGIN.”
Yes, Adblock Plus is yesterday’s technology. Was OK in the beginning but grew so bloated I can’t run it on older laptops. Ublock uses elegant heuristics rather than a brute force black list and takes almost no memory and less CPU.
The advertisers should pay ME for renting space on my computer screen.
Ah, well...
The new Edge browser does not have the functionality of allowing you to add a tracking protection list as in IE 11.
I’m running IE 11.0.9600.17914 now and it does have tracking protection enabled. It is managed under “tools”, “manage ad-ons”.
That sounds like a lot of work. I bought a panasonic phone with sixty slots of call blocking. When that approached being full I bought a CPR call blocker to add inline. It provides another thousand slots.
The phone is mostly quiet now, but a-holes with Kevin from Calcutta seem to be spoofing caller IDs now and occasionally get around the blocker. what I can’t figure out is what they hope to accomplish spending their money on being a public nuisance. Surely anyone stupid enough to deal with them has to be such a small number they can’t possibly be making any money.
I have Edge but only use it for high security connections, not for browsing. Mozilla’s SeaMonkey with adblock plus is the workhorse. When something comes up on SeaMonkey that blocking gets in the way, I just connect to the site with Edge to see it whole.
All I know is my load browsing speeded up tremendously with what I did. Your mileage may vary.
Tough. They talk as if they have a right to the ad money. Some ads are obnoxious. I block the ad at the top of Drudgereport.com using a simple technique.
Funny, but they don’t mention the cost of not ad-blocking to the consumer.
well, I got something good out of things anyway. Just added Ghostery.
I’m glad that works for you. I don’t even know what that is. I’m just a dumb-a$$ country boy who don’t know crap (or so the wife and children tell me).
Inspired by this thread, I just installed Adblock Plus.
Definitely worth doing.
I did not change the settings to block all ads. The only ones I get now are small and non-obtrusive. I might even consider supporting the companies who have ads that get through. They are not obnoxious and may even have something I want in them. Of course a few with animations or videos and sound get through and I will never consider a product from one of those companies.
Ghostery sounds sorta like tracking protection ...
Enjoy a faster web
Some sites take too long to load. This can be due to trackers weighing your system down. Ghostery allows you to block the offending trackers and significantly speed up your browsing.
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