A great rebuttal. Ad blocks are an obnoxious business condition, but they're one that can push savvy media companies into not only doing right by their readers but also finding higher CPM's than remnant ad networks that are being triaged by more nimble ad agencies anyways, leaving publications only the most gutter of advertisements.
Advertising models work. But your advertising model might not.
Ad blocks are an obnoxious business condition, but they're one that can push savvy media companies into not only doing right by their readers
Or, they may push savvy and not-so-savvy media companies into serving up advertising content that's more difficult to block. Like ad content embedded directly in the content.
It's an arms race, and the escalation isn't going to be pretty.
I like the spirit of this. Rather than argue about the ethics of ad-blockers and ad-blocker-blockers, why not focus on the implicit challenge: Can more publishers find ways to make money from ad-free content?
Adblock is like Napster. People want content; the vast majority of publishers only have one business model; a lot of consumers decide to take the content without bearing the cost imposed by that model.
Some people won't pay no matter what - music filesharing is still around, of course. But a lot of people did start buying music again when Amazon and Apple and eMusic changed the price structure to something they were willing to pay.
There are a few sites like Ars and LiveJournal and MetaFilter that have ad-free options for paid users. Maybe this is a small niche and will never be big business. But maybe there's some way to get more people to pay directly in exchange for ad-free content.
I wonder if it's too elitist to be useful to distinguish between high-quality and low-quality content. I happily pay for the Economist, Stratfor and other similar high-quality sources of information and they seem to derive sufficient income from those subscriptions not to have to resort to asinine ads. Sites that don't provide high-enough quality content to be worth the subscription fee all get to fight over monetizing the eyeballs of their users and (I suspect) alienating the more discerning customers.
"I like the spirit of this. Rather than argue about the ethics of ad-blockers and ad-blocker-blockers, why not focus on the implicit challenge: Can more publishers find ways to make money from ad-free content?"
Yes, by either:
1) charging for content
2) making each article an advertisement for something they are trying to sell
3) selling their own products, which will still involve some sort of advertising
It seems like the people fighting against the advertisers are against all forms of commercialism. Even non-flashing pure text advertisements like Google Adsense are blocked by default in all of the adblockers. If it really was only about annoying and flashing ads, why is this the case?
"Adblock is like Napster. People want content; the vast majority of publishers only have one business model; a lot of consumers decide to take the content without bearing the cost imposed by that model."
What an elegant way to put the reality of the situation: Some users feel they are entitled to free content. It's an emerging trend that is starting to happen in many industries (music, movies, books, software, and advertising).
If I, as a content provider know many people are using an adblocker, I will try to find a way around it (or start charging for content). If people stop going to my site because of bad advertisements, I will make any effort to remove the offending ads.
It reminds me of passive-aggressive children. They are pissed at a site/company and instead of telling them about it, they just decide to block ads and go there anyway. If the movement was really trying to make the Internet a better place (with better ads), they would actually be making an honest attempt at notifying the offending site.
"Some people won't pay no matter what - music filesharing is still around, of course. But a lot of people did start buying music again when Amazon and Apple and eMusic changed the price structure to something they were willing to pay."
We aren't talking about paying money. The only thing people have to do is view a simple advertisement. It takes almost no effort.
hu? i don't see why i would create that impression. if my comment was too short, i apologize. the article just expressed my thoughts on the topic and i wanted to state that.
I sympathize with this view, but how exactly are advertisers supposed to come up with more "creative" and "compelling" concepts that somehow will work when users fundamentally don't want the thing they make - ads?
In a broader sense, it's very questionable to say "Gee, content sites should be profitable!" and cheerfully avoid explaining just how, especially right after you've finished explaining how every known method of monetizing content just won't work.
As the guy who wrote the post linked to above, I should note that in the post itself I describe multiple examples of how to come up with creative and compelling concepts that worked great. I agree that it may be more difficult, but if you read the site, we do explain the "how" regularly...
Many people wouldn't even consider those sorts of projects "ads". Further, I can't help noticing that you still have "actual"/conventional ads all over your site.
Clearly, companies find putting ads on your site worthwhile, even if they're less creative by doing so. You, in turn, find taking their money worthwhile enough show us those ads.
Which approach brings in more money? Is the truth ultimately that conventional site ads still tend to work?
You're right. When many people don't consider those sorts of projects ads then we're doing our job right. Good ads shouldn't be considered ads, but they should be good content.
And, yes, we do have conventional ads on the site -- and I'm guessing you're not a regular Techdirt reader (which is totally cool, by the way), but we've discussed this. Having conventional ads is a way to get companies to talk to us about the other offerings that we do. They basically act as lead generation for us because so many companies only think traditionally, they contact us about advertising, and we try to steer them towards other, smarter, programs. But we still let ads go through, even if we tell them that they won't be particularly effective. If people still want to give us money for no good reason, that's their mistake. But we are careful not to take intrusive ads.
And, our ad revenue is less than 15% of the site's revenue (during Q4 it goes higher). So, no, the conventional ads are a waste, and I expect them to die out over time. But, for now, they're a great way to get companies to pay us to become leads for more creative solutions.
Do you not stay awake at night worrying about the effect that hybrid ad/content has on your ability to produce content honestly? In my preferred world, writers would never have any knowledge of which companies are paying the bills.
No. You seem to be confused. The content of our posts and the work we do remains editorially totally independent. These aren't "hybrid" deals. These are deals where we continue to produce our content as is -- with no changes or no requirements and no say from the companies who are sponsoring. That's on purpose -- and we're quite upfront about that to the companies we work with. Why would we risk our reputation by pulling punches, when it's our honest and forthright opinions that make the site what it is.
We have total editorial independence. They get their logos on the top on the right, and the rightto list resources in the righthand bar. We have total editorial independence on the content of the actual blog posts, and have said that repeatedly. They get to see the posts, same as everyone else does. The only thing that Sun and Intel employees get is that when they comment on posts, their comments are highlighted. But that's it.
I'm willing to believe you. I'm simply saying that just looking at that page without knowing anything else would give me the expectation that this was an Intel/Sun organ, not an independent site.
"users fundamentally don't want the thing they make - ads"
Millions of people who don't care one bit about sports watch the SuperBowl for the ads.
Users fundamentally don't want annoying, content-blocking, misleading, irrelevant, privacy-compromising, browser-slowing ads. A couple of internet ad companies that have gotten away from this model are The Deck (http://decknetwork.net/) and Project Wonderful (http://www.projectwonderful.com/).
106.5 million people in the US viewed the last Superbowl. According to Nielsen (http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/survey-most-sup...) 51% enjoy the commercials more than the game. Of the ~54 million viewers who enjoy the commercials more than the game, how many have no interest in the game at all? I'd wager it's a number rightly measured in "millions".
Going back to the original point: the claim was made that people don't want to see ads. Yet ~54 million U.S. Superbowl viewers wanted to see the ads more than the game. The problem isn't with "ads" per se, but with the way advertising is conducted on the internet (which is the point the original article made.)
"Of the ~54 million viewers who enjoy the commercials more than the game, how many have no interest in the game at all? I'd wager it's a number rightly measured in "millions""
That's an awful lot to sit through with no interest; not buying it.
"The problem isn't with "ads" per se, but with the way advertising is conducted on the internet (which is the point the original article made.)"
And would the phenomenon of Superbowl commercials even exist if people didn't have to sit through commercials in live TV? The answer is obviously not. You're talking about a side-effect of a technological limitation. If commercials aired on a side-channel that could be blocked without losing the show, we'd never have seen the development of high-priced, hyped Superbowl commercials.
My experience at superbowl parties is that there are usually a few people who sit through the game without displaying any interest in it (usually opting for an alternate activity like chatting, reading a book, or ogling the nearest baby), but perk up every time a commercial comes on. Based on how common that behavior has been, I'd estimate the number to be "in the millions", and I would parse the behavior as "no interest, watched for commercials". YMMV.
"would the phenomenon of Superbowl commercials even exist"
Unlikely. But the fact that the phenomenon does exist demonstrates that people ARE interested in advertising under certain circumstances.
The internet is fundamentally different, but people are fundamentally the same. The problem here is not "people hate ads", it's "people hate ads of the sort that are common on the internet, they hate them enough to seek technological solutions to block them, and the technological solutions are often applied in such a way as to block all ads indiscriminately."
The problem isn't with "advertising" as a whole. It's with advertising as it's currently done on the internet.
> Unlikely. But the fact that the phenomenon does exist demonstrates that people ARE interested in advertising under certain circumstances.
I think it demonstrates that people are desperate for a common experience (usually to make small-talk about.)
Superbowl ads are convenient since it is a safe subject to bring up for both people who watched the game as well as those who do not care or or do not understand the game. This is also why we have celebrities.
He gave an example ... sponsor content, a.k.a. branded entertainment. It's the only thing that works in world of online advertising right now.
But I think one of the main points is, be smart and use restraint when necessary. If a publisher comes to you and says "Hey, we have a new ad unit that takes over the page!" the advertiser should know that it's a bad idea and use restraint instead of buying up any new ad unit that's presented to them.
If you look at mobile advertising, the click-through rates are 10 times better than online. Why? Mainly because there is less screen, so there is less ad clutter. So it's an approach that works.
But basically, publishers and advertisers are lazy and instead of looking at data and figuring out creative ways to grow, they just spend more money to try to increase return.
It blows my mind that people actually mention sponsored content as a feasible alternative. It's true that ad blocking will ultimately drive many sites there, but I really value the firewall we have between our writers and ad sales. Not only that, but I really don't want to read a site running ads-that-look-like-content. It saddens me that so many seem to miss the implications of doing this.
It works ok for entertainment, but do you really want to read an article like "Why you shouldn't move your sites to the cloud, brought to you by IBM"?
"It blows my mind that people actually mention sponsored content as a feasible alternative. It's true that ad blocking will ultimately drive many sites there, but I really value the firewall we have between our writers and ad sales. Not only that, but I really don't want to read a site running ads-that-look-like-content. It saddens me that so many seem to miss the implications of doing this."
Well, it saddens me that people running adblockers will force many sites to do this to survive.
"It'd be good if we stopped pretending everyone runs adblock. 99.5%+ of people have no issue with ads, and actually find them useful.
That 0.5% who run adblock etc, really aren't worth worrying about much."
Adblock plus on mozilla.org gets around 1,000,000 downloads per week. It may not be a huge percentage now, but if it continues at this rate, it will be.
How does one measure how often adblocking happens?
I have a site with (in february) 37663 pageviews reported by google adsense, but 49581 pageviews reported by google analytics. If the mismatch there is from adblockers, then I must be an outlier. I hope it is that google didnt have ads to match and displayed some public information message instead.
I'm not bitter or anything though. I block ads myself, mostly because I'm too afraid of accidentally clicking ads on a site of my own, and the punishment that can lead to.
Ars (and most other nerd-centric sites) probably has a much higher percentage of users with AdBlock installed than the Internet as a whole.
Then again, it also probably has a larger percentage of people that wouldn't pay any attention to the ads even if they were visible. From Ars' point of view it would be great if these people shut of their ad blockers, but the advertisers would probably be getting the short end of the stick, in that case, which would (over the long term) drive advertising prices down, etc. Ars would pick up some profits in the meantime, but solely at the expense of the advertisers, who are now getting screwed by paying for eyeballs that are worth less on average than the ones when people weren't shutting their ad blockers down. I'd certainly pay less for per-impression ads on a site that wouldn't show content to people with an ad blocker, for this very reason.
It's a grand circle of life, and frankly, it's hard to say what second order effects any of these actions might have. It very well may be that the presence of ad blockers raises the average value of the eyeballs that do see the ads enough that advertising prices end up higher and Ars does better overall. It's equally possible that they're correct, the ad market hasn't adjusted to the presence of ad blockers yet, and they're still getting paid too little per-eyeball. I'm not sure. Neither are they.
But in theory, at least, over the long term, if people with ad blockers really aren't paying any attention to ads anyways, the market should correct for this and the results for both advertisers and the sites providing ad space should approach the true value.
The types of campaigns we run would benefit from more eyeballs. Advertisers don't expect everyone to see or care about their campaigns. Branding campaigns in particular are really just designed to get your company in front of as many people as possible and hope a few of them notice. They're simultaneously valuable and notoriously hard to measure the value of. Our job (as far as advertisers are concerned) is to get the ads in front of whoever we can.
My gut feeling is that people who block ads globally but see them on Ars would actually notice/respond to them better than people who are just generally banner blind. If the majority of the people who've emailed us are to be believed, they don't see anything else on the page except ads when they have ads enabled. I bet advertisers would kill for that. ;)
The biggest problem is that there's no chance someone blocking ads is going to see an ad, and there's a real (but maybe tiny) chance that same person would respond to an ad. There's an even better chance that they'd respond to a really nice campaign that "spoke" to them.
The article itself lists several examples of ads that provided value and didn't garner hatred.
Tech journalism aside it's perfectly possible to make ads that rise above the perpetual noise of CONSUME! advertising we all live with. Look at things like Honda's "Cog" or Old Spice's "I'm on a horse".
If there's a better example of why many people block ads than [1] I don't know what it is.
I don't even bother to block ads anymore. I see a double-underlined word, a popup or a 90%-noise blogspam page and I just hit back. There's so much content out there that doesn't abuse your attention why bother with the noise?
It is very easy to presuppose that the only way to get value from advertisers is through ads. But then you are assuming that only people who will sponsor your content are either add-networks, or corporations who will require that you use traditional forms of advertising (banner and sidebar ads).
If you are simply interested in generating revenue from any corporate sponsor, the question becomes a little bit more open ended.
I think that is what he is pointing out with his specific examples about UPS, Intel, and Sun. Not only were the companies sponsoring content, they were sponsoring a specific project that interested all parties involved (and disclosing that).
The interesting subtext of this discussion is that as users we really hate the sketchy tactics put forth by ad-networks, and that as content providers, ad-networks are the 'easy' solution (easier than doing real legwork to get actual corporate sponsors).
The thing that struck me about the Ars approach was the reaction to legitimate concerns about security, tracking and so on: "too bad." As in, ads are what they are: the site does not really care whether they are useful to the advertiser nor how they affect the user so long as they get paid. An unfortunate attitude to project, particularly when trying to come up with solutions to this problem could be really beneficial. Not that they have an obligation to care, of course.
They did at least suggest that a monthly subscription might be forthcoming, so something good might come out of it in the end.
I'm sorry the response sounded like "too bad" to you, because that really wasn't our intent. We do care about how ads affect users. We heavily Q&A our ads and they're vetted at multiple levels before they show up on the site. Not only that, but we have more aggressive ad policies than any comparable site I've seen. The pushdown ad that Techdirt mentioned, for instance, is against our ad guidelines because it expands without user intervention.
When an ad ends up on the site that violates our guidelines, we get it removed very quickly. It's an unfortunate fact that the ad ops people will occasionally put an ad meant for GQ on Ars, so you'll end up with something that expands by itself, does a popup, etc. They're never malicious, but oftentimes violate the Ars guidelines.
Part of our "solution" to this problem is better educating users about the economics of ads, the effect their ad blockers have on us, etc. It seems to be working based on a small 4 day sample.
> I'm sorry the response sounded like "too bad" to you, because that really wasn't our intent. We do care about how ads affect users. We heavily Q&A our ads and they're vetted at multiple levels before they show up on the site. Not only that, but we have more aggressive ad policies than any comparable site I've seen. The pushdown ad that Techdirt mentioned, for instance, is against our ad guidelines because it expands without user intervention.
I was sharpening the point a little: from what I understand, Ars does indeed have reasonably well-behaving ads when it comes to essentially the aesthetic side. The underlying privacy, security and psy-op/propaganda problems remain, though, and the sense I got from staff comments was that those were simply the Unchangeable Facts of Advertising and nothing could be done about it. These are by no means easy problems to solve, but I think projecting understanding those concerns and figuring out viable alternatives ("having a conversation" about it with the userbase, if you will) can go a long way.
> Part of our "solution" to this problem is better educating users about the economics of ads, the effect their ad blockers have on us, etc. It seems to be working based on a small 4 day sample.
I have no doubt! I think a big banner would have been a better way to do it to begin with, but the subsequent article addressed that part adequately.
I will subscribe once the short-term version comes out.
We shouldn't take the experience of publishers like Ars and techdirt as indicative of the whole industry. Both of those publishers have very tech savvy audiences who are not the best demographic for display ads.
While the effectiveness of display advertising is not as high as other channels (email for instance) it is still effective. The "american idol" demographic clicks on lots of ads.
It's an unfortunate fact that the 40% of our users who block ads also block almost any kind of "advertising that doesn't annoy them". For instance, every user who saw blank content on our site when we decided to have a little fun was running EasyList for Ad Block Plus. You can see the global blocks here:
https://hg.adblockplus.org/easylist/file/d4e0b55077bb/easyli...
You'll note that adsense is specifically blocked by that list. The list also catches The Deck ads. Both of these ad types are things we hear people say "we won't block ads if you run them like this"... but they block them anyway.
The title is right, though, Ad blocking isn't killing any sites. We didn't really say it was either. This whole exercise is really the result of not being able to rehire people who were laid off last year specifically because our ad inventory is being hammered by ad blockers.
"Ad blocking isn't killing any sites. We didn't really say it was either."
Did I miss something or did Ken specifically say: "Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love" That seems to be the same thing, no?
And when you say "the result of not being able to rehire people who were laid off last year specifically because our ad inventory is being hammered by ad blockers."
You're still missing the point. You're blaming your readers who chose to use adblock rather than focusing on ways to build a better business model.
Come on, you guys know this. You've covered the RIAA/MPAA doing the same exact thing over and over again. Don't blame your users and the choices they make. Focus on providing more value.
But ignoring readers and the choices they make (and more importantly, why they make those choices) is every bit as much a part of building a better business model as "do something else you dumbasses". It turns out that the vast majority of our readers block ads without thinking about it, because they think it doesn't matter, or by mistake (seriously). The vocal ones are a vast, vast minority. We spend more time than we should addressing them, but articles like the one we ran are more an attempt to reach the casual blockers.
The difference between us and the RIAA/MPAA is that we're not justifying our lobbying efforts to reform copyright control. We're simply experimenting with technical means of keeping content bundled with ads and social means of educating users who might actually give a shit. The moment one of us goes to congress and says you need to legislate our ability to serve ads alongside our content is the moment you come gripe to me, and we laugh together because I've already quit my job.
Who said anything about ignoring your readers and the choices they make. I said the exact opposite.
And, come on, don't put up strawmen. Just because you're not lobbying to change the laws doesn't change the comparison which was apt: rather than admitting you need to fix your business model, you blamed your users for the choices they made. It's obnoxious, and you guys -- of all the sites out there -- should know that better than anyone.
> It turns out that the vast majority of our readers block ads without thinking about it, because they think it doesn't matter, or by mistake (seriously).
> Come on, you guys know this. You've covered the RIAA/MPAA doing the same exact thing over and over again. Don't blame your users and the choices they make. Focus on providing more value.
Not really a fair comparison. The problem with the RIAA is not that they want people to pay for what they consume, it's that they make the experience for legitimate users worse than for pirates. What Ars did makes the 'pirates' experience worse, without substantially inconveniencing 'paying' users.
So when will site owners/managers put limits on what sort of intrusive, hopping/beeping/sliding ads they are willing to allow by their advertisers?
When I get to the point of site launch, my plan is to please the visitors - not the advertisers. The advertisers with a brain should find the former goal valuable, too. Or rather, let me say, I'd like to derive my income from advertisers who share my user-experience priorities.
Am I doomed? Well, I'm sure going to give it my best shot to offer quality over commercial glitter/abuse.
We are as aggressive as any content site I can think of with our ad restrictions. We prohibit ads that expand or play sound with a user click, for instance, while many other sites don't.
What you'll find is that ad agencies build one ad for, say, 500 sites based on a common set of guidelines (which are often less strict than ours). If you believe your site users would be happier not seeing that particular ad, your choice is to not run it.
I would love to run nothing but text ads, but the minimum we can run to pay our writers is basically "flash in standard spots with occasional premium campaigns".
"our ad inventory is being hammered by ad blockers"
Why are you trying to monetize your audience through ads if they aren't interested? If you could disable all those ad blockers do you believe that same ad inventory would be of any value to an advertiser? Maybe in the very short-term it would, but in the long run it won't provide any measurable value to an advertiser.
You should move away from an ad supported model and focus on sponsored content, buying guides, case studies, etc. There are much better ways to monetize tech-centric content.
Do you not see the problem with sponsored content or (I assume) paid for case studies? We do not want our writers to be aware of ad campaigns when they're writing something. We've run relatively negative content for almost every single advertiser that's ever bought spots on Ars. Do you really want them having any level of influence over what people write?
We run buying guides quite somewhat regularly. Our audience doesn't want more buying guides, though. They basically want what we already write.
Don't listen to what people say, listen to what people do. If they're blocking ads, work out why and what you can do. You've just seen you can't stop them.
I feel for the guys who were laid off. That sucks. Life is tough. But this is not the only way to make money. I block advertising because it annoys me. I pretty much stopped buying music and deleted all the non-free mp3s on my hard disk because of the attitude of the music corps to their users.
But I give money to sites that provide value and more importantly build a relationship. That's what Techdirt understands and almost certainly has got them some donations today from people like me who appreciate reading articles by someone who can express what I'm thinking better than I can myself.
p.s. look in the linked article's comments and you'll see this (not from me incidentally):
"My comment asked Ars why there's no donation button. I've yet to receive a reply. I will not turn off my adblocking option for any site ever again. If these sites truly are dependent on ad revenues to survive, it's not my problem." - have you guys tried a donate button, and if so how were your results? I'm not a regular reader but it's a pretty big jump from reading a few articles to subscribing for 6 months.
My whole post talked about what they do. Many of our users block all ads. The only thing we can do to keep people from blocking ads is... not run ads. Most users don't make an explicit choice to do this, they run ad blockers and block lists that other people maintain.
You may be shocked to hear this, but most of our readers responded really well to Ken's post the other day. We had about 50x as many new subscribers since Friday as we've ever had over an equivalent amount of time. We also saw a noticeable increase in our ad views/pageviews ratio.
It's good that you donated to TechDirt, I love seeing people throw some money towards sites they love. We've run donation systems in the past and they haven't really been worth maintaining, but I'm sure we'll consider running them again. Selling services for a fixed price seems to work quite a bit better, even if those services are "see our site ad free, minus the guilt".
There you go. Thanks for the thoughtful reply, your responding to comments here really makes me think better of your site and I'm sure people are more likely to subscribe as a result of your engagement.
Actually I'm not too surprised that people turned off their adblockers when you asked them. That's what I'm saying - engage with people and if you get on their wavelength they'll respond positively.
I wasn't sure how you'd take my comment, but I'm encouraged by your response. Some comments by Ars in the original DOI thread were offensive ("f*ing Wladimir Palant"), your reply restores my faith.
When I surf the internet, most sites I visit I don't build up a particular relationship with. I'll just read an article here or there. I won't read through all the terms and conditions or turn off adblockers for every site I visit, life's too short. But if it turns out Ars provides a useful service in the future, I just might if you guys ask nicely like this. I still question the sustainability of this strategy, but then again I don't run a successful web site, so who am I to say.
Thanks again for the positive response, and good luck.
I hate ads. I never ever ever click on them. I get pissed off when I see an ad in the way of content I'm trying to read and tend not to stay on the page.
AdBlock on my browser does absolutely nothing to reduce the amount of money that websites I visit can earn from my.
As a part of that, there would be an ad at the top that temporarily "pushed down" the content for a few seconds, before pulling back up. Nothing was covered. Nothing prevented readers from getting the content. And the "pushdown" ad only showed once per visitor and never again.
This is precisely why I use an ad-blocker. I don't really mind animated gifs - I've learned to tune those out. But ads - flash ads are the usual guilty party - that actually fuck with the content actively piss me off, and they are why I have both adblock and flashblock.
And this is why we (Ars) specifically prohibit ads that fuck with content. :)
Advertisers are increasingly demanding about those, though, which is one of the reasons we worked so hard to make "no ads" a feature of our subscriptions.
I posted this on Reddit when I saw this article there: I'd really love a process by which you can automatically say 'I block these types of ads', and the site can choose to serve you content or not based on that. What we have at the moment, where a lot of people get harangued by malicious advertisements, and a lot of people block even the most harmless ad content, is a really unfair to both sides. A way to auto-negotiate what you're willing to 'pay' would be excellent. As things stand, I don't block ads, but I'd really like to be able to block the worst of them without screwing people over.
This would also separate out the people who are legitimately concerned about malware and excessively intrusive ads from those (sadly, I suspect, the majority) who simply don't want to pay for others' work.
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[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] threadAdvertising models work. But your advertising model might not.
Or, they may push savvy and not-so-savvy media companies into serving up advertising content that's more difficult to block. Like ad content embedded directly in the content.
It's an arms race, and the escalation isn't going to be pretty.
Adblock is like Napster. People want content; the vast majority of publishers only have one business model; a lot of consumers decide to take the content without bearing the cost imposed by that model.
Some people won't pay no matter what - music filesharing is still around, of course. But a lot of people did start buying music again when Amazon and Apple and eMusic changed the price structure to something they were willing to pay.
There are a few sites like Ars and LiveJournal and MetaFilter that have ad-free options for paid users. Maybe this is a small niche and will never be big business. But maybe there's some way to get more people to pay directly in exchange for ad-free content.
Yes, by either:
1) charging for content 2) making each article an advertisement for something they are trying to sell 3) selling their own products, which will still involve some sort of advertising
It seems like the people fighting against the advertisers are against all forms of commercialism. Even non-flashing pure text advertisements like Google Adsense are blocked by default in all of the adblockers. If it really was only about annoying and flashing ads, why is this the case?
"Adblock is like Napster. People want content; the vast majority of publishers only have one business model; a lot of consumers decide to take the content without bearing the cost imposed by that model."
What an elegant way to put the reality of the situation: Some users feel they are entitled to free content. It's an emerging trend that is starting to happen in many industries (music, movies, books, software, and advertising).
If I, as a content provider know many people are using an adblocker, I will try to find a way around it (or start charging for content). If people stop going to my site because of bad advertisements, I will make any effort to remove the offending ads.
It reminds me of passive-aggressive children. They are pissed at a site/company and instead of telling them about it, they just decide to block ads and go there anyway. If the movement was really trying to make the Internet a better place (with better ads), they would actually be making an honest attempt at notifying the offending site.
"Some people won't pay no matter what - music filesharing is still around, of course. But a lot of people did start buying music again when Amazon and Apple and eMusic changed the price structure to something they were willing to pay."
We aren't talking about paying money. The only thing people have to do is view a simple advertisement. It takes almost no effort.
In a broader sense, it's very questionable to say "Gee, content sites should be profitable!" and cheerfully avoid explaining just how, especially right after you've finished explaining how every known method of monetizing content just won't work.
Clearly, companies find putting ads on your site worthwhile, even if they're less creative by doing so. You, in turn, find taking their money worthwhile enough show us those ads.
Which approach brings in more money? Is the truth ultimately that conventional site ads still tend to work?
And, yes, we do have conventional ads on the site -- and I'm guessing you're not a regular Techdirt reader (which is totally cool, by the way), but we've discussed this. Having conventional ads is a way to get companies to talk to us about the other offerings that we do. They basically act as lead generation for us because so many companies only think traditionally, they contact us about advertising, and we try to steer them towards other, smarter, programs. But we still let ads go through, even if we tell them that they won't be particularly effective. If people still want to give us money for no good reason, that's their mistake. But we are careful not to take intrusive ads.
And, our ad revenue is less than 15% of the site's revenue (during Q4 it goes higher). So, no, the conventional ads are a waste, and I expect them to die out over time. But, for now, they're a great way to get companies to pay us to become leads for more creative solutions.
Admittedly, that's a slightly different issue.
Millions of people who don't care one bit about sports watch the SuperBowl for the ads.
Users fundamentally don't want annoying, content-blocking, misleading, irrelevant, privacy-compromising, browser-slowing ads. A couple of internet ad companies that have gotten away from this model are The Deck (http://decknetwork.net/) and Project Wonderful (http://www.projectwonderful.com/).
Millions? Really? I don't think so.
If anything, they can pull up the ads on Hulu or YouTube if they really weren't otherwise interested in the game.
106.5 million people in the US viewed the last Superbowl. According to Nielsen (http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/survey-most-sup...) 51% enjoy the commercials more than the game. Of the ~54 million viewers who enjoy the commercials more than the game, how many have no interest in the game at all? I'd wager it's a number rightly measured in "millions".
Going back to the original point: the claim was made that people don't want to see ads. Yet ~54 million U.S. Superbowl viewers wanted to see the ads more than the game. The problem isn't with "ads" per se, but with the way advertising is conducted on the internet (which is the point the original article made.)
That's an awful lot to sit through with no interest; not buying it.
"The problem isn't with "ads" per se, but with the way advertising is conducted on the internet (which is the point the original article made.)"
And would the phenomenon of Superbowl commercials even exist if people didn't have to sit through commercials in live TV? The answer is obviously not. You're talking about a side-effect of a technological limitation. If commercials aired on a side-channel that could be blocked without losing the show, we'd never have seen the development of high-priced, hyped Superbowl commercials.
These media are fundamentally different.
"would the phenomenon of Superbowl commercials even exist"
Unlikely. But the fact that the phenomenon does exist demonstrates that people ARE interested in advertising under certain circumstances.
The internet is fundamentally different, but people are fundamentally the same. The problem here is not "people hate ads", it's "people hate ads of the sort that are common on the internet, they hate them enough to seek technological solutions to block them, and the technological solutions are often applied in such a way as to block all ads indiscriminately."
The problem isn't with "advertising" as a whole. It's with advertising as it's currently done on the internet.
I think it demonstrates that people are desperate for a common experience (usually to make small-talk about.)
Superbowl ads are convenient since it is a safe subject to bring up for both people who watched the game as well as those who do not care or or do not understand the game. This is also why we have celebrities.
But I think one of the main points is, be smart and use restraint when necessary. If a publisher comes to you and says "Hey, we have a new ad unit that takes over the page!" the advertiser should know that it's a bad idea and use restraint instead of buying up any new ad unit that's presented to them.
If you look at mobile advertising, the click-through rates are 10 times better than online. Why? Mainly because there is less screen, so there is less ad clutter. So it's an approach that works.
But basically, publishers and advertisers are lazy and instead of looking at data and figuring out creative ways to grow, they just spend more money to try to increase return.
It works ok for entertainment, but do you really want to read an article like "Why you shouldn't move your sites to the cloud, brought to you by IBM"?
Well, it saddens me that people running adblockers will force many sites to do this to survive.
It'd be good if we stopped pretending everyone runs adblock. 99.5%+ of people have no issue with ads, and actually find them useful.
That 0.5% who run adblock etc, really aren't worth worrying about much.
That 0.5% who run adblock etc, really aren't worth worrying about much."
Adblock plus on mozilla.org gets around 1,000,000 downloads per week. It may not be a huge percentage now, but if it continues at this rate, it will be.
I have a site with (in february) 37663 pageviews reported by google adsense, but 49581 pageviews reported by google analytics. If the mismatch there is from adblockers, then I must be an outlier. I hope it is that google didnt have ads to match and displayed some public information message instead.
I'm not bitter or anything though. I block ads myself, mostly because I'm too afraid of accidentally clicking ads on a site of my own, and the punishment that can lead to.
Then again, it also probably has a larger percentage of people that wouldn't pay any attention to the ads even if they were visible. From Ars' point of view it would be great if these people shut of their ad blockers, but the advertisers would probably be getting the short end of the stick, in that case, which would (over the long term) drive advertising prices down, etc. Ars would pick up some profits in the meantime, but solely at the expense of the advertisers, who are now getting screwed by paying for eyeballs that are worth less on average than the ones when people weren't shutting their ad blockers down. I'd certainly pay less for per-impression ads on a site that wouldn't show content to people with an ad blocker, for this very reason.
It's a grand circle of life, and frankly, it's hard to say what second order effects any of these actions might have. It very well may be that the presence of ad blockers raises the average value of the eyeballs that do see the ads enough that advertising prices end up higher and Ars does better overall. It's equally possible that they're correct, the ad market hasn't adjusted to the presence of ad blockers yet, and they're still getting paid too little per-eyeball. I'm not sure. Neither are they.
But in theory, at least, over the long term, if people with ad blockers really aren't paying any attention to ads anyways, the market should correct for this and the results for both advertisers and the sites providing ad space should approach the true value.
My gut feeling is that people who block ads globally but see them on Ars would actually notice/respond to them better than people who are just generally banner blind. If the majority of the people who've emailed us are to be believed, they don't see anything else on the page except ads when they have ads enabled. I bet advertisers would kill for that. ;)
The biggest problem is that there's no chance someone blocking ads is going to see an ad, and there's a real (but maybe tiny) chance that same person would respond to an ad. There's an even better chance that they'd respond to a really nice campaign that "spoke" to them.
Please do. I certainly wasn't pretending that in the first place.
Tech journalism aside it's perfectly possible to make ads that rise above the perpetual noise of CONSUME! advertising we all live with. Look at things like Honda's "Cog" or Old Spice's "I'm on a horse".
If there's a better example of why many people block ads than [1] I don't know what it is.
I don't even bother to block ads anymore. I see a double-underlined word, a popup or a 90%-noise blogspam page and I just hit back. There's so much content out there that doesn't abuse your attention why bother with the noise?
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/akj4z/get_your_mcdigg_...
On the other hand, the grating "Head On" ads spurred a lot of sales.
If you are simply interested in generating revenue from any corporate sponsor, the question becomes a little bit more open ended.
I think that is what he is pointing out with his specific examples about UPS, Intel, and Sun. Not only were the companies sponsoring content, they were sponsoring a specific project that interested all parties involved (and disclosing that).
The interesting subtext of this discussion is that as users we really hate the sketchy tactics put forth by ad-networks, and that as content providers, ad-networks are the 'easy' solution (easier than doing real legwork to get actual corporate sponsors).
They did at least suggest that a monthly subscription might be forthcoming, so something good might come out of it in the end.
When an ad ends up on the site that violates our guidelines, we get it removed very quickly. It's an unfortunate fact that the ad ops people will occasionally put an ad meant for GQ on Ars, so you'll end up with something that expands by itself, does a popup, etc. They're never malicious, but oftentimes violate the Ars guidelines.
Part of our "solution" to this problem is better educating users about the economics of ads, the effect their ad blockers have on us, etc. It seems to be working based on a small 4 day sample.
I was sharpening the point a little: from what I understand, Ars does indeed have reasonably well-behaving ads when it comes to essentially the aesthetic side. The underlying privacy, security and psy-op/propaganda problems remain, though, and the sense I got from staff comments was that those were simply the Unchangeable Facts of Advertising and nothing could be done about it. These are by no means easy problems to solve, but I think projecting understanding those concerns and figuring out viable alternatives ("having a conversation" about it with the userbase, if you will) can go a long way.
> Part of our "solution" to this problem is better educating users about the economics of ads, the effect their ad blockers have on us, etc. It seems to be working based on a small 4 day sample.
I have no doubt! I think a big banner would have been a better way to do it to begin with, but the subsequent article addressed that part adequately.
I will subscribe once the short-term version comes out.
While the effectiveness of display advertising is not as high as other channels (email for instance) it is still effective. The "american idol" demographic clicks on lots of ads.
You'll note that adsense is specifically blocked by that list. The list also catches The Deck ads. Both of these ad types are things we hear people say "we won't block ads if you run them like this"... but they block them anyway.
The title is right, though, Ad blocking isn't killing any sites. We didn't really say it was either. This whole exercise is really the result of not being able to rehire people who were laid off last year specifically because our ad inventory is being hammered by ad blockers.
Did I miss something or did Ken specifically say: "Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love" That seems to be the same thing, no?
And when you say "the result of not being able to rehire people who were laid off last year specifically because our ad inventory is being hammered by ad blockers."
You're still missing the point. You're blaming your readers who chose to use adblock rather than focusing on ways to build a better business model.
Come on, you guys know this. You've covered the RIAA/MPAA doing the same exact thing over and over again. Don't blame your users and the choices they make. Focus on providing more value.
The difference between us and the RIAA/MPAA is that we're not justifying our lobbying efforts to reform copyright control. We're simply experimenting with technical means of keeping content bundled with ads and social means of educating users who might actually give a shit. The moment one of us goes to congress and says you need to legislate our ability to serve ads alongside our content is the moment you come gripe to me, and we laugh together because I've already quit my job.
And, come on, don't put up strawmen. Just because you're not lobbying to change the laws doesn't change the comparison which was apt: rather than admitting you need to fix your business model, you blamed your users for the choices they made. It's obnoxious, and you guys -- of all the sites out there -- should know that better than anyone.
[citation needed]
Not really a fair comparison. The problem with the RIAA is not that they want people to pay for what they consume, it's that they make the experience for legitimate users worse than for pirates. What Ars did makes the 'pirates' experience worse, without substantially inconveniencing 'paying' users.
Why Google keeps your data forever, tracks you with ads
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/google-keeps...
When I get to the point of site launch, my plan is to please the visitors - not the advertisers. The advertisers with a brain should find the former goal valuable, too. Or rather, let me say, I'd like to derive my income from advertisers who share my user-experience priorities.
Am I doomed? Well, I'm sure going to give it my best shot to offer quality over commercial glitter/abuse.
What you'll find is that ad agencies build one ad for, say, 500 sites based on a common set of guidelines (which are often less strict than ours). If you believe your site users would be happier not seeing that particular ad, your choice is to not run it.
I would love to run nothing but text ads, but the minimum we can run to pay our writers is basically "flash in standard spots with occasional premium campaigns".
Why are you trying to monetize your audience through ads if they aren't interested? If you could disable all those ad blockers do you believe that same ad inventory would be of any value to an advertiser? Maybe in the very short-term it would, but in the long run it won't provide any measurable value to an advertiser.
You should move away from an ad supported model and focus on sponsored content, buying guides, case studies, etc. There are much better ways to monetize tech-centric content.
We run buying guides quite somewhat regularly. Our audience doesn't want more buying guides, though. They basically want what we already write.
I feel for the guys who were laid off. That sucks. Life is tough. But this is not the only way to make money. I block advertising because it annoys me. I pretty much stopped buying music and deleted all the non-free mp3s on my hard disk because of the attitude of the music corps to their users.
But I give money to sites that provide value and more importantly build a relationship. That's what Techdirt understands and almost certainly has got them some donations today from people like me who appreciate reading articles by someone who can express what I'm thinking better than I can myself.
p.s. look in the linked article's comments and you'll see this (not from me incidentally):
"My comment asked Ars why there's no donation button. I've yet to receive a reply. I will not turn off my adblocking option for any site ever again. If these sites truly are dependent on ad revenues to survive, it's not my problem." - have you guys tried a donate button, and if so how were your results? I'm not a regular reader but it's a pretty big jump from reading a few articles to subscribing for 6 months.
You may be shocked to hear this, but most of our readers responded really well to Ken's post the other day. We had about 50x as many new subscribers since Friday as we've ever had over an equivalent amount of time. We also saw a noticeable increase in our ad views/pageviews ratio.
It's good that you donated to TechDirt, I love seeing people throw some money towards sites they love. We've run donation systems in the past and they haven't really been worth maintaining, but I'm sure we'll consider running them again. Selling services for a fixed price seems to work quite a bit better, even if those services are "see our site ad free, minus the guilt".
Actually I'm not too surprised that people turned off their adblockers when you asked them. That's what I'm saying - engage with people and if you get on their wavelength they'll respond positively.
I wasn't sure how you'd take my comment, but I'm encouraged by your response. Some comments by Ars in the original DOI thread were offensive ("f*ing Wladimir Palant"), your reply restores my faith.
When I surf the internet, most sites I visit I don't build up a particular relationship with. I'll just read an article here or there. I won't read through all the terms and conditions or turn off adblockers for every site I visit, life's too short. But if it turns out Ars provides a useful service in the future, I just might if you guys ask nicely like this. I still question the sustainability of this strategy, but then again I don't run a successful web site, so who am I to say.
Thanks again for the positive response, and good luck.
AdBlock on my browser does absolutely nothing to reduce the amount of money that websites I visit can earn from my.
Yes it does. Not all ads are pay-per-click.
This is precisely why I use an ad-blocker. I don't really mind animated gifs - I've learned to tune those out. But ads - flash ads are the usual guilty party - that actually fuck with the content actively piss me off, and they are why I have both adblock and flashblock.
Advertisers are increasingly demanding about those, though, which is one of the reasons we worked so hard to make "no ads" a feature of our subscriptions.
This would also separate out the people who are legitimately concerned about malware and excessively intrusive ads from those (sadly, I suspect, the majority) who simply don't want to pay for others' work.