Slashdot Mirror
Will Ad Blockers Kill the Digital Media Industry?
HughPickens.com writes: Michael Rosenwald writes at the Columbia Journalism Review that global online ad revenue continues to rise, reaching nearly $180 billion last year. But analysts say the rise of ad blocking threatens the entire industry—the free sites that rely exclusively on ads, as well as the paywalled outlets that rely on ads to compensate for the vast majority of internet users who refuse to pay for news. A new report from Adobe and one of several startups helping publishers fight ad blocking shows that 198 million people globally are now blocking ads, up 41 percent from 2014. In the US, ad blocking grew 48 percent from last year, to 45 million users. "Taken together, ad blockers are hitting publishers in their digital guts," writes Rosenwald. "Adobe says that $21.8 billion in global ad revenue will be blocked this year."
Publishers have been banking on the growth of mobile, where the ad blocking plugins either don't work or are cumbersome to install. A Wells Fargo analyst wrote in a report on ad blocking that "the mobile migration should thwart some of the growth" of ad blockers. But Apple recently revealed that its new operating system scheduled for release this fall will allow ad blocking on Safari. Apple is trying to pull iPhone and iPad users off the web. It wants you to read, watch, search, and listen in its Apple-certified walled gardens known as apps. It makes apps, it approves apps, and it profits from apps. But, for its plan to work, the company will need those entertainers and publishers to funnel their content to where Apple wants it to be. As the company makes strategic moves to devalue the web in favor of apps, those content creators dependent on ads to stay afloat may be forced to play along with Apple. Adblock Plus has released a browser for mobile Android devices that blocks ads, and it's planning to release a similar product for Apple devices. "The desire to figure out how to bring ad blocking to mobile consumers is a worldwide phenomenon," says Roi Carthy Ad blocking, he says, "is an inalienable right."
Publishers have been banking on the growth of mobile, where the ad blocking plugins either don't work or are cumbersome to install. A Wells Fargo analyst wrote in a report on ad blocking that "the mobile migration should thwart some of the growth" of ad blockers. But Apple recently revealed that its new operating system scheduled for release this fall will allow ad blocking on Safari. Apple is trying to pull iPhone and iPad users off the web. It wants you to read, watch, search, and listen in its Apple-certified walled gardens known as apps. It makes apps, it approves apps, and it profits from apps. But, for its plan to work, the company will need those entertainers and publishers to funnel their content to where Apple wants it to be. As the company makes strategic moves to devalue the web in favor of apps, those content creators dependent on ads to stay afloat may be forced to play along with Apple. Adblock Plus has released a browser for mobile Android devices that blocks ads, and it's planning to release a similar product for Apple devices. "The desire to figure out how to bring ad blocking to mobile consumers is a worldwide phenomenon," says Roi Carthy Ad blocking, he says, "is an inalienable right."
One can only hope so.
I installed ad blocker this year, and its for mainly one reason: video ads. Since these have become popular, it eats up my bandwidth and starts playing ridiculously loud sound even when I don't click on it. If anyone is too blame for the rise of ad blocking technology its advertisers.
Ad networks profligate malware, as a result an ad blocking isn't just to block an annoyance, its to protect myself from a drive by download of a flash powered/explioted malware that takes over my system and ransoms it back to me. Ad blockers are the new anti-virus.
When ads stop playing sound, hijacking the page, redirecting me to app stores, acting as hovertraps ("Oh! You briefly moused over our ad! Let's take up the whole screen and play loud sounds!"), eating all my computer's resources, and distributing malware - then, and only then, I'll look into not using adblockers.
Web-ad-serving companies complaining about ad blockers are like grade-school bullies, crying to the teacher about "So-and-so punched me back!" They keep escalating their 'services', and are acting surprised that people aren't just taking it.
I made the mistake of opening a link to a games website in IE not long ago and ended up having to kill it because it brought the browser to its knees. I opened it in Chrome with Disconnect and click to play Flash and it loaded pretty much instantly. You made your bed and then shit in it as well. Don't complain about having to lie in it now.
You're making one fundamental logical mistake.
The advertising industry exists to sell ads. It does not exist to sell the things they're advertising.
They don't care whether it works. They care that people pay them to push ads.
Good riddance. The Internet is shit because of ad-sponsored content and SEO.
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
I have no problem with ad on the margins of the page. Slashdot has three up right now and they don't block my view of the content, they aren't playing music or videos (chewing up my bandwidth), and nothing opened a popup. Those are Ads in the tradition of a news paper.
The Fucking Ads are the opposite. They block the content, force you to find that little X in some corner...if they didn't put a fake one in that's just a link to another page. Fucking Ads seem to be loaded first. So if some Ad service has shit slow servers, it takes forever for a simple Text article to appear. Fucking Ads also hijack random clicks. Ever click on a page to be sure the scroll is focused on the page and not something else so you can use the scroll wheel...and here comes a popup.
Fucking Ads are also dangerous. To get rid of them you have to interact with them. Who knows what the fuck will happen when you click that close button?
So if they just stick to what they've been doing for the last 200 years, we're fine.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Worst part? They'll never realize they killed themselves.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
So many industries are this way. They assume that there is a captive audience with only a few malcontents, but over time it starts slipping away and they don't know how to cope. Like television, they decide to save money by having crappier unscripted content or hire only interns as script writers, then are baffled that people are cutting the cord.
Dear Advertisers, Figure out how to do ads in a trustworthy way (i.e. no privacy invasive behavior tracking and little or no risk of malware exposure) and I'll be happy to allow those ads. I'd prefer the ads to be static HTML hosted within the site I visit. I don't want my browser touching 15 domains that all run scripts every time I visit a page. As long as ads compromise my privacy and security I will consider advertising networks the enemy and treat them accordingly.
Running NoScript; it boggles my mind how many domains are required to get some sites working (particularly MSM sites). Sometimes I just give up on trying to access the content.