German Publisher Axel Springer Bans Adblocking Users From Bild Website (axelspringer.de)

An anonymous reader writes: Major European publishing house Axel Springer has instituted countermeasures against users who employ adblocking software on its Bild news outlet, which represents a daily publication with a print circulation of 2.5 million. The website now presents readers with a request to either turn off the adblocking or pay a €2.99 monthly subscription fee. In a statement the company insists that online journalism must be funded by one of the 'two known revenue pillars' — advertising or sales.

Comments

Re:Isn't this a no brainer?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a no brainer to block all ads and adblock-detecting scripts as well. I went there and could access all normal content with uBlock + noscript.

Fuck you

[DogDude]

Dear publisher: Fuck you. I'm happy with either paying for journalism or viewing YOUR ads. I'm not going to allow your web site to shove somebody else's ads in my face. If you want to sell ads, then sell ads. Including some piece of code from an ad wholesaler isn't going to fly, in the same way I wouldn't accept an unknown package wrapped in brown paper from other random people trying to sell me shit along with my paper newspaper or paper magazine.

Sell your own ads, publishers. That's part of your job. If you can't be bothered to do that, then I can't be bothered to help you get paid.

Just tried it

[ArsenneLupin]

Just tried it. I can still access it. No ads. Lots of yellow news. I use noscript.

(Btw, just accessed it for testing, out of curiosity, not for reading the yellow news...)

Re:Isn't this a no brainer?

[Gr8Apes]

The biggest issue with their ads is that I don't ever click on them even if I see them. I'm the "don't look for something until I need it, then I buy it" kind of person. So, let's say I'm looking for a chair. I'll do my research, and likely purchase a chair in a day. That's before the ad network gets updated. What's hilarious is the ads are showing me the chair I bought (creepy yes) but that chair is no longer of interest to me for purchase. And it continues doing so for the next month or more. Almost all my purchases are done this way, as that allows for strong budgeting.

Re:Ads are fine

[AmiMoJo]

So I decided to give them a try and comply with their request. Disabled uBlock and visited the site. To be fair there don't seem to be animated or noisy ads on there. The page was pretty slow to load due to the ad servers taking several seconds to respond. The site itself seems be be a "tabloid" style paper (I don't read German), with some soft porn on the front page (scroll down a bit) and crappy looking content.

Then I tried to read an article, and it displayed the first few lines and then demand â0.99 for the rest. Fuck you Bild, I accepted your ads and shitty Javascript and you still want me to pay for your content? I already paid!

Malware-blocking

[simplypeachy]

Christ, nearly 6MB in 642 URL requests just to load their home page once. Anyhoo, from two full fetches of their home page. Excepting the dozens of trackers and advert organisations that I haven't noted to be involved in malware, we have:

smartclip.net: Party to LG "Smart TV" spying without consent.
turn.com: Repeated malware advertisments to-date. Most recently infecting iPhones.
ads.yahoo.com: Repeated malware advertisments to-date.
serving-sys.com: Repeated malware advertisments to-date.
advertising.com: Repeated malware advertisments to-date.
adnxs.com: Repeated malware advertisments to-date, including Angler Exploit Kit via MSN.com
adscale.de: Malware advertisements.
adsrvr.org: Malware adverts, pushing virus-infected toolbars
rubiconproject.com: Repeated malware bundlers, unwanted toolbars, search result injectors, home-page meddling
mathtag.com: Malware advertisements.
openx.net: Repeated malware advertisments to-date.
bidswitch.net: Malware advertising. Most recently infecting iPhones.

This isn't advert blocking. It's a crucial layer of system security.

When do ad networks get sued for spreading malware

[WCMI92]

Nope. If you want to block my adblocker, fine, I won't go there.

I find NO ad acceptable, but if web ads acted like newspaper ads and sat there, didn't try to distract me from reading, didn't take over my screen, didn't make noise, flash, throb, etc, I'd TOLERATE it.

These days, ad networks are so laden with malware and viruses (when is Google or another ad network going to get sued for not vetting content?) that an ad blocker is antivirus for your web browser!

Re:Isn't this a no brainer?

[WCMI92]

Most people wouldn't use ad blocking if the advertisers didn't allow malware laden ads be served to their PC's turning them into mindless drones for a botnet. They could fix that problem easily by turning around and vetting ads. Or if the ads weren't so obtrusive and annoying either. Bet we'll see within 3 months that they're reversing this stance, or within a year it shuts down.

Remember when the New York Times decided to put themselves behind a Paywall? That didn't last a year. I suspect the same thing will happen here. People don't like ads. The answer isn't to block adblockers, the answer is to stop annoying the shit out of your visitors that they would WANT an ad blocker!