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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.
Viruses not so much. Way too much of that going around to make it safe to browse without adblocking - too many ad carriers do not audit the ads that are displayed, leading to all sorts of click bait and virus crap being displayed.
If a site is important enough to me, I'll pay a nominal fee rather than slow loading times with what is often intrusive hogwash.
If it's not, the information I seek is probably available elsewhere.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Bild is the worst example of German yellow press. I seriously doubt that people who are intelligent enough to install an ad blocker would read bild.de anyway.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
It's why I don't use ad blocking software or disable ads on Slashdot.
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.
Om, nomnomnom...
exactly, adblock has become more important that antivirus
To be honest, I think it has more to do with page load times for most. The ads might be intrusive, but now with adblocking on my iPad pages load quickly, even with spotty Internet. The bidding game the advertisers were playing is a big part of their downfall.
The tracking does have its "creepy" factor, with ads following you from site to site... Despite having already made whatever purchase was under consideration.
Their ad blocker banner requires JavaScript. Running NoScript circumvents it.
The same thing that happens in the real world: you do without the product, and the seller does without the revenue. Quite simple.
Just like he said. Host the ads on their site. Ad blockers would be rendered ineffective and I doubt many sites would be willing to host the bloated and obnoxious ads that everyone is complaining about.
Except if I don't trust it, why the hell would I download it? Why would I waste bandwidth on crap I don't want or trust?
The ad sources have already demonstrated themselves to be shady and not trustworthy.
The average web site seems to think 20+ external sites all tracking what you do is OK. Sorry, but I am not here to support the business model of 20 tracking companies who have nothing to do with me.
I won't click on the ads, and I sure as hell will keep blocking the hell out of them. If a website shows me the thing to turn on cookies, or enable javascript, or tells me that I can't see their site with an adblocker ... I'll simply leave.
All those external entities on a website who want my data can fully expect that I will block them as much as I can.
It's absolutely mind-boggling the sheer amount of CRAP in the average web-page, and once you start running the blockers and seeing just how much there is, the idea of turning off those blockers seems idiotic.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I'm not trying to be a Google shill here, but this is exactly why I like Google's ads (or rather, liked, back when they were more obviously ads on the right side of the search results). If I'm looking for something, I might do a Google search for it; if one of the AdWords ads shows up, as a small text-only ad, and it's exactly the thing I'm looking for, that's a good thing IMO. I guess this is called "targeted advertising", and IMO it's the best kind. If I'm explicitly searching for something, or have some kind of problem I'm Googling for an answer to, having a small,text-only ad pop up with a product that solves my problem is a big help.
Ok so your site needs money from Ads to survive, I get it, we all have to make compromises. But you are serving those ads via un-vetted bloated 3rd party scripts which can harbor malware, cost me time and money & track my Ass between sites. Therefore if you put up a page that asks me to accept your 3rd party Scripted Ads, I will send you a copy of my User Terms of Service for you to agree too. In which you will find clauses that require you to accept responsibility for all 1st, 2nd & 3rd party content and resources served by your site and all losses incurred should that adversely affect my systems, privacy etc.
Alternatively, if you wish to serve all Ads in a 1st party context without scripting then I'm powerless to stop you and would be much happier.
So in the end to me its not the Ads themselves that are the problem, but how they are delivered and what hidden factors are present that I consider a detriment to my using your site.
And the obvious answer for sites like Bild is to stop allowing ads which use scripting. That's what we use ad blockers for now. If they want all their ads visible, they need to work with their advertisers. Or find another revenue source.
It's why I don't use ad blocking software or disable ads on Slashdot.
Imagine if, as you walk along a street in downtown the small shops, which depend on advertising (right?) have these little boards outside their shops with some advertising. Actually this is pretty normal in most places.
Now imagine you have to pay to walk down the street in downtown, a small fee which goes toward maintaining these advertising boards.
Now imagine if you accidentally touch one of these advertising boards theres a chance you'll get infected with the flu.
Now imagine instead of flu sometimes its zombie plague.
Thats what Internet advertising is like.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
The internet wasn't devised as a revenue generating platform, just because you usurped it so doesn't give you a right to my eyeballs nor to demand payola for your content. Don't like it, tough shit.
All you're doing is making sure that I NEVER EVER use APK.
NEVER.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...