Slashdot Mirror
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.
Not using an ad-blocker but, I have noticed that the ads have become much more intrusive lately, so I happily disable ads whenever I can. As the disable feature was instituted by /. and a user must contribute (in what the community deems) in a positive manner, I have no qualms about using the feature. I can't imagine the "Good Folks (tm)" at /. biting the hand that feeds them. I strongly suspect that the positive effect of those users posts far outweighs any 'lost' revenue.
Dear Advertisers,
We had a social contract. In exchange for our attention, you agreed to fund our entertainment. But you squandered that agreement and broke our contract. Simply getting our attention wasn't enough for you. In your zeal to make your ads stand out over the others, you started using insecure technologies that exposed your customers to attack. When you realized that your customers were commodities to be bought and sold, you tried to monetize us. You started using tracking cookies. You sold us to your friends and partners. You violated our trust. And now you're asking us to trust you again but you haven't done a single thing to earn that trust back. Quite the contrary, in fact, you continue to abuse us over and over.
Advertisers, you have asked us to return to the old model but have given us no reason to do so. I will continue to block your ads and your malignant tumors until you have proven without a shadow of a doubt that you have mended your ways. Until then, SCREW YOU.
Sincerely,
Your former customers
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
I've been seeing more requests than ever recently to "please turn off Adblocker" while browsing.
Funnily enough, I see them too. I don't run an adblocker, though. I do however run noscript. I have no objection to ads in principle. However, I'm not running scripts unless I have a compelling reason to do so. So, if you want to show me ads, serve them up without Javascript.
If you want to hog my CPU and eat my battery... well, tough.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Most ads aren't aimed at getting you to click on them and make a purchase. The goal of an ad is to put a concept in your mind. The purest form of this are the political yard signs. Nobody thinks, "I saw 90 signs for Bob and 110 signs for Mike; therefore I will vote for Mike." But people do respond to pressures like that; it creates biases and impressions that they don't even realize.
Even when you do your research, you are influenced by these. Most of the time, your research is going to be inconclusive. There isn't any "best chair"; at best, it's a matter of personal taste. Most products, from canned peaches to computers, will end up having similar specifications, but you'll have a preference because you like the flavor of this brand or the you had a good experience with that computer in the past.
Advertising helps put those ideas in your head. Just seeing it in the ads will give you a positive feeling toward the brand, if the advertising is well done. A lot of advertising is poorly done, of course, but a well-done ad can influence preferences in very subtle ways. That subtlety means it's aggravatingly hard to tell which ads work and which ads won't, but advertising continues to exist for a reason: it steers consumer preferences during the phase where they don't know what they want and end up trusting their instincts. Which applies to more purchasing decisions than most people realize.
Stupid advertisers want ads that they measure working by clicks, so they optimize the ads to attract clicks, but that doesn't drive purchasing. The best ads are the ones that consumers don't even realize they've seen, but just develop a cumulative effect of exposure. That's hard to do, and requires a lot of time, money, and effort to get right. Even then it's a crapshoot, like trying to write a popular song. But in the end, there's a market for so many chairs and so many peaches and so many computers, and advertising can steer enough purchases towards yours and away from somebody else's equivalent one in a way that merely improving the specifications can't do.