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Wired To Block Ad-Blocking Users, Offer Subscription (wired.com)
AmiMoJo writes: In a blog post Wired has announced that it will begin to block users who block ads on its site: "On an average day, more than 20 percent of the traffic to WIRED.com comes from a reader who is blocking our ads. We know that you come to our site primarily to read our content, but it's important to be clear that advertising is how we keep WIRED going," wrote the editors. The post goes on to offer two options for users blocking ads: whitelist wired.com or subscribe for $1/week.
Do they also intend to give us malware, as Forbes did? :-P
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Or just block the ad-blocker blocker script. Just like one can do for most of these sites trying to block ad blockers.
A while back, people asked questions bout why you'd use Incognito Mode in a non-pr0n situation. This is one of those reasons.
Also, i didn't notice anything as to WHY people block ads. Namely, i would have liked a "we promise to actively check ads to make sure they don't try to hijack your browser, or set EverCookies". We're not blocking ads to screw you. We're blocking ads to not have you screw us. Address that and then we'll talk.
Pretty much this. I wonder when big sites start realizing that by default they actually *can* show ads even to people that use ad blocking extensions. All they have to do is host the material themselves and place it within the normal content.
There's been quite a few big sites doing bold moves such as this. I wonder if these sites fighting ad blockers will eventually have to submit to the same fate some German publishers suffered when fighting against their news articles being listed in Google: they lost 80% of their traffic just like that.
-SR
Fourth option: have lightweight unobtrusive ads.
I only started using ad-blocker when ads became a draw on performance.
There's a very important fourth option that they neglected to mention, yet is entirely in their control: stop delivering ads they don't host and haven't vetted.
If a company is willing to vet their ads and host them on their own servers, it's unlikely I'll go to the bother of blocking them, especially since I no longer need to wonder about who's getting my data, and I can read just one privacy policy to find out how my data is being used. By default, however, I block everything from third-party servers, and that's unlikely to change anytime soon.
I had a print subscription to Wired since 1996. About 2 years ago I didn't renew, not because I didn't like the magazine anymore, but because my magazine continually arrived two to three weeks AFTER it was available on store shelves. That wouldn't have been so bad, except that Wired eventually got to the point of releasing all the magazine content online over the course of the month...for FREE... I tried for nearly 2 years to get Wired to figure out the problem, to no avail. Even when I moved to a new house, 30+ miles away, the late deliveries continued (so probably not a local post office issue.)
It's always frustrating when you WANT to give a company your money, but they just have to make it so damn hard (see DRM also...) Anyway, maybe I'll whitelist them, maybe I'll just quit going to Wired.com. I'm sure not giving them any more money.
Oh bullshit, they didn't sell any ads, they signed up to an abusive tracking filled ad network that did all of the work for them.
If I start a convenience store and can figure out a way to stay afloat selling Snickers and M&Ms, then hooray for me, but please don't call me a confectioner.
I'm sorry, that's a totally lousy analogy. Here's a better analogy for you:
I have a convenience store, and in order to make a healthy profit, I find a company that makes candy and *pays me* to give it away at my store. Unfortunately, a certain percentage of this free candy is laced with arsenic or cyanide or ricin. I know about this, but I don't care because I'm getting money from the candy-maker to give away this poisoned candy to my customers.
How is selling ads "abusing" them? The whole damn point of the enterprise is to make some jingle. You want free content? Go watch cat videos on youtube. You want something edited, well, someone's got to pay the writers and editors.
Wired ads are among the most abusive and intrusive I have encountered at a mainstream site on the internet. I like their content, and I'd happily accept ads to read their content. I will not, however, accept that I have to be repeatedly assaulted with slowly-unfolding video popups, excessive DOM manipulation, extensive tracking, and other acts of advertising abuse.
I will go so far as to say that it was Wired that made me finally install an ad blocker to begin with. They are that bad.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
I've never looked at a 19th century newspaper, but I'mma go out on a limb here...
I'm pretty sure the ads didn't:
1) Make noise.
2) Move around annoyingly trying to get my attention.
3) Make me sit and wait to read the rest of the page while they loaded.
4) Cost me additional money (mobile bandwidth) to load.
5) Report my location & reading habits back to the advertiser as I walked about London.
6) Take up 80% of the page, requiring me to flip page after page to read a sentence or two surrounded by half a dozen ads.
7) Cause an actual danger to me in damaging the device I was using to read them.
Did I forget anything? I'll take 19th century advertising standards.
There's a certain red-on-black alternative social networking site that does advertising right. Hosted on their own server, static simple images, reasonably sized, no animation, no sound, no JScript, no Flash, no BS. They actually host the images on a sub-domain of their main site. It would be trivial to block them. I don't because they're not annoying or dangerous. Occasionally they even advertise something interesting, and I (intentionally!) click/tap on an ad.
How is selling ads "abusing" them?
I serve up ads on my website and adblock has never been a problem. The images come from my domain and I write ads inline with the copy and make them relevant to the posted topics. Not only does adblock not stop them, they're far more effective being embedded and relevant to the content.
So, what I hear sites like Boomberg and Wired saying is we want to dish out obnoxious ads from third party advertising networks. They want to outsource advertising income and don't want to work at it themselves. They can't be bothered to make advertising deals for products and services relevant to what their readers want.
This discussion isn't about ads, it's about dictating the terms on which those ads are delivered.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The ad providers don't trust the content producers not to fleece them. How are they going to know? And how are they going go back to the widget seller and prove the ad was seen and worked?
Those are all technically, unsolved problems still.
The same way traditional media does it with audited reviews from respectable firms. How it was always done.
Or just simply did your revenue increase? Ask your clients did they see the add? There are many other ways.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
I paid for a weather channel subscription years ago because it was cheap and they made the CLAIM no ads. That was as it turned out a flat out lie. I unsubscribed the very same day, turns out at the time a lot of people were doing the same. They will just change the definition of what ads are they cant help themselves.The urge to forge loopholes is just too great.
Jack of all trades,master of none