Blocking Users Who Block Online Ads
From Ars Technica:
Starting late Friday afternoon we conducted a 12 hour experiment to see if it would be possible to simply make content disappear for visitors who were using a very popular ad blocking tool. Technologically, it was a success in that it worked. Ad blockers, and only ad blockers, couldn’t see our content. We tested just one way of doing this, but have devised a way to keep it rotating were we to want to permanently implement it. But we don’t. Socially, the experiment was a mixed bag. A bunch of people whitelisted Ars, and even a few subscribed. And while others showed up to support our actions, there was a healthy mob of people criticizing us for daring to take any kind of action against those who would deny us revenue even though they knew they were doing so. Others rightly criticized the lack of a warning or notification as to what was going on.
via Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love.
Everywhere I look, media companies are feeling pushed to the breaking point by their failure to monetize their content online. On the other side, users are feeling pushed to the limit by increasingly desperate online advertising schemes. Check out the following comment from the Ars Technica article:
I admit, after reading this, I felt kind of guilty for adblocking on this site. So I decided to disable Adblock, reload, and see what happened…
1 banner ad, and 1 sidebar ad.
No flashing.
No jiggling.
No audio.
No faux-error messages.
No pop-ups.
No pop-unders.
Good enough for me. Welcome to my whitelist.
/note: you’re off it as soon as the above changes
Clearly there is a lot of tension out there.
I think that 2010 is going to be a year of many fits and starts in monetization strategies. For better or worse, pay walls and authentication walls are coming to news sites and television portals near you. It will be fascinating to see how it all works out.
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