Blocked by ad-blocker blocking web sites - Is this the trend of the future and it is smart for web publishers?
I use Ad-Block on my Windows desktop on Chrome, for the obvious reason—too many ads, too much crap, they’re impolite, distracting, and just plain obnoxious.
A couple of sites have become more militant – putting up a pop-up that says “We see you are using a pop-up – please contribute” or something like that.
Yesterday I followed a link to the Forbes website (business magazine) that simply wouldn’t let me pass to read the article. Different, but obnoxious screens basically requiring me to turn off ad blocking.
I’m not going to do that – especially being coerced to do so—and they lose a potential reader and subscriber.
Sure, I see why they want me to view their ads, but does it make sense for them to lose potential customers?
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I feel the same way. The ads are too distracting and I don’t want to waste my bandwidth on them.
If I can’t get in, too bad. They lost me as a viewer. I can find a substitute in half a second.
Yup. And Ghostery blocks most of the scary videos on weather.com from me; they won’t load. So I don’t watch ‘em.
Of course, ultimately, we may have to pay more for internet usage if the ad model is ineffective.
@elbanditoroso Forbes is trying to sell ads not have you as a, “potential reader and subscriber.” They are getting large banks and investment firms to pay for ads that they want to, “push in your face”. Your subscription of a few dollars is not going to mean much in their revenue stream compared to $2,000,000 for ad space for American Express.
@Tropical_Willie – sounds fine to me. They will lose my eyeballs, and probably others like me. I can get most of their stuff elsewhere anyway.
This is where we prove that the greedy know less about marketing than they think they do. They don’t realize that people are free-willed and capable of resentment. They don’t realize that the only way they can get viewers is through monopolistic practices that fly in the face of anything resembling “free market”.
So, @Tropical_Willie, how much ad revenue will Forbes generate when traffic drops like a rock?
The non-complainers will still go to the website, the “C” class officers of companies will still go.
The CEO’s and COO’s are who the Forbes website are targeting. The 98% of us with a few coins in our pocket will have less impact than the 2% that run large corporations.
It will be worse still.
In Germany there is still a case going on about a large publisher suing the creators of adblocking software for copyright infringement (specifically about the part that involves circumventing technical content protections), including a guy on youtube being sued for making an instruction video on how to configure adblock to access an anti-adblock website.
They have also stated that they would love to go after everyone who uses the software.
Newspapers, digital or otherwise, don’t exist to sell you the news. They exist to sell you to the advertisers. If you use adblock, you’re basically useless to them anyhow, they don’t lose anything by blocking you out of spite.
I went to www.forbes.com using Firefox with AdBlockerPlus, and I didn’t get any popups or ads.
@Brian1946 – i tried it earlier today (january 1) and I didn’t either, but it definitely happened several times last week. Maybe they were doing some testing??? Don’t know.
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