

Don't Blame Your Community: Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites - yanw
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100306/1649198451.shtml

======
mrkurt
It's an unfortunate fact that the 40% of our users who block ads _also_ block
almost any kind of "advertising that doesn't annoy them". For instance, every
user who saw blank content on our site when we decided to have a little fun
was running EasyList for Ad Block Plus. You can see the global blocks here:
[https://hg.adblockplus.org/easylist/file/d4e0b55077bb/easyli...](https://hg.adblockplus.org/easylist/file/d4e0b55077bb/easylist_general_block.txt)

You'll note that adsense is specifically blocked by that list. The list also
catches The Deck ads. Both of these ad types are things we hear people say "we
won't block ads if you run them like this"... but they block them anyway.

The title is right, though, Ad blocking isn't killing any sites. We didn't
really say it was either. This whole exercise is really the result of not
being able to rehire people who were laid off last year _specifically_ because
our ad inventory is being hammered by ad blockers.

~~~
mmasnick
"Ad blocking isn't killing any sites. We didn't really say it was either."

Did I miss something or did Ken specifically say: "Ad Blocking is devastating
to the sites you love" That seems to be the same thing, no?

And when you say "the result of not being able to rehire people who were laid
off last year _specifically_ because our ad inventory is being hammered by ad
blockers."

You're still missing the point. You're blaming your readers who chose to use
adblock rather than focusing on ways to build a better business model.

Come on, you guys know this. You've covered the RIAA/MPAA doing the same exact
thing over and over again. Don't blame your users and the choices they make.
Focus on providing more value.

~~~
mrkurt
But ignoring readers and the choices they make (and more importantly, why they
make those choices) is every bit as much a part of building a better business
model as "do something else you dumbasses". It turns out that the vast
majority of our readers block ads without thinking about it, because they
think it doesn't matter, or by mistake (seriously). The vocal ones are a vast,
vast minority. We spend more time than we should addressing them, but articles
like the one we ran are more an attempt to reach the casual blockers.

The difference between us and the RIAA/MPAA is that we're not justifying our
lobbying efforts to reform copyright control. We're simply experimenting with
technical means of keeping content bundled with ads and social means of
educating users who might actually give a shit. The moment one of us goes to
congress and says you need to legislate our ability to serve ads alongside our
content is the moment you come gripe to me, and we laugh together because I've
already quit my job.

~~~
michaelcampbell
> It turns out that the vast majority of our readers block ads without
> thinking about it, because they think it doesn't matter, or by mistake
> (seriously).

[citation needed]

~~~
Semiapies
See the first link.

------
mbrubeck
I like the spirit of this. Rather than argue about the ethics of ad-blockers
and ad-blocker-blockers, why not focus on the implicit challenge: Can more
publishers find ways to make money from ad-free content?

Adblock is like Napster. People want content; the vast majority of publishers
only have one business model; a lot of consumers decide to take the content
without bearing the cost imposed by that model.

Some people won't pay no matter what - music filesharing is still around, of
course. But a lot of people did start buying music again when Amazon and Apple
and eMusic changed the price structure to something they were willing to pay.

There are a few sites like Ars and LiveJournal and MetaFilter that have ad-
free options for paid users. Maybe this is a small niche and will never be big
business. But maybe there's some way to get more people to pay directly in
exchange for ad-free content.

~~~
rick888
"I like the spirit of this. Rather than argue about the ethics of ad-blockers
and ad-blocker-blockers, why not focus on the implicit challenge: Can more
publishers find ways to make money from ad-free content?"

Yes, by either:

1) charging for content 2) making each article an advertisement for something
they are trying to sell 3) selling their own products, which will still
involve some sort of advertising

It seems like the people fighting against the advertisers are against all
forms of commercialism. Even non-flashing pure text advertisements like Google
Adsense are blocked by default in all of the adblockers. If it really was only
about annoying and flashing ads, why is this the case?

"Adblock is like Napster. People want content; the vast majority of publishers
only have one business model; a lot of consumers decide to take the content
without bearing the cost imposed by that model."

What an elegant way to put the reality of the situation: Some users feel they
are entitled to free content. It's an emerging trend that is starting to
happen in many industries (music, movies, books, software, and advertising).

If I, as a content provider know many people are using an adblocker, I will
try to find a way around it (or start charging for content). If people stop
going to my site because of bad advertisements, I will make any effort to
remove the offending ads.

It reminds me of passive-aggressive children. They are pissed at a
site/company and instead of telling them about it, they just decide to block
ads and go there anyway. If the movement was really trying to make the
Internet a better place (with better ads), they would actually be making an
honest attempt at notifying the offending site.

"Some people won't pay no matter what - music filesharing is still around, of
course. But a lot of people did start buying music again when Amazon and Apple
and eMusic changed the price structure to something they were willing to pay."

We aren't talking about paying money. The only thing people have to do is view
a simple advertisement. It takes almost no effort.

------
pavel_lishin
_As a part of that, there would be an ad at the top that temporarily "pushed
down" the content for a few seconds, before pulling back up. Nothing was
covered. Nothing prevented readers from getting the content. And the
"pushdown" ad only showed once per visitor and never again._

This is precisely why I use an ad-blocker. I don't really mind animated gifs -
I've learned to tune those out. But ads - flash ads are the usual guilty party
- that actually fuck with the content actively piss me off, and they are why I
have both adblock and flashblock.

~~~
mrkurt
And this is why we (Ars) specifically prohibit ads that fuck with content. :)

Advertisers are increasingly demanding about those, though, which is one of
the reasons we worked so hard to make "no ads" a feature of our subscriptions.

------
AlisdairO
I posted this on Reddit when I saw this article there: I'd really love a
process by which you can automatically say 'I block these types of ads', and
the site can choose to serve you content or not based on that. What we have at
the moment, where a lot of people get harangued by malicious advertisements,
and a lot of people block even the most harmless ad content, is a really
unfair to both sides. A way to auto-negotiate what you're willing to 'pay'
would be excellent. As things stand, I don't block ads, but I'd really like to
be able to block the worst of them without screwing people over.

This would also separate out the people who are legitimately concerned about
malware and excessively intrusive ads from those (sadly, I suspect, the
majority) who simply don't want to pay for others' work.

------
Semiapies
I sympathize with this view, but how exactly are advertisers supposed to come
up with more "creative" and "compelling" concepts that somehow will work when
users fundamentally don't want the thing they make - _ads?_

In a broader sense, it's very questionable to say "Gee, content sites should
be profitable!" and cheerfully avoid explaining just _how_ , especially right
after you've finished explaining how every known method of monetizing content
just won't work.

~~~
axod
>> " when users fundamentally don't want the thing they make - ads?"

It'd be good if we stopped pretending _everyone_ runs adblock. 99.5%+ of
people have no issue with ads, and actually find them useful.

That 0.5% who run adblock etc, really aren't worth worrying about much.

~~~
ewjordan
Ars (and most other nerd-centric sites) probably has a _much_ higher
percentage of users with AdBlock installed than the Internet as a whole.

Then again, it also probably has a larger percentage of people that wouldn't
pay any attention to the ads even if they were visible. From Ars' point of
view it would be great if these people shut of their ad blockers, but the
advertisers would probably be getting the short end of the stick, in that
case, which would (over the long term) drive advertising prices down, etc. Ars
would pick up some profits in the meantime, but solely at the expense of the
advertisers, who are now getting screwed by paying for eyeballs that are worth
less on average than the ones when people weren't shutting their ad blockers
down. I'd certainly pay less for per-impression ads on a site that wouldn't
show content to people with an ad blocker, for this very reason.

It's a grand circle of life, and frankly, it's hard to say what second order
effects any of these actions might have. It very well may be that the presence
of ad blockers raises the average value of the eyeballs that _do_ see the ads
enough that advertising prices end up higher and Ars does better overall. It's
equally possible that they're correct, the ad market hasn't adjusted to the
presence of ad blockers yet, and they're still getting paid too little per-
eyeball. I'm not sure. Neither are they.

But in theory, at least, over the long term, if people with ad blockers really
aren't paying any attention to ads anyways, the market should correct for this
and the results for both advertisers and the sites providing ad space should
approach the true value.

~~~
mrkurt
The types of campaigns we run would benefit from more eyeballs. Advertisers
don't expect everyone to see or care about their campaigns. Branding campaigns
in particular are really just designed to get your company in front of as many
people as possible and hope a few of them notice. They're simultaneously
valuable and notoriously hard to measure the value of. Our job (as far as
advertisers are concerned) is to get the ads in front of whoever we can.

My gut feeling is that people who block ads globally but see them on Ars would
actually notice/respond to them better than people who are just generally
banner blind. If the majority of the people who've emailed us are to be
believed, they don't see anything else on the page except ads when they have
ads enabled. I bet advertisers would _kill_ for that. ;)

The biggest problem is that there's no chance someone blocking ads is going to
see an ad, and there's a real (but maybe tiny) chance that same person would
respond to an ad. There's an even better chance that they'd respond to a
really nice campaign that "spoke" to them.

------
sdh
We shouldn't take the experience of publishers like Ars and techdirt as
indicative of the whole industry. Both of those publishers have very tech
savvy audiences who are not the best demographic for display ads.

While the effectiveness of display advertising is not as high as other
channels (email for instance) it is still effective. The "american idol"
demographic clicks on lots of ads.

------
rue
The thing that struck me about the Ars approach was the reaction to legitimate
concerns about security, tracking and so on: "too bad." As in, ads are what
they are: the site does not really care whether they are useful to the
advertiser nor how they affect the user so long as they get paid. An
unfortunate attitude to project, particularly when trying to come up with
solutions to this problem could be really beneficial. Not that they have an
obligation to care, of course.

They did at least suggest that a monthly subscription might be forthcoming, so
something good might come out of it in the end.

~~~
mrkurt
I'm sorry the response sounded like "too bad" to you, because that really
wasn't our intent. We do care about how ads affect users. We heavily Q&A our
ads and they're vetted at multiple levels before they show up on the site. Not
only that, but we have more aggressive ad policies than any comparable site
I've seen. The pushdown ad that Techdirt mentioned, for instance, is against
our ad guidelines because it expands without user intervention.

When an ad ends up on the site that violates our guidelines, we get it removed
very quickly. It's an unfortunate fact that the ad ops people will
occasionally put an ad meant for GQ on Ars, so you'll end up with something
that expands by itself, does a popup, etc. They're never malicious, but
oftentimes violate the Ars guidelines.

Part of our "solution" to this problem is better educating users about the
economics of ads, the effect their ad blockers have on us, etc. It seems to be
working based on a small 4 day sample.

~~~
rue
_> I'm sorry the response sounded like "too bad" to you, because that really
wasn't our intent. We do care about how ads affect users. We heavily Q&A our
ads and they're vetted at multiple levels before they show up on the site. Not
only that, but we have more aggressive ad policies than any comparable site
I've seen. The pushdown ad that Techdirt mentioned, for instance, is against
our ad guidelines because it expands without user intervention._

I was sharpening the point a little: from what I understand, Ars does indeed
have reasonably well-behaving ads when it comes to essentially the aesthetic
side. The underlying privacy, security and psy-op/propaganda problems remain,
though, and the sense I got from staff comments was that those were simply the
Unchangeable Facts of Advertising and nothing could be done about it. These
are by no means _easy_ problems to solve, but I think projecting understanding
those concerns and figuring out viable alternatives ("having a conversation"
about it with the userbase, if you will) can go a long way.

 _> Part of our "solution" to this problem is better educating users about the
economics of ads, the effect their ad blockers have on us, etc. It seems to be
working based on a small 4 day sample._

I have no doubt! I think a big banner would have been a better way to do it to
begin with, but the subsequent article addressed that part adequately.

I will subscribe once the short-term version comes out.

------
morisy
A great rebuttal. Ad blocks are an obnoxious business condition, but they're
one that can push savvy media companies into not only doing right by their
readers but also finding higher CPM's than remnant ad networks that are being
triaged by more nimble ad agencies anyways, leaving publications only the most
gutter of advertisements.

Advertising models work. But _your_ advertising model might not.

~~~
michael_dorfman
_Ad blocks are an obnoxious business condition, but they're one that can push
savvy media companies into not only doing right by their readers_

Or, they may push savvy and not-so-savvy media companies into serving up
advertising content that's more difficult to block. Like ad content embedded
directly in the content.

It's an arms race, and the escalation isn't going to be pretty.

------
RyanMcGreal
I hate ads. I never ever ever click on them. I get pissed off when I see an ad
in the way of content I'm trying to read and tend not to stay on the page.

AdBlock on my browser does absolutely nothing to reduce the amount of money
that websites I visit can earn from my.

~~~
natrius
_"AdBlock on my browser does absolutely nothing to reduce the amount of money
that websites I visit can earn from my."_

Yes it does. Not all ads are pay-per-click.

------
hockeybias
hmmm...

------
jessor
finally! this was the post on the ad blocking topic i was waiting for.

~~~
lanstein
is this account some sort of experiment to see what happens if you post blog-
spam content to HN?

~~~
jessor
hu? i don't see why i would create that impression. if my comment was too
short, i apologize. the article just expressed my thoughts on the topic and i
wanted to state that.

