Commentary
Fourteen Million Reasons To Block The Ad Blockers
- by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, June 4, 2018
First the good news, and then the bad. To be honest, both bits of news are fairly bad. Ad blocking was slightly down in 2017 compared to the year before, according to the Association for Online
Publishers (AOP). However, it's still costing the average publisher £630,000 per year, and the …
3 comments about "Fourteen Million Reasons To Block The Ad Blockers".
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Sean Hargrave is MediaPost's London Editor. You can reach him at seanhargrave@btinternet.com.
Ad blocking is not an excuse to insult the reader with labels like "shoplifter" or thief. Blockers are convenient tools to cut through the clutter and readers deserve more respect for having a true choice to whitelist or not. Go ahead and block the blockers so they can move on to a less insulting source of information, which they will be forced to do. There might very likely be an upstart, close competitor that seeks to build an audience respectful of all of its readers, not just the ones who consent to be monitized (or succumb to rude labels).
As mentioned, publishers have a lot to do to get their own house in order first and the Coalition for Better Ads is a good starting point. I absolutely make that point first of all. But, still a publisher has nothing to lose from banning ad blockers. If readers don't want to be monetised, how do they expect the content to get to them? It's taking the content without playing the game. So ban them. Publishers have nothing to lose other than not wasting content on what I would call shoplifters and you would label people assuming a right to take content for free.
Douglas, I agree with you on this one. Luring in users or visitors with the promise of free access to content, then selling their "data" to advertisers who badger the users/visitors with intrusive and disruptive ads is nothing less than bait and switch tactics. It's unfair to call these ad blocking audiences "thieves".