How best to handle ad-blocking subscribers: Raise prices
Highly engaged readers should pay more for a better experience
People who block ads online aren’t pariahs. They’re teachers, engineers, analysts, psychologists — and me.
Yep, even though I’m a reporter for The Associated Press and indirectly live off the revenue of advertising, I use an ad blocker in my browser.
I find many online ads to be annoying, jarring, eerie, creepy and terrible. So I don’t feel bad about not seeing them.
But I also don’t like depriving myself and my fellow journalists of a living. That’s why, out of a sense of duty, I embarked on a Stanford fellowship two years ago to try to see if ad-blocking visitors could be motivated to pay for journalism.
What I’m about to write might not be so popular with my ad-blocking brethren:
Publishers that require payment for their online content should raise subscription prices on the ad-blocking visitors, including me.
Why?
It’s simple. This group, my group, puts a burden — albeit a small one — on the business model of journalism by avoiding ads that make publishers money. And we reap a benefit that other users don’t always get: faster-loading pages and cleaner news…
