Of Course Ad Blockers Are OK!
The current battle is between content publishers, who want to support their work through advertising, and ad blockers, which allow users to view the same content, but without the ads.
The turning point in the fight was Apple’s decision to include ad blocking capability in iOS9. What started as a relatively small group of tech savvy users installing ad blockers has grown to something that’s easy enough for everyday users. And by all accounts, ad blockers have become a huge factor in online advertising.
Publishers were already facing a situation where a mobile user was worth substantially less than a desktop user, due to reduced screen real estate and receptivity to advertising. The addition of ad blockers to the mix has only served to speed up that revenue reduction for publishers.
Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is. Ads behave badly! They take a lot of time and bandwidth to download, slowing down the user experience. The New York Times recently published a story showing the massive impact of ads on download time. Considering this complete overkill by publishers, they really only have themselves to blame.
If that New York Times link didn’t come up for you, perhaps you’ve exceeded the number of New York Times stories you’re permitted to read for free this month, without paying for a subscription. Rather than load up the page with an annoying number of ads, after a certain number of articles per month, you have to subscribe in order to keep reading. A number that they set, without consulting consumers to see if it was in their best interest. An arbitrary number. If you’ve hit that number but you still feel that you deserve to read the story above, check out some ways to bypass it.
Sorry about that Observer story I linked to — I know it has ads on it. One of the ads that I saw was for a movie opening this weekend, The Good Dinosaur. Man, that looks like a great movie! I really want to see it this weekend, but the theater I prefer to go to is already sold out. For the whole weekend? Why would they make it so difficult for me to see their content? Why wouldn’t they add more showings? Thankfully, BitTorrent exists! I’ll be able to watch it this weekend from my home, as I prefer to do anyway.
Is there anything better than eating popcorn while you watch a movie? I don’t think so. Before I download the movie, I’m going to head to the corner store to grab some. The only thing is, the popcorn I like is only $2 on Amazon, but my corner store sells it for $5! Can you believe that? $5 for a bag of popcorn! That’s not what I’ll be paying!
It’s clearly my right to have whatever I want, whenever I want it, at a price that I believe is fair. Anyone who disagrees is just too in bed with the “old school.”
OK, sarcasm aside… I do understand that the mobile web can be a frustrating, ugly place for consumers. Often times, they click a link from Facebook not knowing where it will lead, and they didn’t explicitly give permission to download 40MB worth auto-playing video ads from 30 different ad networks in order to view one crappy listicle. Ad blockers are a response to that.
I also understand that consumers often times win these battles. When the internet was advanced enough to allow consumers to download free music more easily than they could purchase it, song-stealing flourished. And the music business has never recovered.
I’m less frustrated by the consumers who install and employ these ad blockers, and more perplexed by Apple and the other companies that have helped bring these technologies to the mainstream, or even those that seek to encourage this behavior.
Publishers need time to figure out how to monetize audiences and support quality work. Some day, all the VC money will dry up, and content companies will be forced to support their work with real revenue. We’re not there yet, and that evolution is going to take time to figure out. Pulling out a revenue stream now with ad blockers is not going to accelerate the pace of innovation…it’s more likely to just take money out of the pockets of publishers, and eventually their employees.
PS- I hope those WSJ links worked for you…
