Axel Springer bans adblock users from Bild online
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Anonymous micro payments would be very welcomed though .
I do not think that we should give media more power to manipulate people individually (block content or speech, show differently biased content for different individuals etc).
Disclaimer: I do not use ad-blocking but I have noticed that ads have become more and more intrusive and aggressive and Internet is becoming more and more like TV where you could not read or watch something without constant interruption (the main purpose why people actually choose Internet over TV). This means that I am more and more willing to use some ad-blocking solution or I just do not visit places with intrusive advertising tactics.
So possibly the real solution is less and less aggressive ads and especially no ads after payment (no there is no excuse for that beside publisher greed).
With blogs and citizen journalism and everything else there are now millions of sources of "content", and content by itself has become almost value-less. I think good content is getting more and more valuable by contrast, although its market is probably shrinking.
To the ad-hating, legitimate fans of the publication, there's probably minor difference. That's the group this plan is targeting.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewzeitlin/the-washington-post-b...
> In one case, using Chrome with AdBlock on, the Post had a dialog box redirecting users to enter their email for a free six week subscription. The anti-AdBlock measures don’t seem comprehensive just yet — we were able to view articles after clicking through from a search results link in Firefox with the ad blocking software turned on. But when we clicked through to another article on the site, the redirect screen popped up.
I don't read Bild but as I've said before, most content I view online falls under entertainment anyway. So, being blocked on sites as an AdBlock user (like Forbes now does) can only cut my procrastination time short, which isn't a bad thing.
Plus, ads are not the only way to make money online. So, if it isn't working for a company, then it's time to pursue another business model.
[1]http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/10/05/blendle-is-up-to-someth...
For most businesses that isn't actually an option. You can only try something else if you have the necessary capital to fund a pivot, and few businesses do. The majority of sites you use won't try something else; they'll close down instead.
That's fine, it happens to a large percentage of businesses, and they'll be replaced by new businesses trying new ideas. I'm pointing out that "Try a new business model" is rarely an option. "fail fast" is a startup maxim for a reason. If you don't discover what isn't working quickly you'll just plain fail.
[0] http://adblock.mozdev.org/
[1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/browser-makers-warned-against-a...
[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20071011004456/http://whyfirefoxi...
[3] http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-d...
If it's a site that just runs Reuters feeds or press releases with some 'editorialisation' then they'll likely feel the impact of the back-button.
Recently I tried searching for details of the new Light.co camera. The first two pages of Google results were filled with exactly the same release, regurgitated on dozens of websites. None of them were useful to me, but it shows how much competition there is for eyeballs.
When we detect the use of an ad blocker, we show a small appeal at the bottom to either whitelist the site or make a donation. Total donations received in the last 1 year: $0.
uBlock origin with default settings seems to load their "content" fine and without ads. If that changes, I'm sure one of the optional filters like "anti-adblock killer" will be updated accordingly
Chromium-based browser do not support inline script tag filtering, but you can still block all inline script tags at once, and the site will load fine, though with some broken functionality.[2]
[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Inline-script-tag-fil...
[2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/821#issuecomment-14...
A LOT of people give a shit about the Bild.
The German people are also very technologically capable and highly privacy minded. The linked article cites that 30% of German users have some sort of adblocking software installed.
My gut tells me that by the holiday season we'll see more major sites blocking ad-blockers.
And, of course, we'll just use different tools. Or better yet, change our browser signatures. After all, it's a courtesy to content providers for consumers to tell them what kinds of tools they're using. That courtesy can be rescinded.
This entire spy vs. spy scenario makes me sad. I'm very sorry that the internet thought that folks walking by a storefront looking at your sales copy was a monetizable event. It is not. It was simply a fluke of the way the default technology was constructed.
And now I fully expect to see large, well-funded players enter the fray -- on the side of content providers. That's also a bad thing. Going to be a lot of pain before this gets sorted out.
Terminal with w3m - all text visible including the 'skip to content' accessibility link at the top of each page. Appears to be full text of articles (my German is sadly quite limited).
Yes, I agree, some kind of arms race will no doubt commence.
Worst case: we lose all bandwidth winnings, and have to simulate functioning ads to content distributors.
P.S.: NoScript blocks the Javascript warning for me, unless I allow the bild.de domain. The adblock-blocker only works with NoScript fully disabled. I'm using Firefox with uBlock and NoScript.
There's a huge world out there most people have never heard of most things. One could say "Beatles? I've never heard of them? Or AFX? Never heard of him" but that wouldn't make them unimportant.
Springer is huge in its business.
Game on.
Edit: Clarification: Most ad blockers collapse the divs where ads would have appeared. That's the tell I use to detect ad blockers. There are other, more sophisticated techniques but this is easy and works a good % of the time.
If you have experience in this I would love to read about some of it as it sounds fascinating.