Forbes Tests New Tactics to Combat Ad Blocking
wsj.com
wsj.com
One wonders (he said) whether Forbes might want to pursue success by publishing irresistable articles -- not by seeking new ways to attach ticks to passers-by.
HN wasn't even a thing. but every slashdot article pointing to it, I ignored and looked over the comments if anybody pasted the behind login/paywall text.
Interestingly, we sort of know what this conflict is: it's yellow journalists vs muckrackers.
* There are, in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.*
— Theodore Roosevelt
The dying business model is easily-detectable, obvious ads that can get defeated by NoScript or a regular expression.
My original point was that driving traffic that doesn't generate revenue one way or another is actively bad for a commercial site.
If they were smart they'd realize that long term their monetization method is going to change, and the value of someone as a lifetime reader is worth more than the lost revenue of a couple years of adblocking.
There is something to be said about adblockers still seeing native ads, but thats unfortunately the route we are heading down.
There are a million benefits from high traffic, even if that traffic doesn't click ads. I'm not going to list them, they are dead obvious.
Its then easier to convert existing semi-related (blog) traffic into purchasers then it would be to get all new traffic.
It's going to be difficult to have any interesting discussion, then, because it's not at all obvious to me what benefits high traffic has for a typical commercial site if that traffic isn't generating revenue or providing something else of value.
Obviously if the purpose of your site isn't to make money then things are different, but given that we're explicitly talking about models for revenue generation here, I think it's reasonable to assume commercial websites that are intended to be profit-making.
So I think its easier to take existing traffic and profit off of it by selling it (ads) or selling to it. Those are easier options than first getting the traffic, then taking those steps.
That may be true, but if we assume for the sake of discussion that ad blockers are effective and visitors using them won't generate revenue that way, that only leaves selling to those people in one way or another.
If you're running some sort of e-commerce site, that's fine, though I'm guessing we're talking about quite different kinds of commercial site in this case. There probably aren't a lot of e-commerce sites that also use major ad networks in conjunction with their content marketing as a significant source of revenue.
Likewise if you have some sort of referral scheme available, you can essentially replace ads with some form of product placement that is less likely to be blocked and let someone else do the actual selling.
But what about purely informational sites, or something like a review site that wants to be seen to be impartial and therefore doesn't want to use direct affiliate marketing links for products under review?
I wonder if they fired the arrogant prick who suggested to block all users who have Adblock.
Maybe I am a bad person but I love seeing big corporations, used to bullying their way around, finding out that their old dirty tricks don't work in the new world.
The problem with that mindset is that people tend to think it's also OK to block the little guys who self-publish, or even places that have amazing or great content who deserve the ad impressions. People always say "Yeah, I unblock my favorite sites". Unfortunately, they're just 1 guy (and who knows if they actually do it). The other 99.999% of people do not unblock their favorite sites. They just don't give a shit.
Even the rare few who may give a shit due to stronger empathy or morality will usually justify it away in their heads "Oh, I'm afraid of malware" or some other BS excuse which works to trick themselves into feeling better about blocking every ad.
I agree that the current ad driven free content model vs no ads ever stance of the numerous ad blocking users are a problem for content creators big and small, but I feel it is up to them to develop a sustainable business model to defeat this stand-off without alienating or antagonizing their user base.
There are other (quite simple) plugins to stop any malware from running (like noscript, etc) while at the same time, not having an adblocker even installed. The two are not mutually inclusive. Thus, it isn't ridiculous in the least. It's actually ridiculous to imply that if you have one, you must have the other.
More importantly, these days, you only find malware ads (consistently) on real shady sites. When it makes it to big reputable sites, it actually makes the news because of how rare it has been. There are dozens of other ways to get malware (software downloads, etc) but you don't see people ceasing to download anything off the entire internet, they take a risk because they want the product. The risk is virtually identical -- it depends on where you go and what you do.
> Ads are being used to distribute malware through reputable sites
Sure, that has happened. But it's rare and again, it makes the news when it happens because of how rare it is. You make it sound like reddit.com, facebook.com or news.google.com serves up malware every other day. That just isn't the case. Not even close.
Sorry, until your industry sets professional standards I will continue to block ads and not feel bad.
Oh, sorry if I mislead you. I'm actually not in the industry at all. I used to be a publisher though, had my own website until I sold it. My comments were me empathizing and seeing things from the point of view of a content creator. That's for whom I argue.
> ...
> Sure, that has happened. But it's rare and again, it makes the news when it happens because of how rare it is.
I don't care how rare it is. It's common enough that this year alone, I've read about MSN, The New York Times, the BBC, the Dutch commercial broadcaster RTL, and other reputable sites distributing malware through major ad networks including Google.
If ad networks can't get their act together and value my security, I have no problem helping myself and boycotting their business. I don't need to investigate how to protect myself and help their business succeed if they don't have to do a better job stopping malvertising.
I am more than happy to support organizations and publishers when needed, and most of the content I consume today I either support through subscriptions, donations, or have switched to in-line advertising ("This article/edition/episode of <publication> has been made possible by <insert sponsor here>. <section about sponsor product>. <Actual content>.") But I have no love lost on advertising companies.
I realize this can't work for everyone, but it's time to adapt or die. Ad blocking is here, and given the terrible (at times deservedly so) reputation and status of advertising, it isn't going away. People dislike ads, and telling them they can't have what they want without being force fed ads will only direct them elsewhere.
Blocking ad networks because of malware is not a BS excuse. The only 0-day I ever got hit by, to my knowledge, was straight off a major ad network on a well-known and generally reputable site linked from a popular news/discussion site for geeks you may have heard of. If you've followed any links from HN today, it could have been you.
If someone is then unwilling to share their content with me because I block their ads, I understand and don't pretend they owe me anything. But I don't turn off my security tools, for anyone, ever, and I consider content blockers to be security tools.
I never said that. I said it's a BS excuse. I think it's perfectly fine to be afraid of malware. But you can run a couple of plugins (like noscript, and uninstall java) and solve that problem without even installing an adblocker. Which means you can have ads without the malware if you actually wanted to make the effort to do so.
So yes, it's an excuse since there are plenty of solutions which exist, some only requiring the download of a single plugin.
(I run uBlock and have it block all third-party JS with a few white-listed exceptions, but I suspect most people would describe that as an Adblocker. And it isn't necessarily wrong, since it blocks ads. Just not specifically.)
Small players can be more nimble and work out much much better monetization strategies than display ads. Also ad blockers are only really capable of blocking the big networks. Plenty of small sites run their own platforms, evading the blocks. It's not a very well-known solution, but it's there.
Nobody owes me anything, so I won't complain if a website turns me away, but I'll never apologize for for taking care of myself.
It's more complex than that, I'm afraid. People don't create content or innovate for free. I'm sure there are a rare few who do, but most people hope for the promise of a financial incentive. Having a financial incentive to innovate or create content is a good thing and life without ads would have a butterfly like effect on that innovation. I highly doubt the internet would resemble anything like it does today if ads didn't exist (people take for granted it would look exactly the same as it does now). Nope, without ads, I doubt the internet would have evolved much beyond 1997. And I remember the internet back in 1997. There was some neat things going on, not many ads, but practically zero content compared to today.
Without ads to subsidize content, most of your favorite TV shows wouldn't exist, most of your favorite websites wouldn't exist (think google.com, youtube.com, etc)... After all, google.com doesn't make much if anything off their search engine, 97% of their revenue comes from their advertising department.
The advertising on the search engine pages is 3% of their revenue?
89% of Google's revenue comes from their ads they display on their search results, and in their adchoices network.
If they want to charge for their content, then go ahead and charge and produce something valuable enough that people are willing to pay for it. 99.999% of articles online are just time-wasting bullshit that has nearly no practical influence on anything important in one's life.
Oh and what planet are you from that worrying about malware is considered BS?
For the little guy you mention, being a little guy myself, I have no sympathy if he still wants to serve to the users whatever gets pushed by the ad network.
He has to find other ways. How about self-hosting ads? If he doesn't trust the advertiser in his server, why would I trust him on my web-browser?
Or non-intrusive ads? Adblockers usually allow non-intrusive ads, unless explicitly disabled.
This is an improvement? Stop conflating advertising with data mining and maybe people wouldn't block your ads so much.
> “Email address is always very valuable and, with proper terms of service, figuring out a way to monetize these things in the right way could be interesting,” Mr. DVorkin said.
"Interesting", perhaps, but almost certainly not worth it for readers.
> Meanwhile, the company is focusing more effort on “native” advertising products such as its BrandVoice program, which allows marketers to publish content to its site. That content is not as susceptible to ad blocking because it is published directly to Forbes’s content-management system, instead of through “ad-serving” systems.
Native ads destroy the publisher's journalistic credibility. Is that not plainly obvious to everyone?
As a result, I no longer read Forbes articles. They can go fuck themselves if they want that level of control over my machine.
The registration piece is also interesting. From a monetization standpoint, they can then email the crap out of those people (including pushing native email ads that they likely bill on a CPM rate for).
Logged-in users also give Forbes another interesting monetization option in the form of cookie onboarding services like LiveRamp[1] and such. You can get a CPM rate for simply linking logged-in users to the cookie onboarder's platform which they then match against cookies from advertisers to help them "retag" people for retargeting purposes that may have deleted past cookies, or jumped across devices.
Cookie onboarding gets interesting because from a user standpoint, the impact is perhaps a very slightly increased load time (loading the onboarding tag), and ads that have more accurate targeting. But in theory this allows publishers to offer content that is "ad free" because the user is paying for it in the form of data. A lot of mobile providers include this as well which is annoying because it is harder to detect and block, and they sure as crap don't disclose it.
Not making a statement on whether these developments are good or bad, rather just commenting on the interesting nature of them.
I agree this is an interesting idea, though not necessarily one I would personally choose to use. It might be a short-lived one, though, if the tracking shows that someone who isn't willing to view ads immediately also has a low chance of conversion for any later ads targeted based on the data given initially.
Sponsored stories. Now that's hitting the bottom. It's an insult to the memory of Malcolm Forbes Sr.
I would honestly doubt that this is an entirely new thing for Forbes and most publishers or outlets.
If every site was ad free but behind paywall, how could hacker news even exist?
also remember that every newspaper in the world started with money from political parties and/or unions.
What possible good could come of that?
> Login with Forbes
But they don't actually say how to signup. For that, you need to hit the "Terms of Service" link. So I created a blog account, but I still can't login to the front page.
They're wedged.
And then there's this gem:
> We will never post on your behalf without first obtaining your explicit permission.
Just exactly WTF does that mean? How would any sane person want a site to post on their behalf?
Many justifiable uses. Every time I go skiing snow.com posts a fb update for me, then my friends know I'm skiing and call me. Not for forbes though.
Share to Facebook without leaving Forbes?
Those numbers are bogus. There's no way 40% of people will disable ad blocking just to read Forbes.
Or, instead of two different browsers, you can use xraru [1] to ad-hoc launch as many independent ephemeral "incognito" sessions with the same browser as you like. This way, next to enhanced privacy, you also get as a bonus some protection from malicious websites stealing your cookies/local files/etc...
This would allow Forbes etc. to use Google Micropayments for payment and visitors would pay 0.5¢ or something for every page viewed
A popup would show the first time you visit the domain to ask if you're okay with paying for content in future
I wouldn't have to pay specific subscriptions then, I could choose not to view sites I don't think are worth the value, sites I only ever visit infrequently could get something back for my visit
What could possibly go wrong?
Well atleast they didn't start a food delivery service like NYT: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-05/new-york-t...
It seems the big problem with micropayments is that it looks like a single content provider can't do much in the area on their own. I suspect that to become an established and useful payment method, micropayments will need a safe, reliable, standardised, and trivially easy to use mechanism, something that several big players can get behind and create some momentum.
Musicians can at least still monetise gigs since not every kid who records a song in his bedroom can fill a stadium. But for newspapers there doesn't seem to be much of a defensible position left beyond brand, and the pressure to keep producing new content is obviously impacting their ability to keep producing high-quality, investigative stories, etc. Instead, lots just seem to fill their web sites with a continuous stream of not particularly differentiated articles. So I think newspapers do have a big problem on their hands, and the solution isn't obvious (beyond diversification perhaps)...
Well, for Forbes, it works.
At home I block all ad server domains with a host file on my router. This triggers the Adblock wall. When I am at work or on the road I get a message "Thanks for turning off your adblock."
However, at least Forbes is only deluding themselves and not their clients. There are eyebrow raising demographic issues with internet ads.
I am not explaining this very clearly, but it's so, so bizarre that somehow it becomes my capitalist duty to watch ads, because you're not some monster who wants newspapers to crumble, are you? Watch your ads like a good boy.
When I look at a physical newspaper, nobody is telling me either you look at this ad-filled page or you must not open any page. Nobody is telling me, you can't cover ads with your hands or a book. You must look at ads in order to look at this magazine. If you don't carefully read all of the ads in this magazine, you are not allowed to read this magazine.
It just so happens that with a computer I can more conveniently hide ads, but that's somehow more wrong than covering them with my hand?
I also just find it fundamentally strange that by me viewing ads someone gets money. Why? Well, because the person who made the ad is hoping that I will buy something off them or entice others to buy something off them. This is also strange, I don't want to buy anything or tell anyone else to buy anything. Why is me being indoctrinated by a third party the way that the website gets money? It's a bizarre situation. This is a very strange world we have built. There's gotta be a better economic model that doesn't require guilting me into viewing ads.
Really blocking ads in the physical newspaper hurts whoever bought the ads, blocking them online hurts the actual newspaper. Maybe newspapers should adapt and presell ad space on their pages!
(My university online paper does this because pageviews are so low that they wouldn't earn a dime on adsense. The local businesses who prebuy ads effectively sponsor the website).
But I guess the answer is that you no longer like that site and stop going their, so they don't get future ad views?
*economically. Right now the dollar value of your security/privacy/etc is $0 because you generally aren't willing to pay more for it.
To reach people like me, they will have to serve the ad from their own site.