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Ars Technica
Ars Technica recently changed their site in a small way – if you were using ad-blockers, the content would be hidden for you until you disabled ad blocking for the site.
My first reaction was “fine, you can do that, it’s your right. As a result, I won’t read your content, and I’ll no longer link to your content either. If you think keeping me away is worth keeping away everybody I usually tell about the things I see, that’s your choice to make”.
The next day, an update to the AdBlock subscriptions disabled the blocking, which meant the overall effect was just another futile step in the war between advertisers and adblockers, and not really worth talking about.
But I’ve been thinking about what Ars is saying here. A summary:
[Quote:]
There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won’t hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis.
[..]
Let me stop and clarify quickly that I am not saying that we are on the verge of vanishing from the Internet. But we, like many, many sites are greatly affected by ad blocking, and it is a very worrisome trend.
Let me paraphrase, and I’m sure some of you will disagree with what I’m doing here, feel free to use the comment box.
What they say is: “It’s really not right for you ad-blocking folks to deprive us of income we could otherwise make selling your page views to advertisers. We know you won’t buy the advertised products but, just between you and us, we can get away with selling the advertisers false hope because they can’t tell beforehand which page views definitely won’t pan out”.
Now let me ask you the obvious follow-up question: if Ars is this eager to lie to their advertisers about their public, just to make sure their income is a bit higher than it would be if they didn’t lie, what makes you think they won’t be just as eager to lie to you, the reader?
I always thought the content on Ars was high quality, well done work. Now, I’m not so sure any more.
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I used to think Ars was first-rate, but I’ve been more and more disappointed in them over the past year. Most of their stuff seems to be recycled these days. I’m much more pleased with SlashDot, and of course, The Reg, these days. As for ad blockers (which I use), most of the internet would be pretty much unusable without them. The site publishers have only themselves to blame for this. If they were more circumspect in their use of ads, especially ones with moving elements that distract one from the real contents of the page, then most of us would not be using blockers. After all, sometimes an advertisement leads one to something one needs or is interested in for one reason or another. Publishers need to remember that the Internet is NOT TV. You have our eyes because we want to be there, for whatever reason. Treat us with respect and we will respond in kind.
In order for Ars to “lie” to their advertisers that way, the advertisers would have to be as stupid as you think they are. They’re not.
I’m sure the advertisers are smart enough to know what is happening, and I have no beef with them on this – it is the Ars attitude I’m railing against…
It’s the “We know you won’t buy the advertised product” where you start assuming, and are probably wrong. Advertisement is not directly about sales, it is about manipulation. Have people see your ad enough times, and the next time they go shopping, guess which brands they will think of. And how they will think of these brands – what they will associate them with.
In order to achieve this manipulation, people must see the ads – the more times, the better. That’s the way the manipulation works, even when you think “I’m not falling for ads”, you still get manipulated.
What Ars is saying here is: we get our money from manipulating our readers with ads. Those readers that block the ads, do not want to be manipulated. They keep us from getting more money, in fact they only cost money. Please accept the manipulation, so we can earn more money.
I wonder how people would have reacted if they had said: look, we need the money. For you readers, the site is free, we get the money from ad-manipulation. If you all block the ads, we get no money. To continue with a free to read site, we’d have to put the ads inside the stories. Then you won’t know which is the unbiased opinion of the editors and which is the ad. You do now, and can continue to do so if you see the ads. So we make sure you see the ads.
But they didn’t say that. Why? My guess is the money became more important than the site itself. Minds you, that’s an assumption – mine.
In order to achieve this manipulation, people must see the ads – the more times, the better
That’s exactly why I always tell advertisers: if you manage to make me see your ad, that’s quite special, the way I block stuff. I reward you with a blacklist entry – I won’t buy your product until I’ve forgotten that I’ve seen your ad. They more times you manage to make me see the same ad, the longer that period will be.
free publications in print advertise in the margins of pages too.
it’s one thing to hire a monkey to sit at your kitchen table and black out ads in publications you receive so that you don’t have to deal with seeing them. it’s different, i think, to make an attempt to reject delivery of the parts of publications the bring the publisher revenue and still expect them to hand you copy.
the distinction applies here, because the method by which internet ad revenues are tallied it by logged hits on the ad. if your browser sidesteps the ad query then the advertiser doesn’t pay the content producer. since the queries are what is being manipulated, you are essentially having the publisher print you special copy sans ads (this could turn into a semantic cat fight very easily). i think they are entitled to refuse you the privilege of special privilege.
with regards to “lying” to their sponsors, i think this perspective is rather naïve. people who put ads in newspapers don’t expect that every reader is going to thoughtfully parse every ad in a print publication. They just hope that maybe some potential customer might see their ad and be like “whoah! i was just looking for this.” The marketing people who wrangle advertisements for them may be a lower form of life, but they are a very well adapted bunch (think cockroach) who have made a clever niche for themselves and know precisely how they fit into the ecosystem.
All that said, i think that web sites need to show some respect to their readership with regard to ads. I don’t expect print ads to sudden blot out the entire article i’m reading with an obnoxious popup trying to get me to buy random crap and not working properly when i try to dismiss it because multi-platform testing of the ‘close’ link wasn’t as important as testing for the ‘interrupt your reading’ feature. The browser is a pretty flexible platform for internet experience shaping, and I think advertisers and marketing people do not show enough restraint. There’s a workable compromise in here someplace, even if it’s just QOS type stuff where advertising trackers will still somehow register a hit, but you don’t have to see the actual ad. The best of both worlds…
There’s an interesting difference between advertising on the web and advertising in print. It is very unlikely that people who use adblock do so because of advertising on sites like Ars, because ars isn’t as bad as a lot of other site in its obnoxiousness in advertising. A lot of other sites, however, are, and they drive people to install blockers, which then block all advertising everywhere. A comparison in print would be if you subscribe to ten magazines, all of them with good business content that you need to read, but one of them has porn advertising you really don’t like next to the perfectly good articles. You then install an adblocker on your mailbox, and all ten magezines no longer have any advertising. I wouldn’t blame the nine good magazines, but I also wouldn’t bother to fine tune the adbocker to exclude nine out of ten magazines.
John, you’ve taken up the unwavering position of “fuck all advertising and anyone who wants to fund a business from its revenue”, so it’s not real interesting to discuss it with you.
Marketing has gone from “Hey, we have this product, and you might like it” which is useful, some of the time, because you might want to know what’s playing at the cinema, and ooh, look, a coupon for chocolate Doritos, let’s try those to We’re going to stuff your mailbox, stuff your email until email is essentially broken for most people, clutter your screen with blinking, flashing, noisy crap, pop-ups, popovers, tool bars, keyword popups, and lies. We want you to feel unclean if you don’t use our sparkling douche, we’re going to tell you this crap-in-a-bag salty, greasy, artificially -flavored, -colored, additive-laden garbage is good for you because it has no trans-fats (but extra HCFS) or low carbs(but extra fat). We’re going to hammer you with ads until your desire to throttle the Free(not really) Credit Report guy keeps you awake at night. Head on. Apply directly to the forehead.
I’m perfectly willing to leave my position of “fuck all advertising” if I see a glimmer understanding with advertisers about this, but I don’t. And as long as I don’t, I am, indeed, not wavering.
John, I am blocking as well as much Ads as possible, but how would you sell then any new product to the world? At one point of time you need to make a simple Ad, and don´t forget, once in a while you post entries about your new apps as well. Agree, you´re are not that flashy and invasive, but the message behind it is the same: “Buy it”
once in a while you post entries about your new apps as well
On my own website, yes. I didn’t buy ad space anywhere else. So you, and others, found out about it without me having to barf all over other websites. The referrer stats seem to indicate that people are finding my products without ever having heard about me before and I’m buying zero advertising space. So I dispute the need to make a simple ad just to have people find out about new products. There’s a difference between advertising and making a website for (and about) a product and then letting the natural flow of the Internet take its course. Normal search engine indexing, and people who write voluntarily about my products, without being compensated by me for that, seems to be working fine for me.
You should take a look at a (n American) newspaper from 100 years ago, chock full of ads, some of them for “health tonics” likely of no benefit, and reams of other nonsense, lots of it directly playing to people’s insecurities. 50 years ago it was “you need a new car every other year” and “do you have the latest electric kitchen appliance yet?”
In some places we’re seeing alternatives: the free ad-supported iPhone app vs the ad-free paid version. I’d like to see alternatives in more channels–e.g. a viable subscription alternative for sites like Ars so they have another way to make money. I’m very curious what’s going to happen on the iPad.
I’m very curious what’s going to happen on the iPad.
So am I.