[Quote:]

Back in December of last year, we signed an experimental ad deal to run a series of ads on the site, where a single advertiser would effectively have all the ads for a 24-hour period. As a part of that, there would be an ad at the top that temporarily “pushed down” the content for a few seconds, before pulling back up. Nothing was covered. Nothing prevented readers from getting the content. And the “pushdown” ad only showed once per visitor and never again. We went back and forth about it, but decided it was worth an experiment — especially since no content was blocked or covered. I won’t name the advertiser who was in the first test… but many of you did notice, and did not like it. We got a lot of complaints. So we killed the additional tests. I won’t lie: these deals were for quite a bit of money — a very large premium on the amount of money we typically make from advertising. But when we saw how annoyed our users were, we realized immediately what a bad idea this was and told the others who were scheduled to run similar campaigns, “sorry.” We gave up a lot of money to do so, but what it came down to in our mind was that it wasn’t worth it.

And when I say “wasn’t worth it,” I don’t mean just to us or our community — but to the advertiser. Most of the anger we saw over the original ad campaign wasn’t directed at us — it was directed at the company doing the advertising. So we told a bunch of companies willing to pay us a lot of money not that we didn’t want their money — but that they didn’t want to buy that kind of advertising, because it would only damage their own brands.

[..]

Along those lines, if you are running a media site, if you’re having trouble making money, it’s your fault. Don’t blame your readers. Don’t blame your community by telling them they’re “devastating” a site by blocking ads or failing to pay for a paywall. As the producers of that site, it’s your responsibility to do things to get that site paid for. If you don’t like what we’re doing on Techdirt, go ahead and block our ads. Sure, just like Ars, many of our ads are paid for based on impressions and we may make less money from those ads, but that’s our problem and the problem of advertisers who aren’t willing to do more unique, creative and compelling projects that benefit the community rather than annoy it. We want the advertisers, sponsors and partners we work with to get the best results possible in a way that everyone wins. And that’s not by forcing people who don’t want to see their ads to see them, or by pissing off our readers by blocking them if they use ad blocking. It’s by taking on the responsibility ourselves to put together compelling programs that make everything more valuable for all participants.