Ad Blocking More Than Just Bad Ads

14 Nov 2016

Ad blockers have been making the news quite a bit for the last few months. Publishers hate them, and consumers love them. I published my own feelings on the subject earlier this year.

Apparently, the number of users ad blocking has gotten to the point that some on-line sites are willing to block the ad blocker users. They are willing to lose customers, rather than address the reason for ad blockers in the first place.

But there are two problems that I see with the plan. The first problem is that my employer filters a lot of websites-anything it may deem malicious, or even possibly malicious, gets blocked. Apparently some of the advertising sources are blocked, so digital content would be blocked. There was period of time when articles at Forbes and MLive would not show. I have no control over that.

The second problem is that I-and I’m sure I’m not alone-am not willing to pay subscriptions for dozens of different on-line magazines or media sites. Which means if you block your site, consumers won’t read, comment on, or share your content. You lose word of mouth advertising for your news, and well as ad sales.

The argument is that digital ads pay for content, but I came across an interesting article a couple days ago with these even more interesting stats:

Media Approval Rating: 19 percent

Americans with high confidence in the media: 6 percent

So, based on these numbers, not only do consumers not like your advertising methods, they’re not overly impressed with the content you’re providing, which is probably an understatement. But, your brilliant plan is to block your sub-par content from consumers instead of looking at your own business practices. In the end, you may be doing us a favor, and for that, I thank you.

Tagged: ad blocking