4:)

Ad blockers have been around for many years. I have not found them to be a problem.

As mostly a lurker here, I have to say that I doubt these micro-topics on all the little thoughts that occur to you are of much use to anyone. Perhaps the earnings and observations thread is the appropriate place for these things.

4:)

What was on stake this time? :)

It's game over.

The game will be over when the big guy says it's over. G should be more concerned than you and other publishers (combined), but it's not. If ad blockers become a real threat, trust me it will unleash all the evil, hiding behind that "don't be evil" mask, to protect the flow of income.

yep, blockers vs google, we all know who will win

Uhm, isn't it "It's DONE, put a fork in it"?

Don't feed the trolls

I run Blockmetrics on my site and I see our average according to the service is 30% blocking. We have opted to offer a "donation" option to our visitors and a few accept it. Users who donate are put in a whitelist and can continue to block ads, but at least we get some beer money.

Those who use ad blockers are mainly from countries like Russia, Turkey, China, Arabian countries... I just compared some metrics - Overall adsense page views are about 85% of what GA registered, but for the US difference is less than 1%.

Freitasm, interesting.

Just expanding: users who donate via Blockmetrics are still being served Blockmetrics code, but since they've donated they won't be bugged again. Blockmetrics doesn't tell me who donated - could be anyone, even not logged in users.

We do offer a subscription service, which we started at $60/year. Very few used it. We dropped to $25/year and we saw quite a few new subscriptions, but still hundred in a hundred thousand strong membership.

Subscriptions give very fast page loads because the ad scripts aren't even sent down the line, so the html is smaller, and pages render faster, even if someone is already using adblock.

However there are those who want everything for free. Some say "I already pay my Internet service who should I pay to read something now?" or "Why should I use my Internet service to show ads for your benefit?"

These people obviously think everything is free - servers, capacity, CDNs, database, etc, etc. I wonder if they would go a day without receiving their salary...

but still hundred in a hundred thousand strong membership

Do you mean a one hundred or several hundred subcriptions? I've considered offering a subscription option but didn't think I'd get many takers since so far everything they see has been free.

Checking the numbers. We have 75,000 registered users. Of those we have about ten percent who actively participated in the site over the last five months. We have sold 230 subscriptions in the last 12 months.

At $25/year a sub is a lot less than the ad revenue from each individual user. But if it makes them happy and doesn't affect my reveue that much (actually some might even be plus since they might have blocked ads)...

We obviously have to find other ways of generating revenued. For example we've worked with a local mobile operator for the last year in a sponsored blog. The difference is that we involved the community. Instead of them sending new smartphones for us to review (for free, as that wouldn't be charged to keep a separation between editorial and sales) we actually select from our registered users those who participate most and seem to have good knowledge. These users receive the smartphones and account credits and can then write up to six blog posts over a month. They can write about anything, good or bad. There's no input from the telco on this. And this series of blogs is something I can actually charge them - managing the blog, selecting the candidates from our users, making sure there's a flow of posts coming from them, solving any issues with their accounts, etc.

We have to be creative to make more money ;)

for the US difference is less than 1%

true. most u.s. visitors are naturally clueless when it comes to the interwebz. they still use internet explorer en masse and even installing the adblock plus addon (not available for ie) would be too difficult.
nothing against the americans, let's face it: naive visitors are more click-happy and combined with the relatively high click prices these countries make for a good deal of webmaster income.

Those who use ad blockers are mainly from countries like Russia, Turkey, China, Arabian countries

untrue. in germany on average 25% of surfers meanwhile use adblock plus. depending on demography some webmasters report up to 60(!) percent. i see it in my stats. i have an international website and the ad impressions for germany are way behind the page impressions. firefox is the predominant browser, followed by chrome.
german news websites have recently started a campaign to inform about their economical issues with adblocker users. result: 129% increase in adblock plus downloads. people are extremely advertising averse over here. it's a real threat and absolutely something to be concerned about.

you see, adblocker usage is largely country-specific and a matter of mentality.

freitasm, thanks for the numbers :)

No problems. Mind you those are "registered users" and "logged in users". We actually serve over 500,000 unique visitors a month, so obviously the vast majority are landing from other links, search, etc.

german news websites have recently started a campaign to inform about their economical issues with adblocker users. result: 129% increase in adblock plus downloads

Hehe.

The ad industry only has itself to blame. The more it profiles the people; the more it erodes their privacy; the more it links different site profiles and offline site profiles the more people will fight back.

If you want to turn humans into money machines by stuffing them with adverts then do it in a more humane way.

The more the ad industry targets users the more users will use shields to protect themselves.

The ad industry only has itself to blame. The more it profiles the people; the more it erodes their privacy; the more it links different site profiles and offline site profiles the more people will fight back.

If you want to turn humans into money machines by stuffing them with adverts then do it in a more humane way.

The more the ad industry targets users the more users will use shields to protect themselves.

YOU SAID IT! Thumbs up!

That's extraordinary. freitasm, you must have a huge site! I get excited over 500 unique visitors a day.

Germans are more savvy likely in all areas of life. I agree Americans have no clue about the web, but their "clue" is only going to go UP over time. They're also getting a lot more savvy about "apps", and Adblock is one of those. They're using smart phones and iPad devices to surf the web more and more, over traditional desktops -- the problem is that those smart phones and iPad devices are FAR MORE tapped into the "app" world than desktops.

I also found Adblock itself pretty easy to find and install. Right off the Google app site. Though the "plus" version was not as apparent to me.

I want to reiterate I DELETED this awful app for one, because it's only contributing to all of us losing income, and for two, occasionally I DO like to see an advertisement -- and turning it on and off I find cumbersome and annoying.

the safari browser includes a button as standard now, that strips out all the ads from a page (the 'reader' button). you dont even need to add an extension.


but if it becomes a major problem then the ad companies will just change the way they deliver the ads.

i remember years ago i dabbled with adding a few text links, and they we're doing it through a .php script even back then.
you just put a script on your site and it somehow added the updated links into your page as normal html, not javascript or iframes. i cant remember exactly how they did it, but the links were indistinguishable from normal page text -- just plain <a> links with no extra query strings or anything.

presumably adsense could be done the same way as that... entered into the page as normal text.

I had a droll experience with ebooks a few years ago. Some printed books come with a publisher's advertising insert listing their other current offerings. When the book itself is old enough to be in the public domain, this information is interesting in its own right,* so we generally retain it. I typically put it inside a div with a transparent name like "pub_ads". Well, some of those names were a little too transparent, because I noticed that my browser wasn't displaying this section :) Oops.

Now I give advertising sections a less obvious descriptor. But I keep comment lines like <!-- ads begin here --> because ad blockers don't seem to heed those.


* Especially when you have the fun of making half the listings into active links in the form "example.com/ebooks/12345/" and the other half can be flagged as "in preparation".

I want to reiterate I DELETED this awful app for one, because it's only contributing to all of us losing income

I suspect that the income lost would be between "infinitesmal" and "none whatsoever".

People who use adblockers are probably not the type that would normally click on ads.

No point worrying about them.

...

People who use adblockers are probably not the type that would normally click on ads.

A mistake many people make. There are many different ways of selling ad inventory. CPC and CPA require people to click an ad or click and do something (subscribe to a mailing list, watch a video, register, etc).

Another way of selling inventory is CPM. In the CPM model ads are paid on a thousand impressions, regardless of how many clicks are generated.

Google AdSense image ads are CPM. You get paid regardless of someone clicking or not.

A lot of people block ads with a the excuse that "I won't click on any ad anyway, so why bother showing it".

Reality is that people don't know if the ad show is CPM, CPC or CPA. In most of the cases JUST SHOWING the ad is enough to get revenue.

Publishers that don't understand how it works are more likely to make less...

In most of the cases JUST SHOWING the ad is enough to get revenue. Publishers that don't understand how it works are more likely to make less.

Forcing ads on people who don't want to see them may benefit publishers in the short term, but it will not benefit the advertisers themselves, and they will be looking at the relationship between advertising spend and sales.

Advertisers prefer to spend where there is a return on their investment, and they will not continue with publications that under-perform.

Publishers that don't understand how it works are more likely to make less.

...

Google AdSense image ads are CPM. You get paid regardless of someone clicking or not.

Only if the advertiser bids them that way, and the vast majority bid them CPC.

Forcing ads on people who don't want to see them may benefit publishers in the short term, but it will not benefit the advertisers themselves, and they will be looking at the relationship between advertising spend and sales.

Advertisers prefer to spend where there is a return on their investment, and they will not continue with publications that under-perform.

Publishers that don't understand how it works are more likely to make less.

And that's why, if you read my previous replies in this topic, you will see we do other things with advertisers that don't involved banner ads - sponsored blog posts involving community for example, or crowdsourcing tech projects.

Lots of ways of being creative with marketing without running banner ads only. Obviously some need enough of an audience to be worth for advertiser but if you are really niche then it works pretty well.

People who use adblockers are probably not the type that would normally click on ads.

not quite true. adblock plus is set and forget. most of the time, people have activated it globally for all websites and for every kind of ad. it's not that all adblock users dislike advertising per se. it's just much more practical to block everything by default than to decide case-by-case for each website and for each advertising format. after all, who would do this work just to see some banners? and so all advertising forms and all websites are hit equally, deserved or not. be them annoying flashy layer ads on a spammy site or unobtrusive, probably informative text ads on a quality site.

that doesn't exactly mean, that people wouldn't be responsive on anything you serve to them. when they have global blocking turned on, they just can't decide anymore. that's the issue i have with adblock plus: it doesn't differentiate.

when they have global blocking turned on, they just can't decide anymore. that's the issue i have with adblock plus: it doesn't differentiate.

I would suggest that the issue you have is that you won't take "no" for an answer.

I appreciate that this might be seen as a virtue by marketing and sales people, but the fact is that adblocking software differentiates between people who may be responsive (who you should be concentrating your efforts on) and those who you will be wasting your time targetting (and who are actually doing you a favour by telling you so).

These people obviously think everything is free - servers, capacity, CDNs, database, etc

Another misconception.

What they actually think is that the profitability of your business model is not their problem.

They see it as your problem, and rightly so.

...

Another misconception.

What they actually think is that the profitability of your business model is not their problem.

They see it as your problem, and rightly so.

Yep, you're right there.