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How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

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Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#51

Post by monkmartinez »

aaron695 wrote: post #33
isomorphic wrote: post #4

> So, in the coming weeks, we will restrict access to articles on WIRED.com if you are using an ad blocker. Good luck with that, Wired. The people-who-will-never-pay group will split into two: People who never visit your site again, and people who up the ante in the ad-blocking escalation. While you may think that you don't care about the people-who-will-never-pay group, the latter subgroup will release their improve…

Your comment doesn't make any sense? Don't view ads. Wired doesn't care about you. You contribute nothing back anyway. So by making it a little harder, at least some of those people with morals will be pushed in the right direction to pay or white list ads for free content.

This isn't a moral argument. This is advertising. Less traffic overall will be bad in the long term. There are no two ways about that.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#52

Post by rsuelzer »

jacquesm wrote: post #42
rsuelzer wrote: post #38

I'm sure market research has been done. But 52 dollars a year is probably too high a price for an ad free version of wired. I would pay maybe three or four dollars a year, which has to be more money than they would possibly make off of the advertising revenue I would generate in a lifetime.

> which has to be more money than they would possibly make off of the advertising revenue I would generate in a lifetime. You are so terribly wrong about that.

Any links to research on how much advertising dollars the average website makes per unique visitor would be interesting to read.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#53

Post by jacquesm »

e40 wrote: post #49
alienasa wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wired is in the business of making money. You don't pay them any money directly, so they make it up by showing you ads. If you're going them to prevent them from making money that way, then they don't give a hoot about your eyeballs.

And every time I've relented and turned off my ad blocker for a domain, they have made be regret it and I turn it back on (and often never visit the site again). When will these clueless execs realize that if they didn't abuse our eyeballs they'd have our eyeballs?

They realize it all right. But the money is just too good and the arms race dictates they join in or be left in the dust. It's a hard problem, and I don't think wired has found the answer just yet.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#54

Post by [deleted] »

alienasa wrote: post #25
tokenadult wrote: post #23

Forbes has been doing this for a while on its website. (Or, at least for a while it has been detecting the ad blocking-software that I have been using for much longer.) I have basically stopped reading Forbes (which maybe was a good idea on other grounds) and have learned to appreciate stories from competing publications. If Wired doesn't want my eyeballs to visit its site, I'll just stop bringing them there.

Wired is in the business of making money. You don't pay them any money directly, so they make it up by showing you ads. If you're going them to prevent them from making money that way, then they don't give a hoot about your eyeballs.

[deleted]

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#55

Post by dingo_bat »

jacquesm wrote: post #35
alienasa wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wired is in the business of making money. You don't pay them any money directly, so they make it up by showing you ads. If you're going them to prevent them from making money that way, then they don't give a hoot about your eyeballs.

> so they make it up by showing you ads. Correction: they make it up by giving third parties the ability to lift each and every bit of identifiable information available from your browser, to profile you, to sell your demographic information (lat/lon/approximate age/wealth/family situation/etc, etc) to middlemen who will then in turn sell the opportunity to advertise to you in a real time bidding process to the highe…

Exactly. If Wired would show me static image ads that do not slow down my browser with scripts and use my bandwidth to track me across the web, I would add them to my whitelist.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#56

Post by uptown »

runako wrote: post #13
mark_l_watson wrote: post #2

I like the idea of paying for subscriptions for no-ad service. However, the $1/week seems a little high. I might read 10 to 20 articles a year on wired.com. I do pay subscriptions for things that I use (almost) daily: Hulu no commercials version, Netflix, and Google Music. So, good idea, but I would expect a subscription to perhaps cost $10 to $15/year. Just my opinion...

Wired kind of agrees: if you subscribe to the print edition (~12/yr IIRC), you get access to the digital editions too. The $1/week is a ridiculous grab from people who are unaware that there is a cheaper option available.

Wired is one of those mags you can easily get a subscription for under $5. Free subs used to be pretty common too. My current subscription goes till something like 2024 due to stacking a bunch of free or cheap subscriptions together. $1/week makes no sense.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#57

Post by monkmartinez »

pargon wrote: post #29

Cue all the people who say "Fine, then I won't ever go to Wired's site again." That's kind of the point, you know.

Let them be the case study and prove all of the "welp, won't go there again" crowd wrong. I have my doubts that that blocking blockers is a wise long term strategy.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#58

Post by e40 »

nyolfen wrote: post #41
uberweb wrote: post #31

https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer

helpful hint: this is a listed, but disabled by default, ruleset in ublock's 3rd party filters: https://i.imgur.com/XiXspoi.png

Works on forbes.com (not that I care, but I used it to test). Thanks!

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#59

Post by nightski »

pargon wrote: post #29

Cue all the people who say "Fine, then I won't ever go to Wired's site again." That's kind of the point, you know.

As long as the value proposition is there, it will work out for them. I can tell you, for me it is definitely not. In fact, I just feel bad about the opportunity cost (time) of reading one of their articles let alone actually paying to see one.

If I worked at WIRED I'd be very concerned with increasing the quality of content.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#60

Post by dingo_bat »

msoad wrote: post #9

I wonder why content website don't use Canvas rendering in order to block all ad-blockers. You either see the canvas, with ads in it or don't see anything at all. There need to be a compatible ad-network as well. Accessibility is going to be an issue but if you can solve all of that there is a startup idea right there!

How would that be different from all-Flash websites of the past? It would be quite ironic to kill off Flash and return to the same with HTML5.
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