Ad Blocking Report - 22 billion in lost revenue

The lost ad revenue figures will double in 2016

[netmeg]

From the folks at Marketingland:

Ad-blocking software, once thought to be a relatively small-scale phenomenon, is apparently rapidly going mainstream. According to a new report from Adobe and PageFair — an Irish company founded in 2012 that “measure[s] the cost of adblocking and display[s] alternative non-intrusive advertising to adblockers” — $21.8 billion in global ad revenues have been blocked/lost so far in 2015.

[marketingland.com...]

TL:DR: If you think ad blockers aren't affecting you, you may be wrong. They're everywhere now. Firefox. Safari. Edge. And it's only going to get worse.

[toidi]

You decide, is it ultimately worth giving up your free content to run an ad blocker? 

Please excuse my ignorance, but what is the subject matter of some of these free info sites that we will miss?

[blend27]

@trebuchet

The only question is where this cycle of adblocking/adblock-blocking/back-buttoning will lead in the longer term.

Well, NYTIMES sims to pick up the story as well:
[nytimes.com...]

“They’ll start telling all their friends about this amazing app that saves your battery, saves your data and speeds up the web, and it’s likely to go viral," said Sean Blanchfield, the chief executive of PageFair. "A lot of people are going to get accustomed to having an ad-free mobile experience.”

[toidi]

I stopped reading the nytimes article on my tab after the 2nd unseen and unclicked ad popped up as a result of scrolling down the page. It looks like they have ads hidden where my thumb slides down the screen. Advertising was never meant to be so obtrusive and obnoxious. I feel sorry for all the publishers who are getting punished for the actions of sites like these.

publishers should organize, not to stop adblockers but to clean up the advertising industry.

[creeking]

with articles like this, pagefair is getting their name out there.

[nomis5]

Please excuse my ignorance, but what is the subject matter of some of these free info sites that we will miss?

But surely there are loads of them? For me it's recipe sites, sports sites, newspaper sites, gardening sites, humour sites etc. Most of the ones, not all, run adsense which supplies their income. The content of the ones I visit is high and gives me exactly the information I want. Without that income most would surely disappear and, in the UK, we would left with a few free sites such as the BBC and similar establishment run and controlled websites.

[netmeg]

Don't forget fireworks.

[trebuchet]

I feel sorry for all the publishers who are getting punished for the actions of sites like these.

The problem arises, I suspect, in corporate publishers where the editorial content and display advertising are managed by different people or departments. Advertising people tend not to value content or user experience, they just want maximum coverage/revenue per page. Content managers don't want their content swamped with ads. That's why small publishers tend to be more responsible with ad placement.

publishers should organize, not to stop adblockers but to clean up the advertising industry.

Actually it's the ad networks who should organise, not publishers. They're as impacted by this as we are. I've been saying for years that major networks like Adsense should implement some rigorous advertising standards, start enforcing them and purge their system of anyone who doesn't comply. The problem with this approach is that the horse has bolted. Adblockers now block absolutely everything, regardless of whether a publisher is sensible about ad placements or not. Would you adblocker fanboys delete your adblocking plugin if advertising was wound back? No, you're now addicted to seeing other people's content for free, your "time/privacy/UI is too valuable", blah blah.

The free content golden goose has been slaughtered, I'm afraid. In 3-5 years I suspect we'll be paying for three quarters of our online content. No doubt the same people who complained about ads will be complaining about having to pay (and finding ways to subvert that).

[Elsmarc]

I closed my last website recently and moved on in life. The internet these days is "Walmart-ized" as far as I'm concerned. I rarely stop by here any more (once or twice a month) mainly to see what the latest topics are, but will say this: Quite a few years ago I learned that enough companies contacted me directly wanting to place ads (technical sites was my "specialty") that I always had advertisers. Over the last 3 or 4 years I totally phased out adsense, as an FYI. Anyway - I sold ads directly to companies and made it clear that I sold "presence" ads (like a highway billboard, in a sense), that I did not count "click-throughs" or such and if they wanted to see traffic stats they had to use Quantcast. The company had to send me the graphic they wanted to use and it had to be small (82x82) and had to be a .jpg file (and a link, of course). That way I hosted the ads on my server, no scripts were called, ads were always in the same place, so anyone wanting to block them had to "turn off" all .jpg images which made the sites unusable. Adblockers simply didn't work. I always had advertisers and many were long term, a few had been there for over 6 or 7 years.

Over the last 3 or 4 years I totally phased out adsense, as an FYI. Revenues were dropping and adsense just got to be too "weird" for me to want to deal with. But I will say that I had a number of years in the 6 figure range from adsense so I have no complaint(s) about adsense of days past.

Personally I use Firefox on a Mac with Ghostery (sp?) and No-Script for every day use with all the tracking stuff (cookies, history, you name it) turned off. I do use Chrome when I need to log in someplace for some reason (which I'm using to post this) but I fire up Chrome for something maybe once or twice a week at most.

Adblocking isn't "lost revenue" in my opinion. If one uses the "direct" model I used, they don't work. And if someone is running a website and can't get companies to place ads directly, well... As a last thought, I never once contacted a company seeking their advertising. Companies contacted me and I always had a "waiting list" for ad positions. If you run a good website, companies will seek you out.

[nyc863]

My experience with investigating adblocking.

1, don't trust plugins that tell you what gets blocked - many people run noscript or ghostery or similar "deny by default" extensions which simply deny the metering of blocking
2, adblock is higher with technical users (chrome, firefox) than with less technical users
3, adblock explains a large chunk of the difference between ads and pages but script blocking is needed to explain the other chunk
4, bots that use regular user-agents and disguise their activities over multiple IPs are an increasing problem and it is difficult to detect whether someone is ad blocking or is just a bot
5, Pagefair will say they have the solution but they don't. They have a revenue model where they show paid ads to people with adblock on but the payout is ludicrously low. It is better than zero, but think 10x less than adsense.
6, one of two big adblock systems has a process to "approve" sites with ads but the rules would screw up revenue from people not using adblock: move ads away from content. more clearly mark them, etc etc.
7, begging users or guilting them does not work. Some may whitelist you but they soon return to default "block everything"
8, people who block ads will say it is because ads are "punch the monkey" or "play video" or "play audio" or "cover the screen". This is insulting to publishers using adsense because as we all know those ads are not allowed. Perhaps they are thinking of the p0rn or t0rrent sites they also visit?
9, the adblock business model - to block ads, beg for donations and charge advertisers to show ads - has little to do with power to the individual and a lot to do with stealing revenue due publishers by getting a filter in place, and then turning up the screws when the audience is large enough to hold hostage.

IMO adblock drives ads into content (disguising it as content) or creates annoying paywalls, or generally makes things worse for the people who DON'T use adblock. It is a a big mess and nothing for anyone to be proud of. The stuff adblock companies say is self-serving BS. The truth is they are making a ton of money and the users who let them get away with this should have more honour but they don't.

When a site like Reddit breaks a story and 100k people visit a page, the revenue is miniscule. They are the future of the web audience so publishers better learn how to charge these people.

[Runfun]

with articles like this, pagefair is getting their name out there.

Only problems with Pagefair are:

- they only pay out when you've reached a revenue of $200
- the revenue a day is not much, I'm glad I earn $1.50 a day

So I've to wait for about 130 days to reach the amount of $200 and I've no idea I'll get my money after waiting months.

[Edge]

Bottom line? Greed has gotten us to this point of the discussion.

Yes, applies to website visitor and publisher...

[MrSavage]

I've been busy on vacation lately, but after reading this thread. Two things. One, thanks for the insightful posts. Two, holy $h i t. I think I've been quite naive to this situation. A lot of things makes more sense to me now thanks to this thread. I'm confident that this will sort its way out somehow, but in the meantime? I'm part of an affiliate program that doesn't require affiliate looking codes, so for me, that seems like a positive concept. The Google's and Bing's need to work together on this one and come up with something. If not we're going to start seeing a helluva lot more YouTube ads. I think the direct sales approach may be a reality, which means possibly more work on my end. However, making money vs. pennies? I'm not sure if I can be grand enough to have businesses approach me for ad space.

[thms]

Please excuse my ignorance, but what is the subject matter of some of these free info sites that we will miss?

Excuse my ignorance, but if you don't miss these sites why do you go to the trouble to install an ad blocker to access these sites that you say you won't miss?

[thms]

Also, donations and pay-to-read are clearly not the solution, it never was and only people who don't run content based sites and actually monetize their content suggest these revenue models.

As publishers, we cannot force users to not use ad blockers. The same way, users with ad blockers cannot force publishers to give them content without ads. So for me, the best approach is to block ad-blockers. No harm done, they are happy they don't see my ads and I'm happy they don't see my content.

[trebuchet]

Excuse my ignorance, but if you don't miss these sites why do you go to the trouble to install an ad blocker to access these sites that you say you won't miss?

Haha, of course. I'm actually amused by the arguments some pro-adblocking users put forward. For me the only legitimate reason for using an adblocker is to avoid intrusive advertising which a portion of some sites employ. The rest of their arguments, e.g. "Oh my time", "Oh my privacy", "Granny clicked on an ad once and got lost", "The content isn't worth anything anyway" are just self serving nonsense.

So for me, the best approach is to block ad-blockers.

That's the approach I've been using thms, a friendly but firm modal saying no ads, no access. So far it's working well. At a rough glance it seems about 20-25% of adblock users are turning away from my sites, the rest are whitelisting and entering. I'm happy enough with those results.

[MrSavage]

I find the idea interesting. If you run an ad blocker, you see nothing. Now that's something worth talking about! I need to mull things over, but by the sounds of it here, it's something at least considering. I mean the more webmasters doing that, the funnier it would become. Using an ad blocker would suddenly be a real PITA. I love the idea of middle fingering the ad blocker users. I don't think Google would like users getting served white space or blockage when clicking through on a search result. The more I think about it, the more I like it. The fact is I put together content as a means of making enough money to buy beer and chips. Would I work on sites for the hell of it? Nope, not likely at this point. Thus, if as a visitor you are closing all opportunities for me to profit, then the harsh reality is that you aren't worth my time. Sounds harsh, but it's just truth. If people don't click ads fine with me, but at least there is an opportunity for that to happen. As they say....Serious Inquiries Only. That saying has been around because nobody likes to waste their time. I won't knee jerk on this, but the rebel in me says hell ya.

[tangor]

Ad blockers are not Luddites, kiddies. All ad blocking softwares have inclusions or whitelisting functions and we, who ad block, do frequently allow such things to happen.

HOWEVER, there are somethings not allowed, such as third party stats, cookies, etc, which provide NO VALUE to the site being visited, or to the visitor.

Guess what? Blocking all that stuff does not impede the visitor or the site. And if we LIKE the site, we might even turn the ad block off to see how RESPONSIBLE the site might be in serving ads... and if NOT responsible, then back to blocking.

Where is so-called "lost revenue" might be is concerning.... as it hasn't been earned, never existed, and if it did would be driving the ad serving market in the OPPOSITE direction. If you think pennies per K are slim now....

[creeking]

I love the idea of middle fingering the ad blocker users. I don't think Google would like users getting served white space or blockage when clicking through on a search result. The more I think about it, the more I like it.

I don't think they would like it either. the result would likely be a lower position in G search results. everybody wins.

[tangor]

Funny thing, about that middle finger, it is all to easy to chalk up to hubris on one side and didn't expect anything different on the other side, thus the block continues and....

Everybody wins!

Then again, it is "your" sandbox. If you don't want others to play that middle finger is one way to do it. :)

I think it all boils down to why do ad blockers exist is the first place? Humans are the creatures of least resistance in dang near anything, so why did ad blockers get created? Why do they continue to grow?

Might it be the path of least INSISTENCE YOU VIEW MY ADS with a middle finger extended?

Don't know. Just know I like my surfing to be manageable, reasonable, and SWIFT. All middle fingers will be completely ignored... even that little bit I might have allowed.

No skin off my nose, so to speak.

Are we really willing to go to war with 22-25% of the internet?

Or are we going to find a way to serve ALL WHO COME?

I tend toward the latter. YMMV

[trebuchet]

I don't think they would like it either. the result would likely be a lower position in G search results. everybody wins.

I wasn't aware the Googlebot crawled the web with an adblocker enabled.

Are we really willing to go to war with 22-25% of the internet?

Denying access to adblockers is as much a war as putting up a screen door on my house is declaring war on flies. Personally I don't mind what they do. But my sites are my sites and I will decide the terms of use and access.

Might it be the path of least INSISTENCE YOU VIEW MY ADS with a middle finger extended?

There's no insistence whatsoever. You come to my sites to view my content then you view the ads as well. You don't get one without the other.

Or are we going to find a way to serve ALL WHO COME?

Who is "we"? The advertisers? The ad networks? The publishers? Or the content sponging adblock users? I doubt it will be the latter.

[creeking]

I wasn't aware the Googlebot crawled the web with an adblocker enabled.

with so much of their company depending on search, and as many people and resources they have working on search.......... do you think they would ignore such an important thing?

cloaking ----- [support.google.com...]

[trebuchet]

Utterly irrelevant. Cloaking is about perverting SERPs by presenting SE bots with a fake shopfront. We're talking about blocking or blanking users if they turn up with an adblock enabled. Nothing at all to do with search or SEO.

Google might be focused on Search but their revenue comes from Adwords and Adsense. Do you think genuinely they're going to normalise or mainstream adblocking by factoring it into search results?

[tangor]

The specials for the day are ....

No getting around this. Folks are one side or the other.

Odd thing is that neither side loses, IE, both get what they want. Those who block the ad blockers are already blocked, so that's a win win for everyone. :)

No middle finger exercise required as it is superfluous (and waste of time for the finger wrangler)!

[toidi]

I use forced registration on my sites and adblockers on my machines, so i am on both sides of this fence. If adblockers ruin my conversions i will adapt because i am in this for the long haul. My sites were not created to generate beer money or as an easy way to make a quick buck.

when it is all said and done, the serious business models will still be online and the chaff will have blown away.

Adblockers are just one of the recent changes in an ever changing web. It wasn't that long ago that adsense was the latest change.

those who choose to fight change will end up losing, and those who adapt will survive. You really can't believe that the search engines are going to knowingly serve up a site that blocks 20% of users.

[Leosghost]

Bounce rate..

[trebuchet]

You really can't believe that the search engines are going to knowingly serve up a site that blocks 20% of users.

That's exactly what I believe, for reasons already explained. Only a fool would expect Google to cut its own throat by factoring adblock redirection into search results. And in any case, the block (well not block, redirection really) is conceptual. It can be bypassed with one click.

[thms]

those who choose to fight change will end up losing, and those who adapt will survive.

You have a biased definition of change. For me, blocking ad-blockers is also a change. You will have to adapt hitting the back button 20x times till you find a website that is ok in serving you content without ads.

[netmeg]

This probably isn't going to become a big search engine issue until it becomes a big advertiser issue (instead of a publisher issue).

[blend27]

Just wait till that Big Study comes out that having an AdBlocker on you mobile device(not running all those useless to the user third party JS scripts) extends BATTERY life by about 10-20%. Someone will come out with a clever marketing speech and the plugins will spread like wildfire, especially with those 10 more texts a day youngsters.

Bounce rate..

+1

[elguiri]

The adblocker extensions I have tried don't block ads on Google Search pages.. They work quite well on publishers pages delivering AdSense and other scripts (advertising).

Question: Why don't ad blockers work on Google search pages? Does Google pay?

Separate issue. You don't need cookies to identify users. The best ad networks (or worst, depending on your point of view) can make the deleted cookies come alive again with a quick analysis of your browser. I'm pretty sure Google does this.

Here's a paper: [panopticlick.eff.org...]
Here's the test: [panopticlick.eff.org...]
If you haven't seen this before it'll scare the **** out of you.