Google Expands "Funding Choices" To Replace Lost Revenue From Ad Blocking

[engine]

Google is expanding its Funding Choices beta program to additional countries [support.google.com]. It's an alternative way to combat lost revenues through ad blocking, and some may already be familiar with the "Contributor" program.

[adsense.googleblog.com...]

Contributor by Google -- alternative to adsense funding [webmasterworld.com]
Letting users donate money [webmasterworld.com]

corrected typo

[edited by: engine at 1:58 pm (utc) on Apr 17, 2018]

[Travis]

I don't think this is a good idea to show such popup banner to visitors with ad blockers. Instead there should be a choice to display the message within the ad slot being blocked.

[CommandDork]

I agree with Travis. Disrupting the visitor's flow has always proven to be a mistake for webmasters. I like the idea of the individual adblock being "okayed" by the user. Otherwise Google needs to develop an ad delivery system that goes beyond JS (or whatever is used to trigger) to bypass blockers.

[csdude55]

They make the browser, so why not just make it less susceptible to spyware, maybe even incorporate an anti-spyware tool, block pop-ups by default... and then stop allowing ad blockers altogether.

The small number of people that use them aren't going to move over to the super slow Firefox. And while some may create a hack to block ads, anyway, it won't be as much of a problem as offering them in the Play Store.

[skynet84]

Is there any registration page to set funding choices? I don’t see any setting page to set it on adsense.

[engine]

skynet84 You need to sign up, see [support.google.com...]

Also, if you're a consumer, here's contributor. [contributor.google.com...]

[Travis]

In fact, in the last month over 4.5 million visitors who were asked to allow ads said yes, creating over 90 million additional paying page views for those sites.

But when people say "yes", what's next? I guess they are taken to a page explaining how they have to manually disable their ad blocker? How many who clicks "yes", really complete the whole process of whitelisting/disabling their ad blocker? (or even understand what they have to do)

Also, 4.5 million visitors, doesn't mean this is 4.5 unique visitors. Since the allowing is on a site by site basis, the same visitor can have allowed ads on several sites ...

On average, publishers using Funding Choices are seeing 16 percent of visitors allow ads on their sites

So I guess it means 16% of visitors who had an ad blocker, or 16% of the whole number of visitors?

If you have 100 visitors, and 30% are using an ad blocker. Does it mean that 16 visitors with an ad blocker, disabled it? or does it means this is 16% of the 30%, only 5 visitors?

Also, what happened to the 84% "others", how many of those with ad blockers seeing the banner, will simply leave the site and never return ? ... I know that lot of publishers consider that, a visitor with an ad blocker is a waste, and don't mind them. But still this is a visitor, even if this person doesn't earn you money (potentially, it's not because people are seeing ads that it earns the publisher something), it's still someone who can share your site with others, bringing more visitors, and making your site more authoritative. This can also be a visitor who contributes, if you have a forum, or allow comments.

[skynet84]

@engine signup where? On adsense?

[jojy]

[docs.google.com...]

[engine]

@signup Follow the link to the support.google site and follow the link from there. You have to apply there and wait.

[csdude55]

Thanks for the links, @engine and @jojy. I submitted the form, I'll post back with any updates

[ChanandlerBong]

pop-ups? What are we, back in 2002?

I will leave my adblocker-users unmolested. I have a subscription part of my site and 40% of my subscribers come from my free site, I won't be doing anything to pi$$ them off :)

[Tom1961]

I'll be soon adding a no ad option for a fee. For now, I only allow an adblocker for active members (people who post).

As far as I'm concerned, adblockers are little more than theft.

[steviec79]

Tom1961, I've seen quite a few websites which basically shows a popup message saying something along the likes of...

"We notice you are using a Popup Blocker - as our site survives off ads, please consider making a donation"

- or words to that effect.

[Tom1961]

That's what I do on my site. I'd like the ability to allow adblocker for the first x visits, and or the first few minutes of a visit, but I haven't gotten around to it.

One of my sites had 85% of the frequent visitors using an adblocker. My compromise was to allow an ad blocker for frequent posters (my sites are forums). I simply can afford to run sites for free.

[csdude55]

Similar here, Tom. My traffic is predominately local, and I discovered a few years ago that the local computer shops "repair" viruses and spyware by installing ad blockers. They install them by default on any computer they repair! So while I have a high percentage of people using ad blockers, the majority have no idea and really don't want it.

I'm setting up nagware for my next rebuild release, so that every 5th pageview they'll get a request to disable their ad blocker with a short explanation on how to do it. But the people with viruses that were never repaired will suffer (and probably blame me), so I need to figure out a way to combat that.

I'm thinking about renting a storefront and offering free computer repair...

[steviec79]

Do you know of any Wordpress plugins that can do this?

You see I run an education based website and I often wonder whether accepting donations (like what Wikipedia do at the end of an article), could, over time, beat Adsense, if I offered the option for people to donate a small amount per month. Even $1 per month could add up.

For anybody using an Ad Blocker, they'd also see this is in a pop-up.

[Broaster]

I just hope this doesn't cause people rank to go down, Google relies on Chrome to rank your website they use chrome data user experience and reviews of websites, all it takes is a single person on chrome to decide and leave a negative review of your website and your good as dead, they could say too many pop ups and bam you lost your ranking and relegated to an unworthy ranking.

I remember reading somewhere that google had a ad heavy algo that punished people who had too many ads, yet google adsense was sending emails to tell people to place at least six ads lol

so they basically set you up to get punished

[steviec79]

I just hope this doesn't cause people rank to go down, Google relies on Chrome to rank your website they use chrome data user experience and reviews of websites, all it takes is a single person on chrome to decide and leave a negative review of your website and your good as dead, they could say too many pop ups and bam you lost your ranking and relegated to an unworthy ranking.

I remember reading somewhere that google had a ad heavy algo that punished people who had too many ads, yet google adsense was sending emails to tell people to place at least six ads lol

so they basically set you up to get punished

If that is true, can people leave positive reviews? I don't use Chrome.

[csdude55]

Google relies on Chrome to rank your website they use chrome data user experience and reviews of websites, all it takes is a single person on chrome to decide and leave a negative review of your website and your good as dead, they could say too many pop ups and bam you lost your ranking and relegated to an unworthy ranking.

I've used Chrome almost exclusively since it came out, and haven't seen this particular feature. Is in an opt-in or something?

[engine]

csdude55
Just for the record, Confirmed: Google Site Speed Data Fed by Chrome Users [webmasterworld.com]
I doubt very much that the signals it sends are significant or it would be too easy to game the system.

[Broaster]

Just take this for a grain of salt since I just remember reading discussion around two years ago from reddit where people gave some theories.

I think the Chrome review data is there, I never used it but I read somewhere people can send feedback, or maybe its the google human reviewers, google has thousands of human reviewers mostly from India who will look at random sites and say eh this one doesn't look good or its not authoritative and they have a check list when reviewing your website, and they put it on a list where no matter how many good articles they post up or breaking news it will not rank in search

They dont punish you by wiping you out completely just make sure you dont get to rank highly anymore for single keywords.

A random signal that triggers a human review is if you get significant traffic one day, or if you earn a lot of money on adsense for a few days, a human will then review if your blog or website deserves to get the traffic if they see it and say this is not quality and check off their list that you dont pass their eye test or on the checklist they are given they derank you, so you are relegated to the 3rd page and lower.


also the main ranking factor is still Do follow backlinks to your website from reputable sources.

in Theory triggers to get reviewed are high traffic spikes and Adsense earnings, a human reviewer will then check your website

[Broaster]

steviec79

Thats what Ive read before, but google never tells you their secrets, because they dont want people to game the search

[Broaster]

any update for this.