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Forbes Tests New Tactics to Combat Ad Blocking

41 points by T-A 10y ago

shostack 10y ago
Looks like Forbes is at least testing things, whether people might like these approaches or not. Native content is a very fine editorial line to walk in terms of how it is identified. But if people are clicking the link from a share on social, odds are that any sort of story label on the actual Forbes site is not going to show up in the share, and thus they can pass it off as real content even though it is paid for. Once they get the click or share on a native story, they don't care. The registration piece is also interesting. From a monetization standpoint, they can then email the crap out of those people (including pushing native email ads that they likely bill on a CPM rate for). Logged-in users also give Forbes another interesting monetization option in the form of cookie onboarding services like LiveRamp[1] and such. You can get a CPM rate for simply linking logged-in users to the cookie onboarder's platform which they then match against cookies from advertisers to help them "retag" people for retargeting purposes that may have deleted past cookies, or jumped across devices. Cookie onboarding gets interesting because from a user standpoint, the impact is perhaps a very slightly increased load time (loading the onboarding tag), and ads that have more accurate targeting. But in theory this allows publishers to offer content that is "ad free" because the user is paying for it in the form of data. A lot of mobile providers include this as well which is annoying because it is harder to detect and block, and they sure as crap don't disclose it. Not making a statement on whether these developments are good or bad, rather just commenting on the interesting nature of them. [1] http://liveramp.com/blog/a-primer-on-data-onboarding/ http://liveramp.com/blog/a-primer-on-data-onboarding/
- Silhouette 10y ago
  But in theory this allows publishers to offer content that is "ad free" because the user is paying for it in the form of data. I agree this is an interesting idea, though not necessarily one I would personally choose to use. It might be a short-lived one, though, if the tracking shows that someone who isn't willing to view ads immediately also has a low chance of conversion for any later ads targeted based on the data given initially.
philiphodgen 10y ago
I now completely ignore any forbes.com link. The pain to get to the articles outweighed the extremely modest value of the articles. One wonders (he said) whether Forbes might want to pursue success by publishing irresistable articles -- not by seeking new ways to attach ticks to passers-by.
- gcb0 10y ago
  did the same with nytimes years ago. HN wasn't even a thing. but every slashdot article pointing to it, I ignored and looked over the comments if anybody pasted the behind login/paywall text.
  - gaius 10y ago
    I happily pay a sub to the NYT because their content is worth it to me. Forbes these days, you would need to pay me to read...
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    And yet neither of these(Forbes, NYTimes) sites have a problem using someone else's free news site(HN et al.) to drive traffic to their sites.
    - WalterSear 10y ago
      Or polluting search engine results for free advertisitng of their paywalled pages.
- Silhouette 10y ago
  The thing is, if you also block ads and aren't going to pay them money (or give them something else of value, as discussed here), Forbes are probably happy that you don't go to their site. A visitor that generates no revenue is just a drain on resources.
  - nihonde 10y ago
    Maybe...just maybe...ads aren't a good business model for journalism any more.
Animats 10y ago
"Meanwhile, the company is focusing more effort on “native” advertising products such as its BrandVoice program, which allows marketers to publish content to its site." Sponsored stories. Now that's hitting the bottom. It's an insult to the memory of Malcolm Forbes Sr.
- fucking_tragedy 10y ago
  Sponsored content and PR pieces being paraded around as actual news along side real content has been occurring for years. I would honestly doubt that this is an entirely new thing for Forbes and most publishers or outlets.
  - gtufano 10y ago
    It's definitely not a new thing... The article says: "About 35% of our digital advertising dollars are associated with native". I think it takes time to ramp it up to this amount.
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  I don't like them either, but they have to do something? If every site was ad free but behind paywall, how could hacker news even exist?
  - gaius 10y ago
    Links to people's blogs, is the best articles anyway.
- gcb0 10y ago
  you speak like sponsored messages are a new thing. also remember that every newspaper in the world started with money from political parties and/or unions.
mikro2nd 10y ago
Logging in via Google allows Forbes to "manage users’ Google contacts". What possible good could come of that?
kinkdr 10y ago
I guess it hurt quite a bit to find out that their content was not important enough to make users turn off their Adblocker. I wonder if they fired the arrogant prick who suggested to block all users who have Adblock. Maybe I am a bad person but I love seeing big corporations, used to bullying their way around, finding out that their old dirty tricks don't work in the new world.
- mahranch 10y ago
  >> but I love seeing big corporations, used to bullying their way around, finding out that their old dirty tricks don't work in the new world. The problem with that mindset is that people tend to think it's also OK to block the little guys who self-publish, or even places that have amazing or great content who deserve the ad impressions. People always say "Yeah, I unblock my favorite sites". Unfortunately, they're just 1 guy (and who knows if they actually do it). The other 99.999% of people do not unblock their favorite sites. They just don't give a shit. Even the rare few who may give a shit due to stronger empathy or morality will usually justify it away in their heads "Oh, I'm afraid of malware" or some other BS excuse which works to trick themselves into feeling better about blocking every ad.
  - sspiff 10y ago
    Calling ad blocking to prevent malware infection a BS excuse is ridiculous. Ads are being used to distribute malware through reputable sites, and as an average Joe user you have no feasible way to identify which sites pose a threat. I agree that the current ad driven free content model vs no ads ever stance of the numerous ad blocking users are a problem for content creators big and small, but I feel it is up to them to develop a sustainable business model to defeat this stand-off without alienating or antagonizing their user base.
    - Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
      Genuine question: is there any (or more than trace) ad-distributed malware that affects OS X, iOS or Linux? (Assuming Flash playback not enabled by default.)
eva1984 10y ago
“We’ve had a lot of people converting. Around 40% of users were turning off their ad-blockers,” said Lewis DVorkin, Forbes Media chief product officer. Well, for Forbes, it works.
- diffraction 10y ago
  It's a misleading metric. At home I block all ad server domains with a host file on my router. This triggers the Adblock wall. When I am at work or on the road I get a message "Thanks for turning off your adblock." However, at least Forbes is only deluding themselves and not their clients. There are eyebrow raising demographic issues with internet ads.
- nissehulth 10y ago
  It also means that 60% (whatever metric used) left the site and didn't come back.
  - x0x0 10y ago
    Since they earned Forbes $0, I'm really unclear on why you think Forbes should care.
    - ffumarola 10y ago
      Because sharing articles has no earned media value?
      - x0x0 10y ago
        Pretty much, except at enormous scale. Also, adblock users tend to share with adblock users.
Tobold 10y ago
So in exchange for not distributing malware they want my email address. What could possibly go wrong?
- bogomipz 10y ago
  Nice.
abhi3 10y ago
None these media companies will innovate on micro payments but instead try fancy/annoying tactics. Well atleast they didn't start a food delivery service like NYT: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-05/new-york-times-to-start-delivering-meal-kits-to-your-home http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-05/new-york-t...
- Silhouette 10y ago
  None these media companies will innovate on micro payments but instead try fancy/annoying tactics. It seems the big problem with micropayments is that it looks like a single content provider can't do much in the area on their own. I suspect that to become an established and useful payment method, micropayments will need a safe, reliable, standardised, and trivially easy to use mechanism, something that several big players can get behind and create some momentum.
- colinbartlett 10y ago
  NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Economist, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Time, Newseek, to name a few are all media companies available on Blendle, a news platform with micropayments. I use it and love it, so you can't see these companies aren't trying.
Overtonwindow 10y ago
At first I would use other tactics to get around the anti-ad blocking measures, but I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that it's not worth it anymore, and I would rather keep my ad blocking and go somewhere else.
mirimir 10y ago
> We noticed you still have your ad blocker on, please log in to continue to the site. > Login with Forbes But they don't actually say how to signup. For that, you need to hit the "Terms of Service" link. So I created a blog account, but I still can't login to the front page. They're wedged. And then there's this gem: > We will never post on your behalf without first obtaining your explicit permission. Just exactly WTF does that mean? How would any sane person want a site to post on their behalf?
- mirimir 10y ago
  OK, they eventually let me login.
- soared 10y ago
  > Just exactly WTF does that mean? How would any sane person want a site to post on their behalf? Many justifiable uses. Every time I go skiing snow.com posts a fb update for me, then my friends know I'm skiing and call me. Not for forbes though.
  - mirimir 10y ago
    I guess. Not for me, though.
- trjordan 10y ago
  > How would any sane person want a site to post on their behalf? Share to Facebook without leaving Forbes?
koolba 10y ago
> “We’ve had a lot of people converting. Around 40% of users were turning off their ad-blockers,” said Lewis DVorkin, Forbes Media chief product officer. Those numbers are bogus. There's no way 40% of people will disable ad blocking just to read Forbes.
- lordnacho 10y ago
  Could it be incognito browsing? Or you just use an alternative browser, eg I use Chrome normally but Safari when trying to view Apple WWDC videos.
  - aexaey 10y ago
    Do you mean - just open websites that are displeased with your ad-blocker in your secondary browser? Nice idea. Or, instead of two different browsers, you can use xraru [1] to ad-hoc launch as many independent ephemeral "incognito" sessions with the same browser as you like. This way, next to enhanced privacy, you also get as a bonus some protection from malicious websites stealing your cookies/local files/etc... [1] https://github.com/teran-mckinney/raru https://github.com/teran-mckinney/raru
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- beachstartup 10y ago
  you can turn off ad blockers for a single site, or even page/article. it's not that hard. i can easily believe 40% right clicked and hit 'disable adblock for this page' in order to read a single article they are interested in.
mtkd 10y ago
If a primary player, like Google, created a micropayments mechanism for content - that worked like Google Voice - where users can make a $10 payment and automatically topup - it would solve a lot of the issues This would allow Forbes etc. to use Google Micropayments for payment and visitors would pay 0.5¢ or something for every page viewed A popup would show the first time you visit the domain to ask if you're okay with paying for content in future I wouldn't have to pay specific subscriptions then, I could choose not to view sites I don't think are worth the value, sites I only ever visit infrequently could get something back for my visit
- ianlevesque 10y ago
  There's Google Contributor but it sucks. They replace all banner ads with...placeholder banners that say "Thanks for using Google Contributor". What a waste.
em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
I close the tab when I get the message to disable ad-blocker. To reach people like me, they will have to serve the ad from their own site.
bikamonki 10y ago
IMO, to combat ad-blockers is a silly effort. This is my reasoning: people that install ad-blockers do so for two reasons: privacy concerned and/or annoyed by ads. If these people would not install the ad-blocker, they would most likely 'still' ignore the ads (the brain is a brilliant ever-adapting ad-blocker!!!). On a pay-per-click model, they'd be wasting prints on a segment very unlikely to click. On a pay-per-print model, it is an opportunity to turn the argument on their favor and tell their advertizers: hey, we are going to charge more per print b/c we now target a narrower segment 'most likely' to see and click your ads.
- cstavish 10y ago
  While I largely agree with you, not all ads need to be clicked in order to be considered effective by the advertiser. Look at a Coca-Cola billboard, for instance. There's no action item to call this number TODAY, etc. Just brand reinforcement... And that's valuable to many companies.
  - bikamonki 10y ago
    Good point. I do read that lately this 'brand building' is the key value offered by ad vendors. Although I am not so sure of its effectiveness (ROI), maybe its just a sales tactic in response to a dying business model (PPP & PPC). Yet, this is another subject.
- soared 10y ago
  I pretty much agree, but just got bothered by 'pay per print'. Impression is the word you're looking for.
jordigh 10y ago
I find the tactic of guilting me into watching ads to be so damn weird. Why is it my duty to watch ads? Why must I allow myself to be open to the manipulation to purchase something irrelevant (the real purpose of ads) how I must contribute to your website, blog, TV series? I am not explaining this very clearly, but it's so, so bizarre that somehow it becomes my capitalist duty to watch ads, because you're not some monster who wants newspapers to crumble, are you? Watch your ads like a good boy.
- soared 10y ago
  Because they are producing content for you, and it costs them money to make it? They chose to monetize with ads, so view them or leave. Do you think you're entitled to free content?
  - jordigh 10y ago
    "View them or leave", that's the kind of attitude that's very weird. "View ads or the newspaper industry DIES!" Very Clockwork Orange, eyes forcibly peeled open. Very antagonistic. When I look at a physical newspaper, nobody is telling me either you look at this ad-filled page or you must not open any page. Nobody is telling me, you can't cover ads with your hands or a book. You must look at ads in order to look at this magazine. If you don't carefully read all of the ads in this magazine, you are not allowed to read this magazine. It just so happens that with a computer I can more conveniently hide ads, but that's somehow more wrong than covering them with my hand? I also just find it fundamentally strange that by me viewing ads someone gets money. Why? Well, because the person who made the ad is hoping that I will buy something off them or entice others to buy something off them. This is also strange, I don't want to buy anything or tell anyone else to buy anything. Why is me being indoctrinated by a third party the way that the website gets money? It's a bizarre situation. This is a very strange world we have built. There's gotta be a better economic model that doesn't require guilting me into viewing ads.
    - soared 10y ago
      I see your point. I think the phrasing would be "View ads or the newspaper industry will KILL ITSELF!" because they aren't adapting. That analogy does make sense, but the difference lies in that a physical newspaper presells ads, so if you never see them they don't care. But in digital, they don't get paid until you see them, so they do care. Really blocking ads in the physical newspaper hurts whoever bought the ads, blocking them online hurts the actual newspaper. Maybe newspapers should adapt and presell ad space on their pages! (My university online paper does this because pageviews are so low that they wouldn't earn a dime on adsense. The local businesses who prebuy ads effectively sponsor the website).
fulldecent 10y ago
Can we talk about YouTube Red for a second? This is basically a micropayments system for YouTube and it pays people whose videos you watch. Unfortunately, Google markets it as a "remove ads" service. Does anyone see this as a valuable micropayments platform?
- izacus 10y ago
  "Not available in your country" model of monetization is not helping me give them euros or disable adblock.
charonn0 10y ago
> they can still access Forbes.com so long as they register for a Forbes account, providing personal information, or log in via Facebook or Google. [...] users agree to share information with Forbes including their email address, name, profile picture, age range, gender and other information [...] Forbes is also granted permission to manage users’ Google contacts. This is an improvement? Stop conflating advertising with data mining and maybe people wouldn't block your ads so much. > “Email address is always very valuable and, with proper terms of service, figuring out a way to monetize these things in the right way could be interesting,” Mr. DVorkin said. "Interesting", perhaps, but almost certainly not worth it for readers. > Meanwhile, the company is focusing more effort on “native” advertising products such as its BrandVoice program, which allows marketers to publish content to its site. That content is not as susceptible to ad blocking because it is published directly to Forbes’s content-management system, instead of through “ad-serving” systems. Native ads destroy the publisher's journalistic credibility. Is that not plainly obvious to everyone?
- 3327 10y ago
  Forbes has turned from a respectable publication to a click-bait blog.
  - Spivak 10y ago
    They're riding on their old reputation as long as it lasts, then they'll cash out before it goes under. Not necessarily bad business but bad for their readers.
- capitalsigma 10y ago
  The crazy thing (imo) is that after this change, the Forbes website won't even render if you turn of JS. It tries to load up its JS-dependent ad blocker blocker, fails, and craps out a blank page to you. It's insane to me that they would flat out reject users who can't or won't run JS in their browsers. As a result, I no longer read Forbes articles. They can go fuck themselves if they want that level of control over my machine.
estefan 10y ago
Newspapers are suffering the same fate as the music industry. Everyone can now be a journalist and get widespread visibility. Pre-internet, there was a massive barrier to entry in terms of distribution. Musicians can at least still monetise gigs since not every kid who records a song in his bedroom can fill a stadium. But for newspapers there doesn't seem to be much of a defensible position left beyond brand, and the pressure to keep producing new content is obviously impacting their ability to keep producing high-quality, investigative stories, etc. Instead, lots just seem to fill their web sites with a continuous stream of not particularly differentiated articles. So I think newspapers do have a big problem on their hands, and the solution isn't obvious (beyond diversification perhaps)...
screwforbes 10y ago
I've been testing my own tactic, not going to forbes.com.

41 points by T-A 10y ago

Looks like Forbes is at least testing things, whether people might like these approaches or not. Native content is a very fine editorial line to walk in terms of how it is identified. But if people are clicking the link from a share on social, odds are that any sort of story label on the actual Forbes site is not going to show up in the share, and thus they can pass it off as real content even though it is paid for. Once they get the click or share on a native story, they don't care. The registration piece is also interesting. From a monetization standpoint, they can then email the crap out of those people (including pushing native email ads that they likely bill on a CPM rate for). Logged-in users also give Forbes another interesting monetization option in the form of cookie onboarding services like LiveRamp[1] and such. You can get a CPM rate for simply linking logged-in users to the cookie onboarder's platform which they then match against cookies from advertisers to help them "retag" people for retargeting purposes that may have deleted past cookies, or jumped across devices. Cookie onboarding gets interesting because from a user standpoint, the impact is perhaps a very slightly increased load time (loading the onboarding tag), and ads that have more accurate targeting. But in theory this allows publishers to offer content that is "ad free" because the user is paying for it in the form of data. A lot of mobile providers include this as well which is annoying because it is harder to detect and block, and they sure as crap don't disclose it. Not making a statement on whether these developments are good or bad, rather just commenting on the interesting nature of them. [1] http://liveramp.com/blog/a-primer-on-data-onboarding/ http://liveramp.com/blog/a-primer-on-data-onboarding/

Silhouette 10y ago
But in theory this allows publishers to offer content that is "ad free" because the user is paying for it in the form of data. I agree this is an interesting idea, though not necessarily one I would personally choose to use. It might be a short-lived one, though, if the tracking shows that someone who isn't willing to view ads immediately also has a low chance of conversion for any later ads targeted based on the data given initially.

philiphodgen 10y ago

I now completely ignore any forbes.com link. The pain to get to the articles outweighed the extremely modest value of the articles. One wonders (he said) whether Forbes might want to pursue success by publishing irresistable articles -- not by seeking new ways to attach ticks to passers-by.

gcb0 10y ago
did the same with nytimes years ago. HN wasn't even a thing. but every slashdot article pointing to it, I ignored and looked over the comments if anybody pasted the behind login/paywall text.
- gaius 10y ago
  I happily pay a sub to the NYT because their content is worth it to me. Forbes these days, you would need to pay me to read...
- bogomipz 10y ago
  And yet neither of these(Forbes, NYTimes) sites have a problem using someone else's free news site(HN et al.) to drive traffic to their sites.
  - WalterSear 10y ago
    Or polluting search engine results for free advertisitng of their paywalled pages.
Silhouette 10y ago
The thing is, if you also block ads and aren't going to pay them money (or give them something else of value, as discussed here), Forbes are probably happy that you don't go to their site. A visitor that generates no revenue is just a drain on resources.
- nihonde 10y ago
  Maybe...just maybe...ads aren't a good business model for journalism any more.

Animats 10y ago

"Meanwhile, the company is focusing more effort on “native” advertising products such as its BrandVoice program, which allows marketers to publish content to its site." Sponsored stories. Now that's hitting the bottom. It's an insult to the memory of Malcolm Forbes Sr.

fucking_tragedy 10y ago
Sponsored content and PR pieces being paraded around as actual news along side real content has been occurring for years. I would honestly doubt that this is an entirely new thing for Forbes and most publishers or outlets.
- gtufano 10y ago
  It's definitely not a new thing... The article says: "About 35% of our digital advertising dollars are associated with native". I think it takes time to ramp it up to this amount.
angry-hacker 10y ago
I don't like them either, but they have to do something? If every site was ad free but behind paywall, how could hacker news even exist?
- gaius 10y ago
  Links to people's blogs, is the best articles anyway.
gcb0 10y ago
you speak like sponsored messages are a new thing. also remember that every newspaper in the world started with money from political parties and/or unions.

mikro2nd 10y ago

Logging in via Google allows Forbes to "manage users’ Google contacts". What possible good could come of that?

kinkdr 10y ago

I guess it hurt quite a bit to find out that their content was not important enough to make users turn off their Adblocker. I wonder if they fired the arrogant prick who suggested to block all users who have Adblock. Maybe I am a bad person but I love seeing big corporations, used to bullying their way around, finding out that their old dirty tricks don't work in the new world.

mahranch 10y ago
>> but I love seeing big corporations, used to bullying their way around, finding out that their old dirty tricks don't work in the new world. The problem with that mindset is that people tend to think it's also OK to block the little guys who self-publish, or even places that have amazing or great content who deserve the ad impressions. People always say "Yeah, I unblock my favorite sites". Unfortunately, they're just 1 guy (and who knows if they actually do it). The other 99.999% of people do not unblock their favorite sites. They just don't give a shit. Even the rare few who may give a shit due to stronger empathy or morality will usually justify it away in their heads "Oh, I'm afraid of malware" or some other BS excuse which works to trick themselves into feeling better about blocking every ad.
- sspiff 10y ago
  Calling ad blocking to prevent malware infection a BS excuse is ridiculous. Ads are being used to distribute malware through reputable sites, and as an average Joe user you have no feasible way to identify which sites pose a threat. I agree that the current ad driven free content model vs no ads ever stance of the numerous ad blocking users are a problem for content creators big and small, but I feel it is up to them to develop a sustainable business model to defeat this stand-off without alienating or antagonizing their user base.
  - Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
    Genuine question: is there any (or more than trace) ad-distributed malware that affects OS X, iOS or Linux? (Assuming Flash playback not enabled by default.)

eva1984 10y ago

“We’ve had a lot of people converting. Around 40% of users were turning off their ad-blockers,” said Lewis DVorkin, Forbes Media chief product officer. Well, for Forbes, it works.

diffraction 10y ago
It's a misleading metric. At home I block all ad server domains with a host file on my router. This triggers the Adblock wall. When I am at work or on the road I get a message "Thanks for turning off your adblock." However, at least Forbes is only deluding themselves and not their clients. There are eyebrow raising demographic issues with internet ads.
nissehulth 10y ago
It also means that 60% (whatever metric used) left the site and didn't come back.
- x0x0 10y ago
  Since they earned Forbes $0, I'm really unclear on why you think Forbes should care.
  - ffumarola 10y ago
    Because sharing articles has no earned media value?
    - x0x0 10y ago
      Pretty much, except at enormous scale. Also, adblock users tend to share with adblock users.

Tobold 10y ago

So in exchange for not distributing malware they want my email address. What could possibly go wrong?

bogomipz 10y ago
Nice.

abhi3 10y ago

None these media companies will innovate on micro payments but instead try fancy/annoying tactics. Well atleast they didn't start a food delivery service like NYT: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-05/new-york-times-to-start-delivering-meal-kits-to-your-home http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-05/new-york-t...

Silhouette 10y ago
None these media companies will innovate on micro payments but instead try fancy/annoying tactics. It seems the big problem with micropayments is that it looks like a single content provider can't do much in the area on their own. I suspect that to become an established and useful payment method, micropayments will need a safe, reliable, standardised, and trivially easy to use mechanism, something that several big players can get behind and create some momentum.
colinbartlett 10y ago
NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Economist, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Time, Newseek, to name a few are all media companies available on Blendle, a news platform with micropayments. I use it and love it, so you can't see these companies aren't trying.

Overtonwindow 10y ago

At first I would use other tactics to get around the anti-ad blocking measures, but I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that it's not worth it anymore, and I would rather keep my ad blocking and go somewhere else.

mirimir 10y ago

> We noticed you still have your ad blocker on, please log in to continue to the site. > Login with Forbes But they don't actually say how to signup. For that, you need to hit the "Terms of Service" link. So I created a blog account, but I still can't login to the front page. They're wedged. And then there's this gem: > We will never post on your behalf without first obtaining your explicit permission. Just exactly WTF does that mean? How would any sane person want a site to post on their behalf?

mirimir 10y ago
OK, they eventually let me login.
soared 10y ago
> Just exactly WTF does that mean? How would any sane person want a site to post on their behalf? Many justifiable uses. Every time I go skiing snow.com posts a fb update for me, then my friends know I'm skiing and call me. Not for forbes though.
- mirimir 10y ago
  I guess. Not for me, though.
trjordan 10y ago
> How would any sane person want a site to post on their behalf? Share to Facebook without leaving Forbes?

koolba 10y ago

> “We’ve had a lot of people converting. Around 40% of users were turning off their ad-blockers,” said Lewis DVorkin, Forbes Media chief product officer. Those numbers are bogus. There's no way 40% of people will disable ad blocking just to read Forbes.

lordnacho 10y ago
Could it be incognito browsing? Or you just use an alternative browser, eg I use Chrome normally but Safari when trying to view Apple WWDC videos.
- aexaey 10y ago
  Do you mean - just open websites that are displeased with your ad-blocker in your secondary browser? Nice idea. Or, instead of two different browsers, you can use xraru [1] to ad-hoc launch as many independent ephemeral "incognito" sessions with the same browser as you like. This way, next to enhanced privacy, you also get as a bonus some protection from malicious websites stealing your cookies/local files/etc... [1] https://github.com/teran-mckinney/raru https://github.com/teran-mckinney/raru
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
beachstartup 10y ago
you can turn off ad blockers for a single site, or even page/article. it's not that hard. i can easily believe 40% right clicked and hit 'disable adblock for this page' in order to read a single article they are interested in.

mtkd 10y ago

If a primary player, like Google, created a micropayments mechanism for content - that worked like Google Voice - where users can make a $10 payment and automatically topup - it would solve a lot of the issues This would allow Forbes etc. to use Google Micropayments for payment and visitors would pay 0.5¢ or something for every page viewed A popup would show the first time you visit the domain to ask if you're okay with paying for content in future I wouldn't have to pay specific subscriptions then, I could choose not to view sites I don't think are worth the value, sites I only ever visit infrequently could get something back for my visit

ianlevesque 10y ago
There's Google Contributor but it sucks. They replace all banner ads with...placeholder banners that say "Thanks for using Google Contributor". What a waste.

em3rgent0rdr 10y ago

I close the tab when I get the message to disable ad-blocker. To reach people like me, they will have to serve the ad from their own site.

bikamonki 10y ago

IMO, to combat ad-blockers is a silly effort. This is my reasoning: people that install ad-blockers do so for two reasons: privacy concerned and/or annoyed by ads. If these people would not install the ad-blocker, they would most likely 'still' ignore the ads (the brain is a brilliant ever-adapting ad-blocker!!!). On a pay-per-click model, they'd be wasting prints on a segment very unlikely to click. On a pay-per-print model, it is an opportunity to turn the argument on their favor and tell their advertizers: hey, we are going to charge more per print b/c we now target a narrower segment 'most likely' to see and click your ads.

cstavish 10y ago
While I largely agree with you, not all ads need to be clicked in order to be considered effective by the advertiser. Look at a Coca-Cola billboard, for instance. There's no action item to call this number TODAY, etc. Just brand reinforcement... And that's valuable to many companies.
- bikamonki 10y ago
  Good point. I do read that lately this 'brand building' is the key value offered by ad vendors. Although I am not so sure of its effectiveness (ROI), maybe its just a sales tactic in response to a dying business model (PPP & PPC). Yet, this is another subject.
soared 10y ago
I pretty much agree, but just got bothered by 'pay per print'. Impression is the word you're looking for.

jordigh 10y ago

I find the tactic of guilting me into watching ads to be so damn weird. Why is it my duty to watch ads? Why must I allow myself to be open to the manipulation to purchase something irrelevant (the real purpose of ads) how I must contribute to your website, blog, TV series? I am not explaining this very clearly, but it's so, so bizarre that somehow it becomes my capitalist duty to watch ads, because you're not some monster who wants newspapers to crumble, are you? Watch your ads like a good boy.

soared 10y ago
Because they are producing content for you, and it costs them money to make it? They chose to monetize with ads, so view them or leave. Do you think you're entitled to free content?
- jordigh 10y ago
  "View them or leave", that's the kind of attitude that's very weird. "View ads or the newspaper industry DIES!" Very Clockwork Orange, eyes forcibly peeled open. Very antagonistic. When I look at a physical newspaper, nobody is telling me either you look at this ad-filled page or you must not open any page. Nobody is telling me, you can't cover ads with your hands or a book. You must look at ads in order to look at this magazine. If you don't carefully read all of the ads in this magazine, you are not allowed to read this magazine. It just so happens that with a computer I can more conveniently hide ads, but that's somehow more wrong than covering them with my hand? I also just find it fundamentally strange that by me viewing ads someone gets money. Why? Well, because the person who made the ad is hoping that I will buy something off them or entice others to buy something off them. This is also strange, I don't want to buy anything or tell anyone else to buy anything. Why is me being indoctrinated by a third party the way that the website gets money? It's a bizarre situation. This is a very strange world we have built. There's gotta be a better economic model that doesn't require guilting me into viewing ads.
  - soared 10y ago
    I see your point. I think the phrasing would be "View ads or the newspaper industry will KILL ITSELF!" because they aren't adapting. That analogy does make sense, but the difference lies in that a physical newspaper presells ads, so if you never see them they don't care. But in digital, they don't get paid until you see them, so they do care. Really blocking ads in the physical newspaper hurts whoever bought the ads, blocking them online hurts the actual newspaper. Maybe newspapers should adapt and presell ad space on their pages! (My university online paper does this because pageviews are so low that they wouldn't earn a dime on adsense. The local businesses who prebuy ads effectively sponsor the website).

fulldecent 10y ago

Can we talk about YouTube Red for a second? This is basically a micropayments system for YouTube and it pays people whose videos you watch. Unfortunately, Google markets it as a "remove ads" service. Does anyone see this as a valuable micropayments platform?

izacus 10y ago
"Not available in your country" model of monetization is not helping me give them euros or disable adblock.

charonn0 10y ago

> they can still access Forbes.com so long as they register for a Forbes account, providing personal information, or log in via Facebook or Google. [...] users agree to share information with Forbes including their email address, name, profile picture, age range, gender and other information [...] Forbes is also granted permission to manage users’ Google contacts. This is an improvement? Stop conflating advertising with data mining and maybe people wouldn't block your ads so much. > “Email address is always very valuable and, with proper terms of service, figuring out a way to monetize these things in the right way could be interesting,” Mr. DVorkin said. "Interesting", perhaps, but almost certainly not worth it for readers. > Meanwhile, the company is focusing more effort on “native” advertising products such as its BrandVoice program, which allows marketers to publish content to its site. That content is not as susceptible to ad blocking because it is published directly to Forbes’s content-management system, instead of through “ad-serving” systems. Native ads destroy the publisher's journalistic credibility. Is that not plainly obvious to everyone?

3327 10y ago
Forbes has turned from a respectable publication to a click-bait blog.
- Spivak 10y ago
  They're riding on their old reputation as long as it lasts, then they'll cash out before it goes under. Not necessarily bad business but bad for their readers.
capitalsigma 10y ago
The crazy thing (imo) is that after this change, the Forbes website won't even render if you turn of JS. It tries to load up its JS-dependent ad blocker blocker, fails, and craps out a blank page to you. It's insane to me that they would flat out reject users who can't or won't run JS in their browsers. As a result, I no longer read Forbes articles. They can go fuck themselves if they want that level of control over my machine.

estefan 10y ago

Newspapers are suffering the same fate as the music industry. Everyone can now be a journalist and get widespread visibility. Pre-internet, there was a massive barrier to entry in terms of distribution. Musicians can at least still monetise gigs since not every kid who records a song in his bedroom can fill a stadium. But for newspapers there doesn't seem to be much of a defensible position left beyond brand, and the pressure to keep producing new content is obviously impacting their ability to keep producing high-quality, investigative stories, etc. Instead, lots just seem to fill their web sites with a continuous stream of not particularly differentiated articles. So I think newspapers do have a big problem on their hands, and the solution isn't obvious (beyond diversification perhaps)...

screwforbes 10y ago

I've been testing my own tactic, not going to forbes.com.