As someone who works on a site largely funded through banner advertising, I can confirm that this is true; CPM is tied directly to CTR. A higher CTR means not o

As someone who works on a site largely funded through banner advertising, I can confirm that this is true; CPM is tied directly to CTR. A higher CTR means not only a higher CPM but also higher quality ads, so it is in everyone's best interest to not show ads to users who won't click on them. The question then, for a for-profit site, how do you monetize the freeloaders? I thing the answer is: 1. Try to get them to upgrade to a paid subscription. 2. Create highly targeted ads based on the content, and integrate them with that content (ie not from ad servers). Unfortunately, this is only a cost-effective option if you get a high volume of traffic). 3. Restrict freeloaders from using your most expensive resources. I don't imagine a site like Ars is very bandwidth intensive, but if an adblocking user is costing them a lot in bandwidth for some reason, they could provide the content without the images, for example. Sites also should consider how important it is to monetize every user directly. How much of your cost is fixed vs goes up per user? If most of your costs are fixed (paying writers for editorial content, for example) and the cost of providing content to users is low, it may be better to try to maximize readers aven if some of those are freeloaders; users talk and share information and links, so user A with adblock installed, whose visits cost you almost nothing, might result in users B, C and D who don't have adblock installed visiting your site.