News Corp rolls out trial to deny access to users of ad-blockers
News Corp has followed through on its plans to block users of ad-blockers with pop-ups, suggesting users need to subscribe or white-list the website to access the content.
Eales: “Without [ads] we can’t afford to offer quality journalism”
“We are funded by a combination of ads and subscription and without that business model we can’t afford to provide this [journalistic] service.”
The trial is restricted to The Daily Telegraph with readers prompted to subscribe or to “white-list” the website which allows users to list the site as being acceptable which means it will not have its advertising filtered by the ad-blocker.
This can often mean the advertising must meet criteria set by the ad-blocker, for example, AdBlock Plus has criteria around ad placement, ad distinction and ad size.
While News Corp is going down the route of blocking users of ad-blockers, Domain Group’s Melina Cruickshank has suggested this is not the right approach.
Speaking at Mumbrella360 earlier this month, Cruikshank said: “I don’t think you can tell them what to do and block them, they’ll just go elsewhere, there’s too much choice now.”
“These companies, they control a huge majority of the media in Australia, so educate, tell people what’s going on and tell them that strong, quality journalism in Australia… you’re going to have to pay for it. That’s the reality.
“I don’t think the option of blacklisting or blocking people is is the way to go; the consumer and the audience always comes first.”
News Corp’s trial is similar to one conducted by The New York Times in March.
The US-based news website began showing some ad-blocker users a pop-up asking to be white-listed or buy a digital subscription. It has since also conducted research into ad-blocker usage.
In May, the world’s largest ad-blocker Adblock Plus reached 100m users worldwide.
News Corp have been approached for comment.
Miranda Ward worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017, eventually becoming deputy editor. Miranda joined Mumbrella in September 2013 from Sky News.
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A 30 second change to your Adblocking software will circumvent the detection script they’re using.
Is anyone at News aware how trivial this change is? Seems rather odd to say it’s a ‘serious issue’ and then deploy one of the weakest means to address it…
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This was a fitting post about News.com.au’s ad user experience on Imgur yesterday
http://imgur.com/gallery/wVHIu/new
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I have no problem with ad’s I know that nothing is for free. But ad’s that take a long time to load hurt the advertisers who are sharing the page because after a few seconds Iam ready to leave the page rather than watch the page jump around for what is 5 seconds or more.at times. Fix slow ad’s and I wont be shopping for a ad blocker.
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Even more fitting: Welcome to Mumbrella’s new look – https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CiEV1wqUgAAKHnc.jpg:large
Not a good first impression of the new design…
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I completely agree. It’s not so much the ads but the bloated webpages that take an eternity to load and chew up my data.
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