There is an extremely small demographic of people that want to pay for online news. This could be as simple as subscribing to the digital edition of the New York Times or donating to your favorite neighborhood blog. Studies have shown that people are turning to ad-blockers in order to prevent Google Ads from displaying or commercials in YouTube Videos. This hurting many publications and they are scaling back on the number of stories they are producing and letting staff go. In a world of ad-blockers Forbes is starting to find success.
If you use an ad-blocker and visit the Forbes website you will be greeted with the message “Thanks for coming to Forbes. Please turn off your ad blocker in order to continue. To thank you for doing so, we’re happy to present you with an ad-light experience.” The company has limited the number of ads that are displayed when people turn of their blockers.
- From Dec. 17 to Jan. 3, 2.1 million visitors using ad blockers were asked turn them off in exchange for an ad-light experience.
- 903,000, or 42.4%, of those visitors turned off the blockers and received a thank you message.
- We monetized 15 million ad impressions that would otherwise have been blocked.
Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times.
