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Forbes is Finding Success with Telling People to Turn off their Ad-Blockers

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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.

  1. 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.
  2. 903,000, or 42.4%, of those visitors turned off the blockers and received a thank you message.
  3. We monetized 15 million ad impressions that would otherwise have been blocked.
Michael Kozlowski

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 CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and Verge.

  • It seems that Forbes is also serving up malware with their ads.
    http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/08/you-say-advertising-i-say-block-that-malware/

  • Pixilicious

    Pretty good odds that when a website asks you to turn off ad blockers, they’re up to no good. It is fortunately a buyer’s market for internet content and if one site refuse to serve me because I have a blocker, Ill just move on to the next one that will

  • they are installing an older version of Java, which is basically a bit easier to hack. its not really malware. Its like game companies installing an older version of the .net framework or old direct x files.

  • ld

    You’re wrong. The screenshot on Engadget shows a website trying to make itself LOOK like a java update so you’ll click on it.

  • Galbraith Deighton

    What Forbes is doing or allowing, is exactly the reason NOT to disactivate your ad-blocker (or if you do not have one, to install one).
    If the message was true, and the user was using an older version of Java, it should not be nessesary for Forbes to point this out to the visitor and force an update on him. That is something Oracle is quite good at itself.
    If on the other hand this is malware (and it looks like it), then it proves again that ad-blockers are needed, simply to protect your own machine.

    Ad-brokers do not care what kind of crap or malware they are serving as ads. They also have no control over their own ecosystem.
    The websites showing the ads will also not take responsibility for possible infections they pass on to their visitors/customers.

    So as an end-user, you can only protect yourself by using a good virusscanner, firewall and ad-blocker. (It’s like using a condome while having intercourse with strangers)
    No one else will protect you, so you will have to protect yourself.

    It also means that websites that are still using ads to finance their operations, will have to start looking to other revenue-streams.