Advertising
The editor of one tech website says ad blocking has sliced its revenue in half.
In a post entitled "The Devastating Effect [sic] of Ad-blockers for Guru3D.com," editor Hilbert Hagedoom said while its internal data shows traffic to the website remains the same year-on-year (~4.5 million page views,) there is a "huge discrepancy" in its Google Analytics and DoubleClick for Publishers analytics.
Whereas a year ago, Google Analytics/DoubleClick showed the site was serving up to 400,000 page views per day, one year later it is registering just over 200,000 daily page views.
Hagedoom writes: "After some further investigation, the direct effect [sic] of the on-going trend of ad-blockers is resulting into halving our revenues / registered pageviews. Over the past year we have seen our income literally halfed [sic] as a direct result of active ad-blocking. Everybody can understand that long term this is not sustainable anymore, right now ad-blockers are a true danger for our existence."
The number of consumers using ad blocking software worldwide increased 41% year-on-year to 198 million monthly active users, according to a report published in August from PageFair and Adobe. Ad blocking has become a growing problem and many publications are trying to tackle the issue using methods ranging from employing "ad blocker blocker" software, to preventing visitors from viewing content if they have an ad blocker switched on.
Guru3D.com, meanwhile, is encouraging users to start white-listing its domain within their ad blockers. It pledges not to serve "intrusive" ads like "popdowns/popups and takeovers," and will instead only serve "common ads," targeted to readers' interests around PC gaming and hardware.
Hagedoom writes: "Please, seriously please start white-listing the Guru3D.com domain in your ad-blockers as slowly but steadily the effect of ad-blocking is choking and killing us. If you like to read Guru3D.com now and in the future, please give this serious request consideration."
A number of comments below the post suggest many users have followed the request and white-listed the website.
Hagedoom adds that if ad blocker users "absolutely, unequivocally" refuse to disable their blocking software, they might consider donating to the site to help support its costs, which include covering the bills for staff, workspace, inventory, electricity, test equipment, servers, bandwidth, and other costs associated with hosting the website. He suggests an appropriate price might be "50 cents to 1 buck a month."
Much of the discussion around the rise of ad blocking has suggested that while websites with huge scale and cash reserves might be able to ride out the storm, it might be the smaller, niche sites that suffer the most.
But even the web's biggest players are not immune from the ad blockers. The world's most popular YouTube star (in terms of subscribers) PewDiePie said last week he was losing 40% of his potential revenue to ad blocker users and that ad blockers forced YouTube to launch its new paid-for service, YouTube Red.
YouTube owner Google is among the tech giants that pays the owner of Adblock Plus huge, multi-million dollar fees, to get on the ad blocker's "Acceptable Ads List" and have its ads unblocked.