Ok, I was just reading way too much into it… (I had my wrist smacked once before previously)

Spent the last 9-10 months as non subscriber, so that’s what I was meaning.

But must admit ads turned off (legitimately 😀 ) is definitely an improvement.

The site is a terrible experience when ads are enabled

It really isn’t….. On old computer or iPads everything still works and most of the ads just sit there at the side. Every so often one auto plays or causes an issue but a quick email to the admin and it gets sorted out.
If every site was run like this it would be a dream!
Try looking at the bbc site from outside of the U.K. Random ads that lock out the screen when trying to read the news. Any video has an advert before it.

Ah I see.
It’s surprising (to us at least) how many subscribers have ads turned on. In an upcoming site tweak we are going to set the default state to ads off for all subscribers.

The reason there’s no hand slapping on this most taboo of topics is essentially because Apple have changed the game and we are adapting. Preventing ad blocking is a hiding to nothing. We’ve been in a position to fight back, as it were, for a while but we haven’t for exactly the reason outlined above. To do so would be counter productive. Dodging someone’s preference for no ads in their browser by forcing ads on them is not a subscriber going to make.

The publishing world has to shoulder a bunch of the blame for the fact the business model of ads on websites is now crumbling because it went nuts with how many ads they plastered everywhere. It began a vicious cycle in that the more ads that were placed the lower the yield per 1000 impressions (CPM) and so publishers had to place more ads to keep the revenues up and round and round we go until we get to the sorry mess we are in today.

Apple, Facebook AND Google are forcing a new business model on us and I’m struggling to see it as a bad thing right now. There’s uncertainty about what revenues the new way will bring and whether it will be enough but I do think that content will be forced to improve as a result and that advertising quality will also increase too since the demand for the much reduced volumes available will be very high for those publishers that can offer large audience reach.

Yes, all three of the giant tech co.s take a 30% cut but that’s only on the ads they source themselves. We are able to place ads we have sold directly to an advertiser in their news apps and if we do we take 100% of the revenue. The big three take nothing. That sounds great, and it is, but they won’t miss out on their 30% slices since most of the biggest publishers have way too much ad inventory to sell themselves and there’s always a large proportion of what is called ‘remnant’ inventory left over. On this site if you see an ad with a blue triangle in the corner that will be remnant inventory and in the main this is the stuff that is delivered through multiple ad networks. All three tech giants are going to make billions from that.

Now, 30% sounds like a lot but compare it to what the Newsstrade industry takes from us for our print output. WHSmith Wholesale and mag distribution take 50% of the cover price of all mags sold on the high street. And that is all on sale or return (Which is blox as we never get them back as they get pulped by the wholesale process). So, I and most publishers I know are really quite happy about the 30% slice that Apple et al will be taking in return for distributing our content via their apps. They are, after all, providing us with a delivery mechanism for our content AND the ads we sell ourselves.

Now, if only Apple would turn the bloody thing on, Facebook give us the tools to create these Instant Articles and Google fix the bloody annoying bugs in their Newsstand app we could get on with the business of writing stories and being able to pay for them.

The promoting ad blockers rule still applies btw. So long as we are debating the wider issue here then all is good as far as I am concerned.

🙂

There’s ads on the site? Weird….never seen any myself.

Hehe, tbh I did think that on this specific thread I’d’ve been alright with an oblique cheeky reference…

I always understood why the rule existed.

You’ve mentioned before that the forum is a big source of income mark.

Will that be served through these new revenue share systems then?

I’ve only heard a bit about it but I thought it was more for news articles and features.

I have no idea.
It all depends on the audience take up of the new app channels and the rates that the single ad per story actually pays. Since most ads are delivered through a marketplace it’d the marketplace that will decide the eventual worth of that placement. Until they turn it all on we won’t know. This DOES give me sleepless nights. Our margins are very tight and something as disruptive as this new publishing model from the Big3 could go either way.

I’m still not sure how this works for you though. As I understand it the stories you are referring to are the ones on the rest of the site, not the magazine nor the ads on the forum pages so you would still lose the revenue from the forum? (unless of course the assumption is that all new content in consumed through the app and the web site and forum still exists but isn’t the way most people get to your content ( runs off to review his own website 🙁 ))

Websites as destinations for content consumption are endangered, at least as far as the media is concerned. You still need websites to sell stuff directly. Journalism tho will be served mostly via apps from the Big3. The forum will stay and will be as busy as it is normally but I expect revenues from it directly to decline. It’s the stories we publish and write ourselves that will be carrying the revenue burden in the future. Ads displayed around our stories already generate a lot more revenue than ads in the forum per page impression.

Publishing has never been a simple business model but it’s getting more complicated at the moment. The challenge is to adapt.

Ads in print magazines I look at not least as they typically use quality photography. The issue with online ads is in many cases they are very intrusive and they materially slow down web page load, I’d are negative additions Print ads may make the magazine slightly thicker but they don’t stop you turning straight to the page you are interested in.

We all need to understand unless we pay for content, see ads or allow our data to be harvested there will be nothing to look at. Other forums I use have ads and they have sponsored forums. We cannot expect something for nothing.

“blox” 🙂

Another couple of thoughts.

If ads where less intrusive I’d be happy to have them switched on even being a subscriber, eg non animated banner ads which don’t slow down load time / cause constant re-rendering.
I wonder what the value of ads per user is (confidential I know), perhaps users would be prepared to pay that in order not to see ads. It maybe be as little as £1 or £2 per annum ?

The reason ads are currently all flashy and animated is because they perform better than non animated ads. No matter what we all say bout flash = annoying.. the actual reality is flashy = clicks.

We see this every day when we analyse the performance of the ad campaigns that we run directly.

The reason that particular nugget of marketing reality won’t matter so much in the new publishing era of ads in apps is that app ads can’t be avoided. They are inline with the content so you eye will always scan across it to get to the content on the other side. So it doesn’t have to quite as flashy and animated to score that subconscious ‘hit’ that all advertising works on.

Up until now content has been delivered on big desktop screens where content is in one area and ads in another (Excluding interstitials and pop-ups) so the ads have always had to work hard to get your attention because they are not directly in your sight-line. They are over to the side and so they have to jump up and down and shout ‘EXCUSE ME!’ to grab your attention.

Now content can be delivered in a really nice way on mobiles via apps the ads can stop shouting ta you and start chilling out a bit more since you are going to see them anyway.

You can test this out by looking at our stories in the new grit.cx app that contains a free news feed (Coming to Singletrack shortly) and in the Google Newsstand app for ios and android. There’s a single ad mixing it up with the content of the stories but it isn’t half as annoying an experience as ads on a website. It’s another reason why in the near future you won’t actually use the internet directly – you’ll use an app instead. It’s just a nicer user experience than using a browser.