Ad Age:
On Wednesday, the newspaper began blanking out, for some users, a percentage of words in articles symbolizing the percentage of the company’s revenue that comes from advertising.
The proportion of words blocked isn’t scientific, and the Financial Times doesn’t break out the exact chunk of revenue that comes from ads, said global advertising sales director Dominic Good. “It’s more illustrative than specific,” he said.
The test group comprises registered desktop computer visitors who don’t pay for a subscription, about .075% of the company’s desktop traffic. Some ad-blocking members of this group won’t see any new messaging, some will be asked to whitelist the website’s ads but can still read regardless, some will see articles with many words blanked out if they won’t whitelist the site, and some will be blocked outright if they don’t whitelist the site.
The company will evaulate the results after three or four weeks.
I wonder if this is a potential move to open up the gates, allow visitors through the paywall who agree to accept advertising. Interesting to see how this plays out.
[H/T The caustically cantankerous Not Jony Ive]
sorry dudes, but you publishers blew it. too many ad trackers and you ignore the Do Not Track flag…. so screw off, im not disabling my blockers for anybody.
Agreed. Create compelling content with reasonable ads and I’m fine with that. Make it a tedious experience and I’ll get my information elsewhere.
F— ’em.
Not turning off AdBlock as a condition – I’ll just not read their low-value content (exactly like I won’t fore Forbes or Wired).
They can provide superior content and I’ll whitelist them if they promise their ads will be good (as I have here, for instance).
Give me the option to pay for an ad-free subscription. Otherwise, go f_ck yourself
It’s interesting that twelve months on, none of the news sites that I visit have dropped the use of tracker or ads – most seem to have gone up!
No one is reducing Ads and promoting themselves as such to attract people who might be interesting visiting such a site.
ft.com/subscribe