Adblockers

I have used AdBlock for about 6 months now.

I have no intention to deprive publishers of revenue, far from it, but I don't feel I have a choice. Some sites have so many intrusive (and sometimes downright offensive) ads that the viewing experience is miserable if you include ads.

If a publisher asks me to turn the blocker off on their site, I will for a day or so. If the ads aren't intrusive and are useful, I will leave it like that. If they are intrusive, I will turn it back on again or simply not visit that site again.

The worst sort of ads are Pop ups of any kind and any that play sound or video; Pop ups that are difficult to close are the worst sort of ads and I won't come back to these sites. For example Forbes has great content but its almost impossible to read it sometimes and therefore I don't bother.  My local news paper (The Argus - Brighton and Hove) often uses sound and occasionally uses advertiser images as a kind of watermark on the entire page with artifacts that don't scroll. It’s a miserable experience.

Sites that aren't optimised to display on tablets or mobile phones are surprisingly common, there is simply no excuse for this at all.

It's an impossible task for many publishers these days, keeping a revenue stream thats reliable and large enough to keep paying contributors. Making the site difficult to use with ads just cuts off part of that revenue stream.

I'm happy to pay for content if the price is right. I use Spotify, Netflix, pay for a Times subscription etc but there is a limit to my budget, I can't, and won't, subscribe to everything. We need a good micropayments service; one that allows you to set a monthly budget or limit (say £10) and a per article cost limit, I wouldn't want publishers charging 9 payments for 9 views or 9 payments for a multi-page article. Maybe sites could charge for a well formatted Pocket or Instapaper version of the article?

The music industry suffered from copyright theft for years, they developed a new model (around concerts, merchandising and Spotify/iTunes) that is starting to pay off. Magazine and newspapers need to do something similar. I don't just want to read one paper and pay 10 quid a month, I want to read parts of all of them. I don't care about the Property or Food sections but I do read the News, Books and Music sections and I want to read those from many papers.

Another revenue stream would be to collect articles into e-books and sell these via Amazon. I've bought quite a few of these and they are a great way to read.

Publishers have to find a better way to get their content out there and get people to pay for it, ads are not going to work on their own, there are too many talented developers who will beat them.