News Corp Australia to stop people using ad blockers from accessing sites
Eales: “This is how we fund our journalism”
News Corp Australia is to prevent people using ad blockers from accessing digital content as it looks to fight back against readers who are circumventing adverts and “destroying” the media firm’s business model.
The publisher is to launch a trial where it will tell people who block ads they can only access content if they turn off the technology, a move adopted by several US publishers already.
News of the trial comes after media executives at the International News Media Association world congress urged the industry to take a harder line with ad blockers.
OK, then, won’t watch it. No skin off my nose.
It’s refreshing to see publishers admit that something needs to change, but blocking AdBlockers isn’t the solution.
The industry needs to wake up and stop relying on the obtrusive, low interaction banner-ads that we’ve grown to hate.
NewsCorp needs to take a leaf out of the NYTimes’s* book and work towards producing engaging and worthwhile sponsored-content.
Gone are the days where you can throw together a pretty picture, some flashy animation and bam – there’s your ad.
The users are damaged and untrusting of ads – only when the line between advertisement and content is blurred will you see significant engagement in your digital ads.
* https://contently.com/strategist/2015/03/27/why-the-new-york-times-sponsored-content-is-going-toe-to-toe-with-its-editorial/
Given that it is trivially easy to get around the paywalls on The Australian and other New’s Australian sites I don’t why they are all that worried.
The other other irony is that a lot of their RWNJ readers (subscribers and others) are paranoid about privacy, cookies and hate ads so they may be preventing access to some of their keenest readers.
Bypassing the paywall AND blocking the ads is another story.
If they are concerned about privacy and cookies and hate ads, they may be RW but are hardly NJ.
Oh no! How will I get my Murdoch aligned news that is mostly pay walled anyway?
I’m pretty sure most people using adblockers will be quite happy to skip News sites.
For media companies – native content is the way forward, banners ad suck for everyone.
For advertisers focus on your won website, pushing out your own quality content and return to outdoor and cinema. Leave these rent seeking, muck raking, tax dodgers to wallow in their own audience bashing irrelevance.
And nothing of value was lost.
Usually find blocking Javascript on the sites blocking ad blockers stops them being able to block you. Next step is to fudge your browser user agent as a Google search bot, they tend not to get blocked and even give free access to some sites that have paywalls.
I don’t have an ad-blocker but I find blocking javascript blocks out many of the ads anyway.
Really? How about responding to consumer preference and enabling prepaid/anonymous reading of their sites. Nobody wants News data-vultures reading over their shoulder.
This is a sad and panicky ‘solution’ to a problem of their own making.
News are doing this purely so they’re seen by advertisers to be doing something. Of course, publishers with scale can still reach any audience anyway and only charge when actual ads are served – that’s the side of the story not championed enough.
“Journalistic service” and “this is how we fund journalism”?? Not sure what he’s talking about. But somehow that photo convinces me.
Once upon a time there were three bears. Publisher Bear, Digital Bear and Marketing Bear. Publisher Bear sold many printed newspapers. Digital Bear showed these same newspapers online for free. Publisher Bear was making lots of money from printed newspapers so he decided it was all perfectly OK to give away Digital Bear’s newspapers for free as he was also making lots and lots of money from Marketing Bear’s flashy banner ads and page take-overs.
All three bears thought they had built a perfect money tree and everyone would live happily ever after.
The people were happy for a while as they all thought Digital Bear’s free newspapers were a great idea and stopped buying Publisher Bear’s printed newspapers. Publisher Bear got very grumpy and decided that the people should no longer get it for free. The people had to subscribe and he built giant Pay Walls just like a man called Donald plans for Mexico. But the people found ways to smash the Pay Walls and read them for free just as they did before.
Digital Bear really annoyed the people by putting up lots and lots of yucky ads that people hated seeing every time they read a newspaper. A nice man told them he would help them to make the ads magically disappear with Adblockers and the people were happy again. Free newspapers with no more annoying ads that weren’t very good anyway.
Publisher Bear blamed Digital Bear for not planting the right kind of money tree. Marketing Bear got very angry because people were not seeing his ads anymore and decided it was a waste of time spending money with Digital Bear.
Now Publishing Bear’s last hope to keep Marketing Bear happy is to stop the people using Adblockers and force the people to see ads again or they will not be able to see Digital Bear’s newspapers any more.
The moral of the story Boys and Girls is that you must listen and understand people and treat them with kindness and respect. If you force them to do something they won’t like you very much at all and they won’t live happily ever after. Good night Boys and Girls!
The best analysis ever. Thank you, storyteller!
But where is Goldilocks?
Goldilocks was distracted by a news story about porridge and beds being just right but it turned to be some shonky native advertising. She doesn’t trust the three bears anymore!
Goldilocks was really fcked off because some rotten scum hacked into her phone and listened to her voice mails
Native content. Ha ha ha. What a joke. News is difficult enough to digest without the garbage maquerating as news written by an intern. When will advertisers wake up
Thank you News Corp!! No more of your garbage will be reaching my screen! Oh happy day. 🙂
Why not just use sourcepoint to keep the ads showing and keep the revenue.
Well, bye. 🙂
M to Q: “Now Q, this one’s a bit dicey. The Yanks have come up with a device that makes information available to the whole world and will keep going even in the event of a nuclear war. We want you to put all our information on this device, but keep it closed to anyone short of the readies. But leave it open enough so that those who are short of the readies can still reach the information with a bit of dickering. At the same time we must be able to keep out anyone who has no interest in special extra information we want to put up about er, um, weight loss, ladies’ undergarments, insurance policies, and all that sort of tommyrot. And of course the whole idea is to make lots of lovely money. The whole thing has to be monetised, you know.”
Q to M: “So it’s now you see it, now you don’t?”
M to Q: “You see it only if you pay.”
Q to M: “Surely if it was the Yanks who came up with it, they would have thought of that?”
M to Q: “Well, they didn’t. So it’s up to you. Do get on with it, there’s good fellow.”
Q to self: “SPECTRE and the KGB chappies were simplicity itself compared to this. Perhaps it’s time I thought of retirement.”
Seems a strange world we live in where just because you don’t like the way something is presented, you choose to employ a means of getting around their rules to access their offering.
How it is ‘normal’ that you can just steal content seems a strange development. The equivalent of asking an agency to do your work for you, but not pay for it. Or a client giving away it’s product without having to exchange money.
Nice that sites see a need for an improvement of the experience, but odd that the internet seems a place where legality is voided because someone is ‘annoyed’ that they have to access content in the way the publisher desired.
If you don’t like it, build your own website in the means you want.
“How it is ‘normal’ that you can just steal content seems a strange development.”
It’s not so strange when you consider that media companies were so spooked during the dotcom boom that they posted most of their content free on the web while ALSO trying to sell it in printed form. This never made sense to me. But they did it, and so created a generation of people who expect to have that information for nothing, because that is how it has always been for them. The story of the three bears, above, says it all.
Leaving all that aside, this morning I tried to visit the Herald website on my phone. It appeared briefly, and then the whole screen was covered in a car advertisement. There was a Close button on the ad. When I pressed it, it did not close the ad but took me right away from the site I was trying to reach, to the ad proper.
When you are faced with that kind of thing, it is natural to respond with “All’s fair in love and war.” Not to mention that placing obstacles in the reader’s way is entirely self-defeating when there are so many alternatives freely available.
Like many I had some sympathy for your view….but then you clogged my browser full of bordeline porn that at all my data.
What exactly would we be missing out on if we are unable to access Noise Ltd?
The headline, edited for reality would read:
“News Corp Australia to spot people using ad blockers *they can detect* from accessing sites”
Also as mentioned above people who use ad blockers (aka people under the age of 80) don’t read Newscorp
what a shame, i’ll miss out on the out-of-date clickbait articles that the murdoch/fairfax offerings provide.
All news sites are full of lies and clickbait, so I’m not missing out on anything expect more bullsh!t. Also, Newscorp can DIAF.