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by ACow_Adonis
3224 days ago
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You're right in that the "War on Ads" is an unwinnable war. But I think its more analogous to cleaning your house, or good hygiene. Its true that its a just a matter of time until your house, or yourself, will become dirty again if you don't do anything. But I don't think that's really an argument against cleaning. Rather, its just the reality that you're never going to get down to zero. But maybe if we put up enough of our own barriers, then our families can live in an environment with 10% of advertising influence and exposure instead of 60% or 80%. And i think that's a fight worth fighting. I might not be able to get rid of advertising, but I can block ads, I can stop billboards going up, I can stop them advertising cigarettes/alcohol or gambling in certain times and places, and I can never let the tv shows or ghost-written books into my house. And overall, I think we'll live in a better world overall if people make the effort. Its the good fight. As for ad-blockers being responsible for advertorials, fake reviews, forum spam and influencer marketing...lets just say it takes a massive leap of logic to turn a problem solely due to the behaviours of advertisers and try to level that at the feet of people trying to stop them. Wow. |
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Someone has to pay for content. You don't view ads, and you don't buy subscriptions. You also never donate. What do you think will happen next?
Well, some businesses die, but most don't. At the Guardian, we had to rely on three things:
1. We had to make about three hundred people redundant. (This is the human cost of the problem - not that some fatcat makes marginally worse dividends, but that a print worker who's done this job since 16 is now being turned out at 42)
2. We had to diversify our revenue streams. One way became 'native advertising': content sponsored by companies, like an article on the history of whiskey with a Jack Daniels badge, etc. Editorial hated this. Oh, boy, they objected. They fought in every principle and at every point available. They relented when they realized they were next for redundancies.
3. Then there were us, in commercial. Firefighting bad ads coming via the network, trying to resist JS hogging full page experiences, writing ads in the highest performing fashion we could to make the best of a bad situation. No-one liked us.
I didn't stay for long. I'd like to say I left because I was disgusted with the seediness of the ad industry, but the real reason was that the job was boring and depressing. We weren't saving the newspaper and we weren't making ads better.
Personally I think the only solution is the paywall. That's how newspapers worked for 250 years: you gave your dollar and you got your daily edition. You could trust your paper because it was more beholden to you than to any other interest. Will people accept this, though?