Adblock

in the context of linux reporting specifically.... If the relatively small set of people interesting in solid linux reporting overlap significantly with the small group of people who use adblock..then that's a real problem for the future of linux news reporting. If the lost revenue from adblock users is just noise, then the added revenue from users interested in linux could be in the noise as well. And I would daresay that our little niche microculture is more prone to using adblock than other niche groups (like for example pet llama owners) making our little revenue contribution even less influential or noteworthy.

If the vast majority of people who don't use adblock are far more interested in celebrity gossip than solid technology reporting then the economics dictate that we are going to see vastly more celebrity gossip news and vanishingly little solid technology reporting. Until we find a way to get Brad Pitt to use an Android phone and our interests crossover with mainstream interests.

-jef

> I actually tend to disagree. The small minority of folks who use AdBlock
> or NoScript to block ads are much more likely to get annoyed with an
> advertiser and actively avoid their products. Advertisers *should* want to
> get their ads in front of people who are likely to be ad-friendly or at
> worst ad-agnostic -- getting them in front of those that are
> ad-antagonistic is likely to backfire.

I think the original poster's thinking is that if you can somehow get an editorial in front of those AdBlock users that is favourable to a particular product, they are more likely to take that seriously. I.e. once you've convinced them it isn't advertising, they'll believe it. I don't really believe that either, because I think that turning ads off is far more of a statement about being highly selective of the information one chooses to believe than just about not getting bouncing GIFs and monkeys to punch.

From my point of view, if turning AdBlock on is killing publishing, then it deserves to die. I subscribe to LWN not because paying turns off the ads but because it has genuinely good, useful and in-depth content. I would stop my subscription if I believed that the stories were becoming merely promotional material from vendors.

The whole news industry is struggling with this, with paywalls and advertising and free content and subscriptions all stewed together, sometimes seemingly randomly. The one underlying factor is trust and brand loyalty - people would rather read a source they trust, and converting that into a dollar value is the hard part. When journalists tell us that they don't report news because it's not in the advertisers interests, they've immediately shown where their true loyalties lie - and it's not to their readers.

Have fun,

Paul

I use adBlock, but I disable it on sanely-run technical sites, where the ads actually will be relevant to me (and not rubbish about "the secret to weight loss"). E.g. LWN. Also, it's my understanding that the adBlock I use still fetches the ads - it just hides them. So the use should be invisible - though it obviously does devalue internet advertising.

I'm also more than happy with the LWN paywall model. It keeps the site interesting even for non-subscribers, and it doesn't prevent subscribers sharing.