Why AdBlocking Software only Hurts the Viewer
I was recently asked what I thought about AdBlocking software and how it may impact a website’s revenue. Here’s what I said:
A large proportion of the content available on the web today has been funded by the revenue site owners receive from displaying advertising. According to WorldWideWebSize.com the number of web pages indexed by Google in the past two years has grown by 30 billion, and as a result the value placed on a web page has diminished.
Webmasters are now generating less revenue online through traditional advertising and software designed to blog advertising doesn’t help. What users don’t realise is they’re only hurting themselves.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and in the case of this kind of software, webmasters are now actively combatting it by implementing some of the following;
- Reducing the number of times they update their website with fresh content as it simply isn’t as profitable anymore.
- Turning to alternative revenue streams such as subscriptions and “members only” areas.
- Installing recognition software that will ensure no content is displayed at all for web viewers with ad blocking software installed.
Advertising is all around us, and whilst sometimes pop-up pages and flashing banners can be annoying, remember that the website you are surfing costs money to maintain so it is only fair that it is recouped somehow. The World Wide Web isn’t just a playground, it is a business marketplace too.
