Low click-through rates are sadly the norm in online advertising, but publishers have found ways to stay afloat by charging per-view rates on their ad inventory. So what happens when consumers use ad-blocking software to eliminate all forms of online advertising?
It cheats publishers out of a lot of revenue, according to Ars Technica Editor-in-Chief Ken Fisher, who posted a lengthy memo about his website's stance on ad blocking.
Consumers who arrive at a site using ad blockers use up publishers' bandwidth and gain access to the content, but they don't provide the publisher with any revenue. Ars Technica, a website focusing largely on technology, has an above-average number of visitors who run ad blockers. "Imagine running a restaurant where 40 percent of the people who came and ate didn't pay," wrote Fisher. "In a way, that's what ad blocking is doing to us."
Ars Technica experimented last week by making the website inaccessible to anyone running an ad blocker. The experiment was successful, but Ars took a fair share of heat from its readership. Rather than completely shut out consumers, the website instead asked its readers to disable their ad blockers, if only to help the website's bottom line.
