Nieman Foundation at Harvard
Two reminders on Thursday that publishers face an daunting battle against ad blocking technology. First, The New York Times released its analysis of homepage loading speeds for the top 50 mobile news sites, including CNN, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Gawker, BuzzFeed, Elite Daily, and the Times itself.
Not surprisingly, there’s a sharp difference in how fast a site loads if the ads are blocked or not:
We measured the mix of advertising and editorial on the mobile home pages of the top 50 news websites — including ours — and found that more than half of all data came from ads and other content filtered by ad blockers.
Our neighbors across the Charles River at Boston.com performed the worst: 8.1 seconds to load editorial content and a whopping 30.8 seconds to load advertising. The Times estimates visiting the homepage of Boston.com once a day for a month would cost $9.50 in data usage on an average American cell plan. (Boston.com’s upscale sibling, BostonGlobe.com, took a more reasonable 1.8 seconds to load ads and 4.3 seconds for editorial.)
Reactions to the analysis were mixed, with Boston.com taking its lumps for its poor performance, while others saw the tests as another wakeup call to media companies.
A http://t.co/Ku1QSbwUq0 subscription might be cheaper than the data cost of visiting http://t.co/ddR0KtJSw9…? http://t.co/x9PjNmyQJM
— Tyler Machado (@tylermachado) October 1, 2015
Guardian has lowest ad load time of 50 news sites. Huge validation of the work of @patrickhamann & (former) team. http://t.co/G9QATV67wx
— Peter Gasston (@stopsatgreen) October 1, 2015
Nice job comparing mobile load times EXCEPT nobody goes to homepages on their phones. http://t.co/YK2N4wfP5y
— Chris Barna (@ctbarna) October 1, 2015
Mobile websites load faster & are easier to use with ad blockers, NYT finds. (I can hear the "nooo" from ad industry) http://t.co/j5ykCrCgcH
— Jody Serrano (@jodyserrano) October 1, 2015
Pretty amazing that ads can cost you $0.32/page from your phone data provider just to load 1 page of content http://t.co/6s94kIqbqw
— chris nunneley (@CeoNunneley) October 1, 2015
The best thing about this interactive is it translates load times into $. Most people do not have unlimited data. https://t.co/mRAzbS3BaQ
— stacy-marie ishmael (@s_m_i) October 1, 2015
Meanwhile, my hometown newspaper, the Star Tribune, has introduced its own ad-blocking counter measure:
The @StarTribune is using a script titled “FuckAdBlock” to prevent users with ad blockers from seeing content. pic.twitter.com/vRSdugJ4jj
— Tony Webster (@webster) October 1, 2015
The Star Tribune joins other newspapers like The Washington Post in trying to find a way to keep ad blockers at bay by essentially denying readers entrance to the site. Others like The Atlantic and The Guardian give readers a gentle nudge to find other ways of supporting their journalism.
Needless to say, some readers of the Star Tribune were unhappy with the paper’s decision:
@ehrens @dbrauer I hopped right on over to the Pioneer Press trainwreck of a website when I got that popup. See ya @StarTribune.
— Nick Campion (@mightympls) October 1, 2015
Nope, sorry @StarTribune. And FWIW, the popup doesn't seem to trigger with adblock enabled in private mode. pic.twitter.com/sU7QK9rbZD
— Benjamin Fribley (@bfribley) October 1, 2015
The @StarTribune is now blocking ad blockers, using a script that changes its block message `id` every half-second. pic.twitter.com/woAGvIEj2u
— Tony Webster (@webster) October 1, 2015
@webster @StarTribune @jaredamay
Are mad that they are running a business?
Do you think bananas should be sold without peels?
— Jacob (@jacobnollette) October 1, 2015
@MayorTabke @ehrens @StarTribune sounds like it. Strib is selling an upscale audience that has already shown willingness to pay.
— David Brauer (@dbrauer) October 1, 2015
