Some Online Publishers Increase Revenue by Reducing Ads (Jul 13, 2017)

The Wall Street Journal has a nice bit of reporting here on several websites which are reducing the number and toning down the nature of ads, and seeing positive results in terms of ad revenue as a result. Reading the article, it’s hard to avoid asking “You mean you dramatically improved the user experience and more people spent more time on your site?” The changes being described here seem so obvious that it’s easy to forget that the received wisdom in online advertising (as in TV advertising, arguably) has been that the best way to generate more ad revenue is to show more ads and make them harder to ignore, at the expense of the user experience. The backlash against advertising online (manifested in both use of ad blockers and refusing to visit sites with obnoxious ads) and on TV (manifested through ad-skipping DVRs and the rise of ad-free properties like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO) is now finally forcing a reckoning among those that have swallowed that line of thinking. And the results should surprise no-one: prioritizing anything over the user experience is always going to worsen the experience and therefore usage, while prioritizing the user experience will improve it and usage, and in the process may well improve revenues too. This isn’t a panacea for online display ads, many of which will be blocked anyway even if not obnoxious, and whose value compared to native and search ads continues to erode, but it’s better than continuing down the road most online publishers have been on. The solution for TV advertising, on the other hand, isn’t nearly so simple, given the broader declines in viewership.

via WSJ


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