Hosting ads while using an ad-blocker
I’ve been thinking recently about advertising on the Internet. As some of you may notice, I have an ad running along the right side of my blog. Specifically, I’m a member of BlogHer’s advertising network. BlogHer pegs itself as “the best conversations led by women in social media. A curated selection of authentic voices.” Their advertising network serves ads to members of the BlogHer network, giving advertisers the opportunity to focus on a (relatively) targeted audience. As a bonus for blogs serving BlogHer ads, the ads will link to other blogs in the BlogHer network – I get traffic from other people hosting BlogHer ads, and they send traffic to me. That means that being a BlogHer advertiser not only gives me a small amount of money, it boosts my traffic, further boosting my ad revenue.
I don’t make tons of money from the advertisements on this blog. It’s been about $10 a month, which basically covers my hosting costs for this blog. That said, it’s really exciting to get some money – no matter how little – for doing something I enjoy doing anyway.
For all that, I’m a bit of a hypocrite: I block ads when I’m online, and strongly recommend that everyone else should, too. The difference is pretty incredible.
There, isn't that better?
First lets cover the ‘how.’ I use Firefox, a browser available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I have an add-on installed called Adblock Plus, which automatically filters and blocks just about 99% of the ads out there. The filter automatically updates, so as advertisers get sneakier and sneakier, AdBlock Plus gets sneakier, too. That makes it super-easy to block the vast majority of ads out there. On top of that, most of the blogs I’m reading I read through Google Reader, which generally doesn’t display ads anyway.
But why do I block ads? Well, I block ads because their fucking annoying. And that’s why I’m a hypocrite. The ads on my blog have animations. I’m pretty sure they don’t have sound, and I’m almost positive I don’t let them fly over the rest of the page, even though both of those are options that might make me a bit more money. The more obnoxious you let advertisers be, the more they’re willing to pay you.
Womanist Musings had a really interesting post on the economics of blogging recently, and it was definitely the prompt for me to write this post. Renee talks about the lack of financial intensives to blog, about how advertising rarely pays for much beyond hosting of the blog itself, about the difficulties of Google Reader when it comes to advertising revenue, and about the perceptions that advertising = lots of money:
Blogging is work. What’s more — it is unpaid labour for most of us that do it. This may not mean much to you, but I ask you to consider that most of the work women do in this world is unpaid and this largely contributes to the economic gender imbalance. So when I see yet another blogger having to explain why she has ads that are questionable, it makes me upset.
She finishes with a request for donations, and an acknowledgment that blogging – for all but the biggest bloggers out there – is not a lucrative source of income.
Meanwhile, Ars Technica (a site with a very different focus than Womanist Musings) recently posted an article on Why Ad Blocking is devastating the sites you love. From the article:
My argument is simple: blocking ads can be devastating to the sites you love. I am not making an argument that blocking ads is a form of stealing, or is immoral, or unethical, or makes someone the son of the devil. It can result in people losing their jobs, it can result in less content on any given site, and it definitely can affect the quality of content. It can also put sites into a real advertising death spin. As ad revenues go down, many sites are lured into running advertising of a truly questionable nature
I think this is a much more compelling argument than about morals or ethics, because it’s about the results not the intentions. I don’t think I’m doing anything unethical or immoral by using an ad blocker. At the same time, I can acknowledge Ars Technica’s point that my intentions or morals or ethics may not matter when it comes to the loss of revenue that would occur if everyone started blocking everyone’s ads online.
Now, I also have a donations link. (It’s here, for those who have never seen it.) That link doesn’t bring much money in, either. Probably a little less – on average – than the advertising revenue. But those dollars are ultimately more important, and more satisfying, because they meant an individual cared enough to make a donation. That’s an active role, rather than the passive or default decision to not block someone’s ads.
I’m honest enough to know that I won’t stop blocking ads. I may try white-listing sites that I really like, which means that I would not longer block ads on their pages, thus helping their advertising revenue. I’ll also try donating to blogs and sites I regularly read. I’ve donated to Venus Envy, to Ellen Hayes & Tucker, and to a few other sites.
But tell me, oh faithful readers: should I pull ads from this site? Are y’all willing to chip in enough to make it worth my while to pull ads from this site?
Let me know your thoughts.
Themocracy
This may sound weird, but I would like you to keep running adds. I belive you deserve to be paid for the work you do on this blog, but I can’t really afford to donate much to anyone and I perfer to make what donations I do have big ones to my top couple of sources* rather than spreading them out and leting pay-pal take a big cut. Which means that small blogs like yours aren’t likley to see anything:(
*Based off of Venus Envy’s donations page I belive pay-pal charges a fixed rate, thus I would prefer to donate $10 to one site than $2 dollars to one site.
Thanks for chiming in! I don’t think it sounds weird at all – honestly, I feel the same way about many (most?) of the sites I read. I want them to make money, but can’t afford to give them what they deserve. And yeah, my understanding is the same as Erin’s, that PayPal is a heartless beast.
PS – Out of curiosity, what other blogs are out there that you think are worth checking out? I’m always interested in new reading material.
Shakeville, Femminsting, IEET blog, David Brin’s blog(though he doesn’t take donations) and Questioning Transaphobia. Though the truthfully Shakeville is the only one I really plan to donate too, NPR(no pay-pal woot!) and my favorite webcomics take precadence.
I’m an NPR junkie too. What webcomics are you reading?
I either follow or in the case of completed works have read 30+ webcomics so most people don’t like the full list(though I can try to type it up if you want I luuve talking about webcomics). My top suggestions based on how much I like them, what I know about you, and how likely you are to find them indepenently, would be; Closetspace, A Mirical or Science, Girl Genuis, DMFA, Riot Nrrd and Gunngerkrigg court. Possibly Aethria Epics, that ones real hit or miss.
Almost forgot, Paleo-Future, Brass Goggles and thought they a not exactly blogs, religioustolerance.org and Tales of Future Past. They don’t update often, thus I don’t check them often thus intialy forgeting them, but there archives a worth checking out if your into Science Fiction and Paleo-Futureism(basicily looking and how people in the past portrayed the future).
I don’t care if there are ads or not, as long as you don’t get any particularly obnoxious ones.
What needs to be done here is a new variant of adblocker, one that simply diverts the ads to load (at low priority) into a single background page or new tab. Perhaps the ads from any given site could be framed separately, and dismissible. Then the ads will be counted as delivered and ‘viewed’, and the user could even browse through them to see if any deserved a click.
My current compromise is to only block flash itself, using ‘clicktoflash’. I’m not sure what effect that would have on the ad metrics.
Welcome, taryn, and thanks for the comment. That’s a really interesting idea.
The concern I have, though, is that might ultimately lower the usefulness of ads (were such a blocker widely adopted) since each view would be ‘worth’ less. That’s why places like Google fight so hard to make sure each click is really someone clicking and not just a bot, because otherwise A) they pay out for fake clicks and B) the clicks are worth less to the advertisers.
But it seems like so few people (percentage-wise) are using ad-blockers in the first place, it might not be a big issue.