Online Publishers Try Reducing Ads to Boost Revenue

Aggressive and spammy ad tactics have helped drive an increase in consumer adoption of ad-blocking technologies in recent years, some industry observers say. Publishers may also be trying to get ahead of Google’s plans to introduce an ad “filter” to its popular Chrome web browser early next year, which could block interstitials, autoplay video ads and other formats from loading by default.

Online publisher Dotdash said it’s taking an approach similar to LittleThings across its portfolio of six niche-focused sites, like Verywell and Lifewire, which were carved out from what was once About.com.

Squeezing as many ads as possible onto every page is a shortsighted strategy, according to Dotdash Chief Executive Neil Vogel. The company has therefore stripped out content recommendation ads from its pages and autoplay video ads from within its articles, with the belief that a better user experience will help drive greater revenue in the long run.

“We are leaving money on the table on an individual visit basis but, overall, being thoughtful about things like this we think is a material driver of the growth of our brands,” Mr. Vogel said.

Mr. Vogel said the company stopped using content recommendation ads from third-party companies primarily because of concerns about the types of content they placed on its properties. “Users need to trust us with health, finance, travel advice. We didn’t think it was a good fit,” he said. Mr. Vogel didn’t say which company Dotdash had previously worked with for content recommendation ads.

Adam Singolda, CEO of content recommendation network Taboola, said he agrees that webpages have become more cluttered in recent years, describing them as “at times as chaotic and disorienting” as “Times Square signage.”

That’s largely why his company has been working on new tools such as its “Feed” product, he said, which is designed to help web publishers offer a more “streamlined” user experience similar to the ones they’ve come to expect from social networking apps.

Yaron Galai, CEO of rival content recommendation service Outbrain, said publishers aren’t stripping its widgets from their pages. “I’m not aware of any serious publisher we work with at Outbrain who’s considering removing content recommendations. Discovery is fundamental to their sites and business, just like a search box is,” he said.

Still, content recommendation ads and autoplay video ads have a reputation for surfacing ad experiences of questionable quality. Then, why do publishers continue to use them?

The answer is simple: Providers of those ads pay publishers millions of dollars a month in some instances, and often on a guaranteed basis. It’s a reliable source of revenue at a time when the online advertising market is increasingly unpredictable.

But according to Mr. Festa, publishers should think about the long-term impact those services can have on their sites, and not just the extra revenue.

Ultimately, LittleThings decided to remove content recommendation networks from its site entirely, he said, spurred in part by their use of increasingly “shocking and disturbing images,” which it felt weren’t suitable alongside its content and drove some users to abandon its site.

It made a similar decision with so-called “outstream” video ads, which automatically expand and play in between paragraphs of articles.

“Our initial belief, like most publishers, was that outstream provided relatively easy incremental revenue,” Mr. Festa said. But the company determined that the ads were confusing users and having a detrimental effect on engagement and sharing rates across the site.

LittleThings believes its experience shows that publishers don’t need to rely on aggressive ad tactics to make ends meet, and that they might even be shooting themselves in the foot by including them on their pages.

“We have proven that publishers can get the most impact out of every session while maximizing user experience and value to advertisers,” Mr. Festa said.

Someone share this shit with Hiroshimoot so I can finally turn off my adblock for 4chan and go back to the pre-Hiroshimoot status quo.

This is the best new. /news/ has had since the boards inception.

It's too little too late. I have become cozy with adblockers and have no intention to turn them off just because the companies decided to stop hosting annoying ads.

Took them long enough to realize that malware ridden ads and clickbait shit just drive people away. Being decent and having normal, unintrusive ads makes you more money because it doesn't fuck over users. Being greedy and shoving ads into everything just makes people block them or leave.

Surprised it took them this long to realize that.

>>157203
I'm surprised they realized at all

>>157165
Whatever. I'm hostile to the third party advertising model in any capacity. If a site can't sustain itself from donations, subscriptions, selling shit, or paid for out of the pockets of the owner, it doesn't need to exist.

>>157230
okay...

>>157228
>>157203
I actually stopped using my local newspaper's site just because of the insane amount of advertising and clickbait they began to display on every page, cramming dozens of ads into a page with a 2 paragraph news story.

Then they began using a paywall, which I learned to get around by modifying the URL, but they wised onto that and the links took me straight to the payment options.

Goodbye Press Democrat, I used to love reading your over-the-top left-biased local news about organic spinach farming and how to recycle more efficiently.

>>157187
Same here.

>>157187
Yup