Online ads can be annoying, that’s very true. But it must be understood that for most websites, they are critically important. Without ads, technology websites such as ours would go bankrupt in no time. But Destructoid users seems to sideline the fact. The site has announced that half of its readers have started using ad-blockers and it is appealing them to give up that habit.
Ad-blockers essentially block the ads that are displayed on different websites. In doing so, they drop the count of visits paid to a given ad on a technology or games site. Once the visit count or view count drops, the ads publishers are able to discern that and thus, the owner of that website gets to earn a lot less over time.
In the past, such problems have not only occurred frequently but they have also let to the closure of many websites altogether. According to Destructoid’s founder and publisher, Niero Gonzalez, he had been registering a hike in the number of ad-blockers used by readers on the gaming site.
He tried to persuade the readers to give up on the practice, so that they can somehow support the site and let the team churn out gaming-related content for free. The responses of the readers were varied – some eagerly submitted to the request while others asked Destructoid to change its revenue model.
This is important to note here that ad blockers are making this happen to many mainstream websites. Mainstream sites offer free content because they can earn substantially from their ads. However, if ad blockers become the norm and site owners are unable to sustain themselves, they all will have to succumb to the paywall model one by one – and that’s a losing position for both the publishers and the readers.
Source: Destructoid
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ok, so they have some people who are happy to drop their add blockers
and others, who ask for a different revenue model, i.e. “let me pay to be able to see this without ads”
So, the solution it would seem is like Android apps: free version with adds, paid version without adds.
Whoever won’t add an exception for that site to his addblockers will be re-directed to a paywall. Sadly, for small sites, this will be entirely too costly to implement and maintain.