Report Reveals Apple News Brings Publishers Much Higher Traffic But a Lot Less Ad Revenue

[Kaibelf]

If they offend you so much, you should just not go to the sites. Instead, you take the content and give nothing back. And you're even against paying them for it instead!



Okay. Will do.



No. Because you're not getting anything for it. People who go to a site with adblockers are getting something and can't even be bothered to contribute to the people who make the content for them.

It’s pretty clear from your posts that you either work in advertising or at a site which is laden with ads because the content is not good enough to warrant a paywall. Otherwise I cannot fathom how you would not accept the basic fact that digital advertisers have overplayed their hand SO MUCH that ad blockers are not only a thing, but a HUGE thing.

 

[Michael Goff]

It’s pretty clear from your posts that you either work in advertising or at a site which is laden with ads because the content is not good enough to warrant a paywall. Otherwise I cannot fathom how you would not accept the basic fact that digital advertisers have overplayed their hand SO MUCH that ad blockers are not only a thing, but a HUGE thing.

I wish. Sadly, I do manual labor at a factory for somewhere between 8 and 12 hours a day 6 days a week. 50lb bags of powder don't stack themselves and buildings don't clean themselves.

 

[aka777]

I take it you both work in media? Because that’s the ONLY person who willingly accepts badgering, nuisance, invasive and tracking advertisements. I guess you totally missed what I said. Let me try and make it easier for you to understand a second time. I said that I accept banner ads. I do not accept bandwidth heavy auto play videos, ads that force me to click off them, scrolling ads that impede my ability to read the article.

If that makes me entitled, so be it. Forbes and NYT paywall.. I just go elsewhere now. By forcing them to lose revenue on adblockers, they are learning what types of ads were are willing to accept.

The advertising industry brought this on themselves, as they turned a blind eye to this abuse by advertisers for too long. Companies like Apple are starting to look out for their customers and blocking all of this BS.

 

[Michael Goff]

The advertising industry brought this on themselves, as they turned a blind eye to this abuse by advertisers for too long. Companies like Apple are starting to look out for their customers and blocking all of this BS.

Companies like Apple do this because it hurts their competition. Let's not pretend otherwise. And if they could have become an ad company, they would have. Remember iAds?

 

[CarlJ]

I was all against adblockers, sympathetic to the cause. Then I got a nasty piece of adware on my Mac. Easily removed, but the the narrative said that it comes down with adverts. So, the baby went out with the bath water and I now adblock.

This. They can show all the ads they want, and I'll decide to read, or not read, their site based on the ratio between how useful/interesting I find their site, vs. how annoying the ads are (or aren't). What I do not want, is piles of unvetted 3rd/4th/5th-party Javascript running on my machine.

 

[redneckitengineer]

If you're gonna vote with your wallet, perhaps you should open it and actually pay for that content that isn't free to produce. If people actually paid for things that have real monetary value, maybe they wouldn't need to resort to things like obnoxious ads that get in the way.

Or maybe if the content creators didn’t get so greedy they wouldn’t have the problem in the first place.... /mic drop
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I wish. Sadly, I do manual labor at a factory for somewhere between 8 and 12 hours a day 6 days a week. 50lb bags of powder don't stack themselves and buildings don't clean themselves.

Boy if that’s your career and you still love digital advertising.... I’m sorry.
[doublepost=1538000621][/doublepost]

There can't be 50 comments above when your post is #47

And none of your prior posts addressed my question about how you'll find out if a blocked site later reduces or eliminates the annoying ads that got you to block them to begin with. Do you turn off the blocking to check every 6 months or year? People who block a site tend to leave the site permanently blocked; They don't periodically unblock to check the ad annoyance level.

Sorry, don’t have a post count, just a page count on mobile. I assume 2 pages of full replies. Shoot me....

Yes I actually do attempt to whitelist every so often, usually when cleaning out the cookie jar.

 

[Abazigal]

Companies like Apple do this because it hurts their competition. Let's not pretend otherwise. And if they could have become an ad company, they would have. Remember iAds?

iAds was intended as a less user-hostile alternative to the crap we were getting shoved down our faces elsewhere. Of course publishers need to survive. The problem has never been about ads vs no ads. Its acceptable ads vs unacceptable ads.

I support a spotify style model where I pay a monthly subscription fee and the publisher gets paid based on how many people read their articles. Hopefully this helps align the incentives between publishers and consumers.

 

[Michael Goff]

Or maybe if the content creators didn’t get so greedy they wouldn’t have the problem in the first place.... /mic drop
[doublepost=1538000525][/doublepost]

Boy if that’s your career and you still love digital advertising.... I’m sorry.
[doublepost=1538000621][/doublepost]

Sorry, don’t have a post count, just a page count on mobile. I assume 2 pages of full replies. Shoot me....

Yes I actually do attempt to whitelist every so often, usually when cleaning out the cookie jar.

I don't love it. I just know it's a necessary thing. I don't have to love a thing to know it needs to exist.
[doublepost=1538001469][/doublepost]

iAds was intended as a less user-hostile alternative to the crap we were getting shoved down our faces elsewhere. Of course publishers need to survive. The problem has never been about ads vs no ads. Its acceptable ads vs unacceptable ads.

I support a spotify style model where I pay a monthly subscription fee and the publisher gets paid based on how many people read their articles. Hopefully this helps align the incentives between publishers and consumers.

And you think most people are going to pay for no ads when they wont even pay 1$ for an app that they'll use every day?

 

[idrewuk]

I'm a big Apple News fan. Without me really noticing it's become my daily go-to for catching up on all of the content themes I enjoy and I think it's really nicely presented. Not sure why they're so slow rolling it out to other countries.

Some articles only give a snipper (Daily Mirror, for example) and you have to click to go to their site to finish reading. I tend to only click if it's something I'm really interested in finishing.

 

[WhoDaKat]

I’d pay monthly for ad free news, that involved all of the content from legitimate sites. I wouldn’t want to pay and for the NYT, and then find out half their content is behind a paywall.

 

[fairuz]

Unlike Google and Facebook however, Apple News hosts content within the app instead of sending readers to the original website, depriving publishers of ad revenue.

This is exactly why I used to use Apple News. It's like Safari Reader Mode. Not just blocking ads but the bad formatting on sites. I'm sick of these new designs where everything is huge and there's tons of whitespace. At least MacRumors does it right, keeping it clean but not pretentious or distracting.

Unfortunately, they never upgraded Apple News to show alternate sources for articles like Google News does, so I quit because I felt I wasn't getting a balanced view. But I might go back now that Google News seems to think that the only thing I care about is Kavanaugh.
[doublepost=1538123689][/doublepost]

Companies like Apple do this because it hurts their competition. Let's not pretend otherwise. And if they could have become an ad company, they would have. Remember iAds?

Or because it doesn't hurt them. I don't think they're trying to actively screw Google or something, but I'll bet Apple would be more ad-friendly if they sold ads.

Also, iAd died because it wasn't giving advertisers enough ability to track users. Why didn't Apple just give it all to them like Google does?

 

[Michael Goff]

This is exactly why I used to use Apple News. It's like Safari Reader Mode. Not just blocking ads but the bad formatting on sites. I'm sick of these new designs where everything is huge and there's tons of whitespace. At least MacRumors does it right, keeping it clean but not pretentious or distracting.

Unfortunately, they never upgraded it to show alternate sources for articles like Google News does, so I quit because I felt I wasn't getting a balanced view. But I might go back now that Google News seems to think that the only thing I care about is Kavanaugh.
[doublepost=1538123689][/doublepost]
Or because it doesn't hurt them. I don't think they're trying to actively screw Google or something, but I'll bet Apple would be more ad-friendly if they sold ads.

Also, iAd died because it wasn't giving advertisers enough ability to track users. Why didn't Apple just give it all to them like Google does?

You don't think Apple would actively try to harm their biggest competitor in the mobile market?

 

[Tech198]

I reckon Apples shouldn't be looking at how many ways it can dish up news.... As they hope it would feel the empty void of loss revenue...

They should instead by fixing the problem. By offering privacy, they have effectively limiting their breach. as researchers 'wanna"know who read this... If Apple cannot find a way to "deliver" the reads for, the sake of privacy, then that's a big issue. They seem to to it ok with this "deferential" stuff in Photos... Not sure how much of it Apple knows about users, but if they do it there, they can find some way to do it with publishers as well without sacrificing users.

 

[ipponrg]

You don't think Apple would actively try to harm their biggest competitor in the mobile market?

This actually made me chuckle. Anyone who thinks Apple is a saint when it comes to competition needs to get a reality check.

 

[fairuz]

You don't think Apple would actively try to harm their biggest competitor in the mobile market?

Not publicly. Google also claims they don't do this sort of thing. We can speculate, but there's nothing to go off of, and I don't think Apple News is reason enough to accuse them of this.
[doublepost=1538187326][/doublepost]

This actually made me chuckle. Anyone who thinks Apple is a saint when it comes to competition needs to get a reality check.

They aren't saints, but behavior like this is explicitly illegal (anticompetitive practice). It's hard in a big company to do anything without lots of people knowing, so I don't think they'd get away with such a plot.

 

[Michael Goff]

Not publicly. Google also claims they don't do this sort of thing. We can speculate, but there's nothing to go off of, and I don't think Apple News is reason enough to accuse them of this.
[doublepost=1538187326][/doublepost]
They aren't saints, but behavior like this is explicitly illegal (anticompetitive practice). It's hard in a big company to do anything without lots of people knowing, so I don't think they'd get away with such a plot.

Not this alone, but I'm talking about all the different things they've done lately.