Much has been written about the phenomenon of "ad-blindness" - where visitors to a web page are oblivious the advertising messages on the page.
It seems that our sub-conscious minds are now training themselves to screen out annoying interruption marketing. My teenage sons are evidence of this. They tell me that they never even look at a right hand side panel on a website, because "that's were the adverts are".
So, with the online advertising industry facing this human behavioural challenge, will it be able to survive the increasing technological challenge too?
The technological challenge is coming from the increasing efficiency of software which can automatically detect and block adverts on any web page. I have been trying out AdThwart, which installs easily as a Chrome or Firefox browser extension. It works, and I now browse the Internet and never see any adverts. You wouldn't believe how much this improves the experience.
However, if the twin challenges I refer to here do result in a drying-up of advertising revenue, we might all need to get used to paying for useful online content, rather than consuming it for free.
Accounting Web homepage - with adverts
Accounting Web homepage - with AdThwart
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What ads?
I started using Adblocker some time ago - not that I'm fundamentally anti-advertising, but because so many ads are either distracting (using animations or similar) or there were so many on some sites that it slowed the page loading times (even on a 3meg connection). It would be a shame if AW went the way of the paywall, but it would be 'collateral damage' from ignorant web ad / site designers elsewhere.
That being said (and tempting fate I suspect) for a reasonable fee I would subscribe (unlike the Times site, which I haven't read since it went behind the paywall).
The Times paywall seems to be paying-off
Since you mention it, I wrote a little piece about Mr Murdochs paywall recently. He seems to be doing pretty well, despite the lower readership numbers.