Business Insider fights ad blocking in the UK with whitelists, micropayments and subscriptions
As its staff sized nearly doubled over the last year to 45 employees, Business Insider U.K. moved shop in January to a larger co-working space in London’s Aldgate district, surrounded by tech startups, financial firms and a murderabilia museum devoted to Jack the Ripper. In the publisher’s industrial chic office full of low-hanging light fixtures and intentionally-exposed ceiling pipes, Julian Childs, BI’s managing director of U.K. and Europe, discussed the perils of fighting ad blockers.
“I don’t think there is one definitive model that works,” he said. “That is why it is good for us to have the ability to test different options.”
BI U.K. is beefing up its anti-ad blocking tactics so that the blockers don’t eat up its ad revenue as it continues its European expansion. Within the next few weeks, BI U.K. will begin testing an anti-ad blocker for both mobile and desktop that gives ad-blocking users a few options to fund the content they are consuming. Users blocking ads will be given a prompt that states in order to receive the content they can either whitelist BI, pay for an ad-free subscription or pay a few pennies to obtain a specific article ad free.
The U.K. is the first market that BI will test the product in, and it is a different product than the whitelist prompts that BI already uses in the U.S., Childs said. When asked why the product is being tested first in the U.K., Childs said that “Europe has a higher rate of ad block, but we are conscious there could be geographical differences [in test results].”
A BI spokesperson said that 24 percent of BI U.K. desktop visitors use an blocker compared to 9 percent of U.S. visitors. Mobile ad blocking figures were miniscule in both the U.S. and U.K., but reports suggest that segment will grow.
There is no definitive timeline on when these options might be rolled out to all BI U.K. users or if all the options in the testing will make it to the broader market, but Childs suspected that BI will likely A/B test the anti-ad blocker for a few months.
“With all these tests and product integrations, it is an experiment,” Childs said. “It is not a perfect product.”
Image via Business Insider
-
Why some publishers are giving their AI chatbots a personality
BuzzFeed and Ingenio are hoping giving their chatbots a unique voice and tone will differentiate their AI products but others are prioritizing utility over entertainment.
-
Publishers say the competition is steeper than expected for event sponsorship dollars this year
Selling events was harder than expected for some publishers in Q2, but having a niche helped win some of the coveted sponsorship dollars.
-
Media Briefing: Publisher execs fear lack of visibility for Q3, but feel steady year over year
Publisher execs share how Q2 shook out for their businesses as they brace for an equally murky second half.
-
SponsoredWhat the measurement and currency discussion really means to TV advertisers
Ali Mack, head of TV and agency, Experian Major streaming video providers have recently made headlines by adopting new currencies for ad measurement, threatening Nielsen’s long-standing TV ratings monopoly. NBCUniversal, for example, has certified iSpot and VideoAmp as currencies for advanced audiences and formed the Joint Industry Committee with Paramount, TelevisaUnivision and Warner Bros. Discovery. […]
-
Digiday+ Research: Nearly two-thirds of publishers think they will lose when the third-party cookie dies
Publishers have been busy prepping for the end of the third-party cookie, but that doesn't mean they think they'll come out on top in the post-cookie era. In fact, publishers count themselves among those who stand to lose from the end of the cookie.
-
Spotify cancels six true crime podcasts amid layoffs, Gimlet-Parcast merger
Spotify is canceling six shows and laying off 200 people as it merges its Gimlet and Parcast units to push its podcast business towards profitability.
