In December 2015, Forbes took an aggressive approach to its ad-blocking visitors. In this episode of Digiday Live, recorded last week at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Key Biscayne, Florida, Forbes Media CRO Mark Howard describes the four-stage process that Forbes undertook to better understand its ad-blocking readers, and ultimately reach its sales goals.
Through rigorous A/B testing of language on entry ads, social data gathering and communication-tweaking, Forbes has convinced close to 8 million readers to whitelist the site. Howard’s team found that when readers were given an “ad lite” option in exchange for whitelisting Forbes.com, they consumed more content in one session than a reader who had not whitelisted the site. Listen to Howard’s session above. To hear more about media is changing straight from the people making it happen, subscribe to Digiday Live on iTunes or Stitcher.
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