The New York Times is surveying 700,000 readers who use ad blockers
Off the heels of blocking a “relatively small” amount of ad block users from accessing The New York Times’ website, the newspaper is ratcheting up its anti-ad blocking campaign with a massive reader survey.
Digiday first noticed the website’s survey yesterday. The Times told us that the survey is being sent out to 200,000 digital subscribers and 500,000 non-subscribers, all of whom are using an ad blocker.
The survey consists of a dozen questions beginning with broader questions about the user’s ad blocking habits before narrowing to questions specifically about the Times’ website, including if they would consider whitelisting The Times, ranking the most bothersome type of Internet ads and guilting them with questions like: “Are you aware that blocking ads on the website prevents The New York Times from making money to supports it operations?”
Here’s a sampling of the questions:
The survey is only the latest move in the Times’ public stance against ad blockers. In March, it began showing some ad blocker users a pop-up asking to be whitelisted or buy a digital subscription, issuing this statement:
“We are opposed to ad blocking, which does not serve the long term interest of consumers. The creation of quality news content is expensive and digital advertising is one way that The New York Times and other high quality news providers fund news gathering operations.”
Digital subscribers continue to grow for the Times, but digital ad revenue dropped 1 percent to $42 million, a figure that only encompasses about a third of its total ad revenue, according to the paper’s earnings report for the first quarter of 2016.
More in Media
Media Briefing: Publishers who bet on events and franchises this year are reaping the rewards
Tentpole events and franchises are helping publishers lock in advertising revenue.
With Firefly Image 3, Adobe aims to integrate more AI tools for various apps
New tools let people make images in seconds, create image backgrounds, replacing parts of an image and use reference images to create with AI.
Publishers revamp their newsletter offerings to engage audiences amid threat of AI and declining referral traffic
Publishers like Axios, Eater, the Guardian, theSkimm and Snopes are either growing or revamping their newsletter offerings to engage audiences as a wave of generative AI advancements increases the need for original content and referral traffic declines push publishers to find alternative ways to reach readers.