Jonathan Irons writes about his defense of using ad blockers on news sites and how these companies shouldn’t place the blame on users — “How newspapers voluntarily gave away their online income”.
The newspapers (with very few exceptions) bet all their online revenue on pay-per-click ads. They swallowed the promises of the ad companies, above all Google. They believed them, and they remarkably failed as a complete industry to come up with any more nuanced and niche alternatives. Now the revenue is falling away, and the newspapers are struggling. At the same time, the revenues of the likes of Google are skyrocketing. And now it’s my fault.
Also of note are the screenshot-shaming of several news sites with layouts usurped by ad placements. Right in line with my Hostile Reading Experiences.
And here's a nice accompanying graph to further extrapolate the view:
Advertising revenue 1950-2014. US newspapers vs. Google, Facebook. In bn. US$, inflation adjusted. Data source: NAA, Statista. via Chris Lüscher of IA.