Ad-blockers in the Literary Community

The true cost of ad-free internet use.

Ad-blockers are great for the shopping websites that have 150+ advertisements despite the fact that the bulk of their revenue comes from other outlets, but its taking a toll on the literary community. The Toast, a publication which co-founder Nicole Cliffe calls a niche website read by 99% of librarians and archivists in New England , shut down this July. While Cliffe and cofounder Mallory Ortberg noted that the bigger issue at hand was just not wanting to do it anymore , they also explained their attempts to remind people about ad-blockers and their impact on [the websites] ability to turn a profit .

Other literary publications have begun to address the issue too, some slightly more intense in their actions than The Toast. The Atlantic magazine has a pop-up that not only reminds readers that theyre using ad-blocking software, but keeps content locked until people either turn off their ad-blocker on the sites domain or subscribe to the publication for an ad-free experience, with rates at $3.99 a month or $39.99 a year. Business Insider has since followed suit .

Researchers from the arXiv recently conducted a cryptography and security study , A First Look at Ad-block Detection: A New Arms Race on the Web, regarding the ways in which publications are combatting ad-blockers, and how ad-blocking systems are in turn fighting back. The detection systems, used by aforementioned publications like The Atlantic and Business Insider, are simply additional scripts in the websites foundational code, but these strategies are ever-evolving (Mughees, H.; Qian, Z.; Shafiq, Z.; Dash, K.; & Hui, P, 2016, p. 2). Facebook , for example, still contains a multitude of advertisements, despite the use of ad-blockers.

Its unclear exactly how many people use ad-blockers between personal computers, tablets, and smartphones, but a 2015 New York Times blog post cited a PageFair study , which reported that there were 198 million global ad-blocking users. This was a global growth rate of 41% in 2015, suggesting an exponentially increasing numbers of users in the ad-blocking market.

One of the simplest solutions to the ad-blocker dilemma is whitelisting. Its simple enough and allows readers to still avoid the swarm of adds on click-bait websites that dont rely on advertisements for funding. Users can simply click on the familiar, red ad-blocking icon and choose dont run on pages on this domain, and then confirm the exclude option. A green stop sign will appear, signaling that the ad-blocking software has been paused. The alternative to keeping ad-blockers is, of course, readers paying magazines and publications for the stellar work that theyre producing and promoting.