Advertising has always been a core part of the news business and its importance to the industry has only grown with the advent of the internet. We don’t opt in – online ads just happen.
But there are ways to opt out. They’re called ad blockers, pieces of software that make ads magically disappear from web pages and prevent marketers from walking in your digital footprint.
When ad blockers started appearing a few years ago, no one was paying much attention – the user base was limited to a tech-savvy audience.
But that user number now exceeds 200 million which poses an existential threat to online news outlets and their economic viability.
The Listening Post’s Paolo Ganino reports on the rise of ad blockers and what they mean to the news business.
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