Behind Ars Technica’s Winning User Experience

User experience lessons from the Ad Blocker War are shaping both how publishers monetize their sites and the conversations they have with their readers about this. Successful strategies to address ad blocking are emerging and are typically varied. One of the key lessons is that focusing on the user experience challenges that drive ad blocking in the first place, is an effective strategy for improving ad revenues. I’ll explain how in this article, using a case study of a major US tech publication to illustrate the point.

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How Publishers Can Adapt Like BuzzFeed

BuzzFeed has been in the news quite a bit lately (actually, it’s been in the news quite a bit, period). What was once the “bored-at-work network,” has evolved into a remarkably adaptive and successful publisher. It is easy to dismiss BuzzFeed as just another purveyor of miscellaneous link bait but a recent and in-depth article on Fast Company titled “How BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti Is Building A 100-Year Media Company” makes for very interesting reading.

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3 Ad Blocking Strategies Publishers Are Testing

As part of my expanded “Ad Blocker Series” of articles, I wrote a case study into the 3 ad blocking strategies publishers are testing. This case study has been published on Business2Community as “A Case Study In Industry Responses To Ad Blocking” and I encourage you to read it, especially if you haven’t finished reading the Ad Blocker Series yet. Here is a preview:

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Ad Blocker Strategies – Ad Blockers Awaken

The ad blocking phenomenon has caused quite an upheaval in the publishing industry. With so much discussion and debate about ad blocking and its impact on the industry, we think its important to focus on the key issues so we spent some time exploring the origins of the phenomenon, how the industry is responding to it and what is driving it. The result is our in depth analysis in three parts.

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