I have ad blockers running on my browser. I do this because I do not want my bandwidth consumed by adverts. I have no desire to buy the products on offer, so do not wish to be bombarded by them in the first place – and, going back to that first point, on a mobile phone, these things are eating into valuable data allowances.
The Guardian and now the Telegraph are fighting back. The Guardian has a header exhorting me to become a supporter for a fee. Thanks but no thanks. The Telegraph has a banner that blocks the whole site unless I take down my blocker. So, what to do? Oh, yeah, I use an anonymous proxy…
These guys really need to think more imaginatively about how they raise revenue from their online presence.
The way I look at it, now as the content is such rubbish I shall no longer read what the Telegraph pushes out. Cutting off ones nose to spite ones face.
“The Telegraph has a banner that blocks the whole site unless I take down my blocker”
Strange – I have Adblock Latitude (a fork of Adblock Plus) running, and I can see the home page and individual articles O.K.
I use ordinary adblock plus in Firefox and have encountered the Telegraph blocker pop-up only a couple of Times, it seems to happen only rarely and at random. Reloading the site has cleard it each time so far. If it blocks it permanently I will simply stop reading it.
I use adblock plus on Safari and Chrome (Safari has gone to the dogs lately but that’s another story). Not encountered any problems but as you say it’s a very short sighted attitude. If you want readership, then don’t shut them out.
I get the Telegraph on Saturdays from Waitrose for free, otherwise I just read stuff on line. They’re not going to get me to buy it every day – not at their prices!