Responsible Marketing for Online Content

We spend hours designing a site, and we think long and hard about what kind of things we want to sell, we make sure everything looks great, and then people come along and use adblock. It’s frustrating, and as long as it remains legal, there’s nothing we can do about it. Sure, we can expect loyal readers, friends and family to at least whitelist our site, but they don’t have to. We can ask them nicely to stop reading our content without the ads, we can assure them that we market responsibly and that we don’t use sneaky tactics. We can be totally transparent and still people simply want it for free.

Why are people using adblock, when it raises the moral issue of taking something for nothing? I don’t like the way it feels to censor half of the internet, it stops the content creators from making a living and it also gives them a middle finger for all their hard work. But not everyone is like me, and I can’t expect them to be. Something else I don’t like is being interrupted. And I find that many sites and content creators are over-using adverts which actually degrades the content experience. Rather than finding another source, one without an aggressive marketing campaign, it is very tempting to just download an adblock and use their site anyway. This not only rewards this creator for having what could be considered an annoying and overly commercial product with extra hits, it also puts everyone else out of the picture too.

Marketing responsibly means putting the commercial content in relevant and reasonable places. It also means that we need to make sure that we are offering value with our commerce, and not just passing on some random stuff that we’re not sure anyone will want. People want to see special offers, they want to see bargains, unusual and unique things, they want to see things to buy. People in general love buying things, and they love browsing things. With responsible and appropriate marketing it’s possible to offer a great consumer experience as well as offer a great selection of content. We all need to make money, and content developers are no different. Please be responsible with your marketing though, otherwise we drive more people into the internet censorship of adblock which ultimately costs us dearly.

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