Even though the
internet has been around for over a quarter century, questions and
debates still rage about what it is, what it could be and what it
shouldn't be. I'm a strong believer in net neutrality as are most
small business owners with a web site. I know that going up against
Verizon, AT&T and Time Warner with abuse and scorn won't make a
bit of difference to them but may make my blog and Facebook readers
think I have no logical arguments to offer so I need to resort to
angry adolescent attacks instead.
So I was surprised
when the latest web brouhaha erupted into headlines with one side
blasting the other by calling them, “an
immoral, mendacious coven of techie wannabees”.
Wow!
What's this all
about? It boiled to the surface this month after last month's
announcement that content on Conde Nast's (The New Yorker, Vanity
Fair, Wired end many more) web-site wouldn't
be available unless readers went into their browsers settings to
allow pop-up advertising on their site.
I had a paragraph in
last month's newsletter about that, but in checking my hyperlink
found out that the article I referenced was on the Forbes web-site
(here) and my
readers wouldn't be able to read it without blocking their blockers.
Fine.
As a long-time user
of ad blockers, I offer these reasons why I'll not be turning them
off. First of all, loading videos I don't ask to see takes forever on
my computer. I generally have a dozen or so tabs open in my browser,
my Thunderbird email program and a few applications like Excel or
Irfan. Even when I try to follow a story on USA Today that turns out
to be available only as a video report I immediately hit the back
button. I'd rather read the full story than watch someone give me a
quick synopsis. If someone made a video blocker I'd have one of them
too.
Worse, by clicking
on these ads you're inviting more pop-ups to appear. Did you click on
an ad for river cruises? Thanks to ad tracking, in the following
days you may be over-run with ads and links offering you river cruise
deals.
And malware? See how
closing ad-blockers for a
Forbes article infected computers.
Enough already!
I offer this
alternative analysis from those nice people at Wired and if it
too is unavailable, try this;
it describes the players and their complaints.
In the panic that
ensued when Apple announced its iOS 9 would offer ad-blocking on
mobile devices, the marketing industry freaked out. Fair Page and
Adobe, aware that only 1.4% of mobile devices offered ad-blocking
ability, realized the flood gates were about to open. Calmer heads
pointed out that the $22
billion was not only an estimate pulled out of thin air, the loss
wasn't even actual money, it was money that might be realized if
ad-blockers weren't doing such a good job.
It seems to me if
you design a marketing program that doesn't work, quantifying the
loss then ignoring that the campaign was deigned to use a flawed
delivery system is disingenuous. Apparently the brains in the
marketing department rationalized that those sorry-ass readers
weren't lining up for paid subscriptions to their content, so decided
to make them regret that decision by slowing down their internet
browsing. Brilliant!
In early December,
IAB
said ad-blockers cost publishers $781 million dollars annually.
Are all media
providers flame-throwing? Actually, most
aren't. Many approach it like death and taxes, acknowledging a
certain inevitability of innovation countered by more innovation.
Only something like 4%
of large publishers are leading the war against ad-blocking, but
that 4% draws Donald Trump-like coverage.
And while this
uproar is loudest in America where it's estimated 45 million of us
have enabled ad-blocking software, over
77 million Europeans use it to control their content. Don't
American CEOs (the highest paid CEOs in the world) emit the loudest
cries of outrage and unfairness of any CEOs in the rest of the world?
And do all those
fatally in love with all things digital side with those who have
decided to block their own content? Even most of them understand
what an annoyance unfiltered advertising is and how content
providers have continually broken the trust of their readers.
Frankly I'm
disappointed to learn that Ad Block Plus (ABP), the major provider of
ad-blocking software has offered
a work around to the advertising community. If they will submit
their ads to ABP for review, the less intrusive ones could be
displayed. Of course, submission of the ads would carry a price so
the advertisers scream blackmail, and it may well be. I hope they
ignore the work around and stick to their no ads period game plan.
Could peace break
out in this contest? Former Firefox (browser) CEO Brendan Eich has
introduced Brave,
a new browser that will block ad tracking by advertisers but
allow pop-up ads to be displayed. Since it only addresses part of the
consumer's concerns, I'm betting the battle rages.
Some
industry insiders want
a more measured take on online advertising. They consider the
evolution of the internet and realize that it has gone through more
transitions than anyone could have foreseen as they searched with
their Alta Vista search engine twenty years ago. Their advice? “We
will repent for the sins of the first $50 billion and build up to the
next $50 billion and beyond by remembering that audience, not ads,
are our lifeblood.”
Reading
and Assimilating Digitally
A thoughtful
consideration on the
evolution of reading and learning that leads to questioning how
content will evolve to change the way we learn.
Most
Read Online Article of 2015
There's no way to
accurately track traditional magazine article readership, but this
analysis of the traffic reading 2015's most read article, The
Atlantic's “What ISIS Really Wants,” is staggering and the
information it provides on the who, how, where and when is
incredible, perhaps even a bit intimidating.
Hong
Kong, Autonomy, and Censorship
Hong
Kong has had a contentious relationship with mainland China the last
couple of years. Fearing that the Chinese
government is involved in the disappearance of five employees of
Mighty Current Media who publish books critical of Chinese leaders,
Open Publishing has decided to delay the release of its title about
the corruption of the Chinese President. Hong
Kong citizens have again taken to the streets.
Mein
Kampf Sells Out
After a 70 year
absence, Hitler's Mein Kampf
is available in German bookstores after the state copyright expired
January 1, 2016. The first 4,000 copy release of the heavily
annotated 2 volume set sold out immediately.
Most
Expensive Books of 2015
Abe Books has listed
the most expensive books it sold last year, the costliest being a
5 volume Natural History of Birds
Book
Sales Down 2% Through 3 Quarters
2015
adult
trade sales were flat with a surprising 7.2% drop in children's
and YA. Paperbacks and audiobooks grew in double digits.
Gender
Neutral Titles for Kids
English Publisher
Buster Books releases books with titles like The
Gorgeous Girls Coloring Book and has been
pressured by a group called Let Books Be Books to only produce
children's books with gender neutral titles. Although the
publisher claims gendered coloring books outsell others by 3 to 1,
it has agreed to neuter future titles.
Speed
Reading Doesn't Work
I never quite got
around to signing up for the Evelyn
Woods Speed Reading Method, but now it seems I didn't miss a
thing. It
doesn't work.
The
Rodale 100
Like
the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, Rodale, Inc., arbiter of all
things organic and holistic, has
listed 100 people, places or things that have a positive impact
on Mother Earth.
Engaging
Kids Politically
Perhaps because many
millennials claim total indifference to the political processes,
Scholastic will not only publish
grade appropriate analysis of the 2016 election, but will also
host a web-site to work in conjunction with the classroom content.
Pearson
Outsources, Lays-off 4,000
Print services
provider RR Donnelly, announced in early January that Pearson would
turn
over all supply chain management to RRD. A week later Pearson
announced it was cutting
10% of its work force. Pearson's CEO called
critics “ignorant.”
Final
Thought
If the book is
second-hand, I leave all its markings intact, the spoor of previous
readers, fellow-travelers who have recorded their passage by means of
scribbled comments, a name on the fly-leaf, a bus ticket to mark a
certain page.
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