Why publishers are moving away from the ad revenue business model.

Generating ad revenue today has become more difficult, largely due to detractors such as banner blindness, ad blockers and GDPR privacy regulations.

When the digital publishing industry first emerged, many businesses chose to monetise their content through ad revenue. Initially, this made total sense. Rather than charge users for the article or issue they want to view, online properties worked with a handful of companies to sell advertising space to capitalise on user traffic the content was attracting.

While this sole method of monetisation proved viable for many years, generating ad revenue today has become more difficult, largely due to detractors such as banner blindness, ad blockers and GDPR privacy regulations. Plus, most online readers simply are not interested in consuming content from a website littered with targeted advertisements. Ads can be distracting and the user experience can suffer if placements are too invasive.

By Eyal Katz.

Full story at ITpro Portal.