{"id":12471,"date":"2017-12-19T06:15:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-19T06:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=12471"},"modified":"2017-12-19T06:15:00","modified_gmt":"2017-12-19T06:15:00","slug":"the-media-today-google-starts-its-ad-blocking-purge-in-february","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2017\/12\/19\/the-media-today-google-starts-its-ad-blocking-purge-in-february\/","title":{"rendered":"The media today: Google starts its ad-blocking purge in February"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The media today: Google starts its ad-blocking purge in February<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re a publisher that relies on digital ad revenue\u2014and the vast majority of news sites probably fall into that category\u2014you will have a new problem to worry about as of February: That&#8217;s when Google starts blocking certain types of ads by default for users of its Chrome browser.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that Google planned to make this move <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/google-plans-ad-blocking-feature-in-popular-chrome-browser-1492643233\">was first reported<\/a> earlier this year by the <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em>, but the exact timing was unknown. On Tuesday, the web giant said in a blog post that <a href=\"https:\/\/developers.google.com\/web\/updates\/2017\/12\/better-ads\">it will start<\/a> blocking sites on February 15th.<\/p>\n<p>The company says this is an attempt to clean up the messy state of online advertising, which is awash in pop-ups, interstitial ads, auto-playing videos, and other detritus. And it says it will only block ads that fail to abide by guidelines set by the <a href=\"http:\/\/betterads.org\/standards\">Coalition for Better Ads<\/a> (of which Google is a member).<\/p>\n<p>The blocking comes with a nuclear option: If a site falls below a certain threshold for 30 days, Google will block <em>all<\/em> advertising on the site until it takes action to fix whatever problems have been reported.<\/p>\n<p>Google&#8217;s motive may be to clean up the web, but some are concerned that a company which already controls <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediapost.com\/publications\/article\/309663\/google-facebook-duopoly-takes-between-60-and-70.html\">a huge proportion<\/a> of the digital ad market is blocking other people&#8217;s ads by default in Chrome, which also happens to have the lion&#8217;s share of the world&#8217;s web-browser market.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a few more links on the topic:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The ad duopoly<\/strong>: Google controls over 40 percent of the digital ad market, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediapost.com\/publications\/article\/309663\/google-facebook-duopoly-takes-between-60-and-70.html\">according to<\/a> recent estimates. Combined, the web giant and Facebook have about 70 percent of the market.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>1-800-Antitrust<\/strong>: When the news first broke about Google&#8217;s plans, Cornell law professor James Grimmelmann <a href=\"http:\/\/fortune.com\/2017\/04\/20\/google-ad-blocker\/\">said that they<\/a>&nbsp;could raise potential anti-trust concerns.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Click here to submit<\/strong>: Google says offending sites that are penalized by its default blocking can <a href=\"https:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2017\/12\/19\/chrome-will-start-blocking-ads-on-february-15\/\">ask for a review<\/a> and if they pass then their ads will be shown again.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Is this okay or not?<\/strong> Judging by some of the comments on Google&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/productforums.google.com\/forum\/#!forum\/ad-experience-report\">support forums<\/a>, some website owners are having a hard time figuring out what they have done wrong.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Other notable stories:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Leaked documents show that Mashable, which agreed to sell itself to Ziff Davis recently for $50 million (about 20 percent of its previous value), <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com.au\/mashables-financial-statements-paint-a-bleak-picture-2017-12?r=US&amp;IR=T\">was losing money<\/a> at a prodigious rate. The company lost over $4 million in just three months.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>A Vox feature <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/identities\/2017\/12\/18\/16780424\/women-journalism-career-harassment\">tells the story<\/a> of women who decided to get out of journalism because of the sexual harassment they faced on the job. Former Washington Post reporter Kate Havard left because &#8220;I decided I didn\u2019t want to have to fend off gross sources for the rest of my life.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Bloomberg says billionaire Carlos Slim, who helped bail the New York Times out by lending the company $250 million in 2009, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2017-12-19\/biggest-new-york-times-investor-slim-hatches-deal-to-slash-stake\">plans to sell<\/a> about half the shares he got in the paper as a result of that deal, taking his stake from 15 percent to about 8 percent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Diana Moskovitz writes for Deadspin about <a href=\"https:\/\/deadspin.com\/you-survived-at-nfl-network-by-staying-silent-1821277178\">what it was like<\/a> to work for the NFL Network, the media arm of the National Football League. In addition to the long hours and working on shows like &#8220;Behind the Pom-Poms,&#8221; the job included having to make calls and gather documents whenever a player got arrested.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Facebook&#8217;s test of a split news feed, in which mainstream news sites appear in a separate feed, caused traffic to fall by as much as 60 percent at some Slovakian news sites, but fake news providers weren&#8217;t affected as badly,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/estadodelasredessociales2017\/facebook-has-hurt-mainstream-media-more-than-fake-news-sites-113277bada8\">according to<\/a> journalist&nbsp;Filip Struh\u00e1rik.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>A report from PricewaterhouseCoopers says that the number of people who subscribe to Netflix <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/40509728\/netflix-vs-cable-subscribers-are-neck-and-neck-now-says-pwc\">is now equal to<\/a> the number who pay for traditional cable, and the accounting firm expects the former to continue to outpace the latter.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The media today: Google starts its ad-blocking purge in February If you&#8217;re a publisher that relies on digital ad revenue\u2014and the vast majority of news sites probably fall into that category\u2014you will have a new problem to worry about as of February: That&#8217;s when Google starts blocking certain types of ads by default for users &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2017\/12\/19\/the-media-today-google-starts-its-ad-blocking-purge-in-february\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The media today: Google starts its ad-blocking purge in February&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}