How Dennis Publishing Takes a Stance Against Ad Blockers Without Turning Off Users

Quality content comes at a price

Ad blocking remains a big problem for digital publishers that create quality content and need to monetize it. Dennis Publishing's solution? Reason with ad blocking users. eMarketer's Sean Creamer spoke with Nick Flood, Dennis' deputy managing director of digital, about how the premium UK publisher finds a balance between the expectations of the publisher and the consumer.

eMarketer:

What’s your approach to combating ad blocking at Dennis Publishing?

Nick Flood:

For the last couple of years, like a lot of publishers, we've deployed targeted messaging to ad blocker users to remind them that good quality editorial and journalism costs a lot of money to produce, and websites cost money to operate. To access our content, they must disable their ad blocker.

We don't bombard our users with intrusive ad formats. I still believe the main reason people install an ad blocker is because they visit sites that bombard them with ads, and obviously, they don't want that. But once someone turns on an ad blocker, they get used to experiencing the world without ads or tracking technologies.

We take user experience very seriously. We think about the layout of our pages, we make sure we don't overpopulate them with ads and we try to make our websites fast—that's especially important on mobile. Speed to access content is also critical to consumption and monetization.

eMarketer:

Are there other tactics that you find effective in fighting ad blockers?

Interview conducted on July 27, 2018

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