The New York Times Declares War On Ad Blockers

The New York Times has announced that it will ban ad blockers for unsubscribed users of its site. In March this year, the site performed a test that meant that users were greeted with a message telling them that “the best things in life aren't free”, and that “advertising helps us fund our journalism”, before giving the user an option to subscribe or disable any ad blocking software. Despite a negative reaction from users, the newspaper has now committed to the system, which has since been followed by dozens of other online global media sites. With an estimated 620 million ad blockers installed on devices around the world, Sean Blanchfield, chief executive of PageFair, said that news outlets needed to take care when using ad blocker circumvention technology as it could alienate users and drive them towards platforms such as Facebook. 

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