Not Consumers, but Customers

Last week, Ars Technica and Gawker Media realized that the role played by so-called “consumers” has been changing. The simplistic web advertising models they rely on worked great when visitors had no choice but to consume the advertising “impressions” loaded on every page. As people take back the power to be customers instead, even normally forward-focused sites like Ars and Gawker are terrified.

Quick summary: Ars Technica got all whiny because people view their site with ad blockers enabled, preventing the images from loading. As a result, advertisers are paying them for fewer impressions than they would have if every visitor was loading the ads. Gawker Media has a similar setup, so they’ve truncated their default RSS feeds to try and force readers to “click through” to their site and load the accompanying ads.

“Pay to remove ads” has always been a terrible business strategy. It relies on creating a customer experience so bad that visitors are willing to spend money to improve it. This only works when the organization is in control, leaving its patrons with the binary decision of whether or not to consume what they produce. No longer.

Those consumers now have the power to make their own alternatives, shifting the balance of power. Companies wishing to make money need to court their customers and convince them to spend money, as opposed to shepherding a gaggle of dollar signs all the way to the bank.

If people don’t want to see ads, they can choose not to—whether you like it or not. Ars’ solution was to guilt those people into loading the ads, allowing them to take advertiser’s money for impressions shown to people who already do not look at them. Yet another Pyrrhic victory.

Same with forcing people to “click through” from an RSS feed. Again, the myopic drive to “monetize consumer behavior” gets thwarted by empowered customers. They might get their news somewhere else or create a third-party workaround to display full feeds, but either way they will end up getting the content they want exactly how they want it.

What happens then? Pull an Ars and slur your readers who have the audacity to decide what they want and how? No, the only smart way forward is by improving the customer experience, actively courting customers and giving them reasons to spend their money. Good advertising helps people get what they want, demonstrating to people that what you offer is worthwhile; it is not press releases and obtrusive flash ads.

It’s extremely disappointing that tech sites like Ars and Gawker still don’t “get” it. As Ray Beckerman said,

We are not “faces,” we are not “impressions,” we are people.

Ray Beckerman (source)