Asking a user to whitelist your site

When an ad block user is asked to turn it off, you are asking them to effectively accept all the protections and reasons that drove them to use a blocker in the first place, and that’s why most don’t. You’ve seen many sites attempt this, later to remove it. On mobile whitelisting becomes even more challenging and for users that are on networks, whitelisting is impossible.

Advertisers paying to be whitelisted “acceptable ads” (the extortion fee)

While some publishers have gone this route, it is not sustainable. The companies that take part in this are losing market share, in part because of this approach. Second, it is quite easy to block “acceptable ads” and more users are doing this. These companies have “stolen” your audiences and are asking publishers to pay up to get access to those same audiences. It’s a shakedown, clear and simple.

Asking users to pay

Great approach, but most consumers won’t pay for content at this point. Some premium publishers can do this effectively, but a vast majority can’t. Most publishers won’t make enough revenue to make up for the losses in advertising revenue.

Forcing ads through an ad blocker

This blatant approach is not only unsustainable, it simply erodes audience trust, degrades brands, both publishers and advertisers and it draws the attention and ire of the developers behind ad blocking.