New York Times to Launch Ad-Free Digital Subscriptions to Fight Ad Blockers

As ad blocking continues to grow, the New York Times is preparing to meet consumers halfway by offering an ad-free digital subscription, reported the

Subscription News: New York Times to Launch Ad-Free Digital Subscriptions to Fight Ad Blockers

Source: New York Times

As ad blocking continues to grow, the New York Times is preparing to meet consumers halfway by offering an ad-free digital subscription, reported the Wall Street Journal. New York Times CEO Mark Thompson confirmed this plan on Monday at the Cannes Lions advertising festival.

Though Thompson did not reveal pricing for the new product, readers will be able to subscribe to the ad-free product at a price higher than its standard digital subscription which currently start at $1.88 a week. Thompson reiterated that quality journalism is costly and companies like the New York Times must generate revenue to cover those costs.

Subscription News: New York Times to Launch Ad-Free Digital Subscriptions to Fight Ad Blockers

Source: Screenshot from NYTimes.com

Thompson said, “The journalism they enjoy costs real money and needs to be paid for,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

These comments are consistent with what Thompson said at the IAB Ad Blocking and & User Experience Summit held on June 6.

“We do want to offer all of our users as much choice as we can, and we recognize that there are some users – both subscribers and non-subscribers – who would prefer to have an ad-free experience,” Thompson said.  

According to Advertising Age, in March, the New York Times began testing different ways to combat ad blockers with non-subscribers to get them to either whitelist the company or to buy a subscription.  They tested messages that could be dismissed, allowing the user to continue to access the content, and messages that could not be dismissed and that subsequently denied users access to content.

Advertising Age said more than 40 percent of Times’ non-subscribers who received undismissable requests whitelisted the Times and at least 30 percent whitelisted the newspaper when they received a dismissable request. The Times’ solution – an ad-free subscription option available at a premium price.

Insider Take:

The New York Times has been building up to this position for months, though when the ad-free product will launch is still unknown. As a leader in the publishing industry, other newspapers and media outlets are looking to the New York Times to set a strong precedent and perhaps help them find ways to navigate the ad blocking problem themselves. But will this solution work?

Media expert Mathew Ingram is skeptical. In an article for Fortune yesterday, Ingram questioned whether subscribers who use ad-blockers would be willing to pay even more for subscriptions. Those subscribers currently block the ads, so unless the Times implements a system that blocks those subscribers from accessing content, there is no incentive to pay more. Taking that another step, Ingram questions how this ad-free tier could impact the Times’ advertising business. Essentially that tier of subscribers would be worthless to potential advertisers.

Regardless, the New York Times is proactively looking for ways to combat ad blockers, and as a fellow publisher, we respect their plight. The company is smart to test various approaches and to choose a solution that will give it the best of all possible worlds including subscription and advertising revenue. We’ll be curious to see how their experiment works and if other publishers will follow, or if they will wait to see how the NAA’s complaint against ad blockers fares with the FTC before making their own moves.

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