New York Times considers banning ad-blocker users

New York Times (NYT) CEO, Mark Thompson, suggests he is considering banning ad-blocking non-subscribers to encourage a greater influx of fee-paying readers for the newspaper's quality content. The importance of targeting digital readers was highlighted by the 7% decline in print revenue and 8% increase in digital revenue during Q4 2015. Now the NYT has decided to move away from traditional display ads in favour of more branded content, in an effort to improve engagement with its current 1.1 million paid digital-only subscribers, who generated $193m in revenue during 2015, up 14% from 2014. It is also hoping to double its digital revenue from both advertising and subscriptions to $800m by 2020.

New York Times CEO Mark Thompson did not mince words Tuesday when talking about ad blocking, which has been causing more than a few headaches for publishers .

During a keynote discussion at Social Media Week in New York, Thompson compared using ad blockers to stealing a print issue from a newsstand. "Trying to use and get benefit of the Times' journalism without making any contribution to how it's paid is not good," he said. "Everything we do should be worth paying for.