In the last three months I’ve watched as the advertising revenue from the ads run here at IKN has dropped off considerably. Here’s a chart that shows the monthly US Dollar earnings from those ads since 2012:
It’s always been around U$150/month from the ads (nobody’s idea of a king’s ransom, but it pays a few bills) but now and for the first time since 2009 I’ve had months that score less than U$100. The last two months, to be precise. As blog visitor numbers haven’t dropped off in the period (in fact they’ve been growing) the only thing that comes to mind is the recent rise in the use of advert blocking software such as Adblock (which for the record i use too) or Ghostery (which i also use and for me is the better of the two). There’s been some sort of critical mass reached with the popularity of ad-blocking in these recent months, i see the subject discussed a lot over the interwebz, things of that sort. From my admittedly anecdotal evidence, there may be a surprise in store in the quarterly results of companes that rely on this income far more than your humble scribe will ever do for his hundred or hundred-fifty.
UPDATE: In an ironic twist, reader SB writes in to say that…
“…the chart on this page doesn’t show up unless you turn off adblock.”
Gotta laugh.