Ad-Blocker Software and Not-for-Profit/Civil Society Reliance on Free Social Media

There has been an exponential growth in the consumer (and enterprise) use of ad blockers to filter out advertisements that accompany online mobile and desktop/tablet web pages and social media sites. As well, the technology of ad blockers continues to improve.

See:  http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/05/25/ad-blocks-doomsday-scenarios/

One consequence of this for the not-for-profit (NFP) and civil society (CS) constituencies of the Internet is that free social media services will be under growing pressure to adjust their terms of service and access to specific services, either to protect advertising revenue or to (more likely) face lower advertising revenue. This will likely make it more difficult for NFP/CS organizations to depend on free social media services as their main avenue for communications with members, supporters, and clients.  

This suggests that NFP/CS organizations should perform in house stress tests to assess whether or not they have the capacity and resources to move from currently free social media services to sustaining their own web site and domain name for communications with members, supporters and clients.

Posted by: Sam Lanfranco, Chair, NPOC Policy Committee