Hollow victory for online FX marketing? City AM is first UK newspaper to block readers which use ad blocker software

Buying media from generic financial news sources in regions which are synonymous with FX trading is a methodology which has become fraught with barriers, notably extremely high competition, low conversion rates, and advertisement blocking software used by individual users.

These factors, among many others, have resulted in client acquisition costs escalating to approximately $1,000 per new user on average, which, if a new user only deposits $3,000, is extremely expensive to say the least.

Just last week, we concluded that media buying was indeed done, and that you can put a fork in it.

There may be one ray of hope for digital marketers which prefer the media buying approach, especially those placing their advertisements on pop-ups, as CityAM, one of Britain’s mainstream financial newspapers, has become the first media body in the UK to block access to readers that have installed ad blocker software on their devices.

This represents a battle of wits among end users, and could go one of two ways depending on whether readers prefer to avoid reading CityAM altogether, or to carry on getting their daily dose whilst accepting that they are going to get a pop-up advertisement that they had specifically chosen to avoid previously, that may catch their eye and lead them to opening an account with an FX brokerage.

Currently, CityAM’s restriction on devices using ad blocker software is a trial which begins today, and its functionality will blur out the text of news articles on CityAM for desktop users of the Mozilla Firefox web browser whose devices have been detected by CityAM to have ad blocker software installed.

Should a reader with ad blocker software installed attempt to read CityAM, a message will display on their browser, stating:

“We are having trouble showing you adverts on this page, which may be a result of ad blocker software being installed on your device. As City AM relies on advertising to fund its journalism, please disable any adblockers from running on cityam.com to see the rest of this content.”

City AM Digital Director Martin Ashplant has stated that

“We want to see what the impact is and how many choose to turn ad blocking software off, and how many bounce from the site versus the normal rate. It’s a ‘see how it goes’ plan but the strategy is we want to roll it out further quite quickly.”

This may appear somewhat draconian, however if other financial news sources across regions with a developed financial markets economy follow suit, the reach for digital advertisement for FX firms may increase in critical locations.

As the marketeers of sports cars, mini-skirts and minimalist luxury apartments often say – In this case, less is more.