Some Indian publishers are now asking users to turn off their ad blockers to read their stories on their websites. Currently, this is active on the websites of the Times of India, Economic Times, Live Hindustan and Hindustan Times. Times of India wants users to completely delete ad block extensions from Chrome browsers and does not allow readers to view content even after they have whitelisted a page. The Indian Express, The Hindu, Dainik Bhaskar, Amar Ujala and other news publications would also be joining in asking users to disable ad blockers, as indicated by this Factordaily post. However, websites such as Livemint (part of HT Media) and Navbharat Times (part of TOI Group) have not started prompting users to disable ad blockers. India has more than 122 million users ad blockers according to a study by conducted by PageFair. To put that in context, this is almost half the number of Internet users in India (306 million users as of December 2015). India stands second among the 17 countries identified by the study. India was second to China, which had 159 million monthly active users with a built-in ad blocking browser on mobile. In March, a number of French media publications decided to run a week long trial which would stop users who use ad blockers from accessing content. The publications involved include Le Monde, Le Figaro, RTE, Le Parisien, L’Equipe and music platform Deezer. In Sweden, 90% of its publishers plan to take on ad blockers during the month of August. The IAB Sweden, which is spearheading the…
