By
Bhushan Akolkar
February 6th, 2024
Salon has opted for this novel approach in order to compensate for the loss of its ad-revenue due to ad-blocking softwares.
With the arrival of several ad-blocking software, digital media companies are finding it difficult to monetize the views of the visitors on several websites. However, on the very popular Digital media publication – Salon – has found out an interesting way to overcome this issue by taking a novel approach that routes through the crypto world.
In order to combat the trend of ad-blocking, media company Salon is wooing its readers by asking them to let the website use their computing processing power to mine a cryptocurrency called Monero. After the onslaught of the ad-blocking software, most of the media companies including Salon are flexing their muscles and seeking ways to compensate for the ad revenues.
In a blog post published on Monday, Salon said that in order to provide free content, it was primarily dependent on advertisements to run it servers. However, digital ads alone have turned to be insufficient for most of the media outlets. Salon reported that the overall ad-revenue has dropped by $40 billion from 1999 to 2010.
In the blog post, Salon says: “Like most media sites, ad-blockers cut deeply into our revenue and create a more one-sided relationship between reader and publisher. We realize that specific technological developments now mean that it is not merely the reader’s eyeballs that have value to our site — it’s also your computer’s ability to make calculations, too. Indeed, your computer itself can help support our ability to pay our editors and journalists.”
This means, as a reader, if you want to access the free content on their website anymore, you need to make a choice between turning-off ad-blocking software or “allowing Salon to use your unused computing power” to access their content. If you opt for the latter deal, Salon will invite you to install a software plugin – Coinhive – that allows the media publication to mine Monero cryptocurrency. Before opting for any such option, it is very important for you as a reader to understand the technicalities of this approval.
While commenting on this new revenue-generating plan, Salon CEO Jordan Hoffner said: “We saw a business problem, we saw a potential way out—potential being the key word—and we took it.” The mining option has already got the media publication some users, says Hoffner. However, apart from the mining option, the media house also plans for other revenue-generating streams like a plan of a paid tablet and a mobile app expected to debut later this year.
On the other hand, Salon is quite bullish on the use of blockchain technology and announced that it “[plans] to further use any learnings from this to help support the evolution and growth of blockchain technology, digital currencies and other ways to better service the value exchange between content and user contribution.”
However, one of the major issues with granting permission to mine Monero is that it has been often found that the download plugins are infected with malware which aims to consume all of your processing power thereby making your tasks slow. Salon has issued a clarification on this matter by saying that it will avoid that by actively adjusting the processing power being used by the crypto-miner.
The media house said: “We automatically detect your current processing usage and assign a portion of what you are not using to this process. Should you begin a process that requires more of your computer’s resources, we automatically reduce the amount we are using for calculations.”
Thus before allowing any website to allow them to use your computer’s processing power, one must be always aware of other repercussions as well. In order to bring a clarity to its operations, Salon has comprehensively answered the FAQs below its blog post.