As 2015 barrels towards history, conclusions are being drawn by pundits regarding what's happened in the industry this year and their projections about what the future holds. Ad blocking dominated headlines, thinking, panels, conferences and will, no doubt, continue to receive attention in 2016. The realization that the advertising supported model may not be sustainable going forward has generated a lot of interest in viable alternatives; paywalls and membership programs, to name the two most prominent. Publishers who are mixing and matching revenue models are gaining new momentum while those who do nothing are closing in upon, like 2015, an inevitable demise.

Hearst Magazines' growth is going gangbusters gaining 40% more page views year-on-year with eight of their top publications experiencing their best months in their brands’ history. Their innovative approach to paid content seems to have secured their path forward. As an aside, Hearst launched Esquire Classics, their entire archive, on Piano's VX platform, in September.

While paywalls are certainly one way to generate digital revenue, publications are also turning towards unique, slightly more expensive and exclusive memberships that include subscription and various add-ons like meet a columnist or get a free podcast, see the site ad-free, etc. With the success shown here, it’s definitely an option that publishers should be considering in addition to a paywall.

An interesting look at how the magazine Mental Floss integrated a sponsored takeover by Toyota, putting advertising subtly within the year-end list and a further slow product reveal.

Not all publications have De Correspondent’s luxury of launching after the 2008 media meltdown nor the luck to enter the market with a crowdfunded site that enabled a dedicated rollover to recurring subscription revenue. However, there are learnings that the company is sharing that can be applied by news companies worldwide like evergreening popular stories up and bringing them back when the topic again becomes relevant plus, creating and distributing excellent newsletters.

Despite excellent sharing through Facebook’s Instant Articles, publishers are not seeing enough ad return on their investment. Facebook has agreed to a couple of tweaks that will hopefully increase revenue including lowering the word limit per ad from 500 to 350 and allowing specific links back to the publisher’s home page from the bottom of an instant article.

As a journalist, you have to love this story: Blacklock’s is a small journalist-driven publication that reports the minutia of Canadian government. They recently won a copyright infringement case against the Canadian Vintners Association, a trade group that represents Canada’s billion dollar industry, when the judge said that it was illegal for two CVA employees to share an article that they hadn’t paid for. Mark one up for the paid content industry!

The biggest ad blocker in the world isn’t the one that’s been getting all the press, it’s a mobile browser in India that’s been programmed by Alibaba. I wonder who’s advertising is getting through? Also, have you ever heard of Shine? They are an Israeli company that blocks all advertising on mobile at a systemic level. They are in talks with EE and O2 in the UK, which, if successful will remove all ads from 50M mobile users. That will definitely have an impact on most bottom lines.

DCN (formerly OPA) released findings from their 2015 DCN Consumer Ad Block Report, research that explores the increasing threat posed by ad blocking software. Some key findings are 70% of respondents dislike expanding ads or play with sound, 68% don’t like ad tracking software and 57% think pages are loading too slowly. The report is available to download only for DCN members.

As mentioned above, 2015 has been the the year of ad block as adoption rates have taken off. Digiday’s Ricardo Bilton argues that the issue has forced publishers to take a hard look at their advertising and trackers and they will be forced to make choices about their audiences’ experience in 2016.

Print is dead, long live digital! That’s been the Web's mantra for the past five years as more and more publications turn towards the Internet to distrubute and generate revenue. However there is a reverse trend in motion as digital startups like Tablet, Politico and Kinfolk are moving into print. It seems clear that print is a long way from dying off and could, in fact, help drive digital readship and audience engagement.

Here’s some good news! Cloudflare, a website infrastructure company, made HTTP/2 the default for its free and pro clients on Thursday, with opt-in options for its highest-tier customers. That means 75% of the top 1M sites are going to start loading 72% faster. I wonder if this will have any effect on the ad blocking debate.