Rise of ad-blockers shows advertising does not understand mobile, say experts

“Apple's shiny new mobile system iOS 9 allows anyone using an iPhone to cut out ads, taking a bite out of the $31.9bn mobile ad market, not long ago touted as the savior of the publishing industry.” Not only did Apple change the color of their new product, it also changed their attitudes toward advertisements. Indeed, people are annoyed by ads, even including advertisers. According to a survey, 75% of online video ad viewers complained about seeing the same ads over and over, 62% were upset that there were so many ads, and nearly half thought the ads went on too long.

In my opinion, the purpose of the ads cutting system is to block frauds and enhance the mobile security for phone users. Nevertheless, a trade off for the reduced fraud-ads and virus-ridden badvertisement is the detrimental effects to publishers, especially small ones. While people may suffer less from the reduction of annoying ads that interrupt the streaming of the radio or videos, restricted advertising power will hurt the financing process of the ecosystem. As we have seen the effect power of the blocking system of iOS 9, $31.9bn has been eradicated from the media ad market. Among the blocked ads, I am certain there are quite a few are in fact legitimate and provide real great deals to people. By simply blocking ads without conducting quality examination and identity verification, ad-blockers will inhibit the growth of media market, suffocating many new media start-ups and small businesses. Then the problem will turn into a finance issue, rather than a negative advertisement effect. Therefore, I agree with Constantine Kamaras, chairman of the board of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), “The best path is a digital entente between users and companies that is based on quality standards and codes of conduct, but also on an understanding that all these services can only be financed, today at least, by advertising.”

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/03/ad-blockers-advertising-mobile-apple

British Vogue Research: Ad-blocking has limited impact on visually-oriented publishings

  

Fears have been mongering around since Apple unveiled its most recent iOS system allowing ad blocking. Nevertheless, this trepidation, according to Vogue UK’s research, is overblown, and that there could be a silver lining for publishers and brands should they start to shift onto digital platforms.

 The 2015 British Vogue Business Report surveyed 2787 upper-middle-class women to look at the evolving reader relationship with magazines in print and online, and concluded that people’s overall attention to advertisement across all platforms has never been higher, with significant increases for websites and digital editions.

            In addition, over 75% of under-35s said they trusted advertising and other paid-for communications, and a whopping 94% of magazine readers said they paid attention to website advertisements. The premium ads featured on Vogue’s website were described as “genuine” and “appealing” by the likes of Vogue.

            Besides British Vogue’s studies, other researches also bolstered the conclusion that the panic was wildly exaggerated. According to JPMorgan, people were half as likely to block ads on mobile, since ad blocker applications only affect ads on mobile browsers rather than those within apps. In addition, ad blockers of iOS 9 are only able to block pop-ups in Safari, a browser that occupies 23% of total share on tablet and mobile, and an even scantier 4% on desktop.

Moreover, in the context of readers and users of glossy magazine brands in print and online, advertising perusing becomes part of the experience. Half of Vogue’s pages are composed of high quality and engrossing advertisements on which viewers enjoy spending time viewing. Oftentimes the key issues for visual-oriented magazines are to create visually appealing ads so as to captivate readers’ attention rather than to eliminate them altogether. As a result, to generate greater revenue, future publishers should create less but more effective ads.

One short-term solution is to create native, video and branded contents. Publishers could feature product placements within their editorial photo shoots, and create tutorial videos featuring Shoppable Ads integrated within the contents. For high-end brands, followers expected to see more video contents and more exclusives on parties and runway shows. Burberry recently presented the premiere on its exclusive “Functionregalia” collection on Snapchat including a never-before-seen glimpse into its design studios, bringing about the largest audience to date among all other Burberry’s social media platforms have realized. Burberry is said to host a live make-up tutorial on cosmetics in due course that would be streamed exclusively on Sephora’s YouTube channel.

Links

http://digiday.com/publishers/british-vogue-attention-ads/

http://www.businessinsider.com/jp-morgan-note-on-impact-of-ad-blocking-2015-9

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/burberry-presents-the-functionregalia-collection-in-london-accompanied-by-a-live-performance-by-alison-moyet-following-its-premiere-on-snapchat-300146846.html

The Paradox of Ad Blocking

Launch of IOS 9 and its support for ad blocking apps on Safari has brought the issue of ad blockers to the forefront among advertisers, publishers, tech companies and of course, mobile and internet users.  

At the first glance, as a frequent reader and user of internet, I am very happy to see ad blocking service becoming available in more places. I cannot wait but install those ad blocking apps on my iPhone to keep me away from irritating ads. But after seeing the news that Marco Arment, CEO of "Peace" (the most popular ad blocking app after launch of IOS 9), decided to pull off the program on iTunes and articles like " Ad blocking: Internet apocalypse or overblown issue"on Marketing Week and "The Paradox of Apple News and iOS 9 Ad Blocking" on Wired.com, I began to doubt that whether ad-blocking is a really beneficial thing to us end users or readers. 

As Marco wrote on his blog “Ad-blocking is a kind of war — a first-world, low-stakes, both-sides-are-fortunate-to-have-this-kind-of-problem war, but a war nonetheless, with damage hitting both sides. Even though I’m ‘winning,’ I’ve enjoyed none of it. That’s why I’m withdrawing from the market.”

Yes, we feel bothered when ads slowing down our browsers. It sometimes make people feel creepy knowing that they are being tracked by every click. However, those ads and trackers do help publishers provide free and high-quality content.Data collected from these media help brands understanding the market and after all benefit us customers by providing better customized products and services. 

Looking from another perspective, ad blocking increase competition and put pressure on advertisers and brands to provide higher quality ads that customers would like to see. The more expensive ads require more consideration to generate comparable ROI.  "Junk" Ads will be cleared out of the market, leaving us a more enjoyable virtual world. 

Rise in ad-blocking = rise of creative digital marketing

The usage of ad blocking is on the rise. A recent techcrunch article mentioned that today ~198M people globally use ad-blocking software (original numbers from Adobe and PageFair). This could cost publishers $22B in revenues annually. Such a rise in use of ad-blocking software is leading to a lot of debates on the effect that this will have on publishers, various ad agencies and other websites whose primary business model is advertising.

An interesting viewpoint is that the effects might not be as negative as initially thought to be. Ad-blocking software would not allow ads of publishers to appear on websites but that wasn't a big part of advertising for a lot of publishers to start with. Such ads are often only a component of the total 'digital marketing package' for publishers. Also, blocking of blatant product/service ads just means that publishers need to get more creative about the way in which they are reaching out to their target customers. Its important to note that ad-blockers don't block all types of ads and some ads can be whitelisted (publishers need to apply for whitelisting) - there are various criteria for a publisher's ad to be whitelisted and publishers can create campaigns or ads (based on content or customer data used) that fit this criteria. Ad-blocking is not a black or white concept and ad-blockers are eventually getting smarter about what type of ads are really useful to the customers and those that are intrusive and irritating.

Supporters of ad-blockers make the argument that rise of ad-blocking software will only weed out those publishers/ad agencies that bombard target customers with 'non-creative' ads and by using personal data from various third-party websites. Increased usage of ad-blocking software also highlights the fact that publishers need to get more creative about the way they interact with various social media platforms (facebook, twitter, snapchat etc.) on which their target customers spend a majority of their time. This could mean generating great digital content (text, videos, photos etc.) and running campaigns that attract their target customers rather than bombarding them with ads that they don't like.

Some really good articles on this can be found on the following links:

http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/12/raymond-carver-loved-ads/
http://fusion.net/story/177977/this-is-not-a-sponsored-post/