How many times has this happened to you? You get on your computer, open up the internet browser and start searching something up when all of a sudden...
I started off searching for a topic to write about for my blog by googling a few topics I thought were interesting. I opened up a few tabs and started to read about a few topics. Within a minute I was distracted by the multiple banner ads that littered my screen preventing me from reading the articles. I realized then that this was the perfect topic to discuss.
Online advertisements,we all have them, every site we visit, Facebook page we look at, Youtube video we try to watch that gets abruptly interrupted and our mouses hover in anticipation for that glorious "skip" button to appear. Over the past few years more and more internet advertising are being used which is taking up more of the pages we view. This has pushed many people to start using Ad blockers.
Ad blockers are programs that add on to your internet browser as an extension and prevents all advertisements from being show. What is displayed is a webpage that shows only the content that was published without any banner ads. There are other extensions such as popup blocker and ad filters. All of these programs help show the original content.
The use of Ad blockers have been on the rise. An article from by Adobe marketing shows that content producers are pounding the internet with a wave of ads and people are getting sick of it.
The graph above illustrates the huge increase in users over the last 5 years. In the recent year, "4.9% of all global Internet users had enabled an ad blocking plug-in."1.With so many users using ad blocker marketers have to think of a new way to attract attention without being intrusive. The article also shows that a study was conducted asking a group of 1600 people,
"Sixty-one percent of respondents stated they were completely unwilling to receive such advertisements, yet only 20% of respondents stated they would be willing to pay some sort of fee for an ad-free experience."The study shows that a large percentage of users wish for a ad free experience and some people were willing to pay for it.
Another article from CMO.com shows that the average age of the users who use ad blockers are from the age of 18 - 29 years old which is the desirable age for advertisers. Ad blockers threaten the way companies advertise online, so companies find more ways to find more intrusive and "in your face" ads that stand out the most, even if its for a second.2
After seeing all this, the real questions is whats next for content producers?
What needs to happen is:
- Advertisements need to stop using second rate ads that people find annoying. They need to show that there is value in showing these ads by offering the viewers something they can latch on to.
- There should also be an option to close some of the disable some of the ads, especially those that use heavy flash animation. This would give people the chance to view an ad once or twice and then allow them to close it and view the webpage they are looking at without the constant distraction.
- Have an ad that is:
- static
- preferably text only
- the placement of the ad should not be distracting.
Steps such as these could be "whitelisted", which basically means that it wont be blocked by Ad blocker. This way the ads will be unblocked by the Ad blocker and people wont feel annoyed.3
1. Adobe marketing 2. CMO 3. Tweak Your Biz
Roberts, M. (2014, November 4). Online
Advertising. Retrieved from Digital marketing blog:
http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/advertising/increased-use-adblockers-drives-change-digital-advertising/
Foster, C. (2014, September 10). Growing
Use Of Adblockers A Wake-Up Call For Digital Marketers. Retrieved from The
Digital CMO/ Branding & Communications:
http://www.cmo.com/articles/2014/9/9/adblocking_goes_mainstream.html
Sills, L. (2014 , March 19 ). Marketing
» Is Adblock Plus Killing Digital Marketing? Retrieved from Tweak Your Biz
:
http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2014/03/19/adblock-plus-killing-digital-marketing/
Yup, I'm one of those people who can't live without adblockers. Not only do they hide static ads, they let me watch YouTube videos without having to wait through those initial ads. But then that makes me wonder: with the ever-increasing popularity of video hosting sites and streaming services, what can businesses do to ensure people see their ads on those platforms? Make them more interesting? To be honest, I think a majority of the YouTube ads I've seen so far (either at school or on my phone which don't have adblockers) are well-made. I just hate having to wait, so I don't even give them a chance to appear.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I really like the topic you chose. Although I agree that a plain ad with text is better than a flashy one, I think clean, minimalist ads with a simple graphic are fine too. Nonetheless, ads in general distract me and ruin the overall look of the page I'm browsing. Thus, I'd rather see none.