Page 12 - AeM_June_2017

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Welcome to the brave new world of

Adblockers

To a greater or lesser extent, each of us has a story to Unfortunately, more ads mean more interruptions and
tell about a bad encounter with online advertising, be it consequently more annoyances among the users.
a pop-up or a video interstitial. Understandably, when Some companies even pay the provider of the Adblock-
we feel bothered by something, we react by running er to make sure they reach their target group, and even
away or avoiding it. In the world of digital marketing it Google is planning a kind of similar model for its brows-
means we won’t visit the specific website anymore, er.
switch to banner blindness, or install an Adblocker.
But shouldn’t our industry, instead of constantly com-
With a vengeance, the advertising industry is struggling plaining about Adblockers, search for solutions that
to attract the attention of customers, pushing pop-ups show advertising in a way that is acceptable for the us-
into the visual field of viewers who are desperately look- er and makes Adblockers become obsolete again?
ing for a way to get rid of them. Especially on mobile
devices this can become a lengthy process: Although it Currently, however, Adblockers are heavily on the rise,
is generally possible to skip the advertisement after five as quite a number of studies confirm, and the majority
seconds, the user must hang in there to get the desired of the Millennials have banned advertising already from
content that follows. Strange that to this day advertisers all screens.
still have great hopes of making a positive impact on
the advertised brands. Anyway, the contest, which is From the consumer’s perspective, it isn’t difficult to un-
now no longer only with the conscious ignoring of ban- derstand that since there are many good reasons for
ner ads, but also on a technical level with Adblocker, is using Adblockers. Nobody likes the often badly con-
far from over - rather it has just begun. ceived and mostly irrelevant advertisements, that often
make use of the whole screen of mobile devices.
The Customer Experience suffers, don’t you see it?
We, as the advertising industry on the other hand,
Falling prices for ads trigger that more available budget should perceive Adblockers more as what they really
is invested in a wider range rather than better quality. are - NOT as a threat, but a warning from consumers
12 June 2017 - Mobile Marketing & Apps