June 28, 2016: Consultancy firm eMarketer released new data projecting greater pain for digital publishers and marketers in the form of ad blocking. According to the firm, “69.8 million Americans will use an ad blocker, a jump of 34.4% over last year. Next year, that figure will grow another 24.0% to 86.6 million people.” eMarketer’s data is far gloomier than estimates from PageFair, which, earlier this month, reported that only 4.3 million people in the U.S. used ad blockers.
Who’s to blame?
Ad blocking – like so many problems in the digital marketing ecosystem – is a problem with many parents. The IAB has accused ad blocking technology developers of conducting “an extortionist scheme that exploits consumer disaffection and risks distorting the economics of democratic capitalism.” Web publishers – who now find themselves increasingly squeezed by Facebook’s desire to become the next AOL – view ad blocking as an existential threat, because subscription revenues are rarely sufficient to offset losses from lost advertising.
Nor is the advertising industry – which met this week at Cannes – immune from blame. As Pepsi’s Brad Jakeman observes, ad blocking is what happens when users – at the press of a button – can shield themselves from low-quality advertising that steals their bandwidth while putting intrusive roadblocks on their informational journeys:
What can you – as a marketer – do?
First of all, it’s important for you as a marketer to understand that ad blocking is a much bigger problem for contextual advertisers (who place their display ads programmatically on publisher sites) than for search advertisers. There are two main reasons for this: the first is that Google and the other major search players are big enough, and well-funded enough, to ensure that their ads are whitelisted by all the important blockers.
The second reason is more subtle, but no less important: it’s the issue of intent. People going to Google and entering a commercial query (say, “affordable time shares in the Hamptons”) want to see paid placements from vendors offering such timeshares. In this context, advertising isn’t just tolerable – it’s exactly what these users want to see. The context, in other words, of search-based advertising is one that is fundamentally different from the context in which a user is surprised – while, say, reading an article or pursuing another informational goal – by an ad that jumps out at them. Even the context of such an ad is “relevant,” the experience is jarring enough to – over time – to drive such a user in the direction of an ad blocking solution.
So if you’re doing PPC ads on Google and the other engines, ad blocking won’t affect you much. That’s the good news.
But what if you’re looking for scale beyond that which can be offered by search (which after all, harvests demand typically driven by other media)?
Well, it may be time for you to revisit some channels that you haven’t allocated budget to in a while. These include:
1. Print. While readership among newspapers and magazines is down across the board, people still read them. Special interest magazines and trade publications offer passionate readerships where your ad not only won’t be blocked but may be appreciated as valued content. Consider running a test to evaluate whether print advertising can’t work for you.
2. Direct mail. Because so many advertising dollars have flowed into digital over the past decade, the mailboxes of Americans are freer of clutter than they’ve been in years. Many studies have demonstrated that direct mail can get recipients attention in a way impossible with digital media. And by adding personalized URLs to your mailings, you can track recipients’ behavior with great accuracy.
3. PR and earned media. Remember, advertising, whether digital or analog, is but one aspect of marketing. “Earning” your way into the hearts and minds of your target audience can take many forms: PR, influencer marketing, content marketing, events and tactics.
4. Better creative. As Pepsi’s Brad Jakeman observes, most of the advertising created and circulated on digital channels is, as he puts it “digital landfill.” It’s not just obtrusive, irrelevant, and often “gross;” it’s not even related to the brand’s narrative. Making ads that work on digital channels – or anywhere else — isn’t just a matter of “throwing everything at the wall and seeing what works.” It takes a deep dive into the hopes, fears, desires, and dreams of one’s audience, and coming up with something that reaches these people “where they live.” While it’s possible that such thinking can occur in an in-house marketing department, the traditional repository of such thinking is, as Jakeman notes, is the advertising agency. Put another way, just because an inhouse marketing department has access to the tools required to do great creative doesn’t mean they will use these tools correctly. It is the carpenter – after all – not the hammer – which actually builds the house.
- 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Using QR Codes for Marketing - September 20, 2023
- Kevin Lee on How AI Changes the SEO Landscape - August 31, 2023
- The Power of Compound Marketing: Kevin Lee Presents @ 1MediaWorld 2023 Global Conference - March 7, 2023