Report: ad blocking rose 90 percent in past year

Didit Editorial

8 years ago

June 2, 2016: A new report from PageFair reveals that ad blocking rates continue to rise across the world. Here are some top-level findings:

1. Ad blocking grew by 90 percent between January of 2015 and January of 2016, rising from 198 million users worldwide to 408 million. Today, 22 percent of the 1.9 billion smart phones in the world run some kind of ad blocking software.

2. Ad blocking is most popular in emerging markets, including China, India, Pakistan, and Indonesia. 36 percent of smartphone uses in these regions use ad blocking. Growth is so rapid because many users are on slow mobile connections, or have mobile data caps built into their access plans.

3. In the developed world (Europe and the U.S.), 14 million people use ad blockers, with only 4.3 million in the U.S. However, rates are expected to rise, as more OEMs and browser developers start including ad blocking functionality. In the UK, Three, an ISP, has announced that in June it will begin running a one-day ad blocking experiment to test user response.

The report contains a sobering prediction about the ability of marketers to reach the large population of users who have yet to jump online:

The next billion internet users will come online via low bandwidth, relatively expensive mobile connections. With readily-available mobile ad blocking technologies, the next billion internet users may be invisible to digital marketers.

How should marketers respond?

Ad blocking is a serious issue that so far, has defied any simple solution – or even a unified approach to the problem. Users block ads for concrete, compelling reasons, both to save on their data plans, to avoid malware, to thwart trackers, and to keep themselves from being annoyed by ads that take over their screens and thwart their informational quests.

While there’s been plenty of finger pointing among marketers, agencies, ad networks, and ad block developers, there’s no easy fix – technically or legally – that can put the genie back in the bottle. Unfortunately, this behavior – unless it’s modified — is expected to cost the online advertising and publishing industry $27 billion by the year 2020.

Marketers worried that ad blocking will – sooner or later – begin significantly interfering with their ability to message prospects should consider hedging their current approach with alternative tactics, including:

1. Doubling down on earned media. Because earned media content (otherwise known as “organic media,” “unpaid media,” or “content marketing”) will pass safely through the ad blockers, the value of this content will be preserved, and likely rise. So marketers who’ve made investments in earned media will be hurt less than those who haven’t.

2. Fully leverage first-party data. Ad blockers will likely have little or no effect on your ability to reach people who’ve opted into your messaging via subscriptions, social media, or via your Point of Sale presence. People who’ve already expressed approval of your messaging through subscriptions or other signals of assent have never been more valuable. And thanks to Facebook, Twitter, and Google, it’s possible to reach these people with relative ease today via Custom Audiences. So marketers who have strong first-party databases will fare better than those lacking them.

3. Expand your marketing horizons offline. Obviously, ad blockers can’t block your ads if you mail them to people, put them on billboards, or use traditional broadcast media to air them. Direct mail — when combined with digital capabilities — is an excellent mechanism that’s underutilized today because so many marketers have been attracted to digital media’s efficiencies. But if ad blocking rates continue to rise, many of these efficiencies will be nullified or reduced, making offline marketing more competitive from an ROI standpoint.

4. Work within the “Acceptable Ads” framework. Ad blockers are becoming a new type of “gatekeeper” that will likely exert considerable influence over the form and content of future ads. One major ad blocker, AdBlock Plus, has gone so far as to enroll publishers in its “Acceptable Ads” framework and issued specific guidelines for what it considers to be acceptable ad units. It’s no secret that ad blockers such as Ad Block Plus and Ghostery have a “back door” that advertisers can use to get their ads through the blocker. According to Business Insider, “Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Taboola are paying the owner of Adblock Plus to unblock ads on their websites at a fee of “30% of the additional ad revenues” they would have made were ads unblocked.” Which means, that if book your ads using any of these companies, users of AdBlock Plus are likely to see them.