Ad Blocking’s Growing Threat and What Marketers Can Do About It

The current state of the digital media industry has a lot of marketers worried. Digital ad spend continues to go up, but, due to ad blockers, digital audiences have been in a state of decline with more than 200 million people around the world blocking ads. Being informed on the latest ad blocking developments is crucial for marketers who wish to stay one step ahead of this escalating, industry-wide problem. Here is what you need to know about the current state of ad blocking and what marketers are doing to counteract this trend.

Fewer People Block Ads Than You Might Think

Ad blocking technology has been available to desktop internet users for years, but only recently entered the marketing spotlight. There have been a lot of big headlines recently with scary statistics about the widespread adoption of ad blocking technology. However, many are skeptical on the data being collected around ad blocking, as much of it is provided by companies selling ad blocking tools and services. Thankfully comScore, which many view as a neutral party, has published its own study and found that less than 10% of desktop internet users in the U.S. have installed ad blocking software. This is much lower than other firms have reported which should be a big relief to advertisers.

Ad Blocking Hits Mobile

Last September, Apple rocked the mobile marketing world by allowing iPhone users to install ad blocking technology. Ad blocking apps quickly rose to the top of Apple’s App Store rankings as users scrambled to remove advertisements from their mobile world. Research firm Global Web Index performed a survey earlier this year that found 37% of mobile users are blocking ads. Mobile ad blocking became instantly popular because many digital ads are responsible for slower page load times, online clutter, and burning through data plans.

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Publishers Want Thinner Ads

Digital ads have become code heavy and are responsible for slowing down the load time of many ad heavy web pages. These bloated ads and slower page loading are cited as a primary factor for people installing ad blocking software and publishers are looking for ways to mitigate the growing issue. Content distribution channels have been introducing new ways to quickly serve content to consumers, such as Facebook’s Instant Articles or Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). But publishers are looking for ways to improve their own site quality, and thinning out the ads they host seems to be the next course of action. By reducing the size of ads allowed on their sites, both in terms of physical size and code size, publishers hope to improve the user experience. These kinds of optimizations helped Vox Media improve website load times by 54% and decrease bounce rates for one of their sites by 31%.

What Marketers Can Do Today to Help Slow the Rise of Ad Blocking

• Personalize ads to be relevant to the consumer. Show ads that consumers want to see for products and services they are interested in. Consumers are more likely to engage with your ads when they are personalized toward their interests.
• Provide ads that hold value for the consumer. Branding ads benefit your company, but they don’t hold much value to the consumer. Instead, focus on ads that convey product benefits, exclusive offers, and sales.
• Make your ads useful and actionable. Digital ads should elicit some form of action from the consumer. Your call to action should be useful to the consumer and make sense in the context of their situation. Offer savings for clicking through to your site. Instead of calling for mobile ad clicks, provide a way for consumers to easily call your business.

Ad blocking has received a lot of press lately and marketers are starting to catch on to the trend. As the industry sorts through this dilemma, it is important for all marketers to work on improving their advertisements to be more consumer friendly, especially on mobile. One of the best ways to do this is by enabling the consumer to call your company directly from your ads with mobile click-to-call. To learn more about why click-to-call is so important and how to implement this in your own advertising, download our Click-to-Call Playbook for Paid Search today.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Ad Blocking’s Growing Threat and What Marketers Can Do About It