I’ve participated in a few threads on adblocking over the years and presented my view that the practice is unethical because, simply put, it is effectively stealing from publishers. That might sound like a bold claim, but I consider it to be true.
The content you read was most likely produced by an author who was paid a salary, and was uploaded to a website that cost money to build, host and maintain. That publisher’s revenue model might have been entirely based on advertising income. I think we all understand this but for some reason we seem to ignore it.
Peoples jobs are directly dependent on income derived from advertising, and not just those who work in the marketing department but those right across the business.
Here are two examples within the last couple of months where work forces have been trimmed from publishers who are directly funded by ad revenue.
Verizon: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/23/verizon-media-group-7-percent-layoffs/
Buzzfeed: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/23/buzzfeed-layoffs-2019/
And there will be more to come in 2019.
Display based advertising (banners, videos) comes in all shapes and sizes, and it’s clear that people do not appreciate ad formats which overlay or underlay content, autoplay, take up too much of the screen or in any way disrupt the experience of browsing the internet.
I have seen various arguments for adblocking which I think are ill thought out, but the most common is certainly:
“I’m not turning off my adblocker. If sites want ad revenue they should stop running disruptive ads.”
This is a silly, blanket argument to a problem which is not apparent on every single advertiser, and thus you are depriving ethical publishers of ad revenue based on the unethical behaviour of others. Furthermore, if you’re not happy with the price you’re paying you should stop consuming that content rather than saying the price is too high and consuming it anyway.
The industry certainly does need an overhaul, and there are various initiatives already in place such as the ‘Coalition for Better Ads’ https://www.betterads.org/ and the ‘IAB Gold Standard’ https://www.iabuk.com/goldstandard which aim to solve the problems which consumers and businesses are facing.
To the point:
For those of you unhappy with the current state of digital advertising, which I am sure will be over 90% of you, I want to ask how you would recommend we fix the problem?
Would you prefer to live in a digital advertising free world, where you paid for each piece of content you consumed via micro transactions? Would you prefer a subscription service for the internet similar to Netflix?
If you believe digital advertising does have a place in a publisher’s revenue model, how would you design the experience? Should ads be animated? Should they be static? Should they have sound? Should they be clickable? Should they remain on the borders of the content or can they take centre stage in the midst of it – how would this work on a smartphone?
If popups, overlays, autoplay-with-sound, road-block style, expanding, disrupting ads were replaced with a system more akin to the traditional out-of-home experience we have on buses, underground stations, billboards, etc; would this be preferable? If ads were unclickable, and so the risk of navigating away from the page you’re viewing was removed, and the units were basically just a visual prompt on the outskirts of your content; would that be better?
Would you turn off your adblocker?
The content you read was most likely produced by an author who was paid a salary, and was uploaded to a website that cost money to build, host and maintain. That publisher’s revenue model might have been entirely based on advertising income. I think we all understand this but for some reason we seem to ignore it.
Peoples jobs are directly dependent on income derived from advertising, and not just those who work in the marketing department but those right across the business.
Here are two examples within the last couple of months where work forces have been trimmed from publishers who are directly funded by ad revenue.
Verizon: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/23/verizon-media-group-7-percent-layoffs/
Buzzfeed: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/23/buzzfeed-layoffs-2019/
And there will be more to come in 2019.
Display based advertising (banners, videos) comes in all shapes and sizes, and it’s clear that people do not appreciate ad formats which overlay or underlay content, autoplay, take up too much of the screen or in any way disrupt the experience of browsing the internet.
I have seen various arguments for adblocking which I think are ill thought out, but the most common is certainly:
“I’m not turning off my adblocker. If sites want ad revenue they should stop running disruptive ads.”
This is a silly, blanket argument to a problem which is not apparent on every single advertiser, and thus you are depriving ethical publishers of ad revenue based on the unethical behaviour of others. Furthermore, if you’re not happy with the price you’re paying you should stop consuming that content rather than saying the price is too high and consuming it anyway.
The industry certainly does need an overhaul, and there are various initiatives already in place such as the ‘Coalition for Better Ads’ https://www.betterads.org/ and the ‘IAB Gold Standard’ https://www.iabuk.com/goldstandard which aim to solve the problems which consumers and businesses are facing.
To the point:
For those of you unhappy with the current state of digital advertising, which I am sure will be over 90% of you, I want to ask how you would recommend we fix the problem?
Would you prefer to live in a digital advertising free world, where you paid for each piece of content you consumed via micro transactions? Would you prefer a subscription service for the internet similar to Netflix?
If you believe digital advertising does have a place in a publisher’s revenue model, how would you design the experience? Should ads be animated? Should they be static? Should they have sound? Should they be clickable? Should they remain on the borders of the content or can they take centre stage in the midst of it – how would this work on a smartphone?
If popups, overlays, autoplay-with-sound, road-block style, expanding, disrupting ads were replaced with a system more akin to the traditional out-of-home experience we have on buses, underground stations, billboards, etc; would this be preferable? If ads were unclickable, and so the risk of navigating away from the page you’re viewing was removed, and the units were basically just a visual prompt on the outskirts of your content; would that be better?
Would you turn off your adblocker?
