Ad Blockers are simple software programs that prevent ads from being visible on websites. Ad blockers are basically browser add-ons, and are available for the all the web browsers including Firefox and Chrome. A major chunk of websites on the internet exists mainly due to online advertising. In order to survive in this marketing world, millions of websites depend on online advertising revenues. Apple made headlines recently when it announced that iOS 9, technology. While Android remains the biggest player in the mobile device market, notably more people will be adopting ad blockers now as they’re available on iOS for the very first time, which could undoubtedly have a huge impact on Internet advertising revenues and digital marketing campaigns.
It is a purely a big misconception that ad blockers block all the ads. In reality, only some of the ad blockers block all ads, with many only blocking ads on particular sites. The main reason that people use ad blockers is to remove ads from their web browsing experience. By eliminating ads from the web pages, page load times considerably decreases, and can also reduce data usage. Also, some advertisements make use of scripts – tiny, self-contained snippets of code that perform certain functions on a web page – that can be easily exploited to gain access to users’ private information. This is also the prime reason that people are using ad blockers in large number.
It’s hard to tell if your campaign is being impacted by ad blocking practices or not. Recently, Google has made changes that benefits the advertisers through the introduction of ‘No Impression, No Charge’ bidding on Display advertising. It means that until a user has seen the ad for over 2 seconds, it won’t contribute to the CPM and overall cost of the campaign and you won’t be paying for non-existent eyes on your ads. Apart from that, code snippet solutions are also available that prevent your ads counting an impression and not disfiguring the campaign data, but due to the nature of ad block creators they will work around these issues quick and fast as soon as they become commonly known.
Some of the main impact of ad blockers on marketing campaigns will be overall cost increase in pricing because if impressions becomes difficult to generate, campaigns will likely take longer time to fulfill. As a result, publishers will be pushing for new strategies. Also, ads will need to change. Advertisers should give more respect to consumers, target carefully and create convincing, contextual content.
Ad blocking technology acts as a catalyst for change in field of advertising and media. The new and upcoming changes will continue to affect advertisers. Marketing alongside ad blockers can be demanding. But staying pertinent, focused and keeping your target audience in mind always can lead you to create better marketing campaigns.
