One of my favourite marketing thought leaders is Seth Godin, and I really enjoyed his blog post on adblockers (it is from 2015, but still very applicable). In this post, Seth discusses two of the main parties involved in the adblock war: advertisers and (in a roundabout way) publishers.
On the topic of advertisers, Seth points to three things they could have done to avoid pushing people towards adblocking: avoid secretly tracking people, stop serving ads in sneaky ways (e.g., popovers and popunders) and serve relevant ads.
With countless stories in the news about identity thieves, financial security breaches, and hacked celebrity accounts, the idea of any being tracked online causes concern for many people. While most advertisers use tracking technologies to identify successful marketing efforts and to re-engage potential customers, many consumers have a hard time differentiating these tracking activities from potential security risks.
When it comes to showing relevant ads, many marketers are likely pointing at the previous paragraph in frustration. “How can I show you relevant ads if I don’t know anything about you?!” There is an art to finding that middle ground, or being “just creepy enough” as a marketing colleague of mine once said. With the vast array of marketing and advertising technologies available today, it is far too easy (and tempting) to cross into “too creepy” territory – no matter how innocent the intentions.
As for sneaky advertising methods like popovers and popunders, I think you would be hard-pressed to find a marketing professional who would defend these. I can’t recall ever seeing a popup from a major company like Apple or Starbucks. These sort of shady ads seem to be the domain of smaller and less reputable advertisers like online casinos or unproven dietary supplements.
Unfortunately, many consumers judge all advertisers based on the actions of a few. Each time an advertiser violates their trust, be it with secret tracking or sneaky ad formats, users may become more suspicious of advertising overall. For many, this lack of trust is what leads to the blocking of ads.
Adblocking, Seth says, undermines a fundamental principle of media: free content in exchange for attention. He goes on to explain that ads in older media channels, like TV and print, were kept in check by things like the FCC or paper costs. The web, which does not face similar restrictions, has lead more and more people to believe that the deal (free content in exchange for attention) doesn’t work. They don’t know if the content offered will be worth the attention required.
While most publishers seem willing and capable to limit their advertising to reasonable levels, others are comfortable splitting their content across as many ad-heavy pages as possible (or worse). Because users cannot typically predict what type of publisher they are dealing with until it’s too late, this can lead to mistrust of publishers. When this mistrust leads to the blocking of ads, the fair and reasonable publishers will likely find their ad revenue suffers as well.
As Seth mentions, it is difficult to separate the good from the bad in any sort of scalable way. This is why adblockers started with the sledgehammer approach of “block them all.” With publishers struggling to recover revenue lost to adblockers, many are requesting that adblock users whitelist their site. While some users agree to these reasonable terms, it seems most will not. After all, they can’t be sure about what sort of ads they are agreeing to… the disreputable sites ask them to whitelist as well, and even the good sites can sometimes have dubious ad sources.
Luckily, the adblock community was able to come to a consensus on some reasonable criteria for ads. Now, ads from approved sources can be automatically displayed to adblock users without the need for manual whitelisting. This allows publishers and advertisers to access the growing audience of adblock users. Even better: the ads are shown with the permission of the adblocking masses, which might just help regain their trust.