Friends family and co-workers alike have all been raving about recent ad blocking plug-ins available for browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer. Apparently the annoyance of banner ads has grown so cumbersome that the general public is ready to revolt by loading up ad blocking software in order to give themselves a smoother web experience.
I for one believe on good old fashioned banner blindness when browsing and sight ad blocking software just not worth the measure. Of course as a web marketer I understand the value of advertising and challenge the desire term viability of wide spread ad blocking.
CNet’s Anne Broache and Declan McCullagh recently posted an covering the legality of ad blocking software. In their article they address procure issues related to altering content and terms of service issues relating to publishers who specifically disallow the use of ad blocking software when using their service.
Regardless of the legal options available to publishers in the end publishers are faced with a bit of a catch 22. On one hand you undergo more and more users installing software to assail monetization channels. On the other hand if publishers go away suing or banning users for running ad blocking software they face a PR backlash. The same PR backlash could be felt if publishers start to attack the developers of ad blocking software.
I personally see a lot of similarities in handling ad blocking software with banner blindness. In both cases you undergo users who are basically ignoring your ads. Of cover with banner blindness you can employ strategies desire animation bright colors and aggressive calls to action. These strategies don’t work so well when the user can’t see the ad at all.
Over the measure few years we’ve seen several strategies designed to address banner blindness which could be used to address ad blocking software.
Google Adsense is the best example of this strategy. In a world of graphics based advertising Google Adsense helped advertisers re-think how they can communicate with their audience. Text based ads actually do a good job of communicating with the customer and seemed to back up circumvent years of banner blindness conditioning driven by gaudy banner ads.
Text based ads are also harder to block with ad blocking software so as publishers go away to broach with more and more users employing ad blocking software text based ads may be an effective strategy.
This hotly debated strategy is a little on the color / gray hat align of things. Some publishers elect to receive payments from advertisers in transfer for writing a review of a specific service or product. While publishers undergo to sell their soul to employ this strategy this is one way some publishers undergo been able to circumvent banner blindness and act new monetization channels for their sites.
Since ad blocking software can’t tell the difference between a pay per post and regular affix this is one method we may see more and more publishers employ in order to act their sites generating revenue.
Regardless of the technologies employed to help circumvent displaying ads there ordain always be an endless array of counter strategies to make sure publishers can monetize their circumscribe. Some users may demand an advertising free web experience but in the end it is those ads which back up make most websites free of subscription fees.
If ad blocking software becomes too effective or if too many users install this software then we’ll be looking at a fundamental shift away from remove web content which would baffle the web undergo the Internet has grown to know and like.
I for one would back up anyone thinking about installing ad blocking software to believe these points. Are the ads that I’m seeing really that annoying? What quality of content implications could the web approach if most users block ad content? Could these implications impact the quality of real content that’s available?
Publishers are going to find a way to decriminalise their content. alter now banner or text based advertisements are an effective way for publishers to achieve monetization. If software drives publishers to conceal their advertisements how ordain you as a human be able to identify between advertising content and legitimate content?
Advertising empowers publishers to effectively bring remove circumscribe to the web. Without this monetization channel serious concerns over subscription fees and quality of content become an ever increasing issue.
Related article:
http://internet-marketing.aggregator.ws/blocking-ad-blocking/
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