Of Ad Blockers, Spammers and Naked Emperors

There is a certain twisted pleasure in seeing ad publishers squirming at ad blockers, people who block ads and the money that it “costs” the industry (which some people peg at $22 billion). Twisted because I, of course, participate fully and enthusiastically in advertising on the web, both, for clients and for my own company.

Twisted also because it seems that publishers have been binging on their own KoolAid for so long.

Like you, I, too, was bombarded by earnest pontification of how digital was more “engaging” because it was a very proactive platform as opposed to, say, Television and Radio, where the theory was that we sat passively on a couch absorbing whatever it is that the networks deigned to throw our way.

Like you, I, too, was bombarded by more pontification about, first, banners, then take-overs, then skins, now video, branded content and other ads thrown at us.

No, there’s no engagement Virginia.

At least not with advertising.

The news that almost 20% of internet users in the U.S. actively use ad blockers should not come as a surprise to anyone. For years, a lot of us have preached a contrarian gospel: people are not engaged with advertising, people don’t even like advertising. What people want is content. They are engaged with content. Oh, and they want content to be free. And by free they mean free. As in, no ads.

“It’s clear to us that the ads ecosystem is broken,” said Ben Williams, a spokesman for Eyeo, the German company that makes Adblock Plus, the most popular ad-blocking software. “What we need is a sea change in the industry to get to a place where we have a good amount of better ads out there, ads that users accept.”

There is no social contract.

Publishers then bemoaned the breaking of the “implicit social contract” that “held the web together”. And by that, they mean that there is an implicit agreement that publishers dish out content and we take it for free in return for our attention, engagment and, yes, throves of personal information.

But consumers balked at what was a perceived abuse of their tacit agreement. In the words of Marco Arment in his article “The Ethics of Modern Web Ad-Blocking” (http://www.marco.org/2015/08/11/ad-blocking-ethics): A line had been crossed, and people fought back.

And, if you want to see the definition of going haywire, take a look at www.miamiherald.com. Not only is it the worst-designed website of any major newspaper, it is so intrusive that reading through the content is almost mental punishment. I am embarassed that the only newspaper in my temporary hometown can produce such crap.

And publishers did not really deliver the kind of content that would tolerate anything but the most egregious free distribution. The click-bait phrase “but what happened next” is now a telltale sign for anyone who is over 12 that the article will be bullshit.

The Emperor’s Robes.

Now, PageFair, an Irish company, is promising to break through that barrier: “PageFair also sells technology that allows web publishers to determine if users are running blocking software — and then serves them ads anyway, going around the blockers.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/20/technology/personaltech/ad-blockers-and-the-nuisance-at-the-heart-of-the-modern-web.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0)

So, my first questions is: really? Are you sure YOUR ad is going to break through the blocker?

Nope. YOUR ad is not. Their version of your ad is.

PageFair’s canny strategy to mitigate users’ outrage is that it will only show ads that aren’t “intrusive”. That means, no animations, no blocking content, no trackers.

So, nothing of what makes an ad work.

So why create a flat, non-intrusive ad that won’t tell you anything about the reader?

Some people might argue that this is “better than nothing”. I argue that this IS nothing.

Ad that to the current “viewability” standards (1 second for banners, 2 seconds for video) and you have a severe problem for advertisers: people hate ads under our current conditions, can block them and, when not being blocked, might be seen for only one second.

A sort-of-proposal.

I really don’t know what I would do if I were the industry. Voluntary doesn’t work. I get hit by voluntary ads on PopPhoto and Forbes and breeze right through them.

Native advertising is hard to do –tons of man hours—and the jury is out on its effectiveness.

Perhaps a real change in the industry will do the trick: stop with the uber-intrusiveness, with the uber-collection of data and develop a PR campaign that will tell people that the changes are real.

One can see, down the road, where consumers will clamor for government regulation much in the same way that commercial breaks are pretty much regulated to around 12-14 minutes per hour.

It is in everyone’s best interest to stop the warfare. The only ones who will come out as losers are us, the advertisers.