Ad blocking is the Internet industry's biggest nightmare: it blocks the ads that appear on your page at the server level. Translation: An ad that's served but not seen is still an impression, and thus paid for, but an ad that is not even served at all, doesn't count for anything.
And now the default web browser of the world's most popular phone, Safari on Apple iPhone's iOS9, has ad blocking pre-installed. Google, Facebook, and Twitter make money by showing advertising to their users. No advertising, no money, no Google, no Facebook, and no Twitter. Beyond that though, one of the reasons that we use these tools is to consume content and most content creators make money through advertising. And thus, not only is the trunk of the internet tree being threatened, but so are the leaves. However, the trunk (the large digital platforms), for now, have figured out different ways to monetize. It's the leaves, the publishers, that we need to worry about.
Digital advertising has always been interruptive, whether it's a pop-up, pop-under, full screen takeover, autoplay video, or "rich media" banner ad. Let's face it, everyone hates these ads (including the people that make, buy, and serve them). It's no wonder people want to block them - these ads trick us into clicking on them, they play embarrassing sounds on our computers when they shouldn't, they slow down our browsing experience, and they prevent us from consuming the content we want. Yet, a game of whack-a-mole has ensued: most online publishers rely on advertising to survive and as revenue withers away, they've had to incorporate more ads to make up for the decrease, and thus the mess of advertising that we currently live in. In the short term, publishers are blocking the readers that have in turn blocked their ads. However, like paywalls, readers always find a way, and while they're searching, there's always more content to consume a simple mouse click away.
Despite this, there appears to be a long term solution that many top publishers have gotten behind: New York Times' T Brand Studio, Wall Street Journals' Custom Studios, Forbes' BrandVoice or Quartz's Sponsored Content. Through these platforms, publishers are making money doing what they do best - creating compelling content. Big name brand publishers have created a new ad unit - the story ad - and by tapping the same folks that purchased advertising from them before, they can now charge a higher rates for this custom content. For the publisher, it's a way to make their pages pretty again and not load slowly; a huge reason ad blocking was built in the first place. For the brand, it's hard to avoid your message when it's integrated right into the story.
On top of this, marketers have to understand that the only constant is change. With the advent of the iPhone (power in your pocket), Amazon (never-ending inventory that can be in your hands in 24 hours), and social media (a real time opinion on anything), the way we sell products has changed. We don't need to constantly bombard our customers with reminders, but instead, we need to have one well-told story that they won't forget. When the timing's right, it's this story that will lead your brand into your customer's consideration set.
Telling better stories is what ad blocking has forced marketers to do.
Marketers believing that frequency and reach outweighs messaging have created real-time bidding platforms with the deluge of display ads selling at bottom of the barrel prices. Technology has advanced at a rapid pace, but our 'humanness' changes much slower. We're still emotional, irrational, story driven creatures that respond unkindly to a full screen takeover or an autoplay video. We respond to thoughtful and emotional stories. Understanding what's important to customers - the 'why' not the 'what' as Simon Sinek would say - is what ad blocking has forced us to do.
Do marketers really believe in click through rates? Has anyone driving on the road pulled over because they felt the need to buy car insurance upon encountering a Geico billboard? Just because we can measure it doesn't mean that it needs to be measured. After all, it's your story, not your ad, that will get me to buy your product. Click through rates should be a value add, not an actual metric. Former Facebook data scientist Jeffrey Hammerbacher says that "the best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads". Without any ads, there will be no clicks and thus, ad blocking has forced these best minds to rethink what marketing and advertising actually is, instead of aiming for frivolous KPIs.
The ad block shakeout is a good thing for the industry. When the dust settles, we won't have 2,000 banners shown to us everyday or nearly 7 trillion ads per year, whereas nearly 60% are not seen by humans. We won't try to game people to click on ads or build bots to generate those clicks to cheat the system. Instead we'll be able to focus on simply telling a good story. We'll see smaller publishers getting into the sponsored content game (led by companies like ours), we'll be moving from the "MySpacing" of every site to the "Facebooking" of every site - and even though people hated it at first they grew up to eventually love it. And maybe along the way we'll be able to uninstall our ad block and get in one or two banner or skyscraper ads. The next question is what to do with the thousands of startups whose business model is to serve ads (see Lumascape below).
This story was written by Roger Wu and edited by Al Chen from Cooperatize. Main image via Shutterstock.