Opinion // Blocking the ad blockers
If you’re the Daily Mail or the Guardian, not including each other, what’s the thing that’s causing you a migraine right now?
The answer, very likely, is ad blockers. Because if you’re a global publisher, in fact any online publisher, ad blockers are a big problem.
While many publishers are trying to diversify their revenue streams, the vast majority of their income still comes from ads. It’s not exactly news that the rapid rise of ad blocking is threatening the entire industry - an estimated 144 million people globally used an ad blocker last year, up 70 percent year on year. And it’s not like the last decade has been kind to journalism either.
So it was interesting to see last week that City AM became the first UK newspaper to ban ad blocker users. Today, if you’re a devotee of the financial freesheet’s website but also swear by AdBlock Plus, you’ll be greeted with the following firm but polite message on arrival:
“We are having trouble showing you adverts on this page, which may be a result of ad blocker software being installed on your device. As City AM relies on advertising to fund its journalism, please disable any adblockers from running on cityam.com to see the rest of this content.”
What makes the ad blocker battle so fascinating is that the winner will determine the future the web.
Until now the understanding has been that digital content has been free to view as long as we, the consumer, are happy for the publisher to serve ads and sell our data to marketers. In this bargain news sites and YouTube don’t cost a thing, but we endure mobile pop-ups that chomp through our data to access that Mail Online article, and have to sit through five seconds of this guy tell us why we’re poor and he’s rich because we don’t read a book a day.
But there’s a competing narrative in the story of the web and digital development as a whole; that of ‘the user’s always right’. Under this narrative, if people want to use an adblocker and there’s no legislation against it, why shouldn’t they? It’s only natural to seek out a quicker, neater and less noisy web experience, right? And besides, haven’t we all grown tired of those creepy cookies stalking us around the internet and some faceless third party selling our data to the highest bidder?
As a person who works in PR and advertising, loves great journalism and - daily - frets about its future, I hope that the publishers and advertisers will win out. No surprises there. But I still sympathise with the second narrative.
Perhaps what’s a little depressing - if not surprising - is that it seems City AM does too.
A look past the headline reveals that their stand isn’t quite as robust as one might think. To start with the ban only applies to desktop users (mobile is unaffected) and it’s less a big stand more a ‘see how it goes’ plan, in the words of their digital director.
While well-respected, City AM is one of the smaller news sites in the UK, and I’m sure can’t afford to see even a short-term drop in its ad revenue. Plus, it still wants to keep its readers on side.
So what’s the solution? Native advertising, which side steps ad blockers, is being hailed as part of the answer. Tech innovation has a role to play too. Google’s recently launched Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project is an attempt to work with publishers on fixing the ‘slow and clunky’ mobile web. ‘If content is fast, flexible and beautiful, including compelling and effective ads, we can preserve the open web publishing model’ said the company in a mission statement.
But it seems to me that publishers, if they’re as fearful of ad blockers as the trade press suggests, could do worse that joining the likes of City AM in trialling ad blocking blockers. After all, how can they compete with each other if there’s no market to compete in?
By Kit Cockburn, Semaphore London Account Director
