By Kelly Rogan, on 12 December 2015
Adblocks are starting to take over people’s browsers all over the world. From Adblock Plus to Adfender to AdMuncher, there are a plethora of options out there for all types of consumers who all have one thing in common; they are sick and tired of invasive ads. Here I will describe in detail how adblocks can affect your business, the increase in use, the solutions that you can use and the future will we see with adblocks.
#1 The Adblocks are costing brands money
The effects of ad blocks can be seen all over the world and will cost advertisers $21.8 billion just in the year 2015 and the predicted costs for 2016 are double this rate at $41.4 billion. These costs include all the money that marketers pour into pop-up banners, pop-up windows, auto play videos, animations, pictures, and embedded audios and videos, which consumers who have ad blocks never even see. All the work put into creating these invasive style ads is for nothing in the end, since no one even gets to see them.
#2 Adblocks: The usage is unstoppable
Taking one quick glance at the “Ad Block Use” graph within the infographic will give you the clear view that the usage is swiftly increasing. In the entire United States ad block use has increased by 48% to reach a total of 45 million users as of July 2015. In the global scale usage has increased by 41% only within the past year leaving us with a total of 198 million users globally. The browser that has the most installed ad blocks is Chrome followed by Firefox and Safari. Ad block is not limited to desktop computers and will soon be installed on every cell phone and tablet device. In summary, ad blocks are here to stay so it is time for you to adapt.
#3 The 3 Solutions to ad blocks
As a digital marketing company who lives and breathes marketing and advertising we have decided to make adblocks our friend, not our enemy. Fighting against them is pointless; it is a battle you will simply never win. Instead of putting your energy, time and money into battling against these adblock companies, you should find the opportunities that come along with this challenge.
- 1. Content and Digital Marketing. Consumers are so desensitized to advertising that in order to get their attention you must blow them away. Surprise them with something new, creative, funny, attractive and more than anything, useful. Don’t be intrusive, be interesting.
- 2. Personalized Marketing thanks to automation. There are many different CRM tools out there to help you discover personal information about your target audience, use this information to customize your ads for your specific audience. You should personalize the message, campaigns, retargeting and buyer journey to your specific target market to obtain optimal results!
- 3. TechMarketing. In terms of marketing, technology can be your best friend. Many different tools such as the CRM provided by hubspot can help you collect the data of leads and customers in order to better market to them. No longer do we need to spend our afternoons manually entering customer information, technology makes our lives easier and our work more effective.
#4 The future of adBlocks
There are specialists who predict the progressive disappearance of adBlocks in the coming years and that this extension is just a fad among users, but from my point of view and that of the whole team Cyberclick, we believe that ad blockers are here to stay for a long time. Because in reality, they solve a very important problem of users: the massive advertising attack that they receive every time they surf the Internet.
Intrusive ads had become a major nuisance and consumers had only one way to avoid them, just not visiting websites where advertising attacks are greater. But since the first adBlocks started, its use has spread rapidly and is offering a peaceful and without "inconvenience" navigation to all consumers. This has created an inconvenience for marketing and advertising agencies and brands: what to do so that the investment is not useless?
The first reaction of marketers and advertisers was to fight against this new trend, but it was useless. Because today the user is king and consumers decide what is to be done. We can only adapt to this new way of working. Are you going to stay behind or actually become in favor of adBlocks?
The day that most advertising is friendly and non-invasive, the adBlocks will have lost their original meaning and will begin to fall in use (or not, and will still be used as a precaution against the few aggressive companies that will remain). One of the great landmarks of ad blockers is that they have really forced the agencies and brands to think more about the quality and not just quantity, to find out what really appeals to the target audience and not force him to consume content that they really do not want.
If the users feels that it is them who have the final decision, then they will be more likely to consume our ads, videos and news content. Taking it to the final conversion sale because of the useful and enjoyable ad. Tell me if you agree with our philosophy and leave your comment!