Native ads, advertorials and branded content are all formats that have been buzzwords for quite some time for anyone involved in website copywriting or content production.
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A report has also confirmed that 29 percent of iOS users have already started to block web ads on their desktop and laptop computers. Sorry, and yes, it pains me too.
But Apple’s update only threatens to make mainstream what was already a growing existential threat to any publisher hoping advertising online will support their business. And after Apple’s announcement that it was allowing developers to create ad-blocking extensions for iOS 9, there’s likely going to be even more press coverage. Now publishers, the IAB and industry observers are legitimately concerned by an increase in awareness and usage of ad blockers, as evidenced by the immediate adoption of Peace and other iOS 9 apps. An app called Purity has rushed to the coveted position of No. 1 paid app in the US app store, beating out popular mainstays such as Minecraft and Swype.
The reaction by publishers has created blowback for some makers of ad-blocking software.
The blog did however advocate the use of Ghostery, a tracker for the “invisible web” used to power Peace, as well two similar content and tracking blockers: Crystal and Purify. As a result, all Google can do is pay ad blocking companies to whitelist ads.
Free, apparently, is not cheap enough for the ad-block crowd.
That declaration gave Apple a moral reason to carve Google services out of its ecosystem. Arment himself says that ad-blockers are still necessary, but that he doesn’t want to be a part of the war between advertisers and ad-blockers. While autoplay video ads may work in some mobile in-stream environments where a consumer can swipe them off the scream quickly, it may be time to retire autoplay in other contexts.
The recent changes in the way that Instagram has opened up a more ad-friendly approach and even the mobile-based changes to Google rankings criteria are all pointers to the importance of smartphones to any online campaign planning.
In my opinion, this is an over-reaction to, again, something I feel was an inevitable and obvious evolution in mobile platforms.
Ad blocking “is something we take very seriously and are now building our business around”, he said.
However, the new application programming interfaces in the latest Apple Inc. And not just in browsers. If this doesn’t drive that home to you, nothing will.
As abetted by for-profit technology companies, ad blocking is robbery, plain and simple – an extortionist scheme that exploits consumer disaffection and risks distorting the economics of democratic capitalism.
Ad blocking was termed as the province of nerds. So enjoy this time-which, as the writer Clay Shirky once put (back in 2009), is basically like the 1500s after the invention of the printing press: utter chaos-while someone else worries about how to pay for all of it. Obviously, this stuff should work “in” the browser, when you’re viewing a site, and not require a user to know about and then find some obscure location in Settings.
And, innovators get the chance to reinvent the commerce ecosystem around a set of activities that finally deliver real value to all stakeholders. “As far as I know, this effectively never happens”. Recently, display advertising has been the most effective tool to help us message those hard-to-reach audiences. I think this is misguided, but whatever.
“Our focus has been: ‘How do I grow our ad inventory faster than ad blocking can impact us?'” he said. Yes, ads are annoying.
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I will continue working on this, as will others. More distinctions now need to be made around what qualifies as “good” online advertising versus “bad” ads that should be blocked, they said – though they were less clear on who would decide what constitutes a good or bad ad.
