Ad blockers seem to be a big talking point right now: especially since Apple’s iOs 9 now gives users the opportunity to enable ad blocking software in Safari for the first time ever. For advertisers, it
is never good news when such a large company in the technological market gives users ease of user to stop adverts from being shown on their web browser. With their being a constant rise in ad blockers that are being used, advertisers of PPC and other advertising platforms are being forced to fight back and tackle ad blockers one way or another.
For most people, there have been two approaches that have been taken to combat ad blockers. One approach has been to ‘be cleverer than ad blockers’ – ‘how can I still make sure my advert is shown even if ad blockers are running?’ The other approach is the approach I think advertisers should start concentrating on – stopping people getting annoyed enough to use ad blockers in the first place.
To be fair, advertisers can get around ad blockers. At it’s most basic, ad blockers prevent scripts from running on websites since all adverts from PPC to banner advertising run using scripts. Therefore, if you want to get around ad blockers, you can simply have an image linked on the website and this will still appear because linked images do not use scripts.
However, this doesn’t solve the problem that PPC and banner advertising can still be blocked with advertisers because PPC and banner advertising will always use scripts to load adverts. Therefore, what needs to occur is that advertisers start concentrating on providing contextual advertising campaigns that web users will find useful. This means:
- No pop up ads, even email marketing pop ups.
- No ‘Download’, ‘Click here’, or ‘You are the 1,000,000th winner!’ adverts.
The problem is that a small percentage of adverts are like the above or similar to it. Advertising is not about getting lucky clicks or pop ups – it is about offering people relevant information they may find interesting and giving them the decision and opportunity to click on it.
If ad blocking software is to be irradiated, the problem cannot be ‘quick fixes’ to overcome ad blockers such as using linked images. Advertisers worldwide need to learn that in order for ad blocker software to die out, online advertising needs to be less intrusive, more contextual and not forced upon the web user. It is true to say that PPC does just this – it is the other forms of advertising out there that rely on poorly contextual campaigns that simply want ridiculously high click through rates that are the problem children that cause people to use ad blockers in the first place. Ad blockers cannot be destroyed. But, the next best thing is to stop people from getting to the stage of wanting to use them.
