The number of people using software that blocks online ads is growing. According to an OnAudience.com report, as much as 42 percent of impressions in Poland are blocked, giving the country the top spot in the global ranking.
Countries such as the United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark, and Ireland are hot on our heels. In countries where the largest number of people use plugins such as adblock, publishers resort to creative solutions to stop the spread of a practice that is costing them money. We present the most interesting measures aimed at adblock users.
War on the Internet front
The war with adblockers is in full swing and, as with most conflicts, it has an economic basis. According to eMarketer statistics, publishers may have lost as much as USD 27 billion in 2016 because of ad blocking. The report "The state of the blocked web" shows that 11 percent of the world's population and 615 million devices already block ads. According to Piotr Prajsnar, CEO of Cloud Technologies, the company that developed UnBlock - a tool that allows publishers to display ads to adblock users, each side is to blame for the current state of affairs. - Advertisers, desperately trying to attract the attention of internet users who have long been immune to standard forms of advertising, are reaching for increasingly invasive and loud creatives. What is worse, publishers display them at random, so it is no wonder that audiences subconsciously classify them as spam they want to get rid of at all costs. The lack of precise trading and the still small share of personalized advertising on the market are problems the industry should address as soon as possible - argues Prajsnar.
According to the CEO of Cloud Technologies, internet users are also responsible for the crisis on the e-publishing market, as they massively install adblocks without noticing that the quality content they use is mostly created thanks to funds obtained from ad sales. Consenting to their display is a form of payment for access to publications. Publishers looking for alternative methods of obtaining funds to maintain their newsrooms speak about the problem in a similar way, which most often ends with the introduction of paywall-type solutions and charging fees for access to content. - If we look at the problem from a distance and summarize all the facts, it is clear that everyone loses from the popularization of adblocks: both publishers deprived of a large part of revenue and advertisers who have lost the ability to reach a large group of internet users, as well as internet users themselves, who, by saying "yes" to adblocks, unknowingly sign consent for paid access to popular content that had been widely available and free since the dawn of the Internet - believes Maciej Sawa of OnAudience.com.
AdBlock the main culprit in the dispute?
The creators of adblocks add fuel to the fire by making websites pay for protection from their software, which according to media representatives is a form of racketeering. - Publishers should not pay to be on the whitelist. It is illegal. It is a mafia-style practice - commented Stefan Betzold of the German newspaper Bild on such practices.
Despite the fierce conflict between publishers and adblock creators, companies see enormous potential in internet users who have barricaded themselves behind such plugins. According to Grzegorz Kosiński of Audience Network, an agency specializing in comprehensive service for advertisers in the field of data consulting, adblock users who fast from online ads are much more sensitive to them and are characterized by greater awareness of IT issues. No wonder, then, that they are a tasty morsel for advertisers worth fighting for. That was apparently the view of advertising specialists at Netflix. Using advanced technological solutions, they prepared a campaign aimed at people who had divorced online advertising. Source: screenshot, The Next Web
"Hello adblock user. You do not see this ad, but it sees you. What is on the other side of your black mirror?" This text placed on a large advertising banner greeted readers of selected websites, armed with plugins that were supposed to protect them from such sights. The campaign promoted a Netflix production that tells about the impact of new technologies on people's lives. Adblock users, who are up to date with technological novelties, were categorized as potential audiences for the sci-fi mini-series.
United Kingdom
On the islands, where according to OnAudience.com almost 39 percent of displayed ads are blocked, the Financial Times portal decided to conduct an experiment on a group of 15,000 adblock users, dividing them into 3 groups: the first received a message asking them to turn off the blocking plugin; the second had access to selected content blocked; the third was completely denied access to the entire site. After 30 days from the start of the experiment, it turned out that in the first group one in four internet users turned off adblock (25 percent of people), in the second - almost one in two (47 percent), and in the third as many as 69 percent of users. When assessing the success of the campaign, one should take into account the fact that the reader profile of The Financial Times and the brand of the title itself certainly were not without significance here, and readers were willing to pay for access to premium content.
The British newspaper also has a creative campaign aimed at adblock users, in which randomly selected readers of the FT.com portal with adblocks installed had an irritating surprise waiting for them: one third of the words in articles disappeared. The number of missing words was meant to reflect the scale of losses the publisher incurs because of ad blocking. Dominic Good, advertising sales director at Financial Times, claims that the campaign was meant to point out the consequences of such behavior and that the title he works for relies on advertising as a source of funding for quality content.
Lithuania
A publisher from this small country, with fewer than 3 million inhabitants, recently became famous for one of the most widely covered appeals of recent years. Journalists from 15Min.lt, which is one of the largest and most popular news sites in Lithuania, visited by about one million unique users per month, decided to oppose ad blocking and save the portal from losing revenue. According to the OnAudience.com report, 24 percent of all impressions are blocked in our north-eastern neighbor. Each member of the 15Min.lt editorial team recorded a short video aimed at making Lithuanian internet users aware that disabling an AdBlock-type plugin in the browser, adding 15Min.lt to the whitelist, or reserving a permanent monthly subscription to the site for EUR 1 is just a few mouse clicks. For the publisher, in turn, it is often "to be or not to be."
Before the video appeal, Lithuanian publishers tried various methods. The ideas, moreover, are strikingly similar to those currently used or planned by Polish publishers: displaying messages to blocking users asking them to turn off adblockers, blocking only selected content or video, or temporarily introducing a block on access to some content for users using adblockers. However, none of these measures brought a positive result. That is why Tomas Balžekas, editor-in-chief of 15Min.lt, decided on a different solution. Since neither a request nor hiding behind a selective paywall helped, only one thing remained: calling for understanding.
USA
In the United States, where according to the OnAudience.com report more than 22 percent of ads are blocked, Time magazine turned out to be the most creative. "YOU BROKE TIME.COM!" - with this opening message, readers of the title were confronted after clicking on a banner that literally invited them to break the portal. From the content of the message they learned that good journalism costs money and that it is worth considering giving up ad-blocking plugins. Earlier, however, the entire site fell apart before their eyes.
Against the backdrop of solutions introduced by competing portals in the USA, Time.com's campaign stands out for its humorous touch and seems to be much milder. In the case of Wired or The New York Times, their users were met with an ultimatum and had a choice: add the portal to the whitelist or access the site without ads for USD 1 per month. Otherwise, access to content was impossible. The New York newspaper even ventured a message in which it humbly explains to its readers that we have to pay for the best things in life.
Norway
OnAudience.com data shows that 38.5 percent of displayed ads are blocked in the land of fjords. Schibsted, the media group publishing Verdens Gang, the most popular tabloid in Norway, whose online site is visited by almost 2 million people daily, decided to look into the problem of ad blocking and seek the best solution for itself and its readers. For this purpose, a study was conducted among people using adblocks. It was meant to show which ads they are able to accept. The surveys were also intended to help respondents understand the consequences of ad blocking for publishers. It turned out that a large part of adblock users agree to ads with certain exceptions. 47 percent of respondents expressed a willingness to add VG to the whitelist if the publisher removed flash and pop-up creatives as well as moving and flashing ones from the site. Another important condition set by internet users was precise targeting, which guarantees that ads are not displayed at random. The same percentage of adblock users would put VG on the whitelist if the number of displayed banners on the site were reduced, and 58 percent if the page loaded faster. The study turned out to be sobering for supporters of the paywall. Only 1 percent of respondents expressed a willingness to pay for access to content without ads.
Schibsted took the results seriously, drew conclusions, and opted for transformation. The number of ads on the site was significantly reduced, page load time was shortened by 70 percent, and ads containing heavy animations were abandoned. After the changes were introduced, adblock users were informed about them. The publisher also began testing alternative ways of displaying ads.
Poland
In our backyard, the fight against adblocks entered a new level thanks to the Onet.pl portal. One of the largest e-publishers in Poland temporarily blocked access to its content for users using the AdBlock Plus plugin, trying in this way to force them to disable it. Poland is the world leader in ad blocking: about 7 million internet users in our country use ad-blocking software. They stop almost every second (42 percent) ad impression, depriving publishers of revenue. Onet.pl's decision to block their access caused a stir in the Polish publishing community and seriously divided it.
- At the Wirtualna Polska Group, we aim to create a balanced ecosystem of electronic services and products in which both the needs of users and our advertisers will be met. We do not forget about work on UX while developing advertising products that meet clients' expectations. We block video content. And although we already see the effectiveness of such solutions, we continue to work on this difficult topic for all publishers - said Paweł Kopacki, sales manager in the advertising product development team at Wirtualna Polska.
Paweł Chwaleba, a member of the Management Board of Interia.pl, stated that his company does not intend to block the homepage for adblock. - It solves nothing. After all, on the Internet almost every piece of information is available from several sources - he concluded. Paweł Stremski, director of the Gazeta.pl portal, also dispelled the doubts of the site's users. - At this moment, we do not plan to block access to content on the Gazeta.pl homepage for adblock users in the way Onet did - Stremski stated.
A large part of Polish publishers believe that the solution lies in introducing subscription fees for access to content, messages encouraging users to add the portal to the whitelist, or greater investment in native advertising and content marketing. They prefer to make internet users aware of the importance of the problem rather than bar them from access to content or force them to watch ads. Others already use an alternative solution created in Poland: UnBlock, an original internet advertising delivery technology developed by Cloud Technologies, which allows publishers to display ads despite adblock-type blocking software and, thanks to Big Data analytics, does so with extremely precise trading. - Such ad delivery does not irritate internet users. On the contrary: it arouses their interest, because the message is precisely tailored to their needs and interests. In the case of UnBlock, we observed impressive results that illustrate the effectiveness of personalized advertising. These include, for example, 12 times longer time spent on the advertised page, 46 percent more clicks on the banner than in the case of the Google Display Network, or a 27 percent lower bounce rate. Such data is a signpost for the publishing and advertising industry as to the direction in which changes should go - argues Marcin Filipowicz of Audience Network.
Marcel Płoszczyński
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Cloud Technologies is a Warsaw-based company from the new technologies segment, founded in 2011 by Piotr Prajsnar. It deals with Big Data marketing and data monetization. It is the largest data warehouse and Big Data platform (DMP) in Europe and the fastest-growing company on NewConnect. The company has developed innovative analytical tools (OnAudience, Data Management Platform), whose reach includes virtually every internet user in Europe. The data collected and processed by Cloud Technologies allows marketers to personalize advertising campaigns online and expand BI-class solutions in companies (data enrichment). The company also developed its original UnBlock technology, which allows internet ads to be displayed despite installed AdBlock-type software. UnBlock by Cloud Technologies has already received preliminary patent protection from the Polish Patent Office.
