Real impact of adblocking in Australia is being overstated warn media agency execs
Whitfield: ‘Ad blocking is a Chicken Little situation’
Senior digital executives from two of Australia’s biggest media buying agencies have warned that the impact of adblocking is being overstated in the market.
Speaking at the Programmatic Summit in Sydney, GroupM’s Timothy Whitfield took aim at reports that there were some 200m people using adblocking software around the world.
“My personal point of view is that adblocking is a little bit of a ‘chicken little’ situation,” warned Whitfield, director of technical operations at GroupM. “Someone says a number, then someone repeats that number and it amplifies.
“When I measured it by looking at a single server, one data set over another data set, it was 7.3% in Australia. Now 10% is an agency discrepancy and we were under the discrepancy for adblocking.”
Whitfield was speaking on a panel about the opportunities of programmatic, where another panel member, Graham Christie from Big Mobile, noted: “That 200m figure is a big number but that’s (just) 3% of the people online globally.”
Robbins: ‘We don’t have the data yet’
Later in the day, Dan Robins head of interactive at OMD, took a slightly different view, telling the room: “I don’t think we have the data yet and we see the big over-arching reports and we see certain demographics that do (adblock).
“But it is still so new that there isn’t a piece of information you could tie into an optimisation or digital campaign plan that would do that job for you,” he said, on a panel looking at viewability, ad fraud and ad blocking.
Fairfax executive Tereza Alexandratos argued it was a threat, but only one of a number facing publishers.
Alexandratos, digital ad development director at Fairfax Media, said: “I think for us adblocking is a threat but there are obviously many many other threats to traditional publishers… I think it is widely known that paid models are not going to be enough to replace advertising revenue. It is more of a supplementary revenue stream.
Tereza Alexandratos: ‘Adblocking is just another thing we need to factor in’
“If a publisher is smart they will be diversifying their revenue streams across the board. For us we have, for a long time, looked at other revenue streams outside of advertising to make up for the structural changes in the market and adblocking is just another one of those things to factor in.”
Whitfield’s argument focused on the need for the advertising industry to look at what was driving people to install adblocking software.
“It is a big number but we need to make the advertising environment welcome,” said Whitfield.
“We have taken this fantastic environment – think about when you go to the movies – you actually enjoy the advertising experience with the big screen and surround sound, and we have taken something fun and moved it into a tiny little iframe. That’s the problem we need to overcome.
“It needs the right person, the right message, the right time.”
Nic Christensen
Great points by both Tim and Tereza. We also need to remember that a disproportionate part of that “programmatic” $ coin, still goes to the middle-layer people such as the exchanges, bidders, “agencies” et-al with a few people in the food-chain that are not needed in some cases.
“If” it is up to the 55% and possibly more that I have heard of, those folks who truly care and understand the content where ads appear (the publisher, their staff and their readers/subscribers) have to deal with what results from getting the smaller part of the shrapnel/change. EG: an imbalance where one OR the other side will need to find a solution that forces a correction (asking for feedback about adverts seen, reducing ad real-estate (including calling a spade a spade when it comes tabloola/outbrain etc being paid advertising)) etc.. or….if you are a consumer: Adblocking, till a better solution is found.
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and if you were to drill down and look at adblocking by platform, the rate on mobile – the dominant and fastest growing platform – is miniscule.
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I’ve a bit of an issue with ad blocking. Look in theory I agree, everyone hates getting things shoved in your face right?
However, the revenue generated by publishers which goes back to delivering news to the masses will be lost with this coming in. If journalism resources are tight already, what’s going to happen when revenue targets drop? Will we even have unbiased news in the future? The real cynic in me thinks, have we ever?
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Nothing to se ehere. Internet advertising is working brilliantly.
And Fairfax are looking at “other revenue streams”. I do liketh that one.
Surely that other “revenue stream” isn’t autoplay?
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Adblocks are brilliant (but use the right one, like Ublock Origin, some of the others have sold out).
Only anecdotal, but everyone I know uses them. It’s not just an issue of blocking ads, it’s also about security, privacy, load speed and data usage. Blocking ads improves all of these.
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Someone says a number and then it amplifies. Sounds a lot like 100% view-ability.
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Once again the elephant in the room – distraction!
When ad breaks come on people can wither fast forward or jump onto their computers and check Facebook etc – I wonder how many people actually watch ads?
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Once again, let’s by no means whatsoever, actually address the fundamental problem here in the industry.
Media organisations and publishers have simply taken old world advertising concepts and formats, measurement principles, forgotten about the user experience, forgotten about the relevancy of these ads in the context of the user experience and slapped them all over the page (or video), even interrupting the content consumption experience with auto-play video ads and more.
And yet the industry is arguing about ad blocking being overstated?
The format, placement, context and impact on the consumer content consumption experience is just simply appalling. And nobody but publishers, the ‘media’ and advertising industry is to blame. But what is worse is nobody seems to have learned anything yet!!
Seriously, just take a step back and really, truly take a hard look at the experience on desktop and mobile sites which sell access to visitors from a user point of view, and then wonder why consumers are blocking and skipping the interruptions.
Nothing seems to change, particularly in Australia, in and around the media and advertising industry in regards to how far it is behind in all things digital.
Instead of doing a root canal and reinventing business models and experiences based on insights, data, knowledge, continually testing, experimenting and learning, MARCOM, digital and media buying agencies continue to simply jump at the next big shiny object, in this case programmatic, to try and stay relevant to brands and marketers.
But they still have no real grasp of, understanding or executional capability around 1:1 personalised lifecycle marketing, advanced analytics, cross channel and multi touch attribution modeling, truly integrated advertising & marketing, customer journey mapping, customer experience strategy and design, and I could go on.
Once again, stick your head in the sand, like the hundreds of Fortune 500 companies who aren’t around anymore, instead of actually addressing the root problem and fixing it.
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And today the New York Times recommended using adblockers on mobile to save battery life: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02.....-life.html
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Martin do you ever tire of shitting on the entire digital industry aside yourself. Time after time you write these self indulgent waffles about how everyone has their head in the sand, but at the same time you seem incapable to get anyone to actually follow through on all the answers you claim to have.
If you’re the one in the know, how come it’s these idiot agencies who clients are relying on to guide them? Surely if they’re so incapable and there’s such a clear intelligent alternative such as yourself you’d be so busy solving their problems rather than writing 500 word thinkbombs about how thick the entire industry is in comparison to your high knowledge.
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Nice one Martin Walsh, but please don’t forget to breathe.
Now that you have all the answers, I look forward to seeing everything getting perfect real soon.
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Also Martin Walsh, you probably mean root and branch where you’ve used root canal as your analogy.
Sorry for the pedantry, but when know it all perfectionism is the order of the day…
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Get Ghostery’s privacy browser for your mobile from either the Play Store for Android or from the Apple app store for iOS
Brilliant
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I thought Martin used “root canal” to refer to a radical and rather unpleasant procedure. Root, radical and root-and-branch all derive from the Latin radix, after all.
I tend to agree that the impact of adblocking is being overstated. I paid no attention to online ads when I could see them, and I pay no attention now they are blocked. In either case, the impact was zero.
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I think Martin makes some valid points – and I’d like to know who really has the answers?
I’m not in the advertising industry, but surely you guys realise people are skipping ads, whether it’s fast forwarding, doing something else while they are on – or just ignoring them?
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