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Keep your Ads from Being Blocked
December 20, 2019
Here are 3 tips
Ad blockers themselves are nothing new: In 2019, roughly 25.8 percent of internet users were blocking advertising on their connected devices... [1] That’s a lot of potential customers not seeing the ads that you’re paying to create, broadcast, and target to them. If that’s not bad enough, nearly half of all ad blocker users will actively avoid sites that target them with ads. [2] Ad blockers are causing headaches for companies of all sizes. As a business, your advertising dollars need to count. Here are some ways you can make meaningful connections with new customers with ad blockers in mind:
1. Evaluate how well your ads are working for your audience.
- Is your target audience tech-savvy and familiar with ad blockers? According to a 2019 survey, millennials and Gen Z actively use ad blockers, and 58% of ad blocker users are men. [3]
- Are your ads resonating with your audience in the first place? It’s worth your time to put together a survey and find out if your customers like how you advertise.
2. Focus on the viewability of your ads.
Digital advertising fraud (intentionally serving ads that have no chance of being seen by a person, but are still counted as having been seen in order to boost traffic) has been problematic for a while. In fact, only a quarter of all digital ad spend reaches real people. [4]
- Consider shifting your ad spend to places like Google Ads, which only counts an impression if they’re sure a real person laid eyes on your ad.
- Diligently research any publishing network that you’re thinking about working with, and demand transparency from them about where their viewership comes from. According to the Association of National Advertisers, publishers who use sourced traffic (any method to acquire more visitors through third parties) have three times the amount of fraudulent traffic. [5]
3. Take the inbound approach.
Ad blockers work on desktop and mobile web browsers—but they generally don’t work inside apps. It's time to look at in-app advertising and figure out how it can work for you.
- Pinterest’s “Promoted Pins” are a great example, as are Facebook Newsfeed ads, LinkedIn’s “Sponsored Updates,” and Twitter’s “Promoted Tweets.”
While use of ad blockers is on the rise, digital publishers are finding ways to work around the issue, such as: paying the ad blockers to unblock certain ads; reminding the user that they rely on ad revenue for survival and asking them to turn off the software; or even denying the user access to the website unless they turn off their ad blocker software.
Meanwhile, what does this all mean for your business? Be sure to spend some time doing an overall review of where you’re spending your marketing dollars, and consider alternate ways they might be spent more effectively.
[2] Marketing Technology Insights, Nearly Half of Users of Ad Blockers Will Avoid Websites that Target Them With Ads
[3] Digital Information World, Global Ad-Blocking Behaviors in 2019
[4] Adweek, 3 Ways to Stop Wasting Money on Ads No One Sees
[5] Association of National Advertisers, The Bot Baseline: Fraud in Digital Advertising
