It happened a few days ago just as it happens nearly every day when I read the news. I clicked on a story about drone regulations, and instead of a story, I was greeted by a loud, unrelated video that I couldn’t stop. Eventually it ran its course, and I was able to read the story, but I also resolved not to visit that site again.
Unfortunately, intrusive ads are far too common as are ads that serve malware, slow down peoples’ internet connections or soak up expensive mobile bandwidth. Because of this, users are installing ad blockers on their computers and mobile devices that keep out all advertising, not just intrusive or annoying ads. Understanding why they do this is pretty easy.
Despite the fact that there are some very good reasons to reject online advertising, it exists for some very good reasons as well. The most important is that it’s about the only way to pay for content that appears on the website. Without ads, you’d have no content. And yes, if you look next to this column on eWEEK, you’ll see ads. Those ads are how I get paid.
So it’s understandable that the Newspaper Association of America has gone on a campaign to prevent the use of ad blockers. After all, the association estimates that more than 10 percent of all ads on the Internet are blocked. In addition, the NAA has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission challenging the use of some ad blockers.
Perhaps more notable, David Chavern, the CEO of the NAA declared in an opinion column in January that “Ad blocking threatens democracy.” Really? So I called Chavern.
“That might have been a little bit of hyperbole in the headline,” Chavern said when I spoke with him. But he pointed out that the idea of free access to news was being threatened by the declining revenues that news organizations receive from their online advertising. He maintained that this is a threat to access to news by everyone.
But in his opinion piece and in other public statements, Chavern and the NAA seem to be blaming their own readers for their revenue shortfall because of ad blockers.
The publishers have allowed this in an effort to maximize their own revenues, forgetting the golden rule of advertising supported publishing that it’s the audience that is the product being sold, not the publication. If you lose your audience because they grow to hate your advertising, then you lose your publication.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau, which is an advocacy and technical standards group for the digital advertising industry, has published what it calls its L.E.A.N. initiative. In this case, the acronym stands for Light, Encrypted, Ad Choice Supported and Non-Invasive. This is backed up with a scoring system that lets publishers decide whether the ads they allow are up to snuff.
Originally published on eWeek
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Its up to the web page owners to put pressure on their advert suppliers to clean up their act. Currently I'm getting close to the point of installing an ad blocker, which will be a pity as some of the ads I actually want, but the slowness, intrusive ads and even worse those with blaring audio is becoming unacceptable.
So advertisers, agencies and web page get your act together or your business is going to lose another user!