Advertising

The lifetime value of a blog post: It’s more than you probably think.

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Social Media , , , , ,

bgHere’s an interesting factoid: In 2014, more than 550 million blog posts were uploaded on WordPress alone.

Add in Tumblr, and there are another 250 million blogs.

Considering the sheer volume of blogging activity, it’s surprising how little intelligence on the “value” of a blog post has been available. But now a study has been published that sheds light on the question.

The evaluation, which was commissioned by branding agency IZEA and conducted by research firm The Halverson Group, has determined that the lifespan of a blog post is far greater than the accepted measurement of 30 days.

The lifespan is more than 20 times longer, it turns out.

Let’s break down the research findings a bit more. The IZEA/Halverson study determined that by Day 700 (about two years), the typical blog post will have received ~99% of its impressions.

That’s a pretty long annuity, and it provides strong ammo for marketers who advocate for blog posts as an important way to maximize the return on their marketing spend.

According to the study, the typical blog post goes through three distinct phases in its useful life:

  • Shout: The initial spike in impressions that happens within the first 7 to 10 days, typically resulting in half of the total impressions the post will ever receive.
  • Echo: The period ending at 30 days, by which time the typical blog post will have racked up ~70% of its total impressions.
  • Reverb: The third phase that stretches from approximately Day 30 all the way to Day 700. This long-tail phase will typically generate the final ~30% of impressions.

Of course, the performance of individual blog posts will depend on the subject matter, the timeliness of the information, and other factors. But as a general rule of thumb, the Halverson findings show the potential value of a blog post as far greater than many marketers may have surmised up until now.

The Halverson study also provides a good rule of thumb for the lifetime impression value of a blog post. It can be calculated by multiplying a blog post’s 30-day monthly pageview total by a factor of 1.4.

In other words, by Day 30, marketers can know with a good deal of confidence how the blog post will perform overall.

Using this formula, marketers will be able to demonstrate the “evergreen” effect of blogging as a marketing tactic.

Certainly, the residual benefits of a blog post look very strong — particularly in contrast to volume-based media such as display or search advertising, which stop performing the instant the campaign investment ends.

The bottom line: Companies should continue to blog away … and if they haven’t started or if they’ve allowed their blogging program to flag, it’s time to get things back in gear!

Six years on … and the U.S. ad economy is still in recession?

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Economics, Marketing Communications, Media, Media Consumption , , , , , , , , , ,

recession recoveryTwo reports from advertising research sources released in the past month reveal that the advertising field doesn’t appear to be rebounding in strongly – at least not to same degree as the economy as a whole.

One report, from U.S. Ad Market Tracker, is an index that pools electronic media buys processed by major agency holding companies and their brand marketers.

It’s true that this report shows an increase in the overall ad activity index year-over-year of about 18 points (it’s 184 today … 166 a year ago … and 100 back in the recession year of 2009).

But when we look at the breakdown where most of the advertising growth is coming from, it’s nearly all from a handful of categories: social media advertising, advertising on video, Internet radio, plus ad network marketplaces.

By contrast, search advertising is growing at a much slower rate, and the most “commoditized” segments – particularly online display advertising – are doing little better than treading water.

This isn’t the robust rebound that many business and ad industry observers were expecting to see by 2015.

advertisingOver at Kantar Media, the statistics are even less encouraging.

In fact, Kantar projects that the 2015 ad economy will underperform U.S. economic growth for the fifth straight year.

Considering how lethargic in general the U.S. economy has been over that period, to be growing at less than the average is almost an indictment of the industry.

That’s what Kantar Media Chief Research Officer Jon Swallen suggests:  a “streak that might have once seemed unimaginable, but now would seem par for the course.”

Second-quarter 2015 data released by Kantar estimates annualized measured media ad spending declines in the neighborhood of 4%.

More to the point, Kantar is seeing increases in just 7 of the 22 individual ad media categories it tracks, led by the same categories U.S. Ad Market Tracker identifies as the most healthy ones.

Perhaps a surprise — considering the overall disappointing numbers — is that Kantar has tracked two analogue categories as experiencing growth:  radio and out-of-home advertising.

But print continues to decline at pronounced rates, and Internet display advertising has also officially joined the ranks of media segments that are contracting.

Is the disappointing performance of advertising a function of a weak market overall?  Or is it the result of structural changes and the reallocation of promo dollars into different, in some cases non-advertising MarComm vehicles?

I’m not completely sure.  It’s true that certain advertising categories that are “newer” ones are attracting more attention (and more dollars).  But Kantar’s 2nd Quarter reporting of advertising expenditures by major industry category finds just one – one – segment that has experienced an overall increase year-over-year — pharmaceuticals:

Ad economy chart

When just one industry segment out of ten is showing an increase, it suggests more than just some restructuring or re-jiggering is going on. Instead, it’s just as likely that the U.S. advertising economy remains stuck in a recession, even if the overall economy has finally emerged from it.

What are your thoughts on the tepid advertising results? Please share your views with other readers.

Social media data mining: Garbage-in, garbage-out?

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Demographics, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Marketing Research, Media, Media Consumption, Social Media , , , , , , , ,

gigoIt’s human nature for people to strive for the most flattering public persona … while confining the “true reality” only to those who have the opportunity (or misfortune) to see them in their most private moments.

It goes far beyond just the closed doors of a family’s household. I know a recording producer who speaks about having to “wipe the bottoms” of music stars — an unpleasant thought if ever there was one.

In today’s world of interactivity and social platforms, things are amplified even more — and it’s a lot more public.

Accordingly, there are more granular data than ever about people, their interests and their proclivities.

The opportunities for marketers seem almost endless. At last we’re able to go beyond basic demographics and other conventional classifications, to now pinpoint and target marketing messages based on psychographics.

And to do so using the very terms and phrases people are using in their own social interactions.

The problem is … a good deal of social media is one giant head-fake.

Don’t just take my word for it. Consider remarks made recently by Rudi Anggono, one of Google’s senior creative staff leaders. He refers to data collected in the social media space as “a two-faced, insincere, duplicitous, lying sack of sh*t.”

Anggono is talking about information he dubs “declared data.” It isn’t information that’s factual and vetted, but rather data that’s influenced by people’s moods, insecurities, social agenda … and any other set of factors that shape someone’s carefully crafted public image.

In other words, it’s information that’s made up of half-truths.

This is nothing new, actually. It’s been going on forever.  Cultural anthropologist Genevieve Bell put her finger on it years ago when she observed that people lie because they want to tell better stories and to project better versions of themselves.

What’s changed in the past decade is social media, of course.  What better way to “tell better stories and project better versions of ourselves” than through social media platforms?

Instead of the once-a-year Holiday Letter of yore, any of us can now provide an endless parade of breathless superlatives about our great, wonderful lives and the equally fabulous experiences of our families, children, parents, A-list friends, and whoever else we wish to associate with our excellent selves.

Between Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and even LinkedIn, reams of granular data are being collected on individuals — data which these platforms then seek to monetize by selling access to advertisers.

In theory, it’s a whole lot better-targeted than the frumpy, old fashioned demographic selects like location, age, income level and ethnicity.

But in reality, the information extracted from social is suspect data.

This has set up a big debate between Google — which promotes its search engine marketing and advertising programs based on the “intent” of people searching for information online — and Facebook and others who are promoting their robust repositories of psychographic and attitudinal data.

There are clear signs that some of the social platforms recognize the drawbacks of the ad programs they’re promoting — to the extent that they’re now trying to convince advertisers that they deserve consideration for search advertising dollars, not just social.

In an article published this week in The Wall Street Journal’s CMO Today blog, Tim Kendall, Pinterest’s head of monetization, contends that far from being merely a place where people connect with friends and family, Pinterest is more like a “catalogue of ideas,” where people “go through the catalogue and do searches.”

Pinterest has every monetary reason to present itself in this manner, of course.  According to eMarketer, in 2014 search advertising accounted for more than 45% of all digital ad spending — far more than ad spending on social media.

This year, the projections are for more than $26 billion to be spent on U.S. search ads, compared to only about $10 billion in the social sphere.

The sweet spot, of course, is being able to use declared data in concert with intent and behavior. And that’s why there’s so much effort and energy going into developing improved algorithms for generating data-driven predictive information than can accomplish those twin goals.

Rudi Anggono
Rudi Anggono

In the meantime, Anggono’s admonition about data mined from social media is worth repeating:

“You have to prod, extrapolate, look for the intent, play good-cop/bad-cop, get the full story, get the context, get the real insights. Use all the available analytical tools at your disposal. Or if not, get access to those tools. Only then can you trust this data.”

What are your thoughts? Do you agree with Anggono’s position? Please share your perspectives with other readers here.

Google businesses: One big star and a bunch of perpetual understudies?

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Marketing, Media, Media Consumption , , , , , , , ,

Alphabet or no Alphabet, when it comes to anything beyond its core search and display advertising business, Google’s performance is pretty ‘meh.’

canHere’s an interesting news byte: Morgan Stanley estimates that Google has lost between $8 billion and $9 billion on its so-called “side projects.”

So reported the Barron’s blog this past week.

It’s the strongest signal yet that Google’s vaunted business model is spectacularly successful for its core business … but that it’s as ineffective as most other companies when it comes to building the next silver-bullet product or service.

Even Google’s YouTube business unit is likely only a break-even proposition, despite years of concentrated attention, enhancements and tweaking. According to Morgan Stanley’s Brian Nowak:

“We estimate YouTube runs at a 0% profit margin … YouTube’s profitability could [actually] be lower than we estimate, but since it likely varies significantly from quarter to quarter, and until we have more visibility into the business, we believe break-even is a safe assumption.”

umbrellaIt’s likely we wouldn’t have even these clues were it not for the recently announced creation of Alphabet, a new umbrella structure for Google’s various business segments:  search, which is an estimated 96%+ of its business volume, and then everything else.

This development is providing more “transparency” that enables investment houses like Morgan Stanley to come up with back-of-the-napkin rough figures like this:

Google Revenue and operating profit Morgan Stanley

As time goes on, it will be interesting to see if Alphabet can demonstrate that the corporation is more than a one-trick pony.

Regardless of that outcome, the way that Google has cornered a ginormous $60 billion+ chunk of the advertising business is amazing – and laudable. Fair dues on that.

In case you’re wondering … consumers don’t really care about brands all that much.

Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Social Media , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

branding“I don’t want a ‘relationship’ with my brands.  I want the best products at the best price.” — Jane Q. Public

In the era of interactive marketing and social media, there’s often a good deal of talk about how certain brands are successfully engaging their customers and creating an environment of “brand love” — or at least “brand stickiness.”

It’s not only consumer brands like Chipotle and Under Armour, but also B-to-B and hybrid brands like Intel, Apple and Uber.

As a person who’s been involved in marketing and advertising for well over a quarter-century, I tend to treat these pronouncements with a little less open-mouthed awe than others.

I get how when a brand is particularly admired, it becomes the “go-to” one when people are in the market for those particular products and services.

But the idea that there’s real “brand love” going on — in a sense similar to people forging close relationships with the people in their lives — to me that’s more far-fetched.

The marketing research I’ve encountered appears to refute the notion as well.

Case in point: In an annual index of “meaningful brands” published by the Havas MarComm agency, the research finds that very few consumers cite brands they “can’t live without.”

The 2015 edition of the Havas Meaningful Brands Index has now been released … and the results are true to form. Among U.S. consumers, only about 5% of the 1,000 brands evaluated by Havas across a dozen industries would be truly missed if they were no longer available.

It’s a big survey, too:  Havas queried ~300,000 people across 34 countries in order to build the 2015 index. Broadly speaking, the strength of brands is higher in countries outside the United States, reflecting the fact that trust levels for leading brands in general are higher elsewhere — very likely because lesser known brands or “generics” have a greater tendency to be subpar in their performance.

But even considering the brand scores globally, three out of four consumers wouldn’t miss any brands if they suddenly disappeared from the market.

What are the exceptions? Looking at the brands that scored highest gives us clues as to what it takes to be a brand that people truly care about in their lives.

Samsung is ranked the #1 brand globally. To me, it makes perfect sense that the manufacturer of the most widely sold mobile device on the planet would generate a strong semblance of “brand love.”

Even in the remotest corners of the world, Samsung has made the lives of countless people easier and better by placing a powerful computer in their pocket. It’s only logical that Samsung is a brand many people would sorely miss if it disappeared tomorrow.

The second strongest brand in the Havis index is Google. No surprise there as well, because Google enables people to research and find answers on pretty much anything that ever crosses their minds. Again, it’s a brand that most people wouldn’t want to do without.

But beyond these, it’s plain to see that nearly all brands just aren’t that consequential to people’s lives.

With this in mind, are companies and brands spending too much energy and resources attempting to get customers to “care” about them more than simply to have a buying preference when the time comes to purchase products and services?

Brand-LoyaltyRelated to that, is adding more “meaning” to a brand the answer to getting more people to express brand love? Or does it have far more to do with having products that meet a need … work better than competitors’ offerings … and are priced within the means of more people to purchase?

Havas — and common sense — suggests it’s the latter.

Do that stuff right, and a company will earn brand loyalty.

All the rest is just froth on the beer … icing on the cake … good for the psychological bennies.

 

 

… And then there were two: Facebook is nipping at YouTube’s heels.

Phillip Nones Advertising, Content Creation and Content Management, Marketing Communications, Media, Media Consumption, Social Commentary, Social Media , , , , , , , ,

Facebook “grows up great” to challenge YouTube for video supremacy online.

FB vs YTOnly few years ago, YouTube was pretty much the only game in town when it came to online video.  And Facebook wasn’t even in the picture.

Today, the online video landscape looks far different.

In fact, Facebook is on track to deliver more than two-thirds as many video views as YouTube this year.  And both services have a comparable number of monthly users overall.

Recently, market forecasting firm Ampere Analysis surveyed ~10,000 consumers in North America and Europe.  Approximately 15% of them had watched at least one video clip on Facebook within the past month.

While Facebook hasn’t exactly caught up with YouTube, its rise has been pretty stunning — especially when you consider the massive head-start YouTube had.  More than five years, in fact, which is a lifetime in the cyberworld.

Undoubtedly, one reason for Facebook’s success in video is its “autoplay” feature which snags viewers who might otherwise scroll by video postings.  Facebook reports that it has experienced a ~10% increase in engagement as a result of adding this functionality.

And there’s another big advantage for advertisers that Facebook possesses.  Since its viewers are always logged in, Facebook has the potential to collect far more demographic and behavioral data on its viewers that advertisers can tap into to target specific demographics.

For now at least, Facebook doesn’t offer the option for ads to run before video clips begin playing (the ads appear after the content).  Also, Facebook’s ad charges kick in after just three seconds of the ad being shown, compared to YouTube which sets the bar higher for ad charges to take effect.

[Incidentally, Twitter has the same 3-second policy as Facebook, whereas Hulu charges only for ads viewed all the way through.]

Another difference is that Facebook charges for every ad view, so if a viewer watches a video twice — even if it’s the same video in the same viewer session — Facebook counts it as two views.  On YouTube, that would be considered one view, regardless of how many times the video is watched.

Of course, these kinds of differences can be adjusted — and there’s no reason to think that Facebook won’t do just that if it determines that making those changes are in their best business interest.

Besides, advertising rates are already similar between the two platforms, which suggests that advertisers have come to place a high value on Facebook’s robust audience targeting.

Autoplay features have raised some questions as to what constitutes a true video “view.”  If video ads are being autoplayed, views are easier to get, but are they worthwhile?  Also, the fact that autoplay videos are running without sound until such time as the viewer chooses to engage is causing some advertisers to create content that “make sense” even on mute.

But the bottom line on Facebook’s foray into video seems to be that the demographic and psychographic audience targeting Facebook can deliver is of important value to advertisers.

Add the fact that YouTube is no longer the only major online video platform, and it’s easy to see how significant competition from Facebook risks the loss of advertising dollars for YouTube, along with damaging YouTube’s growth prospects over time.

This is getting interesting …

Copywriting by computer: Wave of the future? … or wild-ass pipe dream?

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Marketing Research, Publishing, Sales , , , , , , , , , ,

persado logoIn recent years, computers have upended many a job category.  And they include quite a few positions involving “language” – from foreign language translators to medical transcriptionists.

And now, it looks like copywriting itself may be the next domino to fall.

Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal published a story about Persado, a company which has developed a software algorithm that enables it to write copy without the human element.

David Atlas, the company’s chief marketing officer, refers to it as “algorithmic copywriting.”  The process creates sentences with a maximum length of 600 characters that are used for e-mail subject lines and other short persuasive copy.

Persado builds the copy by sending thousands of different e-mail subject lines to the e-databases of its clients, which include large retailers and financial services firms such as Overstock.com, AMEX and Neiman Marcus.  Response rates are measured and used to refine the subject lines to narrow them down to just the most effective.

Company PR spokesperson Kirsten McKenna explains the Persado edge further:

“Typical A/B testing will send out only a few messages – then go with the one that gives the best response.  Persado can send out thousands of permutations of the same message to determine which would be the most successful.”

Alex Vratskides
“We have never lost to a human.” — Alex Vratskides of Persado

Comparing Persado’s machine-generated results with traditional copywriting, “We have never lost to a human,” Alex Vratskides, the company’s president, claimed to The Wall Street Journal.

Those results would suggest that Persado is doing things right.  And here’s another positive indicator of success:  The company raised over $20 million in venture capital earlier this year.

The bigger question is whether Persado will be able to scale its simple and short-sentence copywriting into persuasive copy for longer-form marketing materials such as sales letters and brochures – which would make it an even bigger threat and seriously threaten to upend the traditional copywriting field.

For the answer to that question, I’d never want to take issue with the views of veteran copywriter Bob Bly, whose perspectives I respect a great deal.  In writing on this topic, he states:

Bob Bly
Bob Bly

“I do think that either already or very soon, software will equal or surpass the performance of human writers in both simple content and short copy.  We have to prepare for the eventuality that computers may someday beat human direct response copywriters in long-form copy, just as Deep Blue beat Kasparov in chess and Watson clobbered Ken Jennings in Jeopardy.  Ouch.”

What do you think?  Is computer copywriting the wave of the future?  Let’s hear your own perspectives.

Which brands are America’s most “patriotic”?

Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Social Commentary , , , , , , , , , , ,

patriotismWith the 4th of July holiday nearly upon us, sharing the results of a recent brand study seems particularly apropos.

Since 2013, Brand Keys, a branding consulting firm, has conducted an annual evaluation of famous American brands to determine which ones are considered by consumers to be the most “patriotic.”

In order to discover those attitudes, Brand Keys surveyed nearly 5,500 consumers between the ages of 16 and 65, asking them to evaluate American brands on a collection of 35 cross-category values – one of which was “patriotism.”  (The number of brands included in the evaluation has varied somewhat from year to year, ranging between 195 and 225.)

Of course “patriotism” is a hyper-qualitative measure that’s based as much on emotion and each individual person’s own point of reference as on anything else.

Brand familiarity and longstanding engagement in the marketplace helps, too.

So it’s not surprising that the American brands scoring highest on the patriotism meter are some of the best-known, iconic names.

For the record, listed below are the “Top 10” most patriotic American brands based on Brand Keys’ most recent survey – the ones that scored 91% or higher on the patriotism scale (out of a possible 100 percentage points):

  • Jeep (98%)
  • Coca-Cola (97%)
  • Disney (96%)
  • Ralph Lauren (95%)
  • Levi Strauss (94%)
  • Ford Motor (93%)
  • Jack Daniels (93%)
  • Harley Davidson (92%)
  • Gillette (92%)
  • Apple (91%)
  • Coors (91%)

The next highest group of ten patriotic brands scored between 85% and 90% on the survey:

  • American Express (90%)
  • Wrigley’s (90%)
  • Gatorade (89%)
  • Zippo (89%)
  • Amazon (88%)
  • Hershey’s (87%)
  • Walmart (87%)
  • Colgate (86%)
  • Coach (85%)
  • New Balance (85%)

[As an aside … the only entity to score a perfect patriotism rating of 100% was the U.S. Armed Services.]

To be sure, “rational” aspects like being an American-based company whose products are actually made in the United States affect the patriotism rating of individual brands.

But other attributes — such as nationally directed customer-service activities and highly publicized involvement in sponsorships and causes that tie to the American experience — are attributes that add to a general image of being patriotic.

Robert Passikoff, Brand Keys’ president, expanded on the idea, stating,

“Today, when it comes to engaging consumers, waving an American flag and actually having an authentic foundation for being able to wave the flag are two entirely different things — and the consumer knows it. 

“If you want to differentiate via brand values – especially one this emotional – if there is believability, good marketing just gets better.” 

This is the third annual report issued by Brand Keys that’s been focused on brand patriotism – one of 35 brand values comparatively surveyed.  Over the three years, there’s been some change in the patriotism rankings, with Colgate, Wrigley’s and Zippo falling out of the Top Ten and being replaced by Jack Daniels, Gillette, Apple and Coors in 2015.

What I find intriguing about the findings is that there isn’t a very strong correlation between the perceived patriotism of specific American brands and whether or not most of their products are made in the United States versus offshore.   Of course, foreign production is more the norm than ever in the global economy.  What’s important is how the consumer reacts to that reality.

jeep patriotismWith that point in mind … what about Jeep?  Now that it is part of the global Fiat organization, should Jeep no longer be considered an American brand?  Whether it is or not, the brand has the distinction of achieving the highest patriotism score outside of the U.S. Armed Services.

The bottom line is this:  Brands, what they “mean” and what they stand for are based on the emotional as well as the rational – with the emotional aspect being the trump card with consumers.

Jeep, with all of its associations with winning  wartime campaigns (particularly World War II), likely will always be a beloved “patriotic” U.S. brand, regardless of its recent Italian parent company ownership.

Are there brands not listed above that you would consider to be “highly patriotic”?  If so, please share your thoughts with other readers here.

(Still) Too Much Irritating Online Advertising

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Marketing Communications, Media, Media Consumption , , , , , ,

online advertisingTime was, the online experience was blissfully free of annoying advertising.  (Of course, that was back in the very early days of the Internet.)

Then things got pretty bad pretty quickly, as publishers became forced to find ways to make up for lost advertising revenues from their print vehicles.

One of the most egregious examples of the explosion in online advertising were pop-up and pop-under ads.

So infamous, in fact, that an entire industry of ad blocking software sprang up, eventually providing the ability to eradicate most of them.

Not all of them, of course, but enough so that for those who use the programs, those ads are no longer quite as pernicious as before.

And yet … the arsenal of publisher’s revenue-generating ad tricks is still quite large — and pretty irritatingly effective, too.  Here are the most pervasive ones:

Slideshows – Some publishers use a picture slideshow format at every opportunity as a way of increasing page views and ad impressions.  Each click to view the next slide means more opportunities to collect revenue from serving up more display ads.  Using this scheme, publishers can end up with ten times the ad volume compared to if they had presented the information and images on a single page.

Pagination – Related to the slideshow scheme is the idea of publishing an online news story on two or three pages, whereas it could easily have been presented on just one.  If you ask people, most would be quite happy simply scrolling down the page to read the entire story.  On the other hand, publishers love this tactic because it enables them to double or triple their ad impressions.

Autoplay video – Even though most viewers hate autoplay videos, publishers think this tactic is great because they can gain revenue from video serves without having to wait until a user clicks on it to play.

Autopage refreshing – The obnoxious practice of refreshing and reloading a web page every 30 or 60 seconds has little to do with fresh new content being added to the page – unless that “fresh new content” is new advertising impressions.  And that’s precisely why it happens – so that publishers can get credit and revenues from significantly more ad impressions than they would otherwise.

Add to these techniques the age-old practice of attracting attention via “cheesecake” or other questionable images – no matter that they have nothing to do with the product or service being promoted – and you have a veritable rogues gallery of obnoxious “tips and tricks” – all designed to serve up as many ads as possible and generate Potemkin Village-like “engagement” along with the heightened ad revenues.

And who’s surprised?  After all, it’s only “mere money” we’re talking about …

If you find certain advertising practices particularly detrimental to your online experiences, I’m sure other readers would love to hear about them.  Please share your thoughts in the comment section below — and what you’ve done about it in response.

On the march: Ad blocking tools continue their rise in popularity.

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Marketing Communications, Sales, Social Commentary , , , , , , , , , , ,

What Adblock PromisesI’ve blogged before about the rise of online ad blocking tools and their growing popularity with consumers.

One example:  AdTrap – a device that intercepts online ads before they reach any devices that access a person’s Internet connection.

AdTrap’s motto is simple and powerful:  “The Internet is yours again.”

In the months and years since I first blogged about it, ad blocking has only become more popular – so much so that it’s no longer just a mild irritant to advertisers and publishers, but rather a commercial threat that has a significant impact on publishers’ financial bottom lines.

It’s hardly surprising.  Most people want to run as far away from advertising as they can.  For years, we’ve taken trips to the kitchen or bathroom during TV commercial breaks.  We’ve TiVo’d ads out of existence.

And the participation levels in online ad blocking bear this out now as well.  According to data from PageFair, a company that measures publishers’ ad blocking rates and provides alternative non-intrusive advertising options, the number of ad blocker tool users reached nearly 145 million people in 2014.

That’s more than five times the 21 million users of ad blocker tools we had in 2010.

Growth continues apace:  Adblock Plus, which is the biggest of the ad blocking tools, reports more than 2.3 million downloads each week, on average.

Where are people blocking online ads?  In all sorts of areas.  But the most frequent incidence of ad blocking is on gaming sites, where blocking rates are in excess of 50%.

But blocking is happening on other online sites, too, including entertainment, fashion and lifestyle sites – albeit at about half the degree as on gaming sites.

[Tellingly, ad blocking is happening on technology sites, too, where about a quarter of the ads are being blocked.]

One of the more interesting nuggets of information reported by PageFair is the difference in ad blocking rates by country.  What we see is that Americans lag well-behind a number of other countries:

  • Argentina: ~34 of online ads are blocked
  • Poland: ~34% are blocked
  • Sweden: ~33%
  • Finland: ~32%
  • Germany: ~30%
  • United States: ~15%

Germany, in particular, has been the scene of several fervent legal skirmishes in recent years.  There, the publisher of the news magazine Die Zeit sued the parent company of AdBlock, claiming that the ad blocking tool is “illegal and anti-competitive.”  (The suit went nowhere, incidentally.)

Some observers speculate that the higher incidence of ad blocking in certain countries may be tied to those nations’ sociological profiles.  “I personally suspect that in some of these countries, citizens are more concerned about their personal privacy – perhaps for historical reasons,” Sean Blanchfield, PageFair’s CEO, has remarked.

One might wonder if, in the age of Edward Snowden and the Patriot Act (now superseded by new legislation ironically called the “USA Freedom Act”), Americans’ ad blocking practices might now be poised to align more closely with Europeans’.

I imagine we’ll know more about that degree of convergence within a year or two.