IAB Closely Monitoring The Effects of Ad Blockers

Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)

[engine]

The recent hot topic here of "Ad Blocking Report - 22 billion in lost revenue" [webmasterworld.com] generated much discussion, not least the claims of the total lost revenue potential. That figure estimated is plucked from the air as nobody really knows the real figure. However, what we all know is that ad blocking is becoming more prevalent, and that has a number of implications. Advertisers will suffer because their ads are not seen by potential customers. Agents, Google and Bing will earn less revenue, therefore it may impact their ad-based offerings. Publishers will lose a revenue stream, and that may also impact their content. Smaller publishers in the AdSense arena may simply go out of business. For some publishers that's going to be painful, and for users we may lose an information resource.

When an organisation such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) starts monitoring the effect closely, you know ad blocking is becoming a major concern. Calls for lawsuits over ad blocking are way over the top, imho, but the discussion about loss of earnings, from wherever you sit, is going to continue for some time.

"We started taking a look at the remainder of 2015, and the ad-blocking conversation got ratcheted up based on what we were hearing from publishers and their data and the rise of [ad-blocking] incident rates they were seeing," said Scott Cunningham, a senior VP at the IAB and general manager of the trade organization's Technology Lab. IAB Closely Monitoring The Effects of Ad Blockers [adage.com]

Ad-Supported Products and Services: Has it Had its Day [webmasterworld.com].

What do you plan to do to overcome the threat to your income?

[edited by: engine at 1:37 pm (utc) on Sep 8, 2015]

[tangor]

Boils down to this. Does one serve the user, and gain traffic (and friends who recommend) or does one serve ads?

Different strokes and all that.

Should be a happy medium, of course, though deliberately antagonizing those you seek might not be the best course of action. But as has been said many times before, it is always the webmaster's decision. After all, it their sand box. :)

[keyplyr]

Nothing wrong with ads, it's the business model of the internet and has been for years. Done wrong, they can diminish the user experience of course. But they can also offer the user a variety of related products and services if presented in an intuitive and logical maner. I've never had a complaint and I get a large percentage of repeat visitors.

[trebuchet]

Boils down to this. Does one serve the user, and gain traffic (and friends who recommend) or does one serve ads? Different strokes and all that.

The problem with that theory is that traffic and content sharing might make the site more popular but they do not monetise it. There still needs be commercial engagement of some kind, i.e. the site charging for content, selling its own products, or advertising, recommending or promoting other people's products.

At what point does openness and sharing end and monetisation begin? That's the critical question.

[Bluejeans]

Calls for lawsuits over ad blocking are way over the top, imho

Lawsuits sound like a fine idea to me. The fact that there is no legal basis for a lawsuit against AdBlocking software now does not mean that there never could be. Publishers could institute a pop-up like the EU-mandated Cooke Consent form. Only this pop-up states that the website TOS requires that ads be viewed. Implementing an AdBlocker violates the website's TOS and incurs civil and criminal penalties.

I am sorry that users are annoyed by website ads. I'm annoyed by radio TV ads. The FCC regulates the duration and decibel level of TV ads (at least they used to) and could do the same for web ads that chew up bandwidth.

I'm annoyed by Spotify ads. How about a company devise software so I don't have to listen to them or even pay the 9.99/mo for an ad-free experience?

The idea that users have some kind of "right" to surf the web ad-free is absurd. It should be illegal and it would be if website publishers had the same lobbying clout as the audiovisual industry.

[blend27]

@trebuchet.
That was actually polite though... I am pretty sure that @Bluejeans would not get upset. If he/she did, A thousand apologies.

A Question I have as well, it is regarding "At what point does openness and sharing end and monetisation begin? That's the critical question. "

At what point does the questions start popping up in the publishers/regular webmaster`s mind: What about my sites user`s Privacy?, if I doing my best to protect it now?, Do I know what happens with my visitors private data when I include all those outside resources on MY WEB PAGES.

I am going to give an example, here are the HTTP Headers from an ATT-MOBILITY USER on one of the sites that I have.:

Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
user-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0 Mobile/12F70 Safari/600.1.4
x-up-subno: T_GLR_TLG_123123123123123123123 <<<< I changed a few digits
x-att-imsi: 3104105XXXXXXXX ] <<<< I changed a few digits
Accept-Language: en-us
x-up-sgsn-ip: [XXXXX] <<< X = IPV6 removed
host: www.example.com
Via: CHCGILGW01
content-length: 0
x-up-calling-line-id:1216694XXX <<<< I changed a few digits
x-att-plmn-id: 310410
referer: [google.com...]
accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8


Do you know what these are? I know that @keyplyr does.

[trebuchet]

I know very well what they are. Do you know exactly how they got there, or are you just surmising?

In any event, we've already had a long debate about privacy in the other thread and I'm not getting into another one here.

[explorador]

When IAB comes to look at adblocking, it means it already became a major concern. I believe the ads became the problem a while ago, not exactly the loss in income. Failure to take care of that is the main reason adblockers became so popular.

What to do? very little we can do directly about a space we gave to someone else to insert what they want, how they want and when they want without our "permission" or approval. Our panel of authorized ads is not exactly the answer, we mostly see things after they happen, yes we can configure something there but... really.

Complains. Specially about adsense... the way I see it is we have been complaining about ads ourselves for quite a while ago and it's evident on several old threads, we don't like the ads specially since interest based ads appeared, or at least that's when I remember things became really noticeable on the forum. So, honestly we have been complaining in one way or the other, the visitors too, now adblockers come to scene and we (or some) are worried about it. It's almost natural conclusion I guess.

Tracking... many of us don't like the idea, many refuse to insert GA, still I believe many codes do the same work, if we read between the lines this whole thing is a direct call for website owners to take back control of their websites like it or not.

Direct ad sales will not be easy, perhaps..., direct sales of ad space are not easy, but let's not fool ourselves, with the adblockers loss in revenue, the terrible ads that get to be displayed, the very low income adsense is bringing to most sites (and is still going down), how hard it is to sell just one ad for US$20 per month? sure we can laugh about that price but adsense is going so low is not a joke anymore to talk about those numbers. If you are one of those having a website with good income well you are a minority now. Wait till it hits you.

And that's a problem too itself, "wait till it hits you". This is the same as the original low income problems of adsense posted in this forum. "Nobody cared" except the ones hit, then month after month we started seeing a few more suddenly "caring" but only because they were hit. From a business angle is understandable but really, we/you only care if you loose revenue? and if you get paid then it doesn't matter what happens? that's exactly the scenario that makes lots of problems appear and propagate in many industries.

At this point it's terribly easier as a webmaster - coder to build and deliver direct ads that won't be blocked, build stats from that, rotate banners, etc, hey perhaps you can even sell your tool to others, and when it gets hit you can easily change it to avoid being blocked again. It's not Adsense, right? but who is aiming for the same-nowadays-results of adsense anyway?

[creeking]

Do you know what these are?

I know very well what they are.

How about tellling what they are?

[trebuchet]

They're request headers calling the user's cellphone number.
Are you asking because you didn't know? Or just to win a point?

[netmeg]

In the end, the market will decide, as it usually does. I'm not getting rid of ads, I'm not blocking ad blocker people (not even sure how I would do that yet - I haven't looked into whether or not there are markers in the log file) and I'm going to explore and test other monetization ideas.

And I'm not quitting my day job.

[Vamm]

trebuchet,

I don't know what that headers where, and I would appreciate a short lecture or a set of keywords to search for. And also, why is it important and is it good or bad in current context?

[trebuchet]

@Vamm, you should probably search for or start another thread for that, otherwise this one will get derailed pretty quickly.

[MrSavage]

I think perhaps everyone is downplaying this threat. When the ability to make money goes away? When the few ways to get people onto your site is through the white listed Google properties? Suddenly then our skills, content and knowledge suddenly become less valuable by the day. The idea of making money from reporting information, sharing a view point, or doing anything aside from selling a product or service pretty much seems F'd, or is at least headed in that direction. Would you write a product review on your site and not have the ability to collect a commission from a sale or a click from an ad on that page? So many sites that exist are under threat. To me a way of life is under threat here.

Every industry that loses revenue generating opportunities fizzles out. The segment of us who built sites to monetize via ads or affiliate links has what type of future right now? Not promising obviously. There will be a trickle down effect. The ways to monetize "might" change. Or instead perhaps those streams will just end up at the doorstep of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.

All this said, if Google doesn't care, then I don't care. If they are okay with publishers ads getting blocked? So be it. If they can do what they need to do without those views, then it makes moving on a whole lot easier. The lack of concern from the top end for me is the biggest clue in all of this. If my views mattered, then SERPS would be more important. There are many clues already. If I'm a partner, then why can their ads be seen, but not mine? My ads come from them. They post their ads on my site yet I'm blacklisted and they are not. It's bizarre really. The word partnership doesn't come to mind.

I did have a thread that I was about to post last night, but I'm concerned that I may be suspended as a result of it. However, as an Adsense publisher, in this forum, I think it needs to be said. If I can get pre approval by someone, please sticky mail me. I don't want to be disciplined for being too "over the top". I like to swear and for the most part I've been much more gentle on this subject than I've wanted to be.

[ember]

Not everyone will install an ad blocker. People who click on ads are getting something out of them or they wouldn't be clicking (at least on desktop). But having said that, I've never expected Adsense to last forever because nothing does. So I am using more affiliate programs, actually selling something on my sites, etc. I even got a part time job. Once Adsense was nearly 100% of my income. It is now becoming just one revenue stream of several. Diversify, diversify, diversify.

[nomis5]

How's about thinking what good to us (or some of us) can come from adblocking?

If it became common place, I assume many more amateur websites would stop being updated and those thinking about starting new ones would be put off the idea. Greatly reduced income potential would be a strong disincentive to a huge number of sites of that type.

That means less competition for those who can monetise their sites in different ways - a huge drop in competition is my guess.

At the same time the needs of advertisers will not diminish, they just won't be able to do it via Adwords / Adsense. They will look for alternate methods to advertise on websites. Also those who search on the internet for information of whatever kind will not diminish, at least not because of adblockers.

So, for those who remain in this game the situation will be a similar sized audience, advertisers with a similar need to advertise but a large reduction in up to date websites.

If that is true, then simply throwing your hands up in despair and joining the mass exodus of webmasters, just because Adsense has become far less profitable is exiting the market too soon in my view.

This thread, for those who believe that adblocking is a serious threat to Adsense income (as I do), should be about alternative methods of monetising a website where the competition has reduced considerably.

At the moment i have three advertisers on my websites who deal with me on a one to one basis and the adblockers are not blocking those ads. Certainly I'm dropping Adsense from some slots and replacing them with more ads from those three companies right now.

I'm also investigating how major affiliate scheme ads (such as Tradedoubler) are treated by the adblockers. Even if they are currently blocked, and I'm not sure about that, those companies will work a way round it in some form or another.

I do get the feeling that G is not worried about the effect on Adsense at the moment, perhaps they see it as a long term benefit to their business model. But the same is not true of the the major operators of affiliate schemes. They will go out of business entirely if their ads are blocked on a major scale.

One other factor I'm investigating seriously now is how to reduce the download size of my pages. I'm not going after minor coding adjustments, something more effective is needed such as image size / density reduction. My concern is that at some point G or someone else will include page download size in the entries of their SERPS. They may even use that as a serious weighting factor. I want to be on the "lite" side of the equation rather than the "thumping great big heavy side" of it.

Lastly, I'm going after high volumes of page views from now on. I have a base site which is top quality, it now needs to have a serious increase in page views. When I approach a potential advertiser one to one, many will only want to deal high volume sites, the small fry will be at the bottom of their lists for doing business with.

[MrSavage]

Thanks for that well thought out and executed posting. Lots to think about, and some positive thoughts are welcome. I did read I think netmeg saying that she's seen or had direct ads blocked. As in, non traditional Adsense style ads. I've also read in the various recent threads that affiliate links are also stripped. The stripping of affiliate links to me is a far greater threat than the Adsense issue. Perhaps greater clarification needs to be had on ads that you create and put up yourself for direct advertising. The affiliate link situation? I don't have enough knowledge of the various software/apps to know if this is a default. Amazon is a giant and perhaps they need a backroom handshake white listing too. Either that or Amazon is happy to ask people who click from an affiliate link to install their app. Thus, they are milking what's left in that model. Not sure, and clarification would be appreciated.

[Leosghost]

explorador has started a separate thread on the ramifications of adblockers and some ( not blocking the adblockers ) "solutions"..

[webmasterworld.com...]

to repeat the last few lines of my post there..

The plus side... is that it ( adblockers ) will eventually get rid of 99% of scrapers..why scrape if the scraped content cannot be monetised..

IMO..the rise of adblockers will be a good thing for those who run unique , quality sites, and who are prepared to invest the time or money or both in them..

Bring it / them on...:)

[netmeg]

When the ability to make money goes away?

That's the LEAST of my worries. I'll always find a way to make money. Preferably more than one.

[tangor]

I believe the reason why this adblocker thing has "suddenly" (not really, they have been around for the last ten years) achieved notice is the explosive growth of mobile and the web... where those connections are metered a bit differently than landline ... and ads on mobile are causing some users --- AND THEIR PROVIDERS! --- concerns about the cost of that additional bandwidth. This will only get worse before it gets better.

As I, and others, have remarked, find those other revenue streams NOW instead of too late.

[dhaliwal]

This is a major issue and it will continue to remain a big problem for publishers.
I think locking access to content for users with adblockers is the solution.

[MrSavage]

I think the mobile bandwidth aspect is a complete red herring. Oh yes, let's ignore irresponsible images or other page/site content. It's the ads! Oh yes, it sure is. Ads are killing everyones bandwidth? Yes, the ads are slowing down the mobile network in its entirety. Yes, what a stain! The ads are jacking everyone's mobile bills and surfing speeds, especially in places like Europe where I dunno, have some reasonable mobile plans? Check out Canada mobile plans. Who has great reason to bitch? How about sh!tty websites with non mobile friendly file sizes? Ban those? To an extent Google and Bing do in their SERPS. Oh yes, it's the ads. Google has the ads and those are fine, but it's the ads on those other sites that are killing everyones mobile experience.

[blend27]

Yesterday, I was talking to a friend of mine who owns a Pub in town and offers Free WiFi to customers, a lot of folks use it when they get to his bar.

He is "somewhat Tech" and used to run a few Ad supported blogs himself in the past. So we started talking about AdBlockers Issue a bit and he asked me how it works and what benefits are to the user. So after a pint, i think it was 2, he asked me to install it on his device. He liked it. Another friend stopped by and the conversation kind of died down.

About an hour later The Bar Owner came up to me and asked me if it was possible to implement this on his WiFi router. I said Yes, Definitely, but asked: But why, for what? He said that he just got a promotion Idea into his head. A Promo Sign on his window that would say "Ad Free WiFi Access for Customers".....

[Leosghost]

I'll drink to that :)

[MrSavage]

What happens if they visit Google.com or YouTube? Can he be sued for false advertising?

[Leosghost]

"Ad Free WiFi Access for Customers".....

the ..... part, means that there is more text to come..
So he can add more text..like..."except on Google.com Search Results Pages and YouTube..
or blend27 can explain SERPs to him ( over another pint or two ;)..so he can make the "small print" smaller / shorter..

"Ad Free WiFi Access for Customers"
"except on Google.com SERPs and YouTube.."


I can see it catching on..I may "steal" the phrase, and translate it so that all the bars in my region of France can offer it to their customers..:)

[netmeg]

That's a forward thinking bar owner.

Pretty much all business models change over time. Many disappear entirely. It helps if you keep that in mind going in, so while you're doing whatever you need to do today, you can be thinking about what you'll need to do tomorrow.

[blend27]

When I visit Google.com or YouTube I don't see any Ads. Hardware Firewall rules(router). + uBlock Origin extension on FF and Android Tablet. 0 ads.

The point is that a business owner sees the opportunity to generate traffic to his Pub within a few hours of finding out about the piece of software.

as far as "sued":

* See LARGE Lady that sings behind the Bar for more details. :)

[mcneely]

The first official ad on television was that of a clock - shown for 10 seconds.

I look at most ad marketers these days in the same light I do used car salesmen -- So desperate are these that they find themselves guaranteeing ad clicks for their clients and then charging accordingly. At the end of the day, the ad client wonders where all of these clicks are, and the ad salesman has to come up with some excuse as to why no one is clicking on an ad for a product everybody already knows is worthless.

Adblockers aren't really the problem that those who might have borrowed too much money or promised too much make them out to be - The general public can be fooled, or B.S.'ed for a little while, but once they catch on, the repercussions can be swift.

Guaranteeing ad clicks these days is about as foolish a thing as guaranteeing a first place listing on Google overnight -- Trouble here is that these guys that sell the ads, are stumped at trying to explain why these so-called clicks aren't materializing for their clients.

I said it in another thread here on WebmasterWorld .. I'm not seeing a problem with ad blockers .. I run ads myself, and I use Disconnect. People don't want to see the ads on my site? I'm fine with that -- because there simply isn't enough of this whole blocking thing going on to warrant any great deal of attention on my part. Of course then if I were to be B.S.'ing clients into purchasing space with a guaranteed outcome, then I might get a little worried, because I could inevitably be required to put my money where my mouth is.

IMHO, the people that complain the loudest about adblockers, are themselves, for the most part, responsible for the situation they are in. We wouldn't be having this discussion at all if it weren't for those out there that keep promising things they could never deliver. They should just cut their losses and call it a day. Over selling has always been a problem. I remember trying to list in search and the Adsense guys were telling me to plaster my site with ads at the top, and, at the same time, search was telling me to not plaster my site with ads all over the top if I wanted to list well in the index ... Go figure.

I use Google as an example here because I might be most familiar. Here we have Google guaranteeing clicks/impressions in order to justify the amount they charge their clients .. (other ad networks do the same thing) .. and then, when something doesn't go right, it's the publisher not spamming up his site enough with ads, or adblockers being viewed as the culprits. In so many ways 6 sides of Sunday, it's the guys that sell the ad space that have the problem here. Site owners are just going to do whatever they feel is going to be in their best interests .. Some try to survive on the ads (big mistake) whilst others depend on their site products or services in order to survive.

At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself this question -- "Do I work for the ad servers? Or do I work for myself?" -- If you've become so dependent on the money coming from your ads that you find yourself having to write scripts blocking the adblockers, then chances are pretty good that you are working for the ad servers .. You are a part of the problem that the ad servers and ad networks have created for themselves.

Guys that don't depend on the ads for an income, are usually the ones that are pretty good at making a great deal of money, either by product or service, on their own -- They are independent -- They work for themselves.

[MrSavage]

Is everyone throwing the word "ads" out there to include stripping affiliate links? Ads = ads + affiliate links? Or is it Ads = ads and not including affiliate links. Two big revenue streams, so is everyone talking apples, or oranges, or apples and oranges all at the same time?

[Leosghost]

Is everyone throwing the word "ads" out there to include stripping affiliate links? Ads = ads + affiliate links? Or is it Ads = ads and not including affiliate links. Two big revenue streams, so is everyone talking apples, or oranges, or apples and oranges all at the same time?

You are the only one who keeps bring up stripping out aff links..no one else is conflating the two..
Everyone else ( except you ) has only mentioned ads ..
Everyone else is talking "Apples"..only you keep bringing up "Oranges"..
Easy way for you to find out if adblockers strip out your aff links..download an adblocker and see what it does to your aff links..