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]

[explorador]

@Kentsydney, exactly, speed and user experience wins but has been addressed very little among the worries about income via ads, but sure there is hope ahead on monetizing sites keeping a good experience.

I was considering starting a website but now I'm not sure if I can make it pay for itself.

if your site is good quality you have diff market options. Perhaps advertising fails but if you get traffic you can advertise your clients or your own services. It's been said A LOT success depends on constant fresh updates (not actually true for all cases). There is a guy I know who joined the "one daily picture thing" (you can check the web, there are many) so he was posting one picture each day and some info. There: daily updates, nice pictures but the traffic never really went far despite doing this for about 7 years. Did he gave up? nope, not the best photographer around but he got the chance to get hired as a photographer and now he is offering guided photography walks, so the site was never useless and it's paying several expenses.

Another thing about websites bringing money: over the years I saw several cases of people selling stuff based on just one site, attractive but with no traffic at all. Some people bought stuff or the idea, or hired the guys never caring about traffic, hey! never even asking numbers. So, some people do exploit websites as selling platforms or at least portfolio.

Websites are not only income options based on advertising, they also showcase personal or team abilities worth monetizing.

[Kentsydney]

Thanks, I think I will still start a website ( well I have but haven't had time to work on it much)

Yes you should do things not primarily to make money and if it's good then obey will follow .

I know this sounds idealistic but it's how it works

[netmeg]

Was unpleasantly surprised to see a Gravity Form blocked by an ad blocker this morning. Now I have to figure out if that's an anomaly or SOP.

[Leosghost]

Depends on how a form is built..
the demos here in samples ( not the "widget" on the right )
[gravityhelp.com...]
are not blocked by adblockplus..but all except the basic contact form are blocked by no script

The from on the right ( widget form ) is not blocked by either..
Whether any of them process data..with adblockplus disabled, and no script on, I did not try..
You'll have to download their samples and play to see which work, and to what degree..

by "not blocked" ..I mean they and all their fields ,are visible..

[keyplyr]

Was unpleasantly surprised to see a Gravity Form blocked by an ad blocker...

That's why I uninstalled Adblock Plus. I kept missing things that were being blocked - and of course, if I can't see it, I don't know what I'm missing. Got tired of toggling the "disable on this page" on & off all the time just to see if I'm not seeing something I want to see.

[Leosghost]

Except as I said above adblockplus ( my apologies, Adblock Plus, I tend to run the name all together, as it installs "out of the box" ) doesn't block gravity forms..

It might be blocking other stuff.. I don't find "toggling" tiring.. just another click amongst many..;)

[ember]

IAB is now asking members to make videos describing how they are affected by ad blockers. They want the videos uploaded to YouTube so that IAB can use them to spread the word about how ad blockers hurt publishers.

[trebuchet]

The WSJ has an interview with IAB's CEO about adblocking, among other things.

[wsj.com...]

Personally I'd rather IAB focus on working with publishers and consumers than with legal action against adblockers.

During my trials of Adblocker Plus I did find that a couple of embedded script-based tools, e.g. a mortgage calculator, were blocked. My forms worked fine but they are native forms, not Gravity.

[worker]

Does anyone know of an easy way to make my entire site appear to be an ad to the Adblockers?

I don't want people with Adblockers to have access to my site(s) at all. If there is a way to identify and block the entire site, and replace it with a banner that shows a kitten being stabbed and a notification that they can see the site and stop the killing of the kitten by turning off the Adblocker, then that is my preference. (And I'm not kidding around...I intend to put a horrible picture up that will make Adblockers either turn off their blocker, or go away forever.)

Alternatively, if I cannot block people using Adblockers with a large site blocking display, then I want to replace existing ads with horrendously offensive flashing, swirling, kitten killing, goatse-esque type images. Images that are so distracting and obnoxious that people won't want to stay on my site.

I don't think Adblocker users can be talked into turning off their blockers. I think they have to be forced to do so...or I don't want them seeing my content / using my bandwidth.

Ideas? Comments?

[No5needinput]

Tried to join a popular affiliate program this morning - Could not fill out parts of the form until I turned Adblock off (Form used JS to add website url) Took a while to realize Adblock was preventing it...

[Leosghost]

@worker..
There are very simple ways to do that*..

But..as someone who does "disable AdblockPlus" on certain pages..

I don't think that ( in the long term ) it would do your overall traffic , nor your overall SERPs positions any favours..

It would certainly make those who link to you, much more likely to remove their links..some of their visitors who clicked through to you would possibly tell them about "the unsuitable" material that they were linking to..

Which would mean ( long term ) that you'd have to get your traffic via adwords..which if you are monetising via asdsense, would make Google likely to bump you for arbitrage..they'd probably do so for "cloaking" anyway if you showed different content to Google bot than you showed to visitors using adblockers..would be logical in the light of "contributor", a Google can obviously "see" which visitors are using adblockers..

surprised that some of the terms in your post got through the filters here; )

*However, as explorador said recently in another thread , "we are not here to make anyone's dinner for them"..nor supply "instant free code solutions"..the same is true of the apache / htaccess and other fora here..stlll less IMO to aid someone to commit SERP suicide..

Trying to code such a thing yourself, might actually be useful for you as a coding exercise, the better you learn to code, the less likely you are to have a revenue model that depends on 3rd party ads, and thus the less the existence of adblockers would affect you....

To notify users of adblockers and no script etc that certain parts of some sites are not going to function correctly ( such as some js forms etc )..it is a simple matter to display a sentence or a notice to that effect on the site..

I have done this for years on my sites if they use js..it has not increased the "bounce rate"..as long as your site is not throwing a large number of scripts and 3rd party trackers etc at people..they tend to be quite happy to allow scripts / disable adblockers..

facebook buttons and G+ buttons** already track, and are everywhere, most people do not "bounce" because of them**..likewise very many sites will not load their content unless the ads are loaded..

** I block them..always have when possible..always will..

[edited by: Leosghost at 5:35 pm (utc) on Sep 23, 2015]

[explorador]

Worker: I intend to put a horrible picture up that will make Adblockers either turn off their blocker, or go away forever

or instead of the horrible picture: put an ad! that would be awesome ha ha

At least with adblocker, it's easier as to detect the innerHTML of any div containing the ad, it's different when adsense ads are allowed than when are blocked, play with code in that direction

[creeking]

middle fingering rage!

[Leosghost]

^^^ ;) cute...

[EditorialGuy]

I was just reading an article on The Independent's Web site on a desktop display, and an "Ads by Google" skyscraper suddenly floated across the text from the left side of the page. Is this something new? (If it becomes commonplace, I may join the adblocker crowd.)

[IanCP]

I asked a long time friend about the impact of AdBlockers on his site. We are in the same genre and I introduced him to AdSense in 2003.

His original content material came from decades accumulation of his college lectures, as well as a huge number of books he has had published over decades. He also employs his own advertising agent. In part he said:

"...As for the Ad Blockers - yes this is a growing problem and a little difficult to quantify. I suppose the only thing I can say is that we serve around a million page views a month on "example.com", and we have space, according to Google DFP - the ad server we use, for around 800,000 or so ads each month. I think there are a number of reasons for this, one of which is ad blockers..."

FWIW

[worker]

Ok...we decided (based on comments here) to pull back a bit on the 'in your face offensive approach'. Instead, we are watching for the first occurrence of an empty ad div, and filling it with a large hypnotic spinning gif that says 'You Will Turn Off Your Ad Blocker'...and we are not allowing people to scroll past that image.

We are not overlaying any content with the image, it just expands to a much larger size than the original ad, and prevents access to view the content on the page (due to scrolling restriction). We believe Google will continue to see the content of the page 'as is', since it is not likely to trigger the Adblocker reaction.

We are looking at adding a counter to this so that we can get a sense of how many times this happens each day, although we are not that far along yet.

Any comments on our approach to dealing with this issue?

[Leosghost]

Sounds like ( if you get it to work, as it stands it has "issues" ) you are trying to get flagged as "malware"..usually noted in SERPs as "this site may harm your computer"..

But if it amuses you ..go for it...

[ken_b]

"this site may harm your computer"..

Or the equally ominous note...
"This site may be hacked"
.

[worker]

Ok...we are not restricting the scrolling of the page now.

We are only displaying the message that the person should turn off their Adblocker.

We are adding a counter that will keep track of the number of times any IP causes the .gif to display each day.

This should give us a sense of how much Adblockers are negatively affecting the sites.

As far as we can tell, this should not trigger any type of malware or 'hacked' response because nothing is being downloaded to the member's browser, and we are not restricting their access to the content of the page.

We are just getting in their face to make sure they know (on every page) that our sites are free and they should turn off their Adblocker.

Comments?

[tangor]

A much more reasoned response and, depending on the wording, might produce the desired result (ads running). Your mobile traffic, however, probably won't as ads on data plans become rather expensive, and slow down the user experience.

[trebuchet]

We are just getting in their face to make sure they know (on every page) that our sites are free and they should turn off their Adblocker.

@worker, As with anything you should think carefully what is appropriate for you and your site, then conduct some trials and carefully watch the results.

I deny access to adblockers by redirecting them to a landing page. The message there is simple and polite. It explains that advertising funds the free provision of content, so if they would like to proceed then they should whitelist or disable their adblocker. Also an explanation that my sites only uses a small amount of static display advertising. So far I find that around 2/3rds of adblock users have entered, the rest have gone away. Make of that what you will. Of course it all depends on what your site is, what content it offers and how unique it is.

I don't think denying access is a long term solution, mind you. For the moment it works OK for me but I am looking at options down the road.

[edited by: engine at 6:43 pm (utc) on Sep 25, 2015]
[edit reason] tidied up [/edit]

[Lagonda]

Don't want adblockers to see your content?
Just attribute a class="Adsense" to all your div/p with content.

Works like a charm.

Of course it doesn't help anyone but hey, it's fun just because of the aforementioned head scratching.

If users start to see that adblockers bring more nuisance than good, maybe they'll get sick of it.
Of course, you're not doing it on purpose, it's all adblock's fault, you just happened to call everything on your site "Adsense".

Some say it's sabotage but... aren't we being sabotaged too?

[netmeg]

an "Ads by Google" skyscraper suddenly floated across the text from the left side of the page.

I haven't seen this from genuine AdSense yet, but it might be a premium perk or (even more likely) a third party network that serves AdSense as a fallback.

I'm not planning on doing any anti-ad-blocker notices myself, but if I *were* going to address it on my sites, I'd probably try asking first (explaining why it's important in a single sentence) before I'd skip right to demanding or blocking. Maybe that's just me.

[worker]

Just a quick update.

While it is WAY too early to draw conclusions from our changes, here is what we have seen so far:

358 unique visitors using Adblocker have hit the sites since midnight

146 hit 1 page and then left (or turned off their Adblocker)
56 hit 2 pages and then left (or turned off their Adblocker)
33 hit 3 pages and then left (or turned off their Adblocker)
19 hit 4 pages and then left (or turned off their Adblocker)
12 hit 5 pages and then left (or turned off their Adblocker)
23 hit 6 pages and then left (or turned off their Adblocker)
13 hit 7 pages and then left (or turned off their Adblocker)
56 hit 8 or more pages and then left (or turned off their Adblocker)

The top 5 number of pages visited by 5 different individuals/IP's is:
99
67
62
54
54

Again while it is too early to draw conclusions:

1) Traffic is the same as usual
2) Revenue is up by about 10-20% for this time of the day

This was a VERY quick project to test some things.

In a month or so, we plan to do the following:

1) Test different images/messages to encourage the disabling of Adblocker
-The tests will range from cute sad kitten requests to kittens with knives to their throats warnings
- We will also test automatic redirects to the homepage with a message explaining what's happening (per a previous poster)

2) We will also modify our system to keep track of the users who have been identified as using Adblocker to see if they disable it and stay on the site or if they leave instead. (This is critical to determining which/if any of the above test work.)

We are watching to see if Google views our current approach negatively, but we do not see why they would. If anything, they should be pleased if we are able to encourage people to disable their Adblocker's when on our site/s.

PS. The number of Adblocking visitors who have hit my sites since midnight went from 358 to 372 in the time it took me to write all this down.

[explorador]

146 hit 1 page and then left (or turned off their Adblocker)

Nice experiment, you mentioned ips later, you can use ips to draw conclusions on the above, did they left? or continued on the site? a bit of work on code but doable.

[explorador]

User experience, Many don't seem to know the term or what it means, and it means many diff things together, not just one, not just navigation or speed. I've been looking at this issue from that perspective and it's a lot of aspects to consider. Most if not all comments have been addressing ad blocking as the issue and nobody seems to ask if their sites are a problem or "the problem".. Let's open our minds and try not to think on just-one-direction, heck, anyone who built a site reaching gazillion of visitors is capable to do so or predestined to die. Parallel ideas are good for life in general.

If your visitors installed ad blocking is because they are not interested on seeing ads. Asking sounds good but also contradictory, "oh we so good but please turn off so we can eat". Yes sounds terrible and rude but look at it, it's not new to see webmasters showing off and then begging. If your minds are able to move on that bitter part we can wonder why from those many visitors nobody is considering putting an ad on your site. I'm not the best to explain things but try to see, as a business strategy or business message you have: (1) Please turn off your ad blocker because I'm so good but I'm starving and I need your clicks/views, if you don't do it I will hide my website and show you one of my fingers... or (2) hey we are big, put your ad here, or let's talk about X business, see my website? I can do similar things for you!.

Closed minds see! it's not the only approach or reality, it's an alternate message of possibilities about "I'm not drowning and I can see ways out, and some can help you!". In the past tried a few things and adding contact forms on every page along with "blah your ad here" and I got a good response from people interested. Didn't close enough deals not because they were not real, but because I had higher paying options, period.

- Showing a message instead of ads is an option
- Showing an ad, instead of the blocked ads, is also an option but consider experience
- As tangor said, one huge problem is relying on others
- So, what if you show ads, and if blocked... show YOUR ads?

Or is it that people with so good websites with so many visitors can't just sell any of their abilities that made such amazing money making sites possible? if people can't code it's not the end of the world, there are options, ways out.

As for user experience, I've been playing a bit with ad blockers (don't have enough time but), anyway I'm seeing a possible technical way out after some trials (won't tell), but it will involve taking a deep look at the adsense TOS again (I've been static on that for a while). ANYWAY having this ad blocker thing ON for research does provides me a BETTER user experience. I'm not in "favor" of ad blocking, I'm in favor of good user experience, hope you guys can see what I mean there. Ad blocking is irrelevant on the AD SIDE to me because I'm actually a developer with huge ad blindness, I research, buy, etc, I don't click ads, period. But the trials show me FAST websites and saving bandwidth, it's difficult to argue with that. Like... really.

As for strategies I believe there are other threads around better suited for discussion.
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]

I was considering just finding a way to still show ads, "the ads" and on the other side monetize a bit more what allowed me to build such websites. Now I'm considering a mix, a way around to show ads, showing alternate ads where andsense doesn't show up (yes we can detect this) and also inviting people to put an ad there, it's something many have missed, some mentioned going direct sales but many failed to see the options where the ads where blocked.

[explorador]

One thing... it's surprising how many users with ad blocking just can't manage it, just installed the app and that's it, so for user experience I don't consider asking them to "white list" something as possible, for many is all on or just all off.

[Leosghost]

@worker
To reiterate the point raised by explorador ..

I must be missing something from your figures ..given that you must be recording the IPs that arrive..and then cross referencing those with adblocker..How many of the "358 unique visitors using Adblocker have hit the sites since midnight " stayed having turned off their adblocker..and how many left..

I ask, because ..

146 hit 1 page and then left (or turned off their Adblocker)
56 hit 2 pages and then left (or turned off their Adblocker)
33 hit 3 pages and then left (or turned off their Adblocker)
19 hit 4 pages and then left (or turned off their Adblocker)
12 hit 5 pages and then left (or turned off their Adblocker)
23 hit 6 pages and then left (or turned off their Adblocker)
13 hit 7 pages and then left (or turned off their Adblocker)
56 hit 8 or more pages and then left (or turned off their Adblocker)

doesn't give a "break down"..;)
whereas, for example..
this ( *made up figures by myself to give an example of what would be "useful data" )
146 hit 1 page and then 25* left and 129* turned off their Adblocker..would be far more "useful" to you in "tuning" your landing messages ..

Your current method is highly unlikely to give you any problems with Google SERPs..whereas an automated "redirect" would be much more likely to ( despite what a previous poster may advise ..I think he thought he was refuting some thing which had not been said earlier, or it was damp down there in the culvert or something, but it wouldn't be the first time since the topic has had greater debate here that some have read what wasn't actually posted, and then replied to figments of their imagination..)..primarily because the various Google bots might not all get redirected..and thus potentially bring up the issue of "cloaking"..which has always been something that Google and the other search engines are quick to penalise..

Glad to hear that you have abandoned the idea of trying anything that might try to adversely affect the visitors browser, that and the cloaking issue were the ones that I was warning against..( not what some others "thought" or "imagined" i was saying ) ..A request ( without redirect ) shouldn't give you any problems at all technically in SERPs or with search engines, as everyone ( search indexing bots included ) gets the same page..

One additional word of warning however with your current strategy..

Google bots have historically been seen to visit primarily from US IPs..some of us ( I'm one of them ) have also seen them use non USA IPs from time to time..I have seen them on 3 separate occasions come out of DE IPs ..so, I'd advise against GEO redirecting non USA traffic to any page that blocks or redirects visitors in any way..in case Google decide to "verify" using non USA IPs..

Also they do employ human site quality testers, in quite large numbers, from many countries..these people may also visit..Standard GEO IP blocking wouldn't hurt you in that case if they were blocked ( many here restrict which countries can access their content )..but serving content to them from behind an adblocker blocker might not be a good idea..

re the "kittens" ;) ..I remember some very successful pages a few years ago of the "donate" or the bunny gets it" or "donate or the kitten gets it" type with images..humour ( with an explanation can work, even get some small viral effect going, and can be good for traffic and "getting the word out" ) just be careful about the imagery.."images of guns in frame" or "we'll shoot the kitten/ bunny" can fall foul of Googles "adsense cannot be displayed yada yadda"..and sometimes Google can be weirdly strict about interpreting what adsense publishers do..;)

edit..explorador posted a bunch of comments whilst I was typing , explorador ( and in fact most people ) type way faster than I do ;) ( I'm typing in English on a French layout keyboard, and everything gets underlined as incorrectly spelled )..so he may have covered what I wrote already..I'll go read ..:)

[keyplyr]

One of the worst user experiences I can think of is when someone uses all caps or bold print in a public forum. They are equally irritating causing me not to read a thing they write. Seems like there should be an app to block that.