Invasion of ad blockers threatens future of digital advertising market


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Joseph O'Halloran

| 20 April 2016




A survey from Accenture has signalled a serious and growing threat to the digital advertising industry, with consumers now fully aware of ad blocking technology.



Gavin ad blocker 20 AprilThe survey of 28,000 consumers across 28 countries found that 61% were aware of several options for removing advertising such as ad blockers and that more than two-fifths (42%) said they would pay to eliminate ad interruptions.

Worryingly for the advertisers, the blockers were typically enabling TV, smartphone, tablet and PC users to load video files more quickly, view more clean-looking Web pages, reduce bandwidth consumption, and increase their privacy by removing tracking and profiling systems of video advertising delivery platforms.

“Ad blockers are a relatively new threat to the digital advertising industry,” explained Gavin Mann, Accenture’s Global Broadcast Industry lead. “Consumers are increasingly willing to pay for blockers because too many ads are poorly targeted. In today’s world of personalised content, being forced to watch an ad that has no relevance is a missed opportunity and feels increasingly intrusive on precious screen time. In fact, simple avoidance of content associated with heavy and repetitive irrelevant advertising will increase as consumer choice and awareness of choice increases.”

In a call to action, Accenture recommended digital advertising organisations to invest in user experience and user interface transformation, production studios, and post-production support resources and facilities. It added that equipped with a wealth of operational and analytical technologies that can be applied to solve these business problems, advertising can deliver value-added creative capabilities and more robust customised services to consumers.