Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
THE AD INDUSTRY has to shoulder some of the blame for the escalating arms race between ad blockers and online advertisers, according to one leading industry figure.
AdRoll co-founder and president Adam Berke said the ad sector had “done a bit of a poor job” explaining to users how it helped pay for all the free content people expected to get online.
“There has been this implicit agreement between internet users, which we all are, and advertisers that says OK, I’m going to get these products for free,” he told TheJournal.ie.
I’m going to be able to read your article for free, I’m going to be able to listen to music for free, I’m going to be able to watch this video for free – everything I want, I want it for free, but there’s going to be advertising.”
According to figures from Dublin-based anti-adblock company PageFair, an estimated 18% of internet users in Ireland now use software to block internet ads, which many complain blight their favourite sites or make pages slow and unresponsive.
The Washington Post this week took the drastic measure of shutting out readers using ad-blocking software, citing its need for digital ad revenue to pay for the people who accessed its journalism free online.
“When you use an adblocker, you are actively hurting the content creators that you love,” Berke said.
I think some companies like the Washington Post saying ‘hey, we rely on advertising to provide you with this content, please (exempt our site) on your adblocker or turn it off maybe’ is the right kind of dialogue to get out of the arms race.”
Retargeting
Berke’s views aren’t a big surprise, of course, given his company’s bread and butter is selling advertisers tools to make their digital campaigns more effective.
He was in Dublin late this week where his rapidly-growing company, the most-popular platform for digital ad “retargeting”, employs around 100 staff, its second-biggest office worldwide after its San Francisco headquarters.
Last year AdRoll raised $70 million (€62 million) in one funding round as it reported an annual revenue rate of $150 million (€132 million), still a tiny fraction of the $135 billion (€119 billion) it was estimated companies spent on internet ads in 2014.
Online advertising has quickly evolved from essentially the same as the print equivalent – images on a page – to something bought, sold and manipulated in real time based on anything from the time of day to users’ locations.
Retargeting takes that process one step further, crunching unique user data – from desktop browser cookies to other anonymous identifiers on Apple and Android devices – and using it to funnel digital ads towards individual users.
Visitors to a site, for example a bike shop, can be targeted with future ads for similar products once they leave the site in a bid to convert them to customers.
A browser looking at bike accessories could even be bombarded with different ads to a road-bike shopper.
Berke said it would only be a matter of time before all advertising went down a similar route to online ads and became programmable – even hold-outs like the TV industry, which still sold slots on a show-by-show, network-by-network basis.
People will do the jobs of creating strategies and targeting and creative and things of that nature, and then we will use technology to do the stuff that humans aren’t very good at like make millions or billions of real-time bidding decisions and optimisation decisions,” he said.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
I don’t have a problem with ads in theory as I understand that’s how we get stuff for free. The problem is when the ads are so intrusive that it makes it next to impossible to enjoy the content, then I’m going to block them. Having thirty second non skippable ads on YouTube after every second video, or ads with crazy flash videos, or articles split over multiple pages to increase advertising space drove me to install ad block.
Then the content is rubbish, and hence the problem.
*THIS IS NOT A JOKE*
You are the One-Hundreth-Millionth reader of
this page. You have won an iPhone 6sPlus.
Please clink the link below to claim your prize!
Clickmeclickmeclickme
what about likes of greedy rte that we already pay TV licence put have to sit threw full screen pop up ads and about 5 ads before a program even starts!
your TV licence fee doesn’t even begin to cover rte costs. without the ads they would be extinct.
The RTE and BBC license fees are very similar. The Beeb has no ads and is arguably the best content creator in the world. Yes, it has a much bigger license base. But it’s network of stations and channels both in the UK and abroad is much bigger than RTE.
The beeb also have 16 times the population to collect the licence fee from
@Sean, you have to be joking! The BBC license fee is massively more revenue than what RTE get. If you want an ad free rte you would need need a massive license fee increase.
They should get rid of the ads so! RTE an absolute waste of money….
why exactly, their viewing numbers says different. Your not supposed to like everything they do. that’s the point of public broadcasting, not everything has to appeal to a mass market
I’ve had just over 200,000 ads blocked in just over a year. 200,000 – there’s your reason for installing a blocker.
156,742 for me in around the same length of time. Ludicrous amount.
I wouldn’t be able to watch my favourite online sports channel only for adblocker plus .
No problem with subscription models i have a few but you would want to be providing a good service.
The take a whitelist approach, an adblocker can be quite useful for security reasons browsing websites you’re in familiar with. However websites I visit frequently will get whitelisted as long as there are no autoplay video ads. More broadly the issue is very similar to that of music, film and game piracy. A generation of people now seem to find the idea of artists and writers being paid for the content they produce completly alien. They also refuse to acknowledge this act as stealing
Honestly the way the music industry was so explotive of people when the likes of napster did not exist was the reason noone had a problem with using the likes of napster.
I’m not old enough to have been exploited by the music industry pre Napster I wasnt even ten when they got sued and there are people only about 5 or years younger than me who have never paid for music in their lives
I stopped using Vodafone because of the amount of ads they force you to watch on YouTube and other web sites.
What did I just read?
I don’t mind ads. I do mind bad, poorly targeted ads. I would have thought in 2015 the might of Google would have figured out that making me sit through a few seconds of advertising to watch a ten second cat video is stupid. Especially when they’ve been collecting data on me for years and haven’t figured out that maybe an ad for L’Oréal shampoo is probably the wrong product to target me with. Some of the American services are the worst though. They put ads in services that you actually pay for like NFL and MLB live streaming and then the ads are exclusively targeted at American audiences. Absolutely pointless.
I’m entirely fine with web based businesses failing to succeed and the internet going back to being mainly driven by hobbyists. Those motivated by passion and interest rather than monetary gain.
“Passion” doesn’t cover the massive costs required to host the videos you enjoy. An awful lot of hobbyist content relies on tools that are made free by advertising revenue.
But I am also fine with web-based businesses failing because people won’t click their ads. However, the internet won’t change into the passion and interest haven you seek, instead people with the resources and money will consolidate their control by introducing other paid models. See, for example: blip which deleted the videos and kicked out all its hobbyist content creators to focus on its 4000 stronger more commercially lucrative partners.
There’s also nothing wrong with seeking monetary gain for doing something you enjoy. Why should the people who produce the content you consume be required to do so for free?
Is there an adblock for ipads and where can I get it?
Use this, great for blocking all ads on all devices connected to your network, small bit of DIY involved but worth it http://lifehacker.com/turn-a-raspberry-pi-into-an-ad-blocker-with-a-single-co-1686093533
Block Party was working for me on ios 9 beta
Used it on the indo site. I’ve a 6+ and the poxy ad for Ribena takes up almost all the page
Ridonculous
I’m sick of adverts everywhere… Next toilet paper unless you use newspapers?
Ads are great as long as they stay in one place, don’t make any noise (unless I click on them), don’t slow down the website and don’t try to install stuff on my computer/phone/whatever.
Otherwise yer blocked.
Worse than the distraction and delays, there’s the growing problem of malvertising — ads that are actually malicious content that can infect your browser/PC/phone without any interaction from you. Blocking flash helps a bit, but really I’ve found blocking all ads best.
Take a look at https://blog.malwarebytes.org/malvertising-2/ for some of the most recent ones including major sites like Yahoo and MSN. Worth the risk?
Hosts File!
That is all.
entirely agree – in my case it stops 99% of adverts and it’s a small matter to add new hosts entries when needed. the only drawback with the hosts file approach is when add sites are using https://…/ as i have seen happening with mrgreen betting and a couple more..
It’s called “click-bait”.
Just below this very article were:
12 frightening facts your pilot will never tell you.
23 facts about left-handed people.
and surprise surprise…
50 of the funniest cats.
Dumb logo – Really looks like AdRoil….(?) I predict failure….
This ad reminds me of this cringey video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67ZZUSpeS4k
have your say