If your business lost 20%+ of its inventory, you’d pay attention, right? It would probably be your biggest priority until you’d identified a solution that solved most, if not all, of the cause of that revenue drain.
The Coalition for Better Ads (CBA) was formed seven years ago because the industry recognized that the value exchange of viewing ads for access to content had become imbalanced for consumers due to some particularly annoying ad experiences. The resulting consumer dissatisfaction drove rapid growth in ad blocking usage.
The initial impact of the CBA’s Better Ads Standards, combined with individual companies’ ad experience improvements, was highly successful. The Coalition developed Better Ads Standards for desktop, mobile web, short-form video, and mobile apps, based on extensive consumer research. Following the adoption of the Standards, the ad blocker usage rate came down approximately 15% from its peak, as measured by Chrome desktop ad blocker usage in North America & Europe.[1] This decline represented a tacit endorsement by consumers of the industry’s updated approach to ad experience. There was also a significant reduction in ad blocker plugin downloads. It also was a financial benefit to publishers, who experienced higher revenue as ad blocking usage declined.
As a still relatively young sector of the economy, digital publishing had big issues to focus on - adjacency, misinformation, sustainability, and an always-evolving regulatory environment to name a few – and, perhaps buoyed by its progress in reducing ad blocking usage, the issue was relegated to the back burner by some in the industry.
Some publishers and ad tech providers, in search of more revenue, pushed the envelope on the types and volume of ad experiences included on their sites, developing new approaches may not have been well received by some consumers. In response, while ad blocker downloads remain significantly below their peak, some consumers have reacted by reversing the positive progress made on the ad blocker usage rate.[2]
The increase in ad blocker usage should be alarming to the industry and should provoke a response along two fronts: prevention and communication.
Prevention
Not all ad experiences are created equal. A large majority of consumers have indicated that they accept the social contract that trades the presence of digital ads for content and experiences. Where that acceptance breaks down is when those ad experiences are excessively annoying or interruptive, too many ads appear on a page at once, consumers hear stories about ad-delivered scams, and other concerns. These experiences can lead consumers to feelings of frustration and distrust, and, ultimately, the decision to install ad blocking software.
Therefore, the CBA will be conducting additional research in 2024 for the purpose of updating its Desktop and Mobile Web Standards to ensure that they are in line with current consumer experiences. To the extent that the industry adopts these updated Standards, consumers should experience ads that are closer to their expectations. Better alignment between consumer expectations and the ad experiences they encounter will reduce the likelihood that consumers who don’t have ad blockers will start using them.
Specific aspects of digital advertising experiences that will be investigated as part of this research include:
- Pop up ads & exit ads
- Sticky ads
- Feed ads
- Animated ads
- Varying levels of ad density
Communication
The improvements to the online ad experience due to adoption of the Better Ads Standards is, unfortunately, invisible to existing ad blocker users. For consumers without an ad blocker, positive or neutral ad experiences can be sufficient to keep the publisher/consumer relationship healthy. For those who have already adopted an ad blocker, communication is the only way to change the status quo.
Recent CBA research on the behavior of ad blockers indicates that once downloaded, settings are almost never adjusted. When they are, it is almost always the result of an outside prompt.
Ad blocker default settings don’t discriminate between publishers who build consumer-friendly ad experiences and those who don’t. As a result, the only way to convince an ad blocker user that your site does not use negative ad experiences is to actively engage the ad blocker-using consumer in a conversation.
The most popular method publishers use to communicate with ad blocker users are typically called “walls” and come in two types – hard and soft. Walls typically ask visitors to add their domain to the ad blocker inclusion list - effectively disabling the ad blocker for that site only.
Soft walls present this as a request and do not prevent the visitor from accessing content if they refuse. Of the 15% - 30% of visitors using ad blockers, soft walls are typically successful in getting 15%-20% to add the domain to their inclusion list.
Hard walls are visually similar to soft walls, but require users to disable their ad blocker for that domain. If the user refuses, they are not permitted to view the publisher’s content. Hard walls are typically successful in getting more than half of visiting ad blocker users to add the publisher’s domain to the user’s inclusion list.
Highlighting Alignment with CBA Standards
CBA research has indicated that the consumer decision to add a domain to their inclusion list is predicated largely on the extent to which they trust that domain. While some domains, usually legacy media properties, enjoy longstanding trust in the marketplace, there are many that users frequent but don’t know well enough to trust. For those domains, it is crucial to signal their trustworthiness as part of wall messaging.
In research conducted with Admiral, the addition of the CBA seal and mention of the publisher’s commitment to the Better Ads Experience Program boosted trust in that publisher. As a result, users were 15% - 30% more likely to add that domain to their ad blocker inclusion list.
What’s Next?
This is the first in our 2024 series of blog posts highlighting the current state of consumer opinion on digital advertising and ad blocking. Looking for upcoming posts on the impact of poor ad experiences and approaches for winning back the trust of consumers who have elected to use an ad blocker.
[1] [2] Google Internal Data, North America & Europe.
