The care publishers take in the number and type of digital ads they include on their sites has never been more important. Successfully operating an ad-supported digital property requires publishers to attract and cultivate relationships with consumers and then monetize their visits with advertisers. Some consumers and advertisers have indicated that they are not entirely satisfied with this approach and have acted on their dissatisfaction. These steps have potential negative economic consequences for publishers:
- Ad blocking by disaffected consumers reduces the total number of impressions that a publisher has available to sell
- Brand advertisers have increasingly excluded domains based on publisher site characteristics like ad density and ad type based on concerns about “Made for Advertising” content, which lowers the demand for ad inventory for certain publishers
While there is no panacea for making all consumers and advertisers happy with any digital property, following the Better Ads Standards from the Coalition for Better Ads is a research-backed way to ensure that your digital property is aligned with consumer expectations for the type and number of ads on a given page, video, or mobile app.
A Consumer Demand
Some consumers are expressing discontent over their experiences with digital advertising, which can be inferred from a recent increase in the download and use of ad blockers. This trend reverses several years of declining ad blocker usage in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
The Coalition for Better Ads was founded to understand consumer opinion about digital advertising experiences and create Standards that identify the types of ad experiences that drive consumers to avoid through use of an ad blocker. In 2023, the CBA conducted the study “Understanding Ad Blocking” to update our understanding of how and why consumers download and use ad blockers.
Consumer Concerns
At the Coalition for Better Ads conception, research indicated consumers were motivated to block ads to avoid ads perceived as “annoying” and/or “interruptive.” The 2023 study reaffirmed these experiences as the most important factor using an ad blocker, but three additional factors have become important to the decision:
- Avoiding viruses and malware
- Masking their identity
- Protecting battery life and reducing data usage
Source: Coalition for Better Ads, "Understanding Ad Blocking Study," Global, Q1 2023, n=11,700. Filters: Ad Blocker users.
The study was conducted in 13 countries across North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. The countries represent a variety in the size and maturity of the digital economies in those countries. Despite differences in geography, culture, and the digital economy the reasons consumers cited for choosing an ad blocker were consistent.
Understanding and Appreciation of Value
While they may employ an ad blocker, ad blocker users are not necessarily averse to ads or blind to the contribution they make to the digital landscape. Ad blocker users report positive feelings towards ads for things they are interested in, clicking on ads at the same rate as non-ad blocker users, and buying products seen in digital ads at a higher rate than non-ad blocker users.
In light of the fact that ad blocker users don’t consider all ads to be problematic, we can assume that many ad blocker users are only employing an ad blocker for specific ad experiences. Getting ad blocker users to uninstall their ad blockers entirely is likely challenging because it requires them to forgo protection against the ad experiences they’re trying to avoid. However, getting them to allow ads on trusted sites seems like an achievable goal.
Ad Blocker Settings Behavior
Ad blocker users indicated that they rarely, if ever, interacted with their ad blocker settings after download unless they were prompted. Based on this data, the onus is on publishers to engage ad blocker users and ask them to allowlist the publisher’s domain.
Source: Coalition for Better Ads, "Understanding Ad Blocking Study: Qualitative," Global, Q2-Q3 2023, n=70. Filters: Ad Blocker users.
Consumer Dialog
For domains that have built long-standing relationships with a consumer, the request is straightforward. If asked via a so-called “wall engagement” to add a domain to an allowlist as a condition of seeing the target content, consumers will typically respond positively.
For those that don’t have a trusted relationship, the challenge is more difficult. Consumers will perform an explicit analysis based on their perception of:
- The importance of the content
- Their ability to get that content somewhere else
- Any signals about the trustworthiness of the site
In such situations, the best proxy for trust is creating a halo effect based on compliance to an industry standard that is supported by well-known and trusted brands. The Coalition for Better Ads’ Better Ads Experience Seal has been established for this purpose.
A Business Necessity
In late 2023, the discussion among advertisers and agencies centered heavily on the overall user and ad-specific experience in their buying decisions. The ANA released its Programmatic Transparency Study which sparked a conversation in the industry around the topic of “Made for Advertising” or “Made for Arbitrage,” increasing the scrutiny that marketers and their agency partners are paying to websites they partner with.
Since the release of the ANA study, an ANA-led consultation including the 4As Advertiser Protection Bureau (APB), WFA, and ISBA in partnership with company representatives, has developed and released a framework to define what a Made for Advertising site is. Among the five key elements, two concern ad experience: (1) high ad-to-content ratio and (2) rapidly auto-refreshing ad placements. The first is aligned closely with the CBA’s Mobile Web Standard on Ad Density while the second references the importance placed by brand advertisers on publishers aligning with the entirety of the Better Ads Standards which detail ad experiences that consumers find excessively annoying and/or interruptive.
If we judge the importance of an issue in the marketplace by the extent to which vendors serving that marketplace adjust their messaging and/or product offerings in reaction to the issue then there is no question that the issue of MFAs and broader site quality has resonated with brand advertisers. At current count, at least eight verification vendors, agencies, and other technology providers have released MFA exclusion lists. The proliferation of offerings suggests there’s demand by advertisers to avoid publishers who exhibit characteristics of MFA, including the negative ad experiences.
The CBA’s Better Ads Standards are research backed prescription of how to deliver high quality ad experiences in line with consumer preferences. These ad experiences offer the additional benefit of signaling high quality inventory to advertisers and agencies as they look to avoid MFA inventory.
Summary for Publishers
Ad buyers and consumers agree, there is value in publishers doing the work necessary to deliver a quality digital experience. Advertisers and agencies will be more likely to prefer your inventory should they be using MFA lists that factor in the ad experience, fewer consumers will feel the need to use ad blockers, and those that do will be more likely to allow you to show them the resulting ads.
Adherence to the Better Ads Standards is an industry-accepted way for publishers to deliver the type of experiences that consumers and buyers are interested in. As a publisher, adoption of the Better Ads Standards and display of the Better Ads Experience Seal is an important part of signaling to consumers and ad buyers that you are committed to good ad experience. Sign your domains up now and start displaying the seal to consumers and buyers.
