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In Battle With Ad Blockers, Ad Industry Fesses Up To Alienating Users (iab.com)
itwbennett writes: In a post on the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) website Thursday, Scott Cunningham, senior vice president of technology of IAB and general manager of its Tech Lab, issued what amounts to an apology for "[losing] track of the user experience" and called on advertisers "to do better." But it may be a case of too little, too late as "a report (PDF) released in August forecasted that U.S. websites will lose US$21.8 billion in ad revenue this year due to ad blockers," writes Jeremy Kirk.
He's from the IAB, which actually is an important organizing group of advertising. They set standards for various protocols, etc.
So if he's saying it, it's not because users are thinking it; he's saying it because advertisers are thinking it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This is absolutely true, and it's why I don't run ads on my site. No ad agencies that I'm aware of allow you to screen ads in advance, and I'm not prepared to put something on my site if I don't know what it is, particularly since ads are frequently a vector for malware. Also, accepting donations in return for not running ads has been more profitable than running ads ever was.
Exactly. I remember when Google first came out with their ads and they seemed innovative because they were simple text ads. At the time, the "common knowledge" was that you needed blinking Flash ads that played sound, triggered full screen video if the mouse cursor went anywhere near the ad, and spawed a dozen pop-up ads. Anything less and users would ignore the ads. And, of course, as users tuned out your garish ads (even without using ad blockers), you needed to go even more garish to force them to pay attention.
The advertisers dug themselves into this hole with the types of ads they tried pushing on users and now they're acting surprised that users view ads in a negative manner and try to block them.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Try "Project Wonderful" you have the option to screen all ads and all ad modifications.
Also the other thing you can do is create a media kit (google it) you can deal directly with the advertised and host the ad yourself if you so chose.