Adblocking plug-ins have been around for some time, but as online advertising becomes a greater force in marketing expenditures, the mainstream press has began to cast a greater spotlight on the issues that surround it.
Last month, Danny Carlton, a Web site designer and author, blocked Firefox users altogether, arguing that it was the only way that he could ensure that those who might have downloaded the adblocking Firefox plug-in would not access his site.
My thoughts on the matter at large were that we users had become more and more demanding: we want more and better content, but we don’t want to pay for it, and, we now don’t even want ads around it. That’s a dangerous and unreasonable position… because online advertising is just gathering steam and publishers - both traditional and new - are embracing this trend and opportunity, which means consumers have more access to great content than ever.
Mind you, as a web publisher, I would be naturally biased in the debate. The flip side is that we produce videos and hitherto have not served a single pre-roll before our content.
But, this post will show how the plugin creates a downward spiral that brings web users, marketers and publishers to a race towards a lowest common denominator, something we presume the developer was not aiming for.
Today, the NYTimes runs with the story:
In the larger scheme of things, Adblock Plus — while still a niche product for a niche browser — is potentially a huge development in the online world, and not because it simplifies Web sites cluttered with advertisements.
The larger importance of Adblock is its potential for extreme menace to the online-advertising business model. After an installation that takes but a minute or two, Adblock usually makes all commercial communication disappear. No flashing whack-a-mole banners. No Google ads based on the search terms you have entered.
From that perspective, the program is an unwelcome arrival after years of worry that there might never be an online advertising business model to support the expense of creating entertainment programming or journalism, or sophisticated search engines, for that matter.
Nick Carr adds some thought here, too, focusing on the reaction that Google has had to AdBlock Plus (none) to that of MSFT. What did MSFT say?
In a statement, Microsoft spoke of its success in permitting third-party developers to “add value to the browser experience through the creation of add-ons.” The statement continues: “The range of add-ons available does include ad blocking software. It would not be appropriate for Microsoft to comment on the merits or demerits of a specific add-on, or group of add-ons. Provided they have not been designed with malicious intent and do not compromise a user’s privacy or security, Microsoft is pleased to see new add-ons that add to the range of options that users have for customizing their browsing experience.”
To which Carr adds:
Microsoft’s laissez-faire attitude may seem surprising, but it reflects a cold strategic calculation. Microsoft knows that ad blockers pose a far greater threat to Google than to itself. As they say: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Indeed.
What does this all mean?
As a voracious consumer (both reader and viewer) of free online content, the appearance of such a plug-in is a net-net negative in that if it does grow into something that is widespread, then it will reduce the propensity for more free content. Oddly enough, the developer does not seem to have an ideological aversion to advertising:
Wladimir Palant, developer of the open-source Adblock Plus project, wrote in an e-mail message that he had not heard anything from large companies like Google, because, he suspects, the program “isn’t popular enough yet. Attacking it would be a waste of time for these companies.” He estimated there were 2.5 million users of Adblock Plus around the world.
“The numbers are rising steadily,” he wrote, adding that his figures do not “show exponential growth any more (luckily, the server has limited traffic), but there are still 300,000 to 400,000 new users each month.”
Mr. Palant, a 27-year-old programmer in Cologne, Germany, is not an ideological opponent of online advertising. For example, he counts himself a fan of the ads that show up with a Google search, saying they are useful and unobtrusive. That does not mean Adblock will not block Google’s ads, however. It means Mr. Palant has to customize his own version of the program to allow them in.
Mind you, as a web entrepreneur, I’d be lying if I said this was welcome, especially when I read how Mr. Palant looks at the chicken vs. egg debate on what is obtrusive advertising:
“There is only one reliable way to make sure your ads aren’t blocked — make sure the users don’t want to block them,” he wrote. “Don’t forget about the users. Use ads in a way that doesn’t degrade their experience.”
The problem is, if users block ads, they will block them all, so a good ad becomes akin to a tree that falls in a forest. And, let’s face it, given the choice, 99% of consumers would prefer seeing no ads at all…
CONCLUSION
The objective, as a member of the online content/community/commerce ecosystem, is to get more quality advertisers focusing on using the Web as an effective and efficient advertising platform so to remove the more dubious advertisers and advertising creative. Good companies develop good creative, which in turn are less annoying or seedy. But, by creating and spreading a tool that blocks all ads, then less, and not more advertisers will migrate online. And if that happens, Mr. Palant will find himself programming out of an online future. Of course, we’re not blaming him or anything, because if he does not do it, someone else will… and by developing this, he is in fact setting himself up to develop antidotes to adblocking software.
He even offers one tip:
One response by Web sites would be for them “to serve ads from their own servers,” Mr. Palant wrote in an e-mail message. “For them, this has the advantage that they will probably escape common filter rules, which are usually targeted at large advertising servers.”
This confirmed how I figured the software would work, which confirmed another way around it. Mind you, as a web video content producer, this was the first thing I thought of when I begin to read the articles on this, but video content + video advertising will be able to probably circumvent this kind of blocking pattern. I won’t get into the specifics of why that is, but judging from the how the software works and how video advertising is different from display, banner or text ads, definitely one result of this is a greater adoption of video advertising.
While I just gave Mr. Palant a challenge, it does reiterate my point: video advertising, when pushed to the extreme, is far more annoying than display/banner or text links, so the net-net result of such a plug-in is a downward spiral and race to the lowest common denominator and not an improvement of advertising creative that users would welcome.
Ultimately, adoption of any plug-in, software, application is the challenge, and something tells me Google, MSFT, Yahoo! and company will never bundle this or encourage this, and as such, it will hit a wall sooner or later, hopefully before it is, Mr. Palant will have spooked enough of the major web players to develop antidotes for his current incarnation.
Subscribe:
September 11th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Funny that the ads from http://BlogAdSwap.com as well as my own installation of phpAdsNew, which are both fed from the same exact server that all of my sites are hosted on, are blocked by Palant’s AdBlock Plus when used to visit any of my sites. Once again his words do not match his actions. It’s never really been about “bad” ads, but about the socialist-utopian mindset of everything handed to you for free. The easy life, at someone else’s expense.