Adblockers : Will Advertisers Move Back to TV now ?
Ivor Fanny
Posts: 969 Forum Member
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With most people now using Adblock of some kind- you can surf the net without seeing a single ad. So is selling advertising on websites now a waste of money?
Does this mean advertisers will now revert to TV & Radio?
Does this mean advertisers will now revert to TV & Radio?
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The latest Ofcom Market Report states that £5.4bn was spent on online advertising in 2012, which is more than any other platform. (By comparison £4.4bn was spent on TV).
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/cmr/cmr13/UK_4.pdf
There will need to be a dramatic increase in the use of ad blocking software before advertisers decide to spend money elsewhere.
I've long been fascinated by the science of advertisers and what they consider 'worth it' in terms of what they pay for, and also I've wondered for a long time how many people are actually influenced to a major degree to buy anything just because they've seen it advertised on TV. I never have - but then I'm a marketing person's nightmare, very little brand loyalty as long as I get my own value for money!
Like the OP, I wonder what the TV channels/advertisers are going to do. Surely they aren't totally unaware that, for many people, adverts are merely seen as a 'necessary evil' (to fund the channel/websites they like), one which they also take active steps to avoid as much as possible (adblock, ff/pre-recording on TV etc)? Someone, somewhere, must still think there's some value in paying to advertise themselves via various means, but if increasing the length and number of ads annoys more people than it's worth, then are the days of advertising via these means numbered? Which in turn means the money they generate is in danger of being withdrawn, which will have an impact on the services provided by commercial outlets?
Any other alternatives?
Yeah, I've got no intention of using something like this. If the advertising gets too intrustive, I just go elsewhere. My 'big three' of Facebook, DS, Youtube are all fine for me with the current level of advertising, and of course the BBC site has no adverts at all. Any other site I take or leave as it suits me- if the adverstising is too much, I don't come back.
On heavily sponsored TV shows they make much more use of the '40 minute' hour. Here in the UK the principal commercial channels use 47 minutes at best, with 44 minutes on the more competitive non terrestrial channels.
Few would object to a reasonable amount of sensible advertising but advertisers will not settle for this, they employ agencies to produce the most infantile crap that is just an insult to the average person's intelligence.
Added to that, see TV channels gradually reduce their budget-per-timeslot (something which may already be happening). More re-used content, cheaper-made shows, massively increased gambling/phone-in programmes.
Free-to-air terrestrial will become less relevant.
I mean, it's so easy for me right now to watch commercial TV content without the programme maker making a single penny off me. And the number of people like me will continue to grow. I can't remember the last time I consumed a TV advert or an internet advert.
All this 'free' content I'm getting is not a sound business model. And I imagine there are plenty of discussions in boardrooms discussing this very problem.
For my interest of sport then you can't avoid the one advert between overs of cricket or the few at change of ends in cricket. The half time in football and rugby I can be out of the room as they are 4 to 5 minute breaks.
If you like live reality shows again you see the breaks.
However any non live shows on commercial TV as said above I PVR and skip the ads.
This is why ITV are looking at other revenue sources eg charging for HD of ITV 2, 3 and 4 or the micro charges for downloading stuff from ITV player. They even have a monthly subscription version with no adverts version of ITV player. At various times they have also talked about moving everything except the main ITV channel pay.
Actually the move to catchup helps ITV and C4 as these services have forced adverts which most people can't circumvent. I presume via Sky they get some money out of the subscription as you can FF on your Sky box.
If it was most people using adblockers, we'd be seeing most websites either having to charge or shutting down. People seem to forget that ads are how these websites make much of their money. Maybe people don't like adverts, but they're what pay to keep the websites you use going! If most people were using adblockers, the idea of websites being "free" wouldn't last very long. And I'm sure people would protest more about having to pay to post on here, then they do about the adverts.
Adblockers are certainly used by a tiny minority of people.
It was their obnoxious, ever-more intrusive attempts to get attention on the internet that lead to the creation and continual development of adblockers and the same thing is happening on TV.
The longer the ad breaks, the more incentive to bypass them completely. The more they pump the dynamic range of the audio (make it louder to the viewer, despite their disingenuous attempts to argue the toss - there's a Samsung phone advert that does this) the more they're hated and the more people have an incentive to avoid their adverts.
They're like the jealous lover who, frightened their partner will abandon them, becomes ever more posessive and controlling and, contrary to their intent, drives their partner away.
When the regulators fail to help them act in their own best interests, the only thing to do, is kick them to the kerb yourself.
So just what do you do whilst on DS on the www ?
Sadly, DS currently has moving ads which sometimes make page loading slower *and* they make scrolling jerky and navigation slow. My CPU use shoots up to 30 - 38% at times for Adobe Flash player alone and Firefox grabs upto another 10% at times. The pale green and yellow EE flash ads seem to be the culprit currently.
This is unacceptable to me - ludicrous in fact on my 3.5GHz x 4 machine - so I have sadly had to press the appropriate Adblock button in Kaspersky to fix it for me and to make browsing the site acceptable again. DS are allowing (via third parties) some pretty wild and uncontrolled script on their site these days and I find that sad and it will eventually drive away more ad revenue than it creates IMO.
I browse at work (during luck breaks) and the so called intelligent adverts, are just adverts for sites I visited 5 minutes ago, or sites I already use, know the URL of, and dont need adverts for.
Video advertising on video streaming websites, can be harder to block
Well said. Someone has to foot the bill for large websites like this to stay in business. and remain free for the end user.
Same thing happens to me.
DS usually have TWO autoplay (which repeat) videos at the top and bottom of the screen. My computer can't handle it. They are unnecessary. A static banner would suffice.
I think only the knowledgeable people will know about ad blocking software. I highly doubt the average computer user will know ad blocking software even exists.
I've visited some sites on my iPhone that are utterly unusable due to advertising (and Safari being rubbish at blocking..).
DS does, on the whole, get it reasonably right a lot of the time with the positioning of the ads, but many sites don't.
But then I'm sure Adblock Plus allows companies to pay them to allow non-intrusive ads though ..
Yes and think of the damage done to their business as people seek alternatives to Sky+, in the States I'm certain there was a move to allow and implement unskippable ad breaks but nothing came of it.