Adblock Plus: Rethinking internet advertising
Adblock Plus is an add-on to Firefox that blanks most of the ads on a webpage. A couple of articles have been written on the matter in the nytimes and in Forbes. But the figures they give don’t match.
Mixing data from Wladimir Palant, Adblock Plus’ creator, and Mozilla, the number of Adblock users can be estimated at around 6 millions. That’s 0.5% of the total web-using population.
Not much, but a breakdown by country shows that the situation is becoming serious in some markets.
More importantly, 2% of the web-using population in Poland and Finland, for instance, cannot be reached by advertisers. A little sociology will probably tell that Firefox users that can install a plugin are tech-savvy enough – not the last group advertisers want to address.
The total loss, considering only display advertising, amounts to $105 millions. Add that to the 1 billion or so wasted because of user’s not paying attention.
But, as Wladimir Palant points out, advertisers are still ignoring the phenomenon. Let’s hope they open their eyes before Adblock Plus penetration reaches 50% (in 2014, according to my estimates).
The solution? Please your consumers. Don’t impose costs on them with irrelevant advertising. The web economy does not allow for inefficiencies, as Umair always say.
My two cents: i feel that adblock and its sequels appeared because of hugely anoying flash ads. If an ad is keeping on moving across the page or attracting the eye by some new animations after its first display, then the user may quickly be fed-up by the whole website and decide to leave or, as a reaction, make the move to install adblock. Further ads from the same website are lost.
It is therefore in the publisher interest to keep ads, particularly moving images, below a certain level, and to stop the animations after first display.
Javi,
I think you’re totally right. Advertisers could afford to annoy viewers in the mass media era, when there was a (relative) scarcity of content.
Now that you can just click ‘Back’ on your browser (or install Adblock), advertising must become relevant and engage into information-sharing rather than brainwashing.