Summary:

An executive-level overview of the adblocking phenomenon and what news media companies should (and shouldn't) do to combat it.

Report highlights:

“What To Do About Adblocking” provides:

• An introduction to adblocking: anatomy of an adblocker, moving beyond the desktop to mobile and ISPs, and the cost of adblocking to publishers.


• A look into the rise of adblocking: trends in adblocking growth and 5 factors that contributing to adblocking adoption.


• What publishers should do about adblocking: tactics to avoid, questionably useful tactics, recommended tactics.


• A vision for what Advertising 2.0 looks like: conclusions to combat adblocking in 2016 and beyond.

Who should read the report:

Media company executives charged with strategically confronting adblocking, CEOs, chief digital officers, chief revenue officers

Author:

Johnny Ryan, Ph.D., is head of ecosystem for PageFair. Previously, Dr. Ryan was the chief innovation officer of The Irish Times, where he introduced start-ups to work inside the 154-year-old newspaper for the first time and established a multi-million euro big data R&D programme. His second book, A History of the Internet and the Digital Future, is on the reading lists at Harvard, Stanford, and other top-tier institutions.

PageFair is the industry leading anti-adblocking authority and solutions provider. It works with nine of the ComScore Top 25. More than 4,000 publishers have signed up with PageFair, and it measures circa 11 billion pageviews each month. PageFair's mission is to re-establish a fair deal between consumers and publishers, and thereby secure the future of the open Web. It restores appropriate ads in a way that respects the user and supports the publisher.

Detailed overview:

“What To Do About Adblocking” is an executive-level overview of the adblocking phenomenon and its implications for media companies.

The INMA report traces the rise of adblockers, its shift beyond the desktop to mobile devices and ISPs, and ultimately the cost to news publishers.

The INMA report presents an overview of the phenomenon and explores consumer data to better understand why people block ads. It shows that adblockers are emerging as new premium audience segment for marketing communications. “Adblocking is an opportunity to explore advertising formats that users can accept while also restoring publisher revenues,” Dr. Ryan said.

Beyond recommendations, the INMA report also recommends tactics to avoid:

• Using immature anti-adblock technology, including domain rotation technology.


• Relying on native advertising, which can be blocked.


• Resorting to closed platforms such as Facebook and Apple News


• Showing appeals to users, but permitting them to view content (only <1% success rate).

“INMA members are accelerating their knowledge and responses to adblocking worldwide, and we thought a top-level just-in-time overview could be provocative and guiding,” said Earl J. Wilkinson, executive director and CEO of INMA. “Johnny Ryan and PageFair do a terrific job of dissecting adblocking and providing clues to what Advertising 2.0 will look like.”