A typical American is expected to encounter around four thousand to ten thousand ads on a daily basis, ranging from visual advertisements such as billboard and digital media, to auditory advertisements such as radio and television. While ads are created to influence consumers, consumers are not necessarily satisfied with the information that they receive. In fact, for digital media, there are 198 million users who use adblockers, extensions effectively hide ad content from webpages. For the user, this means little to no distraction from their purpose in visiting the site. For content producers on the web, adblockers means that their primary revenue stream is being disabled.
The war on adblockers revolves around the clashing needs between producers and users. For producers of content or technology, revenue from ads is extremely important. According to Lisa Valentino, Chief Revenue Officer at Condé Nast Entertainment, "If [media companies] block every ad there is, there will be no content." Valentino's words epitomize the key problem that media players face. By enabling the ad-blocking feature, producers of content must endure detrimental costs. In 2015, the number of consumers using adblockers in the U.S increased 48 percent, translating to a lost of 22 billion dollars on the producers.
On the other hand, users seek to gain convenience and control. With ads existing ubiquitously on websites, not only does the loading time slow down, but users also have close to no control over the information that they receive. It is rather unrealistic for producers to completely abandon ads; rather, what they could do is to alter the way that ads are viewed by users.
For social media platforms, producers are beginning to focus on the importance of relevance. Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), for example, introduced the Relevance Scores for Ads in 2015. From a scale of 1 to 10, ads are rated based on the feedback that they receive. If an ad has a high report rate, then it will have a lower score. In contrary, if ads have positive interactions on the site, then scores will be higher. According to Facebook for Business, "[Facebook] tries to show people ads that are the most pertinent to them." By increasing relevance to users, the media company hopes to fight adblockers by increasing interest to the target audience. Moreover, other social media platforms such as Twitter (NASDAQ: TWTR) and Instagram (NASDAQ: FB) also try to enhance the users' experience by giving them more control. Users can hide ads as they wish to, thereby gaining flexibility to choose ads that match with their interest.
With advertisements sprawling over news and information websites, users are often annoyed by the queue of ads that they encounter. For news websites such as Forbes and GQ, a more decisive approach is taken. According to Forbes' website , users of adblockers will be denied of access to the website until the extension is uninstalled.
Other media companies may follow Facebook's recent approach of disabling all adblockers that allow users to view the site ad-free, but that is not enough. Adblockers thrived not because of the ads themselves, but because the ads did not prove to be valuable to users. Finding an ideal way of delivering ads, one that tailors to users' interest, should be the main takeaway from the war on adblockers.