By now as I write this article, many publishers would have already started creating technologies that bypass adblockers for running their businesses. Recent move by Apple to move out of its values (or what they have spoken till now) to provide content blockers on its mobile browser is really catastrophic for the publishers. The move could take ad-blocking on the mobile web mainstream, with serious implications for any business with a stake in online ads. I liked adblockers. In fact, I absolutely loved them until I really thought of it deeply by putting myself in the shoes of publishers. The reason I used the word catastrophic is because it really is if Apple does that in such scale. It is estimated that 60% of web traffic today comes from Mobile devices out of which many (not majority) are iOS devices. Now that Apple is giving an option for its users to download adblockers and use them in Safari, Apple is not just killing Google and Facebook which primarily rely on Ad business, they are giving a death call to publishers.
Where did it all start?
Google is the first word that comes to anybody’s mind if one thinks of the word free or ad. Google is not giving everything free for philanthropy. It is creating a business model around a service where the primary service is given free to the users (at least on disguise) but charges users in the form of their data. Tim Cook recently said, “if somebody are making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried. As far as we, Apple are concerned, you are not our product.” Apple tried and tried hard to convince people to move away from free services like Google to protect their privacy. But at the end, every user votes for themselves on the tradeoffs on whether or not he wants contextual services (Google Now) by sacrificing privacy, whether or not he is ready to trust all his personal collection of photos to one company for free (Google photos) or paying for it. It eventually boils down to the user on tradeoffs he’s going to make. The problem now to Apple is that they are unable to turn enough of the users away from Google.
We read many blogs online everyday. It is estimated that more than half of the publishers rely on Google’s AdSense for the ads to be served. Whether they use Google’s services or anybody else’s, Apple allowing content blockers on their web browsers implies, revenues for many blogs is going to plummet. It has been just a day that iOS 9 is released which support adblockers and all the apps that are adblockers are already topping the charts on the App Store. Users are surely annoyed about the ads and my personal experience says that content blocking allows you to load your webpages as quick as twice as fast depending on the density of media these ads deploy but blocking them altogether is harsh.
Apple may come out and say, we care about user experience more and all the other things less but on the way to their vision they have to look back and reflect upon casualties of their decisions because they are no more a startup. Their decisions do not create ripples. Their weight now disposes water from the ocean to the bank. Some even say that the debut of both Apple news app and content blockers is not a coincidence but a conspiracy. I’m not going that far to suggest the same but can say with some certainty that Apple is having a cruel laugh as they are now successfully blocking revenue sources of Google.
What should publishers do now?
Big companies that rely majorly on ad revenue like Google, Amazon, Facebook are purportedly paying millions of dollars to major adblocker players like ABP to whitelist their ads. Now that Apple is personally involved in this they seem to have upped the ante. It is rumoured that Adblocker plus creator is now working alongside Google to block the adblockers. (what an irony!) Google has already updated Youtube’s code and is penalising users that use adblockers by forcing them to see the whole ad taking away the option to skip the ad.
All these futile attempts aside, if we speak of current ads, they are cluttered, passé and an overhaul is long due. Now all the publishers should seriously consider revamping the ads and should think of ways to deal with adblockers. One way is to politely ask users to switch off adblockers. (A publisher can know whether or not a user is using an adblocker by running a simple html script) Second way is to deceive adblockers by serving inline ads. Curated ads is another way to deal with the problem. Rather than serving up random ads that come directly out of Google’s servers which are often deceptive, publishers can always serve users with better, contextually relevant ads which serves the purpose of one, better user experience and two, the probability for the ad to be clicked.
Its now on the publishers come up with a business model around the new developments of adblocking and strive to serve it’s readers.
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