A Wobbly Insight Into AdBlockers Costing the Industry Billions

The latest 2015 report by Forensiq has once again let us look behind the red curtains of the nightmarish happenings in the ad tech world. Ad blockers are now said to account for up to $21.8bn in lost advertising, and it is set to rise next year.

This wasted advertising is not only shocking but when looked at in detail it is usually the highest value eyeballs that are being lost due to the rise in trends of people using software such as AdBlock.

In the majority of the cases of adblock being used is coming from desktop users, so this isn’t currently as big of an issue on mobile (not to say mobile doesn’t have its own problems with bot traffic) but with apps like push spring cropping up on the app store it could only be a matter of time before this force that is having a negative effect on our industry sweeps through the massive volume of mobile traffic out there.

Have no fear though, we at solution central in Databowl have come up a couple solutions to get around this parasite that is affecting your metrics.

1. Native advertising - ­Just like product placement using infeed ad units, search, recommendation, listings and custom contained ads can escape the algorithm’s detector for ads. As a side note while we are on the subject if you haven't tried out native for your brand, then you really should, it is boasting pound for pound in marketing budget some of the highest CTR’s seen around.

2. Vary your ad sizes. By using different ad sizes and shapes rather than regular and known sizes it can bypass the adblocking algorithm in certain cases and also get over the ‘banner blindness’ than many companies fall prey to.

Being aware that you may not be getting the full purchase power of all of your marketing spend is something that all companies who rely on online advertising will have to watch out for.