There are many websites whose main source of revenue is the ads that appear next to their content. The opportunity to earn more money has led some websites to increase the space dedicated to advertising to the detriment of content. Other times, unwanted effects occur between the code generated by the ad servers and the web page itself.
The user's response has been to incorporate Ad Blockers to their browsers, in order to minimize the effects of advertising on web pages, but which also affect websites that offer advertising with better ethical criteria.
Evaluating and understanding the impact of these Ad Blockers on the ads you publish on your website is the objective of this article.
A bit of history about ads on websites
As soon as the web went from being the exclusive preserve of academia to being used by individuals and companies, the amplification effect of messages did not go unnoticed by advertisers.
The digital world could become a new medium for their campaigns, beyond the written or audiovisual media. In fact, on October 27, 1994, the first banner was published on the precursor website of Wired magazine.
The following year, the unit of measurement for digital advertising prices was established: the cost per thousand impressions (CPM). This unit of measurement was inherited from traditional media, in which the cost of an ad was largely determined by the circulation of the newspaper or the estimated audience at the time of broadcast.
The ability of digital advertising to measure the impact in real time has led to replace this unit of measurement by the cost per click (CPC).
In 1996 Doubleclick was born, offering a tool capable of measuring the return on investment (ROI) in digital advertising.
In the following years, new advertising networks would be born, new advertising formats would be generated and advertising revenues would become important for many websites, even essential for their survival.
One of the services that most contributed to the popularization of advertising on websites was Google AdSense, which allowed personal websites, but capable of attracting significant traffic, to obtain advertising revenue.
Today, advertising tools make it possible to deliver targeted advertising, according to user preferences, or remarketing techniques, which seem to follow the user through all the sites they browse.
However, as has happened with traditional media, many websites have become saturated with advertising in order to obtain higher revenues. And the reaction of their users has not been long in coming.
User response and the emergence of Ad Blockers
A study conducted by HubSpot in 2020 revealed why users block ads.El estudio establecía que un 91% de los usuarios considera que la publicidad digital actual es mucho más intrusiva que hace dos o tres años. De ahí, que se hayan popularizado los Ad Blockers.
Pero, ¿qué es un Ad Blocker? Los Ad Blockers son extensiones de los navegadores que detectan qué parte del código de un sitio web puede corresponderse con un anuncio publicitario e impiden que ese código sea ejecutado por el navegador.
Los Ad Blockers surgieron casi al mismo tiempo que la publicidad digital. En 1996 salió la primera extensión para el navegador Netscape que realizaba esta función, el IFF. Posteriormente surgieron otros como AdBlock, que actualmente cuenta con 70 millones de usuarios sólo en Chrome, AdGuard, con 13 millones de usuarios en Chrome, o Adblock Plus, con unos 650 millones de usuarios. En promedio, el 37% de las personas que navegan por Internet lo hacen con un bloqueador de anuncios activado.
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Ante la aparición masiva de este tipo de extensiones, las redes publicitarias reaccionaron ante los tribunales, intentando ilegalizar este tipo de extensiones argumentando que infringen los derechos de propiedad intelectual al modificar el contenido de las páginas. En 2018 el Tribunal Supremo de Berlín falló a favor de la compañía que desarrolla AdBlock Plus.
In the end, it was established that a private user is free to use this type of extensions. However, their use is prohibited for telecommunications companies through whose networks the content must reach the user unaltered.
Do ad blockers reduce my advertising revenue?
Obviously, yes. If we consider the high number of users who use this type of extensions, we can be sure that a high percentage of those who browse a given website are able to block ads.
So, is there any possibility to override the effect of these ad blockers? The answer is yes. In fact, there are several alternatives to do so.
However, it is worth assessing the impact of these technologies on a website's advertising revenue before deciding whether the impact is high and, if so, what is the most appropriate measure to minimize it.
A free tool to assess the impact of ad blockers
810 million websites are powered by WordPress, 43% of all active websites.
Many of these sites receive enough traffic to be potentially monetizable through ad revenue, and all of them are affected by the ad blocker problem.
Many of these sites receive enough traffic to be potentially monetizable through advertising revenue and all of them are affected by the problem of ad blockers.
Fortunately, today we can measure the impact that these tools have on our site's advertising revenue and then deduce whether it is worthwhile to set up a system to minimize their effect.
The company B2.ai has developed a free plugin, B2 ANALYTICS, for WordPress that allows you to track the use of ad blockers by:
The data obtained is displayed in the WordPress Dashboard and, cross-referenced with the advertising revenue obtained, we will be able to evaluate the impact and loss of profit attributed to ad blockers.
Then we can then assess whether it is worth trying to minimize the impact of blockers and, if so, which technology to use.
