What will it take for publishers to clean up their ad experience?
The answer to declining display revenues, funnily enough, is not more display
I am a blocker of ads. After testing AdBlock Pro out for an article a few years ago, I was so impressed with the speed and cleanliness of this new internet that I never uninstalled it.
Fast forward to starting a new role, which involved a fresh, ad block-free laptop. It was quite a shock to be reminded of how many ads clutter the pages of regular sites, and the point was particularly hit home when researching some tech news sites.
One brand in particular had four autoplay videos pop up while I was trying to browse. The site, pictured below is one aimed at C-suite IT professionals. Enough said.
The worst thing was that I accidentally provided four click-through’s on various adverts whilst trying to navigate around them.
I’m not the only one experiencing this issue, nor is it a new one. Jack Marshall at the Wall Street Journal got a vast number of responses to this tweet:
I would urge anyone working in publishing or media to have a careful read through the 50+ responses to the thread. For the most part, they are from ad professionals, publishers and journalists.
It’s a sobering lesson in how utterly fed up readers are that the same names keep cropping up. Another striking point was how abysmal the reading experience on mobile has become from so many publishers, who seem to be trying to squeeze extra revenue from accidental taps and swipes.
So here’s the question. What will it take for publishers to wake up to what this is doing to their sites and reputations?
Reducing ads doesn’t mean sacrificing revenue
The Wall Street Journal put out a brilliant piece this week which contains some heartening case studies about publishers who are cutting down the number of ads. If you’re interested, read it here (but beware the ironically invasive page ads from WSJ themselves…)
The article talks about LittleThings; a women’s online lifestyle publication all about ‘meaningful content’ and the power of positivity. With over 50 million visitors a month, it certainly has the traffic to make the thought of squeezing in a few extra display ads quite tempting.
But they chose to go in the opposite direction, instead challenging themselves to remove one piece of advertising per quarter but without losing revenue as a result.
After removing the clickbait-heavy content recommendation widgets, interstitial ads and autoplay videos, they were left with mainly display ads, click-to-view videos and sponsored articles.
Predictably, revenue generated from each individual page dropped. But overall ad revenue increased, as Justin Festa, LittleThings’ chief digital officer described to the WSJ:
“Users view more pages, share more content and are generally more engaged,” he said. Revenue generated from each user’s session grew 38% in June, compared with a year earlier.
I’ve heard similar stories from publishers in the UK. Those that focus on a minimalistic ad experience may not necessarily break records for revenue per page, but users are more likely to see the advert, interact with it (and not by accident) and stay on the site a great deal longer as it is a more pleasant reading experience.
This is nothing new. Many media analysts and industry experts have been very loudly saying the same thing for many years now. So why can I still go to sites which present me with experiences like the screenshot above?
The next twelve months
Now we’ve reached a stage where planning to clean up the ad experience is simply too little too late.
Google are baking adblocking into their browser for release in early 2018, following similar moves by Firefox in February of this year.
“It’s far too common that people encounter annoying, intrusive ads on the web — like the kind that blare music unexpectedly, or force you to wait 10 seconds before you can see the content on the page.” said Sridhar Ramaswamy, senior vice president for ads and commerce at Google.
“These frustrating experiences can lead some people to block all ads — taking a big toll on the content creators, journalists, web developers and videographers who depend on ads to fund their content creation.”
In short, if your audience haven’t already adopted an ad blocker (which a reported 1 in 4 now have done), Google will weed out the annoying ads for them by default — those that don’t meet the standard of the Coalition for Better Ads.
Other browsers will follow. Do you remember the last time you saw a browser pop-up ad? Probably not, because most browsers by default now block them and have done for years.
This is great news for the consumer. In two or three years, terrible ad experiences may well be a distant memory. But for publishers who have all their eggs in the display ad basket, this spells the imminent end of such revenues.
What if all display ads were switched off tonight? If your ads don’t meet the incoming acceptable standards, have you diversified enough to survive, or would the shutters come down?
The battle to end invasive ads could end before the year is out. Diversification can no longer be plan B, or a nice way of supplementing ad revenue.
A note on Facebook
Between them, Google and Facebook raked in almost one fifth of global ad revenue last year, and are expected to increase that proportion this year, with Facebook predicted to make ever-increasing gains.
There are a number of reasons why this is, but two stand out for me. Firstly, it’s really simple to advertise, whether you’re a small business owner using basic post ‘boosts’, or a fully-fledged ad manager on their own ad platform.
Facebook has far more data on its audience and individual interests than you, the publisher, can ever hope to have on your web traffic, from their marital status to their political views and even class. It’s not difficult to see why ad spend is being increasingly focused on this very powerful platform.
The second reason is that it gets results, partly due to being able to segment the audience to their interests at a micro level, but also because the whole ad viewing experience is seamless. Adverts for the local gym and the latest Samsung product launch sit alongside engagement posts, baby pictures and lunch updates from friends.
These ads don’t pop out, bounce around or otherwise rudely make a play for the user’s attention. They are effective precisely because they blend in.
Or should I say, were. In the last month, Facebook has made the classic mistake of getting greedy and sacrificing user experience for extra ad dollars. Not only do videos now autoplay in the news feed, but they autoplay with sound.
The primary function of this, despite what Facebook say about ‘positive feedback’ (Google searching ‘Facebook autoplay videos’ suggests otherwise) is to increase the number of people watching videos with sound; it makes the metrics look better for the advertisers as this is a primary measure of engagement.
I’d hazard a guess that Facebook will review that decision in the next month or so as the user backlash has been pretty big already. One point in their defence — they do have an option in the personal settings to switch this off.
How they play the incoming Messenger ads will also be pivotal in how users perceive the tech giant’s priorities. Traditionally, Facebook has always trumpeted the high value they place on keeping their users happy and in the newsfeed, no matter what — an attitude which has kicked publishers back from time to time. If people start smelling that Zuckerberg cares more about keeping advertisers happy than their newsfeed experience, we could see an even bigger shift towards more private, ad-free messaging networks.
In a nutshell
Learn from Facebook’s attitude towards adverts. Integrate them seamlessly into your interface, and they will be much better received. Some publishers have seen tangible results from cutting down the ads per page with no revenue loss, so be bold and take action on your overcrowded reading experience — it’ll pay itself back.
The rise in people installing ad blockers may be slowing, but that doesn’t mean display is safe. With impending browser changes from the major players coming into force in the next few months, it’s no longer a case of relying on display as a sustainable source of revenue. If these changes don’t hit it, something else in the next year or two will. Plan for the worst, get creative and find solid revenue alternatives. There are plenty of publishers out there doing brilliant things that are working well.
As for me, I’m off to install an ad-blocker on my new laptop which will block all publisher’s ads, until the few stop ruining it for everyone else.
