Ad Blocking Makes Inbound Marketing Even More Important

Posted by David Terry on September 28, 2015

Online ad blocking - online advertisingThis was a very big week for marketers in the digital advertising industry. Ad blocking became a hotly debated topic - putting digital marketers up against consumers who don't want to be bombarded with unwanted online advertising.

It was Apple who may have tipped the balance on the debate, with the launch of iOS 9, and they may have caused an earthquake on the digital advertising landscape.  

A few months back I read that the new evolving Apple search engine that's slowly being introduced into the iOS world was going to be a major improvement over the Google search engine, because they said there will be no ads, and they claimed that a "no-ad search engine" is what most consumers want.

This was a warning shot of what was to come, as it looks like Apple wants to take the high ground with consumers on the issue of mobile and online ads as well.  This is clear Apple positioning, and a major point of differentiation, against the Google search engine and their massively popular, money-making ad machine called AdWords.

The debate heated up this week with the release of iOS 9 on all Apple mobile devices. That was because the latest version of Apple’s mobile OS gave mobile users the option to block unwanted ads by downloading ad blocking apps available from the app store.  Apple said, they have given its customers the option to block ad content "for an improved mobile browsing experience."

So what's the big deal?

Of course ad blocking is nothing new, people have been blocking ads on their desktop computers and laptops for ages, using popular browser add-ons like AdBlock Plus and Ghostery ... or by ignoring the ads completely ... unless the ads were personal and relevant to you.

So if more ads get blocked that means less revenue for publishers and content owners.  Therefore there is a legitimate concern about the owners and publishers of content who rely on online ads for their revenue and income. So blocking ads is a big blow to publishers.

But the other issue, on the other side of the coin, is that advertisers should have created ads that were more personal and relevant to what consumers wanted. And they didn't - instead they mass-marketed and blasted us with lots of crappy ads that nobody wanted.

Many advertisers didn't use our private data properly, in fact some abused our data, they tracked our data and gave us cookies for their own benefit, and in doing so many sleazy advertisers moved in and became internet marketing bottom feeders, inserting ads in the worst places  - and yes our mobile browsing experience got ruined.  These online ads interrupted everyone and ended up pissing people off. 

The story, in a nutshell, is that consumers are finally getting fed up with incessant banner ads, obnoxious pop-ups, and videos that automatically start playing when you load a page. 

To me this sounds like interruption-based marketing, or like good old-fashioned outbound marketing using untargeted direct mail, tele-marketing, email spam and bad tv commercials.

As we are Inbound marketers we advocate personalization of messaging based on relevance, data targeting and profiling, so at least the consumer is giving permission and making a choice to receive information they want. That does sound like the better way.

It's a good thing that consumers are taking control of their browsing experience, and the time has come for mobile devices to catch up. So Apple are probably correct making ad blocking a downloadable app option - and it should have been expected.

Users can now block the ads out with a new generation of ad blocker apps that start from the default position of "delete all" and then by using a white list, you can choose which companies you want to deal with and add them as you go along.

As Seth Godin puts it in his seminal essay "Permission Marketing" some 15 years ago - when users take control we have to respect them and earn their trust and permission.

Sounds like this is the direction we're going in and what Apple is doing sounds right.

So in my mind when we think of ad blocking, we have to also think of how to do Inbound Marketing right - we have to do it properly - and the best way to do online advertising is by earning the privilege to contact consumers. Maybe over time - and in return - they will give us permission to talk to them.

This is the foundation of Inbound Marketing and that's what we practice at Terry Marketing.

 

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Topics: Inbound Marketing, Digital Marketing