Ad Blocking and the Free Web — Time to Educate and Evolve
By Ben Alpren
While many publishers are worried about losing revenue due to ad blocking, there is something bigger at stake -- net neutrality. For those who are uninitiated, it is the principle that all data on the Internet should be treated the same, not discriminating or charging differently by user, content, site, platform, or application. While users have the right to block ads served to them, they don't always understand the repercussions.
Ads are a reality of the media industry, subsidizing many venues for entertainment and information such as newspapers, magazines, and of course, a host of Web sites on the Internet. For many publishers on the Web, particularly small ones, advertising revenue is where content creators make their living -- and this ecosystem is at risk from ad blocking.
Ad blocking threatens the open Web
Voluntary ad-blocking solutions such as AdBlock Plus for Google Chrome and Apple's iOS9 ad blocker prevent ads from being served on a personal device, thereby disrupting the ad-revenue model. The elephant in the room is that ad blocking is a threat to the open Internet, and in many cases the companies behind them generate their own revenue in the process. Some of the larger ad blockers have acceptable ad policies that allow Web sites to apply to be whitelisted and not have their ads blocked.
While acceptable ads sounds good on paper, users can often still opt out of seeing these ads, and it's also problematic as it means that ad blockers then become the gatekeepers for dictating which sites are allowed to participate. The bigger issue, however, is that many also incorporate a revenue model that insists large companies pay to have their ads unblocked.
With these guidelines in place, ad-blocking companies are essentially saying that it is okay to stop certain content from reaching consumers, unless a special toll is paid to them. The IAB has gone as far as to call programs like this extortion.
The ad tech industry prepares for change
More and more users are opting in to ad blockers every day. In response to this, there are now companies that work to circumvent ad blockers. According to PageFair, one of these companies, in the UK alone ad blocking grew by 82% to reach 12 million active users in the 12 months leading up to June 2015. With the ecosystem of both ad blockers and anti-ad blockers, we're essentially in an arms race that is driving money into the pocket of companies that have arisen as a result of neglecting user experience. With all this escalation, the big debate right now in ad tech has to be "how can we get users to understand the ramifications of ad blocking?"
Education is key
Digital is bad at educating outside of its own walls, but doing so is now vital to maintain the internet as it was founded. Users need to understand that the cost of ad blocking means that many of their favorite Web sites, blogs and digital channels might go the way of the dodo as their creators have no means to keep them going. The Internet is one of the few egalitarian spaces in the world, and we need to listen to, inform and work together with users to keep it an open ecosystem.
Source
"Ad Blocking and the Free Web — Time to Educate and Evolve." MediaPost, 5/2/16.