Should Your Business Block AdBlockers?

There is a continuing divide between consumers and advertisers on the web.

On one hand, advertisers want and need to generate online revenue to help their business succeed. Why? Websites are one of the most lucrative communication tools to ever exist, and if they can't generate revenue, then their business will fail.

On the other hand are consumers who either dislike or outright hate ads. Online advertising has a messy history of being incredibly intrusive. Also consumers have to deal with poorly designed ads that use junky script or plugins to function. These ads can potentially take a lot of data/memory to run on a browser. This results in a slower browser experience, which will guarantee a high bounce rate and negatively impacts the chances a user would go back to that site.

Enter Ad Blockers 
The biggest one available to consumers is Adblock Plus, which currently holds bragging rights to being one of the most used add ons to virtually all major browsers, primarily Firefox and Google. Ad companies and businesses hate them. From their perspective, they exist solely on the function to deny these companies revenue. But what these companies don’t put into perspective is that Ad blockers exist for a reason.

The relationship between the average consumer and ad companies has turned sour. Adblock Plus isn’t a snake charmer who has lured customers away with false promises of easy and inconsequential web experiences. It was created to fill a market demand - to block what was seen as obtrusive advertising and very real, legitimate threats to web browsing security. And like any bad relationship, some companies take to extremes to try and hang onto their customers, and end up causing more damage.

What A Business Shouldn't Do
Forced whitelisting and denial of website access unless ad blockers are disabled will most likely push
users away. They will go somewhere else if they can find an alternative, especially when these methods lead to bigger problems.

Forbes requested all ad-blockers be disabled.

One of the more recent (and ironic) examples of this is Forbes, which made the decision to prevent users from accessing their website and articles if they had an ad blocker turned on. Visitors would receive a notice asking users to disable their ad blockers. Unfortunately, Forbes got hacked, and those users who turned off their blockers were almost instantly served ransomware from the site’s advertisements.

This was a huge slap in the face for users who turned off their pop up blockers, and many ad blocker users saw this as vindication that they were in the right to keep using ad blocking; online advertisements were simply not to be trusted.

Furthermore a recent report offers some circumstantial evidence showing that websites requiring whitelisting are actually seeing an overall decline in traffic.

Where do we go from here?
Some companies are already attempting to answer this question with efforts like better ad security and quality. It will likely take some time before trust is rebuilt with ad-blocking consumers, and since it seems Ad Blockers are here to stay, this may prove to be much easier said than done.

It might be worth considering whether ad companies should try a new approach to the way they handle their online advertising. Whether this will be done through persistence, technology, or creative innovation remains to be seen.

How can your business effectively navigate this ever-changing landscape of online advertising? Reach out to our team at CC Communications to learn more about best practices for online advertising. We can also help you explore other ways to effectively advertise online without fear of an ad blocker disrupting the delivery of your marketing messages.