Let us tell you how much your ads suck…

Why standardized ad feedback can’t come soon enough

I have written that online advertisers should devote 10–20% of an ad unit’s surface area to soliciting feedback from consumers.

The unfortunate current-state-of-the-art of ad feedback is represented here by this banner ad served by Google, as seen on the Washington Post website (not clear from the logo-less ad who the brand is, by the way). The icons at the top right, from the Digital Advertising Alliance let you know this ad is behaviorally targeted, and these icons may solicit feedback from you to the company placing the ad, and also allow you to access your “ad choices” in some way. It takes up just 0.64% (480 out of 75,000 pixels), less than 1/100th, of the ad real estate.

If I do manage to notice that top right hand corner 0.64% of the ad (which many of us have trained ourselves to ignore in its entirety), I could click the (x) in the top corner and be presented with the following options:

Either “Ad covers the page” or “Report this ad” (A), and then if I select “Report this ad” I’m presented with three simple further options. Either the ad was Repetitive, Irrelevant or Inappropriate. It doesn’t tell me anything about why I saw the ad, ask me why it was irrelevant or what might be more relevant, and WTF does “inappropriate” mean in this day and age? If as a consumer I’ve already gone the extra mile and found the 0.64%-needle-in-the-haystack, I’m probably willing to share a bit more of my feelings here. Instead, those “AdChoices” icons have become a joke which most consumers don’t get, as multiple non-industry-funded studies have shown.

Now what if instead 10% of the ad was a message asking me for feedback, I’d probably (at least initially before it was ubiquitous) notice the ad, and I’d also feel that they actually gave a shit about what I had to say. As Professor David Carroll shares, the consumer is entitled to have “simple tools to reject and to complain about advertising”…

Here is why both advertisers and websites should make a clear and conspicuous statement that they want to both gather feedback and inform the user about how this ad was targeted:

• To show the user that their voice matters, and that they have the ability to take control of their data
• To convey in a noticeable way how important the consumer’s input is to a well-functioning ecosystem
• That this space inside ad units will serve as the path to seeing some or all the metadata the ad system(s) has/have about them including a complete history of the ads they’ve seen, and the ability to report “bad ads”
• Current mechanisms mainly allow simple opting-out instead of taking deeper feedback from users, and so they won’t really improve the marketplace at all
• Once users can see that the data are actually being used to improve their experience, they will contributed further.
• It’s important that the feedback is visible to the website publisher as well, so they can far more quickly assess if a particular ad or advertiser is negatively affecting their audience or brand, and take action that could include stopping that ad from running

If marketers and publishers want to counter the growing power of adblocking, and improve engagement with consumers and the quality (and conversion rates) of their advertising, they should focus on “feedback first”. Being told that most of their ads suck might hurt at first, but as marketers listen and truly improve, consumers will compliment and truly participate in that improvement.