HOW AD BLOCKING IS TRANSFORMING THE PUBLISHING LANDSCAPE

If you’re rushing to download iOS 9 for the Ad Blockers, you’re not alone. In its effort to provide a more elegant “Apple-like” experience for iPhone and iPad users, the tech superpower is leaving websites and smaller publishers in a tizzy. Ad Blocking quite simply is the removal of ads from a webpage, with this latest mobile adaptation it is projected that one in five iOS 9 users could eventually opt for ad blocking programs. If we take a step back and look at this from a global perspective, the numbers are currently at 198M monthly active users — With 1 in 10 internet users in the US/UK and 1 in 4 in France and Germany. Ad Blockers are super smart and constantly one step ahead of the problem. They work by STOPPING web requests to advertising networks before they are made, BLOCKING the execution of advertising networks code and ADDING additional styles to a web page to “hide” advertisements.

In response to the rise of Ad blockers, social platforms like Facebook, Instagram and latest contender Medium are revising their strategies to offer brands additional incentives. For the first time Facebook is giving brands an independent measurement of views partnering with Moat to measure everything on Video ad displays — from how long a video is watched, to if the sound was turned on or not.

Medium has positioned itself as a centralized platform for publishers, with engagement as its primary metric. Brands like Marriott, BMW and Intel are the first to take advantage of this rich format, reaching out to a specific audience networks within Medium’s walled gardens.

Instagram recently flipped its posting format, so ads appear as a full page takeover on your mobile screen.

Is a world without advertising a real possibility?

Some DSP’s are preparing for that and pivoting their business model. London based startup Yavli has developed a technology that detects browsers installed with ad-blocker software and serves sponsored native content instead. Then there is Sourcepoint, co-founded by a former google manager, and its strategy is to encourage transparency between content consumers and content creators, offering analytics tools for publishers to establish who their ad blocking audience is. With AdBlockers dominating the publishing landscape will more ad tech companies refocus their offering from media buying to data enablement?