Users are allergic to ads

POV: Pasionatelly playing the game. An ad pops up. Waiting 20–30 seconds for an ad to end. Continue playing the game. Another ad. Waiting. Continue playing. Another ad. Frustration. Exiting the game.

Or, searching the web for information about a university projects and all of a sudden an ad with organic local beverages pops on. But you are not interested in organic local beverages when you only drink Cola. Someone is trying to tell me to start a healthier lifestyle or have they just targeted the completely wrong person?
How many times did this happen to you? Ads that are so frustrating and annoying you exit the game you really wanted to play (and you don’t want to pay 10€ for ads to stop popping) or really untargeted ads that you don’t even see, or you do, but completely ignore.

Nowadays, companies are overclutting with the wrong ads and making it impossible to see anything but the ad. Motto for some companies for sure is quantity over quality while it has to be a different way around.

When it comes to advertising, users are making it difficult to reach them, due to the significant growth in the popularity of ad blockers. Today, ad blockers are being consumed every day by 42,7% of users of the Internet while 5 years ago it was consumed approximately by 29% of the world's Internet population. Let’s look deeper into why is so.

Source: https://blog.fixmestick.com/the-power-of-pop-ups/

Ads are coming in different shapes and forms and aren’t asking for the time or the place. Video ads with sound, video ads without sound, static images on websites (usually for products you already bought), audio ads, you name it, they are dozens of different types of ads.

Some of the most annoying types of ads according to users are:
· Pop-ups — ads that pop up in the middle of the screen

· Ads with automated sounds –the ads that usually have really loud and frustrating sounds that come from out of the blue

· Video ads you have to watch — you have to watch an ad from start to end in order to be able to skip it

· Whole screen ads — huge ads that take up a whole screen so users have to see it and probably click on it while trying to close it

Marketoonist.com, source: https://marketoonist.com/2017/06/annoying-ads.html

Typical reasons why consumers end up installing ad blockers are:

· Users are perceiving ads as annoying
· Ads can be creepy
· Ads can be irrelevant
· Ads are too intrusive
· Ads are containing viruses
· Too many ads on the Internet

Having all that in consideration, what marketers and advertisers can do about it?

1. Target the right people — be only where your customers are and where you want to be. Don’t be everywhere just to pop up and maybe stay in someone's memory. Rather choose wisely and gather quality customers.
2. New ad formats — creating new formats, especially for different platforms could be a game changer and deliver more user engagement by showing them actually something that is related to them
3. Creating valuable content — creating useful content that is actually going to help users rather than just trying to brag about your achievements or to aggressively sell it.

In conclusion, unrelated, copy-paste ads are now everywhere. In order to really stand out in a crowd is by creating memorable and helpful content and experience for users. Advertising could be a great tool to transfer a non-user to a consumer/user but only with the content that would be useful to them and they would actually willingly stop and watch an ad.