Ad blockers
…and the ad industry’s trust issue (part 1 of 2).

There has been a lot of talk about ad blockers in the news recently.
You’ve heard that Google will bake in an ad blocker on Chrome in 2018.
And you also know that that Apple has announced it will soon block auto-play of videos PLUS stop auto-tracking you as you make your way around the web.
Is this the end of the ad industry as we know it?
I mean, here’s Google, the biggest advertising platform on the web, driving a stake into the heart of the business! So cue the dramatic headlines…
“Online advertisers beware — Apple is coming for you.”
“Platform giants are muscle-flexing…”
“Google’s gonna clean up the web”
And not without reason. The digital ad industry has been playing catch-up to solve its deep-rooted trust issues for over a decade.
Things haven’t gotten better, either. Every day there is a new way to micro-target the audience — in a way that often plagues the intended viewer … with no real proof of ROI. Several times a year someone publishes an industry report on fraud that paints a bleak menacing picture, with terms like “dark revenue.”
Makes you worry that your detergent ad is going to appear next to a hit-man for hire ad, doesn’t it? Extra tough on those “bloody stains!”
The industry has a trust issue
So our industry has a trust issue. And the likes of Google and Apple, the ones whose profits depend on controlling your access to the Internet and who have spent decades and billions of dollars building trusted brands are taking advantage of that. They want to grab a bigger slice of the pie. For Google, for example, blocking ads from other third-party ad technology companies will divert some of those dollars directly into Google’s coffers.
Smart!
Needless to say, various industry stakeholders are unhappy. It threatens their revenue streams.
Here’s the thing — this mistrust issue is not one player’s fault
It’s all of us! And it won’t be solved by tech-giants or any one party. Let’s review how the three main actors in our industry — publishers, advertisers and brands — have contributed to the trust problem. And what you can do to re-build.
How has each player contributed to the industry’s trust problem?
We’ve established that the industry has a trust issue. Now let’s explore how each major player in our industry contributed to this. And what to do about it.
Publishers
Let’s start from the front lines, the publishers. Major online publishers (e.g. New York Times, Wikimedia, WSJ, Bloomberg) have a habit of making their ad inventory available through third-party ad servers.
Often they put relevancy and consumer experience (CX) aside, in favour of impressions and revenue.
If you’ve read an article on your phone from a major news site, you know what I’m talking about. Half of what shows on your screen is interstitial ads, pop-ups, delayed loading and loud autoplays. Not good.
Look, I get it. Investing in a large advertising infrastructure is costly. It’s not the publisher’s core business (and should it be?).
But viewers need more than the recent initiatives of ads.txt (which allows content owners to declare who is authorized to sell their inventory). Yes, it’s a good start to publish a list of authorized digital sellers. But really, advertising should step up and consider the entire user experience.
Publishers need to align with what the audience wants, as well as the brand’s objectives! At the end of the day, if a marketer can use your content and your platform to connect to their audience, they will easily jump on board. Customized ad packages and well thought out engagement methods shouldn’t be the exception in your media mix. They should be the norm.
Advertisers
At the risk of oversimplifying, I’ll lump in creative advertisers (agencies), and media agencies into one general category.
Let’s start with the obvious: do you ever click on display ads? Whatever industry-average CTR you use, some people do click. Some even do it intentionally! And sadly, the experience there is often just as bad as the experience on a publisher’s website: non-mobile pages, non-specific landing pages, unrelated product pages, the list goes on and on.
And don’t say there was no budget! We need to get past commoditization of advertising, this laundry-listing of what we offer, and move to a solutions-based business model.
And what does that mean? It means instead of selling a slab of marble, some wood, hinges, handles, pipes, a sink, faucet, etc. we need to sell a renovation. Everything from the idea, to the design, to the execution.
It means that your media mark-up, your agency AOR fees, your web-development fees, or your strategic services fees should include and consider:
- The entire consumer experience
- Testing
- Different versions of creative, landing pages and everything else it takes to make the campaign a success.
I challenge you to not itemize your costs and/or hours to the client, but rather to package your offering with the goal of solving their problem.
And don’t say that’s the media agency’s / creative agency’s / web agency’s job!
Brands
Last but not least: brands! Brands, you too can help build a better end-to-end consumer solution. Thinking about a holistic solution (the key to success) means doing 3 things:
- Prioritize the entire experience for your audience. This means thinking about what happens when people are actually interested in your brand and interact with it. Not just about getting the word out.
- Start prioritizing investments in tracking structures. Earmark a portion of your media budget for experts who make sure that things can be tracked properly.
- Invest in smart KPIs. Because all of the data is just as bad as none of the data. Let me say that again: “all of the data is just as bad as none of the data!” Sure, you can record everything, but without a set objective it’s impossible to find the story in the data. Check out Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik for a great resource on how to set up goals in digital. It’s not new, but it is timeless.
With a well-thought-out online experience for your audience, and the systems to get the right data, you can engage your agency partners to help you build smart solutions, track them, and improve on them.
Next time, you’ll see a solution to this problem, one that demands a different kind of behaviour from all parties.

