Advertisers vs Ad Blockers

After going through years of digital waves wherein trends came and faded the one thing that always managed to maintain it’s position as the bread and butter for revenue generation across social media, e-commerce sites and even the worlds largest search engine was ads. As the popular quote from Fight Club goes“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy stuff we don't need” you can guess, not everyone wanted to be advertised to. Consumers weren’t really happy when ads were being forced upon them and instead of letting them make choices, brands where choosing for them. This led to an invention of a tiny plugin in 2009, something that probably is now on every second computer i.e. the Adblocker. This plugin allowed users to enjoy content and surf the web without ads. Basis an article on Forbes online, about $12 billion in ad revenues in the U.S. alone will be disrupted by ad blocking by the year 2020.

How has this affected marketers and advertisers is something really integral to the booming industry of digital marketing since on one end it’s considered to be flourishing and on one end consumers are tired of repetitive content thrown at them. The most critical thing to be noticed throughout this is the focus on engaging content, creative ads and most importantly the shift of focus from advertising/marketing the product for the consumers job to be done instead of doing so based on the products benefits. The current battle for everyone in the digital industry is to identify the thin line between ads that will be well received and shared by the consumer willingly vs. creating ads that makes the consumer feel “I am so glad I have the Adblocker installed.”

(Source: https://goo.gl/kdy5n1)
(Source: https://www.marketingcharts.com/advertising-trends-82144)