Beating the ad blocking tendencies for effective digital marketing

What is needed to make digital ads more effective?

In a study conducted on 1,500 American consumers, the Interactive Advertising Bureau established that 26% of computer users and 15% of smartphone users block ads. Insights from this study can guide strategic managers on how to not only design their marketing programs but also how to make their brands more acceptable by consumers. One of the reasons for this tendency was related to consumers being annoyed by ads blocking their content. Some ads were described as being extremely irritating where they block the user’s screens for long. The irritation is heightened when the ads leave the user no option to simply close them and get back to their browsing. In other words, ads are judged as most annoying when they interfere with browsing more. This is the basis for recommendation on how to avoid consumers using ad-blocking software..

The most convenient online ads are those that can be turned off or closed by the consumer with the greatest ease. Brand managers must consider that viewing of an ad is not the end game. The consumer will consider the manner in which the message was presented to them and this forms part of their perception of the message and the brand. Disruptive advertisements, especially digital ads, appear to be disrespectful and often annoying. This gets in the way of the brand conveying its message. Even where the message has been passed, the recipient would often be exhibiting a negative attitude towards the brand hence highly likely to ignore it. More significantly, the prevalence of such annoying messages would more of often than not lead to them using software on their devices to block ads.

One of the annoying forms of advertisements is long ad-videos that are played just before a user can view a much-shorter video. In other words, the user will have spent more time on an ad than on the actual content they wished to access. The other annoying ad form consists of pop up screens. These come to the surface and virtually block off the pages that the user is on. In most cases, it should be possible to simply click on the close button or use the esc key to get rid of them. But some are designed such that any action of any kind opens links. These are most annoying and are certain to increase the probability of the consumer to block ads.

But the good news for strategic marketing managers is that consumers are not always inclined to blocking these ads. If they are made less disruptive or less annoying, consumers would not mind them. For instance, video and audio files should disable the automatic play features so that the consumers can choose whether or not to play them. This act of providing consent makes them more predisposed to receiving the messages sent out. It makes it more likely that they will positively receive the marketing messages being conveyed.