Consumers Are Taking Back The Internet

These are the secrets that your digital agency may be using to make money off your business - see what they don't want you to know.

Banner ads. Sometimes I think the only thing keeping them alive are advertising agencies touting massive numbers of impressions to clients so they can keep the juice flowing.

I’m saying this as the CEO of a marketing agency. But more importantly, I’m saying this as a consumer.

A consumer who is starting to get massively pissed off at what was once a USER focused experience.

It’s time to cut the crap.

So let’s dive into the secrets behind why so many marketers are still selling you something that stopped working a couple of years ago. 

Be where the eyeballs are. It’s a message that I beat our clients over the head with. It’s why we’re making a massive land grab on Snapchat. It’s why we pushed our clients to be insanely aggressive with Facebook and Instagram Dark Posts. You need to be where the eyeballs are.

But here’s the problem. There are many people who skew the “eyeballs” to make it look like they are actually where they are NOT.

For example, I’ve seen companies make presentations showing the 3.2 million impressions that a banner ad made…but not report on the fact that only 9 people clicked on the ad. So make sure you know where the eyeballs are – but understand how to make sure they look at you.

Viewers are fatigued. It seems like every day, there’s a new study showing that readers on the web glaze over banner ads. As you scroll past them, they’ve become an “impression”. Did you see it? Probably not. Interestingly an “impression” doesn’t actually mean that a person saw it – only that it was sent to your computer. 

The Internet Advertising Bureau defines “impression” as “a measurement of responses from an ad delivery system to an ad request from the user’s browser”. What does that mean? Well, combined with the fact that viewers suffer from fatigue…and now that we know an “impression” doesn’t necessarily mean someone sees it…we see a recipe for fraud.

How about these two studies? Adobe found that 33% of internet users find display ads to be completely intolerable.

Even worse - BannerSnack reports that: 61% of users say they click ads just because they don’t want to be interrupted while reading content, 57% are afraid of receiving SPAM from advertisers or getting a virus, and 54% of users don’t click banner ads because they don’t trust them.

Another study found that just 2.8% of participants thought ads on a given website were relevant.

That sure doesn’t bode well for the goal of “conversions”.

Fraudulent clicks cost you – big. You can read all over about how companies hire other companies or individuals to “click” ads – something that costs you (or your client) money. 

But have you heard about the “one by one”? Probably not. It’s where advertisers compress ads into one pixel by one pixel squares which are literally impossible to see but can serve up massive impressions. Then malware is used to send people to sites they never planned on visiting.

How about the less illegal and more obnoxious problem here? That’s right – the accidental click.

You’ve all done it when your fat thumb pressed the wrong thing. So you cost the business you ended up on a couple of bucks for accidentally clicking their ad.

But while doing so, you also drove down their Google Quality Score because you spent no time on the website and drove up their bounce rate…which, of course, will result in a higher cost per click for their future ads.

Yes, this is also happening to your business. Be aware.

Ad blocker downloads are soaring – and that should tell you something. In the year 2015, Ad blocking grew by 41% globally. In the last two years, ad blocking has grown more than 400%. And with more and more ad blocking software and apps coming out every week, that number is set to skyrocket. 

For digital advertisers who are gaming the system – and their clients – this doesn’t bode well. Looks like your bluff will soon be called and your hand will be shown.

For consumers – it’s a Godsend. 

It’s OUR turn now. We’re taking back the internet.

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POSTED BY

Kyle Reyes is President and CEO of The Silent Partner Marketing.  He's also an acclaimed Keynote Speaker on entrepreneurship, leadership, marketing and social media.  You can find him on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and on Snapchat @dasilentpartner.