On-line advertising: do the numbers add up?

If advertising is part of your business, then if you haven’t already, you clearly need to start rethinking a number of things. The transition toward subscription models or the growing popularity of ad-blockers, which have been joined by Apple’s plan to allow the use of blocker extensions on Safari, both on smartphones and computers, a move that will further threaten the way traditional online advertising has worked until now.

Apple may not be about to kill off online advertising, even if doing so were an effective way to attack a rival that is largely dependent on it, and that hasalready signaled its concerns. But it will definitely increase the shift in advertising spending away from the web to other scenarios such as apps, which for some time now have been the main way that people consume content on mobile devices, to the detriment of navigators.

We spend up to 90 percent of our time on mobile devices using an app of one kind or another; and the trend continues to grow: if your business model requires users to open a navigator on their cellphone and access your content through conventional navigation, then you’re fighting for a share of an ever-shrinking market. And if the experience you’re offering those users is dreadful and consists simply of trying to squeeze onto a tiny screen what was already terrible advertising on a computer, then you need to change your strategy right now, because the number of your users who access your page that already have an ad-blocker is about to mushroom, and trying to beat this by denying them access to your content if they don’t deactivate it simply isn’t going to work. And neither will asking them nicely.

The writing has been on the wall for many years now, and it is clearer than ever that strategies to increase clickthrough by getting desperate users unable to close your appalling advertisement to click on it by mistake are not going to work any longer, and neither will those interstices that force people to put up with an advertisement hogging their screen for 30 second, as well as pop-ups, animations, preactivated sound and video, nor all the other aberrations, which will be consigned to the garbage can of history as more and more people learn how to use ad-blocking tools.

So, if you’re an advertiser, stop kidding yourself: intrusive advertising isn’t going to work any longer, and if you persist with it, your supposed target audience is just going to hate you more. If you are an agency, then get the message over to your clients and start showing them new ideas rather than perpetuating outdated methods. And if you are a website, the three quarters of the same: accepting what the agency or advertisers want will simply turn people away from your page. It may cost you money to begin with, but you’re going to have to learn to say NO at some point.

And just where is new revenue going to come from? It seems pretty clear that traditional display advertising is going to suffer, particularly for those still obsessed by intrusive formats, but what will be the substitute for that? Part of it will come from in-app advertising, most of which are not interested in hassling users. Part of it will come from more conservative formats, such as stills, low-key animation that can be stopped with a simple click or that only repeat a couple of times, the use of sponsors’ logos, or models that allow the user to know this or that brand has sponsored this content but that it isn’t going to keep bothering you.

Some sites will probably go down the freemium road, offering free content with advertising and an ad-free option at a price.

At the same time, branded content will continue to grow as long as the rules are clear about its value proposal. There are already a number of good examples about how to provide value without tricking users, about how to build sustainable models with users who learn how to appreciate these types of models. It’s going to be a long and bumpy road, but there is a road.

And of course part of advertising revenue will go to the social networks: models such as Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News, or Google Kiosk will offer their content creators applications with reach, accompanied by their own advertising and free of commissions, or supplying them advertising in return for a standard finder’s fee. My impression is that some of these models could experience growth, making up a significant proportion of some pages’ income, either through direct contracting or programmatic models.

Let’s be clear about this: it isn’t that online advertising has failed: what has failed is the fight against common sense and insistence on maintaining outdated models. Advertising will adapt to the coming changes and find its niche, taking advantage of the peculiarities of the internet, allowing for better segmentation and greater interaction, and will end up being accepted by the public because, quite simply, it makes sense, as long as the experience isn’t a hassle. Will the numbers add up? I think they will; although not for everybody.

(En espa?ol, aquí)