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Ad blocking has become a problem for the modern marketer. At the heart of the issue lies the concept of relevancy. Is one solution understanding what makes good advertising?
First, let’s look at why there has been a dramatic rise in ad blocking.
People block bad adverts. That’s the fundamental issue here. If adverts are annoying and provide little value to the end user, then people will start to block them. This is the crucial point that surprisingly many advertisers miss.
There’s no simple quick fix to the ad blocking problem – to suggest there is is to completely miss the point. However, there is a lot we can learn from different approaches to solving the problem. There are three fundamental features of good advertising that we’ve found from producing many wide-ranging mobile campaigns.
Relevance – one thing that mobile does better than most kinds of advertising is ensuring that advertising is relevant to the end user. It’s a regular occurrence for the modern consumer to receive content that carries no significance or relevance. This is one of the fastest ways to drive those ad blocker downloads. Making adverts relevant to the end user means that brands might have to adopt a strategy that appears as if they are reducing their reach. But what they are actually doing is increasing the value of their ads. By utilising mobile location they can provide smart advertising which reaches relevant parties.
Context – contextual advertising is a phrase that’s heard often in the advertising space these days. But there’s often a misinterpretation of what this actually means and how advertisers can implement a strategy that is based around this concept. This means being able to take in a number of factors in real-time that determine the delivery and kind of content that is sent to audiences. An example is content that is personalized and defined by the location of the consumer along with the timing of the message.
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Value – Placing the consumer at the center and providing them with valuable experiences will help to alleviate the rise in ad blocking. It’s important that we realize that ad blocking is a message from consumers that they are not getting enough value from advertising in its current form. For advertising to reach the next level and become valuable for consumers it needs to solve consumer’s problems and do this at the best possible moment.
These three ideas are completely attainable in today’s marketing landscape – they are a crucial part of a mobile proximity marketing campaign, for example. There’s an incredible amount of tech solutions that ensure these criteria are met. It’s all about putting the consumer first, and this is a choice that brands will have to take seriously. But what we’ve learned from completing campaigns of this kind is that brands who decide to take this decision will reap the benefits.
The challenge for brands is to get their message out there and compete with their competitors, and for these reasons, it can be understandable why some choose to spam consumers with bad advertising. But what they don’t realise is the opportunity that value providing solutions such as mobile proximity marketing can bring.
These new ways of advertising can combat the problem in rising ad blocking and distrust of advertisers. The challenge for advertisers is to communicate with their audience on a one-to-one basis. Now, this isn’t easy, but we’ve seen brands get that payoff. The industry is moving in this direction, brands that get involved can help to solve the ad blocking problem by creating value providing advertising.