Use of Adblocking growing at a rate of 43% per year
There is a scary report from PageFair, which predicts rapid growth in the use of Adblocking tools. The study showed that the average rate of Adblocking is just over 22%, with a significant variation from industry to industry. More worrying is that the use of such tools is growing at a rate of 43% every year.
Now whilst the report’s forecast that every ad will be blocked in 2018 is naive at best, it’s clear that publishers will lose more and more revenue as individuals "opt out" of receiving adverts. With the B2B media generally relying on advertising for their income, and universally moving to online, it’s clear that publishers need to think beyond delivering banner ads. If not, it’s very possible that the revenue that will disappear due to Adblocking will be sufficient to push titles from profitability into loss.
Good times for banner advertising in the electronics industry ended about five years ago. Today, the future of the web advertising is text, which can not be filtered out. Unfortunately, the preparation of a text ad in the electronic magazines is a task beyond the strength of many PR agencies, so the changes will not come quickly.