DoubleClick, the ad-serving giant owned by Google, has unveiled native ads that defeat ad blockers.
The move comes at a time of growing concern among online publishers that increased use of ad blocking tools by consumers undermines their business model.
More and more people are using mobile platforms for browsing, and every time they reach for their devices they expect to find exactly what they are looking for, quickly looking elsewhere if bombarded by ads.
Some have even resorted to using ad-blocking tools that enable them to view app or website content undisturbed by pop-ups, banners and other flashy graphics. With this in mind, marketers and publishers must take a new approach to advertising, preferably using mobile native ads.
Native ads take many different names like online advertorials, promoted posts or sponsored listings. But at their simplest, they are a form of advertising that is so tightly integrated onto a site that they cannot be eliminated with ad-blocking software.
More than ever before, native ads need to be respectful and relevant to the user’s context in the moment.
“At DoubleClick, we’ve been investing heavily to help publishers address this challenge,” Jonathan Bellack, DoubleClick’s Product Management Director, said in a company’s post. “With DoubleClick Ad Exchange, we’ve built programmatic technologies that scale advertising to wherever users are, in the moments that they’re most likely to respond. We’ve also developed mobile-first, immersive ad formats to keep users engaged and ensure advertiser goals are met. Today we’re excited to bring these two areas of investment together for our DoubleClick customers with programmatic support for native and video formats on mobile.”
The retail giant eBay was one of the first companies to use the Native Mobile Programmatic solutions and since the launch of its DoubleClick native ad unit, the company is seeing an average of 3.6-times increase in ad engagement, with some campaigns registering click-through rates up to 5 percent.
“We’re focused on leveraging DoubleClick’s technical footprint to bring scalability to our native mobile programmatic offering,” says Brian Brownie, Director of U.S. Display Operations and Programmatic Advertising at eBay. “Our success with desktop private marketplaces, backed by eBay insights, has unlocked massive client adoption and this next phase of mobile delivery is a continuation of the effort.”
DoubleClick’s new approach seems to be a win for both its advertisers and customers who see the new ads on a mobile site. For advertisers, it is a way to connect with customers that might have otherwise been unreachable. For customers, it means fewer intrusive ads and more ads that are part and parcel of the content visitors are already seeking.
Ad Blocker Background Photo via Shutterstock
This is a very early battle in this war. We’re going to be seeing more and more of this coming. There is a fundamental conflict when a user wants to consume “free” content but blocks the ads that allow the content-generator to monetize the content (thus paying for it’s creation).
Andrew
Robert, What is not said about adverts in these articles discussing pushing back against ad blocking is the bandwidth issue. The fact is that ads take up alot of bandwidth and it’s stealing from people surfing the net. Mobile experience is a joke, slow as hell because of the ads. So this “free” content is not really free even with an ad blocker.
I tested a new mobile browser on my S5 that has built in ad blocker and later in the day I checked my data, I was surprised at how much data I saved. Maybe advertisers should make non intrusive and non bandwidth sucking ads, which don’t slow down my mobile experience. Peace Out.
Anita Campbell
Hi Andrew, advertisers pay the way for all the free surfing that users do. Users might get more bandwidth, but I guarantee they will start paying for it somewhere else (probably several places) if ads go away.
It costs a lot of money to run sites. There are people behind such sites — businesses and employees. The employees who work on such sites are not independently wealthy. Employees can’t be expected to work for free — who would? Many sites are small businesses. If they don’t make a profit they won’t be able to survive.
It’s a fine line for site owners to balance between ads and serving users. We deal with that all the time. Many many times we have deliberately said “NO!” to adding more ads or adding them in intrusive places, because we view our mission as serving users.
But at the end of the day, we can’t serve users unless we can stay in business.
I’d love it if there were another to pay employees in a publishing business besides ads. But so far this site and millions of other sites (and media companies and TV networks, etc.) have not figured out the magic formula.
Just trying to share another perspective.
– Anita
VexenX
This may be an old thread but I think it is important to note that Andrew didn’t say “Remove all ads” he said, “Maybe advertisers should make non-intrusive and non bandwidth sucking ads, which don’t slow down my mobile experience.” There is a big difference. All he wants are advertisements that don’t kill his internet. I’d like to extend this to ads that have created security holes due to how websites outsource their ad revenue to sites that outsource further with little or no over sight into security issues that are created. I block as many advertisements as I can, and until there is some accountability to both security, and moderately tasteful advertising, will continue to do so. There are very few exceptions to this.
Basically, if advertising wants to declare a war on the security, bandwidth, and sanity of its’ audience, we will, and are fighting back. This ends with the advertisers finding a better way to advertise, not demanding we change what is deemed acceptable to us. Compromising my computer and killing my mobile bandwidth is not acceptable, especially for some text, just isn’t worth it. If that means a site goes down, well, survival of the fittest. Just remember that when the masses work together on a problem, they can solve it, whether it is making ads more classy (if anyone is ever listening anymore) or, due to deaf ears and aggressive, annoying advertising, silencing it.
Also, you could point out the hypocrisy that I don’t need to use the site, my question is, is that really what a site wants, to alienate people? What I say might sound harsh, but if you take a long sobering look at how f-d the situation has gotten, you will likely see that there has to be a middle ground. If advertisers don’t feel any impact from their poor choices, they will change nothing, so… here… impact. Time to grow.
Let the market players fight it out, fair and square! 😉 I am all for ads and at the same time to have the opportunity to block the ads. Will this be a cat-and-mouse game?
fhounslow
I do not mind ads but they are taking over my GSN game site and I can hardly play the games anymore.