How many times have you clicked on ‘Skip Ad’ on YouTube, before your favorite movie or song played? How many times have you cursed, unable to escape watching the boring mundane Ad, and had to sit through its full 20 seconds? Or how many times have you clicked on ‘Not Interested’ on a banner ad on a page you’re visiting?
Well, if you are a business owner, you should know that the feeling that you have for other people’s ads, people may also have for your own. People are impatient and often don’t want to sit through an ad, no matter how interesting it might be.
Top Ways to Circumvent Adblock Tech
The influx of online ads has prompted users to employ ad-block technologies. The bane of advertisers includes content filters/blockers, software plugins, and browser extensions that can help identify and block any content like online advertising on a web browser, or an application. From standalone programs to customized services or extensions in web browsers or operating systems, ad blockers make it difficult for media groups to increase their advertising revenue. Today, around 42.7% of the world is using an ad block of some sort (Source). It thins web traffic and shuts out all digital analytics. However, there is a way around this. Here’s how.
Adhere To Acceptable Advertising Rules
Join the Acceptable Ads Program, a non-profit founded by the creator of AdBlock Plus. Through this program, publishers can have their ads whitelisted by ad blockers. This is an ‘Allow Non-Intrusive Advertising’ txt file that adblockers reference, along with EasyList. All three major players in ad blocking, i.e AdBlock, AdBlock Plus, and uBlock are part of the program, and this setting is enabled by default if you download the extension.
If you make it to the whitelist, you can immediately start monetizing around 80% of your ad-block desktop traffic. Publishers just need to ensure their ads meet the Acceptable Ads Standard. Organizations that are building first-time products have an easier time making it to the whitelist but you have to be careful where you place your ads. If you have fewer than 10 million affected monthly impressions, you can join this program for free. Around 90% of the whitelisted sites fit into this bracket. If your company is above that threshold, Acceptable Ads charges a 30% cut of all revenue gained from a whitelisted ad. A lot of the world’s largest publishers are members of AA, like Amazon and eBay.
Persuade Users in an Interesting and Engaging Manner
Don’t be afraid to ask users to turn off their ad blockers. Any message that asks users to turn off their ad blocker in a non-pretentious and subtle way may resonate with them and encourage them to play along. An interesting example could be a company that uses a script that really exalts the customer, saying something like, “We really value your readership or patronage, so could you please turn off your adblocker” in a much more subtle and interesting manner. However, this is a hit and miss because some users may take the messaging seriously, and some may not. Either ask them to disable the ad blocker, giving them the option to continue, or try another method like seeking donations in some other fashion, or making your content gated unless they do adhere to either option.
Give Users Something Of Value
The easiest way to circumvent Adblock technology is to create a membership or loyalty program where users pay a fee to view content without ads. This strategy may not work overnight, but they are worth it in the long term, and they are a recurring source of revenue.
A membership site is any website that charges a regular fee whether monthly or annually, and provides members with exclusive content. However, the ability to create a membership model depends on what type of content or products and services you offer. An e-retailer may not want a premium membership package. However, if you are a publisher with a lot of long-form articles, it may be a useful and effective model. You also need to take into account the technical demand on your WordPress host. Concurrent users and unique challenges for WordPress membership sites mean you need to have a performance-backed plan if you are to follow this path.
Use an Anti-Ad Block Script for WordPress
An anti-ad block script or tool can help website owners show ads even if a user has an ad block tool enabled. Publishers can recover ad revenue that would otherwise be lost due to ad blockers. Around 30.5% of the top 10,000 websites use anti-ad block scripts and plugins, according to TechCrunch. But this might have a boomerang effect too. Users may get annoyed with an ad block wall and could leave the website, never to return, so you risk losing a large amount of traffic. However, if you are solely depending on ads to monetize your content, it might be the most pragmatic short-term option.
Conclusion
Love them or hate them, you can’t ignore them. Ad blockers were bound to mushroom as soon as publishers started adding ads to their websites to maximize revenue. Some basic steps like making your ads more user-friendly while exploring other monetization methods like paywalls can help you curb your revenue loss. You could try and explore another area like developing a mobile app to fight ad blockers. There are also multiple other methods like giving out E-Books, online courses, sponsored content, and affiliate marketing that could help you monetize your site. You could also explore AdBlock Recovery Tools.
Publir’s ad-block recovery tools put the power in the hands of the publishers, allowing them to understand their ad-block traffic. It provides important data like what percentage of your site’s traffic is made of un-monetized users, and what devices and which locations these users can be pinpointed once identified. The tool then allows publishers to display a message to ad-block users, requesting them to whitelist the ads.
