How To Get Your Ads Seen

June 7, 2016
Graham Bowers

how to get your ads seen

The rise of ad blockers has raised a dilemma for advertisers and publishers – how to get your ads seen?

How do you get your #ads seen in the age of ad blocker? Click To Tweet

There has been a lot of talk recently about online ad blockers. Businesses are generally opposed. Some are discussing whether they are a form of protection racket (as many ad blockers let you pay to for whitelisting). Consumers tend to support them.

I feel there are lessons to learn for business. There is no point in just dismissing consumer concerns. The first thing to examine is why people want to use ad blockers on their computers and smartphones. After all most browser extensions slow your browsing a little and many cost money. So I thought we’d examine why people use them, and how websites get their ads blocked.

Avoid Excessive Adverts

Forbes will not let you view the site unless you pause / disable your ad blocking software. Yet they are one of the worst offenders for covering their website in all kinds of adverts. They slow the site down so that every page takes an aeon to load. On a smartphone, the ads render the site practically unusable. The close buttons are often small and impossible to find.

On a desktop, I will pause my adblocker to read Forbes. After all, they produce some good content. However, on one article, there were three image ads, a section of sponsored CDN Taboola type ‘recommended articles’, a pop up video, and an overlay that had to be closed before viewing the article. It was irritating, distracted from the content and slowed my browser down. It certainly didn’t make me want to buy the products.

Avoid Excessive Adverts to Get Your Site #Whitelisted Click To Tweet

Solution: Keep it to 2-3 adverts at most, and make sure they don’t slow your site down.

Brush Up Security

Many times, poor website security has resulted in the spread of computer viruses. ‘Malvertising’ attacks have even affected high profile sites. Websites like the New York Times, Spotify and Yahoo. The offenders are usually motivated by money, although political activists have also indulged.

The result is that websites featuring adverts that look deceptive or spammy are likely to be blacklisted. Consumers will not trust the site. Use of content delivery networks is also seen as a risk factor by especially cautious web users. This is why the larger, more reputable ad networks, ban spammy looking adverts. Google’s Double Click, won’t allow ads that feature flashing colours, OTT language or multiple exclamation points. Even certain topics are off limits.

Solution: Use reputable ad networks, and keep your site security updated.

Use Targeting

“The Guardian started using jumping flashing ads to persuade me to read the Guardian when I was already reading the Guardian.”

One Guardian article about ad blocking had hundreds of comments, many from people explaining how the Guardian website had made them get an ad blocker.

If you allow irrelevant adverts to populate your site, it will just irritate users and turn them off you and your product. The best adverts are tailored to the site’s purpose. For example, a gardening trowel, sold on a site about growing vegetables. It’s better for everyone. Useful to users, more likely to generate sales and less likely to annoy your regular readers.

Over exposure is another issue. The best display advertising networks have reach and frequency capping. This prevents users from bombardment with the same advert over and over again. I have seen the beginning of Go Ahead yoghurt bars’ advert of a woman dancing over 100 times. If anything it has put me off buying a product I already like.

Make sure your adverts are relevant, #targeted and useful. Also, use frequency capping! Click To Tweet

Solution: Make sure your adverts are relevant, targeted and useful. Also, use frequency capping!

Try Native Advertising

Native ads can often get round ad blockers. A good chunk of Buzzfeed’s clickbait lists are actually sponsored. But they aren’t blocked, and are read more often than typical banner adverts.

This disguised form of advertising is essentially an advertorial, and similar to product placement. Most are now required to be clearly marked as an advert. Failing to do so can get your seriously penalised; several of the influencers who advertised the ill fated Fyre Festival are now being sued for not disclosing.

Even in video content; vloggers for example, are now required to explicitly state if they are being sponsored. This can also be linked to contextual advertising, designed to tailor the adverts to the content the user is viewing.

Publishers, how do you ensure your ads are seen?

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