Over 80% of online ad effect is on offline sales
sciencebulletin.org
sciencebulletin.org
EDIT: FOLLOW UP. I had a deeper look. The article is dated, "Posted in Business on February 3, 2017". I found one copy of the paper published December 29, 2015 and another July 26, 2016. Both same I think, but one author had moved from Google to Pandora.
The article text seems off beam. The paper describes a method to better estimate advertising impact, not directly what that impact is. Odd.
there are problems with ad blockers and malicious ads. i simply dont understand why these things are a problem. why do we not see simple ads, static images with no java script, implemented in such a way that ad blockers cant really block them? i mean, if your ad is some image inserted somewhere in one or all of your web pages, how could an ad blocker know which image it was out of the many which are probably going to be present on any given page? and why are people not willing to pay for such an advertising vector? people visit the website, they will see the ad like a billboard or any other traditional ad, so why is it not possible to charge traditional rates? its very confusing to me so if anyone with experience in the matter could weigh in that would be very nice.
A local business can spend 1 hour and $500 on Google AdWords or Facebook Ads and be fairly confident that their ad was seen by X number of real people in their community. A larger brand can pay $500k to run very sophisticated campaigns, where they can drill into detailed demographics, A/B test their ads, and mock up ads to get real-time feedback on products they haven't even made yet. Even with rising adblocker rates, ad networks are still more efficient for most advertisers and content websites.
(I'm not affiliated with Google or Facebook.)
I've posted about this before as I've actually been involved in a site that does just this. It has basic text ads, side graphical ads, and banner ads. There is no JavaScript used for any of it, all the site images including the ads are served exactly the same way. The text ads are completely embedded in the page text. No 3rd party ad services are used at all.
Ad blockers have no problem blocking every one of them.
that's interesting. how would they block a comment like this: This post was made possible by McDonald's (I'm lovin' it), if it were embedded this deeply in post content?
I'm interested only because i have briefly entertained the idea of ad content embeded directly into a db query via a sproc, for example, so that the ad and the post content are basically one and the same... if the entire content is blocked, maybe that's the desired outcome? never bothered to try it though.
For example if I recall correctly... you can be sued and heavily fined for conflating the two and not explicitly delineating the different types of information. Hence why Facebook and Google advertising can be pretty easily blocked by figuring out the meaning of div labels. Of course to thwart ad blockers, these div labels usually are cycled through pseudo-random characters forcing a cat-and-mouse game in maintaining block lists, but the intent of separation has to be there.
This is similar to the surprising effects of regulation in news reporting that ultimately gives minority viewpoints ample screentime in the spirit of 'fair coverage against bias', leading to viewers' false perception of systemic disunity.
The perverse incentives for mixing in deceptive ads or product recommendations is still there so people find rather interesting ways to sidestep the rules: e.g. hyping up stocks or spreading FUD either 'anonymously' or through intent-obfuscated 'press releases'. But then again these shady counterings are also regulated in other ad-hoc ways such as securities fraud law, fiduciary duty to shareholders, compensated spokesperson laws, libel laws, etc.
There are a few core lists of domain strings that most of the blockers pull from, Easylist is one of the most commonly used: https://easylist.to/easylist/easylist.txt
Layered on top of that are some general sorts of behavioral rules, things like:
- Is this image an IAB size
- Does the id or class of this HTML element contain 'ad' (yes, some are this blunt a tool and followup yes, they definitely mess up legit content. Try building a site about Active Directory and not use 'ad')
I'm deeply conflicted about the whole thing. If you want a crisp example of what a mess we are in look at Reddit. They have the cleanest, least intrusive ads imaginable, they don't do 3rd party tracking, they work with publishers to try and make ads that are relevant to their audience etc and yet their ads are still blocked by AdBlockers. What are they supposed to do? Who do they appeal to?
Well of course. And ad is an ad. And the point of an Adblocker is to block the ad. The main reason I install an Adblocker is because I don't want to see any adverts. (preventing malware, and slow page load times is just an added bonus for me)
As long as content is on the open web I am free to chose how to display that content on my own computer as I see fit.
I do pay for some sites to get rid of them were I find the content valuable, but 99% of sites do not offer that choice.
Instagram , snapchat and other app silos will come up as winners as you can't block their ads and open web will turn into a paid web slowly.
PS: I m using ad blockers