A friend of mine recently pointed me to this Salon article which cites the CEO of the company behind AdBlock Plus as saying that they’re going to start charging advertisers to not  have their ads blocked. His reason is simple: 80% of AdBlock Plus’s users aren’t against all advertising… they’re just against the irrelevant junk advertising that’s become prevalent.

He’s right. It’s true. And I dare say it’s all Google’s fault. They’ve trained advertisers to focus on the one thing that makes Google money: the click. The thing is that clicks don’t make anyone BUT Google money. And in order to get more clicks, you’ve got to have ads that are obtrusive and annoying.

Take the click away and people go back to the type of advertising that, you know… works. Branding advertising. The kind of thing that readers (i.e. humans) don’t mind. Ads that are in some obvious way related to the content they accompany do quite well.

Podcast ads, sponsorships, and simply relevant banner ads all fit this model. The companies that use these methods see actual results. These results don’t come right away, mind you, but over the course of one-to-three months these ads pay off in a huge way: towards the companies sales and, ultimately (if the company is managed properly), the bottom line.

But yes, we’ve got to get away from the click and, as the Salon piece says, eventually we will … one way or another.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 1st, 2013 at 12:18 pm and is filed under business, podcasting, rants, web advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.