Published on the 05/04/2016 | Written by Donovan Jackson

Research confirms ads damage consumer experiences, quantifies popularity of ad blockers…

Everybody loves advertising, right? After all, that’s how we find out about the products and services we need and the countless billions spent on advertising over the years surely attests to its efficacy. That’s no doubt why, as soon as consumers have power over advertising, they tune out en masse in a multi-billion dollar digitally disruptive poke in the eye for marketers.

Inbound marketing software vendor HubSpot has released research which confirms what anyone with a web browser intuitively feels: despite ads appearing everywhere in new and different forms, they create negative consumer experiences. It said 80 percent of consumers across Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia are leaving websites because of ‘interruptive’ online ads, and 50 percent of global audiences are installing ad blocker tools. The other 50 percent, iStart surmises, are not yet aware of the availability of ad blocker technology.

The study points to the necessity for different approaches to reaching customers, said HubSpot APAC marketing director Ryan Bonnici in a chat with iStart.

“There’s never been love for ads and now that people have the ability to block where they didn’t before, they are taking that option up,” he said. “We’re also seeing device vendors, like Apple, which want people to use their devices and love the experience, building in ad blockers natively.”

Those top line figures effectively mean advertisers are likely to lose half of their targeted online audience immediately; that’s ‘digital disruption’, on which iStart has  waxed fairly lyrical in the past, on a massive scale in an industry worth around US$121 to US$135 billion per year; Bonnici said ad blockers are costing publishers some US$22 billion per year already.

The answer to this rather nasty (if you are a publisher relying on advertising, or an advertiser hoping to reach eyeballs) conundrum probably isn’t the increasingly intrusive ads which automatically start playing video or audio, scaring the bejesus out of the user. Instead, Bonnici said less interruptive, less intrusive means of reaching the target audience, through for example, native advertising, is likely to be more effective.

“Advertisers and marketers have to be a lot more careful where and how they spend money. At the heart of it, they have to target the persona who they want to try to engage and think about that engagement; no-one wakes up and says ‘I can’t wait to click on an ad’. That’s why the engagement rates are going down. Instead, you need to think about channels that add value.”

Like, for example, creating ‘brilliant engaging content that people want to share’ and which foments that most ancient of marketing methods, word of mouth. “It’s about creating content that adds value and taking that to new audiences in non-interruptive ways.”

Of course, some websites are combating ad blockers in a simple, yet effective way: detecting the ad blocker, and telling the visitor to switch it off or they don’t get to see the content.

In any event, HubSpot said its ‘The Effectiveness of Advertising in Asia Pacific’ report also ‘investigates how marketers will engage consumers with ads in the future’ and ‘uncovers how legacy techniques of audience engagement are damaging consumer relationships’.

Key findings include: 

• Millennials have the highest adoption rate of ad blocker software, with Adblocker Plus – the world’s most popular ad blocker app – reaching 300 million downloads worldwide.
• Email and sponsored-advertising generate the most neutral experience, but 77 percent of respondents revealed they would unsubscribe from a brand’s distribution list if they were sent too many messages.
• Ads are getting a lot of attention but consumers in Asia Pacific also feel negative towards telemarketing calls (66 percent); pop ups (51 percent); and auto playing videos (40 percent)
• Want to damage your brand’s reputation? Three quarters (75 percent) of respondents in Asia Pacific indicate they would have a lower opinion of a brand if they are subjected to a telemarketing call.

The research is available online.