September 28, 2007
TiVo for the Web Arrives
By Tom Ryan
Described by some as a “TiVo for the Web,” Adblock Plus lets users delete banner ads and disable flash and rich-media messages.
The software, which was recently added to and is only accessible on the Firefox browser, is designed to make web browsing a purer user experience.
Writing for The New York Times, Noam Cohen waxed over his Adblock experience, “What happens when the advertisements are wiped clean from a website? There is a contented feeling similar to what happens when you watch a recorded half-hour network TV show on DVD in 22 minutes, or when a blizzard hits Times Square and for a few hours, the streets are quiet and unhurried, until the plows come to clear away all that white space.”
But Mr. Cohen noted that, just like a blizzard, the focus afterwards is often on the millions of dollars lost in the process.
“The larger importance of Adblock is its potential for extreme menace to the online-advertising business model,” writes Mr. Cohen. “After an installation that takes but a minute or two, Adblock usually makes all commercial communication disappear. No flashing whack-a-mole banners. No Google ads based on the search terms you have entered.”
Some see legal fights if ad-blockers increasingly make ad-free surfing easier.
“We don’t want to go down a route that would seem adversarial at all,” Mike Zaneis, VP of public policy for the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the lobbying arm for the online ad industry, told CNET News. “People are free to ignore ads, and they often do that, but when you have a third party blocking those ads, that’s the real problem.”
Nonetheless, marketers speaking to Adweek mostly shrugged off the Adblock threat. They argued that it’s on a niche browser, and similar programs on larger browsers have not waylaid the online advertising business model.
“This particular program is just one part of a larger trend that’s a fact of life for marketers,” said Ilya Vedrashko, an emerging-media strategist at Hill Holiday, Boston. Mr. Vedrashko said much bigger browsers such as Internet Explorer also have ad blocking tools. “I wouldn’t overestimate the importance of the business impact of this application.”
Furthermore, Mr. Vedrashko feels such technology is positive because it forces marketers to create better ads.
John Paulson, president at digital marketing agency G2 Interactive, New York, agreed. “From an industry standpoint, I don’t think any of this is stuff we should be afraid of because it just puts the onus on the image creators to put out messages of value to the user,” he said.
But Jenny Howell, manager of interactive marketing for American Honda Motor, was less hopeful: “Although penetration of Adblock is still quite low, conceptually, programs like Adblock are, of course, frightening to an online marketer.”
Discussion Questions: Should the emergence of Adblock Plus and other internet ad-blockers make companies rethink their online advertising spending strategies? Does this change your perception of the potential of online ad spending?
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Whether Adblock itself is successful or not, the real issue is huge and will be addressed. Too much advertising is too intrusive and harms the value of the medium. Translation: when driving along a highway, one billboard per mile isn’t annoying, but a billboard every 100 feet would be. When listening to the radio, a commercial every 10 minutes might not be resented, but 5 commercials in a row every 10 minutes just makes the audience go away. And if the commercials (however few or many) shout their messages with no wit or couth, many folks turn off that station or turn off their radio entirely. One of the reasons Google is so successful: the ads aren’t allowed to shout, or be insulting, or flash all over the place.
This is like TiVo in another sense–as long as it is used by only a small group of people, it doesn’t really matter. But if lots of people stopped seeing the web ads (or TV commercials) then not only does it first hurt the pocketbook of the media companies, but then eventually either the content goes away or the media company does something drastic, as was implied in the IAB comments.
I am amazed at people who want to get rid of TV ads–how do they think someone can afford to produce and distribute the programming? How can Google or anyone afford the huge infrastructure and other costs without the sponsor ads? Would you rather have webmd.com for free, with ads, or have to pay for it?
There are thousands of good totally non-commercial sites that address certain information, but most of the best must be funded and profitable. I understand at one level how such an application would be appealing to some, but if it works the availability of web content, the number of good web sites, and the free access model will of necessity go away.
Web sites may argue it is an illegal repurposing of their copyrighted content, or sites might detect that such software is in use, and if it is, block access to the site unless a fee is paid.
Adblock plus is a great add-on to the Firefox browser and I use it. It changes my Internet experience in that my time is more efficiently spent reading what I need (and want) to read, instead of all of the worthless advertising that slows down my Internet experience, takes up my time and doesn’t allow me to focus my efforts in the manner of my choosing. More and more software programs will start to duplicate this and we will see these become a universal consumer demand, since most will be free or inexpensive to download (much like anti-virus software). This is the first of many killer aps like this that will change the consumer’s Internet experience for the better.
This could possibly be a real challenge to the web-based advertising industry or it could be a just another piece of technology that most people will ignore or advertisers will find a way around.
The key is that at this point, it does not matter it it is real or not and it people will use it or not. The smart organizations will be keeping an eye on it and other possible competing technology and developing contingency plans.
I’ve been using AdBlock for 3 months on my kids’ machine at home. Its great; imagine if we could have had our Saturday AM commercials filtered out from the TV as kids….
I’d never use it otherwise, Internet promos are so much fun!
I’m a Firefox guy and have been for a couple of years (I highly, highly recommend it–download it and give it a try, it’s free). I’m also an online advertiser, so I’m a little conflicted. Fortunately, all of our advertising is opt-in, meaning that our customers and potential customers have requested our messages. We have been “chosen,” so to speak, and therefore cannot be blocked.
But, for the sites and services that sell banner ads but cannot support them with helpful data (such as iVillage.com), this is hopefully a wakeup call. The online ad industry is much too loosey-goosey as it’s currently practiced.
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Whether Adblock itself is successful or not, the real issue is huge and will be addressed. Too much advertising is too intrusive and harms the value of the medium. Translation: when driving along a highway, one billboard per mile isn’t annoying, but a billboard every 100 feet would be. When listening to the radio, a commercial every 10 minutes might not be resented, but 5 commercials in a row every 10 minutes just makes the audience go away. And if the commercials (however few or many) shout their messages with no wit or couth, many folks turn off that station or turn off their radio entirely. One of the reasons Google is so successful: the ads aren’t allowed to shout, or be insulting, or flash all over the place.
This is like TiVo in another sense–as long as it is used by only a small group of people, it doesn’t really matter. But if lots of people stopped seeing the web ads (or TV commercials) then not only does it first hurt the pocketbook of the media companies, but then eventually either the content goes away or the media company does something drastic, as was implied in the IAB comments.
I am amazed at people who want to get rid of TV ads–how do they think someone can afford to produce and distribute the programming? How can Google or anyone afford the huge infrastructure and other costs without the sponsor ads? Would you rather have webmd.com for free, with ads, or have to pay for it?
There are thousands of good totally non-commercial sites that address certain information, but most of the best must be funded and profitable. I understand at one level how such an application would be appealing to some, but if it works the availability of web content, the number of good web sites, and the free access model will of necessity go away.
Web sites may argue it is an illegal repurposing of their copyrighted content, or sites might detect that such software is in use, and if it is, block access to the site unless a fee is paid.
Adblock plus is a great add-on to the Firefox browser and I use it. It changes my Internet experience in that my time is more efficiently spent reading what I need (and want) to read, instead of all of the worthless advertising that slows down my Internet experience, takes up my time and doesn’t allow me to focus my efforts in the manner of my choosing. More and more software programs will start to duplicate this and we will see these become a universal consumer demand, since most will be free or inexpensive to download (much like anti-virus software). This is the first of many killer aps like this that will change the consumer’s Internet experience for the better.
This could possibly be a real challenge to the web-based advertising industry or it could be a just another piece of technology that most people will ignore or advertisers will find a way around.
The key is that at this point, it does not matter it it is real or not and it people will use it or not. The smart organizations will be keeping an eye on it and other possible competing technology and developing contingency plans.
I’ve been using AdBlock for 3 months on my kids’ machine at home. Its great; imagine if we could have had our Saturday AM commercials filtered out from the TV as kids….
I’d never use it otherwise, Internet promos are so much fun!
I’m a Firefox guy and have been for a couple of years (I highly, highly recommend it–download it and give it a try, it’s free). I’m also an online advertiser, so I’m a little conflicted. Fortunately, all of our advertising is opt-in, meaning that our customers and potential customers have requested our messages. We have been “chosen,” so to speak, and therefore cannot be blocked.
But, for the sites and services that sell banner ads but cannot support them with helpful data (such as iVillage.com), this is hopefully a wakeup call. The online ad industry is much too loosey-goosey as it’s currently practiced.