Whittingdale stopped short of announcing an outright ban on ad blocking, but said he would “consider what role there is for government.”
I don’t disagree that ad blocking is an issue that needs to be addressed, and quickly. But Whittingdale’s assertion that all the blame lies with consumers and ad blocker providers is plain wrong.
Here’s why…
You cannot compare ad blocking to film or music piracy
Calling ad blocking modern-day piracy is ridiculous. It isn’t modern-day piracy at all. It’s technology giving more power to the consumer and therefore forcing changes in the market.
When somebody pirates a piece of music or a film, that’s it. No money goes to anybody who had a hand in producing it, and you can’t monetise somebody listening to an MP3 on their laptop.
With ad blocking it’s completely different. People might block your main source of income, which is undeniably a problem, but you still have that audience and therefore you can still find other ways to monetise that audience.
One such way could be improving display ads with UX in mind and definitely not inserting autoplay videos into the middle of an article.
To refer to ad blocking as piracy puts all of the blame on the consumer, which is entirely unfair given how utterly unsightly and out of control online ads have become in recent years.
The blame is split between a number of different parties, all of whom need to work together.
A politician coming out and demonising individuals who choose to block ads is hardly likely to win them over.
Whitelisting is free for SMEs
The culture secretary’s whole ‘protection racket’ argument is pinned against the idea that businesses are being forced to pay some kind of bribe to appear on the list.
Aside from his comments being a bit of a kick in the teeth to the consumer given Three’s recent findings that people actually have to pay for ads on mobile, this is also somewhat misleading.
Small-to-medium sites or blogs do not have to pay a fee. They merely have to meet the required standards to be whitelisted.
Managing larger sites, however, inevitably requires an enormous amount of admin. There are manual processes involved, which require time and labour, so it’s hardly surprising that there’s a fee attached.
I’m not absconding ad blocking sites from blame here, but as I’ve said in other posts on this issue it’s easy to just say ‘ad blockers are bad’, stick your head in the sand and pretend that’s all there is to it.
But ad blockers have succeeded for a reason, and they’re not going to go away.
If the government really wants help they should work with the ad blockers, perhaps offering funding to large publishers who agree to meet the terms for acceptable ads.
Just a thought..
Publishers are not free from blame
A lot of discussion on this issue seems to surround the idea that publishers are the innocent victims in all of this.
In a talk I attended a while back one newspaper advertising manager claimed, steadfastly, that publishers are in no way to blame for ad blocking.
Instead, he said, it is the dodgy streaming sites et al with all their awful popups and autoplays.
He’s not wrong on the latter part – those dodgy streaming sites have certainly been a big driver, and it’s likely many people downloaded an adblocker for those sites without turning it off for the sites they don’t mind so much.
But to claim publishers have no share of the blame is either dishonest or outright delusional.
To illustrate my point, I present you, once again, with this classic from The Independent:
Only clamping down on ad blockers glosses over the other issues
Ad blocking has, at the very least, opened up a proper debate about the impact of crappy ads on UX, and it has forced publishers to think differently about how to make ads more palatable or to consider other revenue streams.
Some are now panicking because, through sheer laziness, they pumped more and more display ads into content – videos, scrolling banners, irrelevant recommended articles, you name it – and effectively put all their eggs into that basket.
To only clamp down on ad blocking ignores the underlying issue: consumers have grown increasingly tired of sites awash with awful, garish ads that ruin the user experience.
If ad blockers are to be outlawed – which hasn’t been seriously discussed yet, but, let’s face it, is one potential outcome – then surely the offending publishers will just carry on as before.
In that case, it’s the consumer that ultimately suffers.
Conclusion: stop dishing out blame and work together
I’m not trying to shift blame onto any one party here, but I have become increasingly alarmed by the direction of the discourse around ad blocking.
High-profile figures such as the culture secretary seem to talk as if the fault lies with the evil ad blocker providers and those immoral consumers who choose to use their products.
And he’s not the first person to make a comparison to the music and film piracy issues of the past, a completely irrelevant comparison as far as I’m concerned and one which demonises the individual rather than focusing on the bigger picture.
Ultimately, all parties – ad blocker providers, publishers, consumers and the government – need to come together to address the issue.
What we need is sensible, open-minded debate. What we don’t need is yet more divisive rhetoric from people who don’t really know what they’re talking about.
Do you agree with the culture secretary’s comments? Let me know in the comments below…
Comments