How should advertisers handle ad blocking?

As much as you would love to get your ads in front of as many people as possible, there are going to be times when they end up getting blocked, often by visitors with an ad blocker installed on their computer. Ad blocking should be considered part of the online advertising business, and you should be aware that there are always going to be some ads that do not get to their programmed destination. The good news is that you can take steps to minimize the number of ads that end up getting blocked and go unseen. Let us take a look at a few tips:

Focus on quality

There are some advertisers who create ad campaigns in a variety of different formats, and then blast them out to every single place that they can. This is not a very effective strategy to begin with, as you are essentially just throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. It is a much better idea to take time to create ads that are memorable, and which will actually be appealing to your target audience. This way, if the ad is not blocked, your chances of an interaction is much higher. People turn on ad blockers because they are annoyed by low quality ads distracting their attention from the content they are interested in viewing. It is important you create high quality ads to lessen the amount of interest in ad blockers, helping all advertisers, and increasing the chances of your own ads being seen.

Work directly with publishers

It is easy to simply place your ads in a network or exchange and then sit back and hope for the best. It is definitely the easiest in terms of time and effort. The problem with this strategy is that your ads could end up getting blocked because the network you chose has a bad reputation for hosting low quality ads. To avoid this situation, you need to work with publishers directly. This will be time consuming, but dealing with the publisher directly offers the best chance of online ad success.

Keep it simple

While flashy ads with outstanding claims tend to get noticed, it is more often than not for the wrong reasons. Yes, your goal is to attract customers and make sales, but if they are annoyed by your ads, or openly dispute the claims being made, you could end up in difficult situations with ad blocking being the least of your concerns. Make your ads honest and informative, and make sure that they all adhere to acceptable and standardized ad formats. Do that and there should be no reason they will ever be blocked.

Try native advertising

This is a form of advertising that is becoming increasingly popular in the online world. The ads that are created are done in a way that makes them look like an organic part of the site that they are published on. The ads can contain videos, images, text, or a combination of them, and are delivered in the same way that the publisher would normally post their own content. Visitors to those sites are usually more accepting of an ad that fits within the normal look and flow of the site and sometimes do not even realize they are viewing an ad.