An Angered Pack of Users
Here’s the thing about users: they’re valuable. The web is for them, essentially. If there were not people interested in content, then there would be no need for content. The advent of more aggressive advertising has led many users to install ad blockers on their devices. And many of those users no longer see ads. Period.
But far greater than those scorched earthers are the amount of users with ad blockers who practice ‘ad filtering’. This is exactly what Acceptable Ads stands for – the intrusive ads are filtered out. The Acceptable Ads Standard creates a threshold, a level of ‘accepted’ ads that users have consented to seeing. In fact, over 90% of users who have Adblock Plus as their ad blocker have Acceptable Ads enabled on their devices.
That means that they do see ads, and those ads are seen at a level that does not interfere with their user experience, but rather creates trust and respect towards the brand.
Invasive advertising does not go over well with users, but lighter, approved versions do. It’s a chance to say, ok, let’s all be fair. These users have a low ad exposure, meaning they are not used to clicking and skipping all the time. 71% of US online ad-blocking users polled in eyeo’s recent Ad Blocking Report stated that they understood that publishers rely on advertising to keep their content free.
There is room to get along. Users just want to be heard.
CCM Benchmark: A Great Example
As we’ve learned through our recent collaboration with French publisher CCM Benchmark, the question isn’t why publishers should care about user experience, but rather why there are not more publishers paying attention to something that has become a driving priority for many serious publishers around the world.
CCM Benchmark is a leading digital media company with various well-known websites in France such as Commentcamarche.net, le Journal des Femmes, le Journal du Net, etc… and they are very committed to users and user choice.
Jean-François Pillou, CEO of CCM Benchmark has commented: “Before working with eyeo, we thought that those people who downloaded an ad blocker were against advertising and thus had installed an ad blocker in order not to see any ads on our website. So we decided to respect their choices and defer from using any ad- recovery solutions, which would end up annoying our users even more. This decision was aligned with CCM Benchmark’s values as our website relies on the solidarity of our community and voluntary contributions from our users.”
Of course, through our joint collaboration, we helped them solve this problem by introducing them to Acceptable Ads. Acceptable Ads is a middle way allowing users to take more control of their experience, while granting publishers the chance to fair and sustainable monetization of ad-blocking users. The results have been great and the relationship with CCM Benchmark is going full-steam forward.
They, amongst other publishers, know that users are not the enemy. In fact, collaboration is a real and invaluable alternative to older forms of advertising.
Want to know more, or talk with us about how you can work with Acceptable Ads?
